By: Dr. Matt Warnock
Tradewind is an intellectually stimulating and highly entertaining modern jazz album by Chicago bassist Steven Hashimoto’s group Mothra. The album features a highly accomplished line-up of musicians including guitarist Neal Alger, vibraphonist Kathy Kelly, saxophonists Dan Hesler and Michael Levin and drummer Heath Chappell. The level of ensemble interaction and communication on the album is commendable to say the least. With adventuresome grooves, complex chord progression and melody lines that twist and turn across the harmonic spectrum, it is the strong sense of ensemble between these six musicians that allows the music to flow naturally out of their instruments without ever sounding forced or contrived.
Hashimoto’s electric bass style is reminiscent of the recordings of the late, great Jaco Pastorius, though with a personalized sound that is thoroughly modern in context. His ability to seamlessly move between modern jazz/rock based grooves (“Now You Know”), slow ethereal ECM influenced feels (“Haiku”) and Latin/swing tunes (“Woikin’ Wit’ Mr. Poikins”) brings a element of diversity to the album that prevents it from becoming stagnant or monotonous. Every tune has a new feel, its own unique voice that is only further exemplified with Hashimoto’s versatile bass lines and grooves. His lines always seem to have the knack of being able too fit perfectly within the overall vibe of the piece, which provides new levels of inspiration for the other members of the ensemble.
The ensemble that Hashimoto has selected for this album is a natural fit to bring out the intended character of the compositions. Each band member brings a strong understanding of the modern jazz language to each piece, and aside from their melodic and harmonic vocabularies their heightened sense of communication is one of the main reasons why the album as a whole is so successful. Without this high level of interactivity between all of the musician’s pieces such as “Eloise,” “Happenstance” and “Samsara” could have faltered before they even began. Instead, each of these tunes, as well as the others, is allowed to breathe and develop a character unto itself, while the musicians allow themselves to ebb and flow with the individual nuances of each composition.
Tradewind is a modern jazz album that is sonically adventuresome while at the same time being easily accessible in nature. Though it was originally released through the Chicago Session subscription service, due to the popularity of the series’ releases, including this one, all of the labels titles can also be found wherever albums are sold.
Links
Steven Hashimoto’s Homepage
Tradewind on Amazon
