Autumn, short days cooler temperatures colourful leaves and yes you guessed it, funky jazz. This album features one of the most famous drummers in the solar system, Steve Gadd, and in addition to being a mostly happy foot stomping album, All That Matters sets a challenge of sorts to any future NATO (Germany, US and Sweden) jazz trio, in the form of an unprecedented age range.
Leader Simon Oslender is only 26 years old, the very able sax player Jacob Manz is even younger at only 23. The oldest member of this supergroup is Steve Gadd, who has been famous since the ‘60s and played with just about every decent musician alive by now and is included in the credits of countless albums, he is 79. Nils Landgren who has established himself a brilliant funk specialist in his own right, has been married since 1979, yet he is ‘only’ 68. The scale of perspectives and energy that this this age range creates, has no doubt a lot to do with the zest that this immensely talented band displays throughout the album.
All That Matters sounds as if it were recorded in the early ‘70s, the style certainly pays homage to jazz funk albums that were all the rage at that time. Those who like Les McCann’s albums of that era (especially the Eddie Harris collaborations) will recognise themes and rhythms that make compelling to this day.
The album contains 10 tracks and lasts a smidgen over 51 minutes which gives the band space to demonstrate its prodigious skills. This international collection of excellence consists of Simon Oslender (keyboards, percussion), Steve Gadd (drums), Will Lee (electric bass), Bruno Muller (guitars), Jakob Manz (alto sax) and Nils Landgren (trombone). The sound is influenced by American musical styles be they New Orleans shuffles, straight jazz, gospel revival or even some of Fagan and Becker’s signature sounds.
The recording’s sound is on the warm side, it is good but it places instruments at an unrealistic width. There was something else that raised eyebrows and caused an overworked audiophile to scratch his balding head, the CD produced 48Khz at 16 bits, which perplexed as CDs are meant to offer a maximum of 44.1/16 resolution due to limitations of the format.
I tried two versions, one was upsampled to 48/24 and the other to 96/24, with some very odd results, the 48/24 certainly sounded far superior to the 16 bit version, it had spacial depth and added speed and clarity of bass. Not so for the 96/24 version which sounded very bright and harsh and the warmth and low-end bass was all but taken out of it. Strange.
Best tracks: Quite Logical, Donkey , Cruisin’.
Reuben Klein