snobb
Russian drummer and composer Alex Vostrikov is a leader of instrumental rock band Jam It! Differently from his band's music, on his solo album Alex doesn't play progressive rock, he plays jazz fusion, quite unusual one.
I can hardly remember drummer's album with such perfectly composed material! Obviously rooted in classical composition, music here doesn't sound as third stream or even chamber jazz, it has groove and lot of improvisations.All three musicians are equal co-leaders playing this beautiful music, sound is rich,full and tasty.
Besides of well-composed material, the other big advantage of this album music's is it represents very rare and fragile balance when no-one of its two strong components dominates in final mix. At every moments the listeners can hear classic piano and swing, groove and precisely played pre-composed piece,etc,etc. Bass line sounds as if it comes from "golden era" mainstream jazz, drummer doesn't try to impress listeners demonstrating his technical abilities even for a second. High energy comes from rock aesthetics but it doesn't destroy the elegance of music. Dramatic development is taken from classical tradition, but music doesn't become too formal or predictable, it looks Alex took best from jazz,classic and rock and very carefully,with big respect to each genre mixed it to his music, which sounds very familiar and unusually new at the same time.