KARL LATHAM/RYAN CARNIAUX/

MARK EGAN

“Constellations”

DoubleMoon/Challenge Records

Jazz drummer Latham, inspired by Bjork’s

2007 side Volta, brilliantly reinterprets the

Nordic chanteuse’s sound, style, and sensibility with the help

of Mark Egan (on fretted and fretless Pedulla S-strings), trumpeter

Ryan Carniaux, and keyboardist Nick Rolfe. Egan leaps from

the opener, “Hope,” with a growling theme-and-variation ostinato

that becomes a dialogue with Carniaux’s horn. Elsewhere,

he locks in tight with Latham’s taut groove on “Wanderlust” and

global shuffle on “The Dull Flame of Desire,” issues dancing harmonics

in “Desired Constellation,” and makes the closer, “Ostara,”

his own with his sympathetic fretless melody reading and sprawling

solo. –Chris Jisi