Bass Player Magazine Review of “Constellations”
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