Upon first listen to trumpeter
Wallace Roney's
Mystikal one might be inclined to marginalize it as yet another attempt to re-create '70s-era
Miles Davis. This would be a mistake. While
Roney has always owed a large debt to the iconic
jazz innovator -- he even played with
Davis on a concert released as
Miles & Quincy Live at Montreux --
Mystikal is a modern album made up of vintage parts. Which is to say that while
Roney has deep affection for the sounds of '60s
jazz and '70s
funk and
fusion, he is a resolutely forward-thinking musician who borrows from a variety of sources and time periods even when the overall sound is funky. Featuring his longtime working band including pianist
Geri Allen, brother saxophonist
Antoine Roney, keyboardist
Adam Holzman, bassist
Matt Garrison, drummer
Eric Allen, percussionist
Bobby Thomas, Jr., and turntablist
Val Jeanty,
Roney has largely crafted a sister album to 2004's similarly minded
Prototype. Like that album,
Mystikal is in many ways a standard
jazz album with some original compositions, a cover of a
standard, and a lesser known piece by a well-known artist. This time around that artist is
Wayne Shorter, whose
"Atlantis" kicks off the album. An expansive and creepily funky piece off
Shorter's underrated 1985 album of the same name,
Roney turns the song into a moody mix of
Miles in the Sky-esque post-bop, '80s
hip-hop, and
new age atmospherics. Similarly engaging is his melancholy cover of the
Temptations classic
"Just My Imagination," which draws out the deeper, more sanguine harmonics of the song even while it perfectly embodies the innocent romance of the original. Interestingly,
Roney makes room for some straight-ahead but no less adventurous stuff here covering trumpeter
Kenny Dorham's jaunty
"Poetic" as well as ending with pianist
Bud Powell's gorgeous
ballad "I'll Keep Loving You." Roney's own compositions do not disappoint either with the hard
funk of
"Stargaze" and the elegiac
"Baby's Breath" displaying the trumpeter's deft creative vision. ~ Matt Collar
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![Pharoah [Expanded Edition]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0680899800822_p0_v2_s90x140.jpg "Pharoah [Expanded Edition]")
