About

Speak To Me is unmistakably a Julian Lage record. There is the juxtaposition between the considered and the instinctual, the tension between the melodic and atonal. There is that live-wire audacity in his electric guitar, and moments of stillness, intimacies shared via an OM-sized acoustic, all to tell us a story. And yet Speak To Me is quite unlike anything Lage has done before.

His fourth studio album for Blue Note, this LP expands Lage’s usual trio to a sextet, changing the dimensions of the songwriting, finding Lage’s jazz guitar touring through adjacent musical neighbourhoods, drawing from gospel, hymnals, acoustic folk, the blues, with the acoustic sharing more of the burden than we are used to hearing, his 1657 Nachocaster T-type with the Ellisonic P-90 at the neck shouldering most of the electric work. But for a recording that stretches the dynamics between raw electric and pure acoustic there more occasions for Lage's guitar to recede into the background, to sketch out the track and let the other instrumentation colour it in. 

The Speak To Me ensemble brings together some formidable talents. Lage drafted the “powerhouse” Canadian pianist Kris Davis, with Patrick Warren joining her on keys. Levon Henry is on wind instruments, while the virtuoso Julian Lage Trio rhythm section we all know and love is in full effect with Jorge Roeder on bass and Dave King on drums. — (via Music Radar)

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Label: Blue Note – 00602458276398
Format: 2x Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: US
Released: Mar 1, 2024
Genre: Jazz
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File under: Bass / Guitar