The late Steve Lacy's music occupies a very special place in the world of improvised music: it's witty, spare and quite heady, as unique as anything in the jazz codex. There have been many nods in his direction over the years, some more successful than others, but all finding various sources of inspiration, be it his tunes, approach or even his humour.
Ideal Bread poke fun at themselves and generally play Lacy's music through filters of rock 4/4s, free improv and outright jazz. Songs like "The Lesson" enter freely and noisily but find themselves in serious and almost pedantic running of the melody, while "The Wire" staggers around 'til it finds the groove. While the conceptual shifts are fairly well executed, the songs sometimes fail to gain much traction beyond a very well played exercise.
(Cuneiform)Ideal Bread poke fun at themselves and generally play Lacy's music through filters of rock 4/4s, free improv and outright jazz. Songs like "The Lesson" enter freely and noisily but find themselves in serious and almost pedantic running of the melody, while "The Wire" staggers around 'til it finds the groove. While the conceptual shifts are fairly well executed, the songs sometimes fail to gain much traction beyond a very well played exercise.