Trumpeter Enrico Rava, the veteran father figure of Italian jazz, does a curious thing on his new record. He mixes that lonely, wistful note that he himself is so good at evoking – I always visualise a deserted street at dawn in a small, almost unknown Mediterranean city – with harsher, raspy notes that Francesco Diodati can squeeze from his guitar when required.
So you get the lyrical and sensual and you get the frenzy of pushy fusion, and that chance-it-anyway improvisational approach from Diodati that reminds one of Bill Frisell’s playing. And yet Diodati can get lyrical and meditative too when Rava pulls him in that direction – they are all Rava tunes after all - so it’s a perfect marriage. Both gentlemen are aided and abetted by Gabriele Evangelista on double bass, drummer Enrico Morello and guest trombonist Gianluca Petrella. Petrella and Rava play off each other instinctively and the album has different synergies and pairings going on within the confines of the quartet.
Track one and two - Diva and Space Girl respectively- are elegant and dreamy. Don’t continues the reflective, mildly regretful mode and if you were trying to get yourself off to sleep at night, those first three would certainly do the suantrí trick. Track four, Infant, is brisker and the guitar lets out the throttle, while track six, Sola is a sad ballad – there is rain on that deserted street by now - which begins with ruminative solo bass. Not Funny is similarly chilled, while the title track - Wild Dance itself - commences with a fearsome sound like a didgeridoo.
F Express starts with a sequencer sound and bird cries. Thus the album ranges around, spreading its peculiar fire across the sagebrush through the spectrum of mood changes, from the urgently propulsive to the quietly lyrical, from brassy post-Bebop bravura to quiet introspection. Guitarist Diodati goes over the top with one mercifully short, but fully rocked-out guitar solo that is somehow superfluous - it's like it says nothing. Nevertheless, aside from that tiny misstep, Wild Dance is a gnarled but leafy branch from the flourishing Italian jazz tree.
Paddy Kehoe
