Tenor and soprano sax visionary Chris Potter has produced a richly poised, seductive album in The Dreamer is the Dream, on which the American musician shines in the company of pianist David Virelles, percussionist Marcus Gilmore and Joe Martin on double bass.
The opener Heart in Hand is a languorous exercise, sultry and slow-moving like Miles Davis’s aching ballad, Blue in Green but without the wistful air we associate with that one. It is glorious, you could listen forever to its cadenzas with the certainty that you would never quite tap into its secrets.
Ilimba begins with earthy Ilimba drum, played by Potter himself, a multi-instrumentalist who also handles flute and samples. The drum in question is played in Zimbabwe and Tanzania, and the body of the instrument is made from the hard outer shell of a gourd.
Pianist and celeste player David Virelles spent his youth in Cuba and is, according to Potter, steeped in the folkloric rhythms of that island. You certainly sense something Cuban indeed in feathery, brightly-hued touches and flourishes. However, slow, sensuous pieces like Heart in Hand, Memory and Desire and their natural companions, the free-spirited, poly-rhythmic tone poems Yasodhara and The Dreamer is the Dream are not particularly tropical in inclination. Yet they lure you on up their Coltrane (train) tracks, and the former features particularly well-judged percussion from Gilmore.
Cuban-influenced or not, there is, it has to be said, real heat radiating off the six tracks. Pre-production was done in Switzerland before the ensemble repaired to New York’s Avatar Studios to record what is a rich, yet curiously elusive album.
Paddy Kehoe
