MONKEYWORKS

by Dann Chinn
 

Monkeyworks pitch their tents on interesting turf. TheNew Jersey seven-piece have settled in that indeterminate zone bordering on the increasingly rigid territories of jazz, rock and their noisy child, fusion. They visit their neighbours to borrow milk and say hi, but don't really fit in with them. They're better off hanging out with their fellow homesteaders in the debatable zone - those earnest, displaced-yet-accessible crews like the Flecktones, Bruford Levin Upper Extremities and Jansen Barbieri Karn; plus more elliptical, come-and-go, cometary players such as alt.guitarists David Torn or Arto Lindsay. And like these talents (and some of the broader-thinking neighbours), Monkeyworks are as much steeped in the wide pool we lazily tag "world music" as they are in American or European formalities.

Much of this comes from their guitarist/main composer Ian Smit (drawing on the music which has filtered into his liberal white-African heritage), although the most overtly African piece on board is a whole-band composition, stressing Monkeyworks' collective intentions. On "Dancing By The Acacia Tree", Tex Brown's township-jazz bass groove bobs zestfully under Alan Camlet's steaming cymbalwork and Jeff Eldredge's merry accordion, while the horns of Steve Peckman and Jim Stagnitto converse like The Brotherhood Of Breath arguing affectionately over the beers. Steve Meltzer caps it with some of the liveliest conga-and-voice babble since Manolo Badrena was rattling Weather Report's cage in the mid-'70s. Similarly, their grand opener - "All Folks Welcome" - is a group-composed parade of mingled folk-music strains from all over the globe. Moorish Spain, the Gypsy guitar nation, Irish drones, African walking rhythms and Indian vocal melodies all make their presence felt, led by sax and trumpet in breezy fanfare.

Inbetweeners as they are, Monkeyworks' jazz aspirations owe something to Marcus Miller's synthesized urban settings on Miles Davis' "Tutu", despite their almost-acoustic lineup and Eldredge's eschewal of any keyboard more complex than a Clavinet. This music is still more latterday New York than earthy ethnography, a point driven home by Smit. His Torn-inspired use of discreet drone-guitar loops and gently eerie electrophonic textures provides Monkeyworks with a crucial post-industrial blending element to use in their cultural melting pot. On "Let's Do The Monkeywalk", for instance, he underpins Camlet's dabbling in hip-hop beats, Eldredge's squeezebox flourishes and Stagnitto's chrysanthemum flurry of trumpet notes with a subtly disorientating and skirling submarine coil of circular guitar. It's also Smit that blows the biggest holes in politeness with several yelling, skronked-out electric solos owing much to Adrian Belew in full bucking-bronco mode. As often, though, he displays a sensitive touch on multicultural acoustic guitar, mingling blues, flamenco, jazz and African techniques together in a sensual slither of voicings and fingertips.

This kind of busy cosmopolitanism and jazz vocabulary stitches much of the music together. Peckman and Stagnitto's horns provide most of the jazz depth, melodies and fluidity while the rhythm section leans towards a simpler yet lively multi-fusion approach which thankfully avoids off-the-peg jazz-funk slickness. Consequently, more traditional approaches such as the calypso carnival procession of "Out Of The Bush" or "The Whole Hole"'s mix of traintrack-clicking blues and broad trumpet tonecolour sketches (supported by a springy groan of feedback guitar) come across with sincerity. Mostly, the band avoid the blustering, brass-hung side of jazz-rock as much as they avoid the intense post-bop cliches of contemporary jazz purism. On the stately groove of "Monkeywork"'s African-esque mudfunk, Brown's bass adopts a woody Tony Levin thunk over which Smit lays an off-kilter yet fret-roasting guitar solo and Peckman drives home some raging North African sax lines like an imam in a zoot suit.

Perhaps true bullheaded jazz tension is mostly notable by its absence - Monkeyworks are comfortable listening even when Smit is at his most molten, or when Peckman's sax digresses toward Shorter obliqueness or Ayler wailing. But when the band are concentrating on expressing a composition rather than pursuing pulse and reinterpretation, such quibbles are less important. Smit's composing is accessible, expansive and inclusive: geared towards seducing a hot, friendly club audience rather than flexing outrageous chops or exploring an elusive and complex mystique. At one end of this is the slow-flying teamwork of soprano sax, accordion and acoustic guitar on "Gone Doe La". At the other, the much more spacious and Ellingtonian "Hit By A Dragonfly"; in which Monkeyworks make the most of their acoustic abilities via Eldredge's wide-spaced and authoritative piano chording and Smit’s diversion of his African acoustic guitar into pecking, Di-Meola-style dives and rushes, while Stagnitto interjects slender muted trumpet and smoky puffs of flugelhorn. And like a gentler take on "Saeta", the Smit/Meltzer/Peckman-composed "The Daphne Quiz" marches gradually up to a glorious sunup with the horns entwined.

A fine and tuneful example of the alternative mainstream of post-fusion, this is a good start for Monkeyworks - a solid home-base from which to explore that inclusive multi-tribal music.

- DANN CHINN