New York Times praises Creesus

I guess there's no shame in being scooped by the New York Times. Two weeks before we ran our review of local jazz combo No More Shapes' Creesus Crisis, the newspaper of record took a moment to praise the disc. If you don't have the time to click and scroll, here's what they had to say:

No More Shapes

A new jazz group from Calgary, Canada: Eric Hamelin, J. C. Jones and Jay Crocker, playing drums, trombone and guitar-electronics. Young guys, ruckus makers, doing some subversion, scratching out their signatures. They’re as do-it-yourself as it gets, but they’re not out of nowhere: you can draw a pretty straight line from Thelonious Monk to Roswell Rudd and Steve Lacy’s early-’60s band, through the more traditional edge of New York’s loft-jazz scene in the 1970s (Frank Lowe and Billy Bang records come near it), to No More Shapes’ first record, “Creesus Crisis” (Drip Audio). The album has a likably garagey sound as the trio hustles through moody, splintery bop and clattery rock. But the ballads, like “New Years (Yves’)” and “Invisible Glasses,” really make its case, building and subsiding, putting emphasis on tune and atmosphere, not behaving along jazz’s usual theme-solos-theme grid. No More Shapes might not make it to the Vanguard, but there’s a strong feeling of right place and right time; you get the sense that they might construct their own.

Young ruckus-maker Crocker is also in Ghostkeeper, who, you'll remember, is releasing its new self-titled album this Thursday.


more in Music Features     |     posted Apr 13th, 2010 at 1:04pm     


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