Michael Blake: Dance of the Mystic Bliss
P&M Records

Issued on P&M Records, the label founded in late 2021 by tenor saxophonist Michael Blake and his London-based sibling Paul, Dance of the Mystic Bliss could have been a lugubrious affair. After all, it was created during the pandemic years (albeit during a lockdown break) and emotionally constellates around the death of their mother, Merle, at eighty-one. Instead, it's a dynamic, life-affirming celebration. There's much to admire about Blake, and young players would be wise to consider using his career as a template. He's been in the game for over twenty-five years, and the one-time Lounge Lizards member has fifteen albums in his discography. Yet on the cusp of sixty, he's expanding his sound and broadening his stylistic horizons.

On Dance of the Mystic Bliss, he augments his primary axe with soprano sax and flute, the latter an instrument he worked hard at developing during lockdown. More critically, the album introduces an eclectic new outfit, Chroma Nova, featuring Skye Steele (violin, rabeca, gonji), Chris Hoffman (cello), Michael Bates (bass), guitarist Guilherme Monteiro, and percussionists Rogerio Boccato (cajón, pandeiro, etc.) and Mauro Refosco (hand drums, berimbau, marimba). Such instrumentation might suggest that the album's a ”Brazilian jazz” project, yet while there are moments that justify the label Dance of the Mystic Bliss resists simple genre capture. As the album plays, one's less fixated on slotting the music into a stylistic box and instead arrested by the instruments' timbres and the performances' rhythmic energy.

Blake honours his “dancer, singer, gardener, and cat lover” mother (his description) by starting with “Merle The Pearl,” the tune's swinging, percussion- and strings-driven pulse an immediate attention-grabber. Add to it a handful of slinky melodies, his full-throated roar, and a groove that's as indebted to Africa as Brazil and you've got a delicious scene-setter. Other tunes are as infectious, among them the feverish “Sagra,” which Blake animates with a rollicking groove and rousing fiddle and tenor sax.

Spiraling soprano runs couple with Monteiro's picking on “Le Couer du Jardin” to hypnotic effect, the music's intoxicating quality deepening with the addition of percussion and strings. After Blake's jazzy tenor slinks a path through the funky 7/4 groove of “Little Demons,” Monteiro heats things up with a spiky, blues-soaked solo that briefly points the album in a Delta direction. As a soloist, he consistently impresses and proves to be a solid partner to the leader.

Elsewhere, the aptly titled “Prune Pluck Pangloss” sweetens its enticing languor with pizzicato strings and marimba. Blake plays tenor and soprano sax on most of the tracks, but fashions “The Meadows” as an attractive showcase for flute and guitar explorations. Many a track's grounded in the dense, percolating thrum generated by Boccato and Refosco, “Topanga Burns” a case in point for how firmly they underpin the leader's soaring soprano solo.

June 2023