Matt Choboter Band: Spillimacheen
Inner Circle Music

Recorded in Montreal in fall of 2017, Spillimacheen presents a provocative set of Matt Choboter compositions performed by the Canadian pianist with trumpeter Simon Millerd, guitarist Maxime Rheault-Trembley, double bassist Cole Birney-Stewart, and drummer Andrew Thomson. That the release appears on Greg Osby's Inner Circle Music (INCM) imprint already engenders expectations of quality, which the recording thoroughly meets.

The multi-award winning Choboter brings an impressive CV to the project. A year after graduating from Capilano University in 2014, he recorded his debut album, Samskaras, and then decamped to South India for studies in Carnatic rhythm and melody with veena player/vocalist Karaikudi S. Subramanian. Choboter continued to establish himself thereafter by performing alongside Brad Turner at the 2016 Vancouver International Jazz Festival and with numerous figures within the Vancouver and Montreal music scenes.

Insofar as it's represented on Spillimacheen, Choboter's music suggests the sensibility of a restless artist not necessarily ready to abandon conventional territory yet nevertheless eager to push beyond it in search of something more adventurous. Witnessing him engage in the process makes for exciting listening when the paths the music takes are unpredictable, as if the pianist and his partners are charting new routes with fresh discoveries emerging as they do so.

That restlessness is mirrored by Choboter's current lifestyle, which sees him living between Copenhagen, Berlin, and Paris. The album material itself reflects the impact of his South India studies and the many trips he took through the Canadian wilderness following that earlier excursion. Having immersed himself firsthand into settings stretching from Vancouver to Montreal couldn't help but have an impact on the music he subsequently conceived and performed, and of course that South India visit also left a lasting mark, given the degree to which ideas associated with Carnatic rhythm, such as extended time cycles and recession-and-growth patterns, worked their way into the material.

Four of the album's eight pieces push past the ten-minute mark, and only one's under five. Such lengthy durations feel consistent with settings that are less tunes and more excursions. Themes are explicitly stated, true, but they're often treated as springboards for explorations that classify what Choboter's up to as post-jazz of a distinctly personalized kind. In keeping with that flexible mindset, configurations fluctuate between trio, quartet, and quintet on the release. If the players sound comfortable executing such challenging material, it's attributable in part to the year-and-a-half they spent experimenting and rehearsing before entering the studio.

Choboter's open-minded sensibility is reflected in piano playing that repeatedly moves outside established norms of harmony and left-and-right hand conventions. As a representative setting such as “Psychological Time” advances, the music rises and flows, growing aggressive at one moment and introspective in another and with different instruments moving into the spotlight and then away from it. Though the music's informed by abstraction, it's not without its swinging moments, too. “Fixated” is elevated by a rousing solo taken by the leader and the group generates serious heat during rhythm-heavy ensemble passages. “Soweto” unfolds with the fiery determination and pageantry of an Art Ensemble of Chicago performance, whereas the title track enters on a dark flood, all foreboding thematic material and rambunctious drum colourations, before briefly coalescing into a quasi-funk pulse and then disentangling itself from something so straightforward. Like much of the recording, it's episodic, not so much for brazen effect but as a natural consequence of Choboter's mindset.

February 2019