Some of the most wonderful blendings of sounds comes when guitars meet with keyboards. Here are a couple different approaches to this timeless sound.
Guitaris Dewa Budjana mixes and matches with LA studs Larry Goldings/key, Bob Mingtzer/reeds, Jimmy Johnson/b and Peter Erskine/dr for some upbeat and contemporary sounding jazz that is catchy and sophisticated. Upbeat grooves such as on “Foggy Cloud” and “Majik Blue” spotlight a clean sounding axe, with some nice soprano support by Mintzer on the latter. Goldings’ B3 hits the right chords on “Erskoman” which locks in a relentless groove, while the dramatic and driving “Dan Hyang Story” show off Budjana’s chops. Janis Siegel transfers some fine vocals on “As You Leave My Nest” and some gentle acoustic work is displayed on “Borra’s Ballad.” Nice showing!
Keyboardist Riza Arshad leads the simakDIALOG band along with Tohpati/g, Adhitya Pratama/b, Endang Ramdan/perc, Erlan Suwardana/perc and Cucu Kurnia/perc. Think there’s a lot of percussion on this session? WHEW! Hip grooves percolate with keyboards and guitar on “Stepping In” and “Lain Parantina” while the band rocks on “Common League” with some synthetic background rumbling along. A more gentle groove is found on “ What Would I Say” and some clever guitar lines meld with the keyboards on “Harmologic” but the theme here is jamming the grooves, and it works well for that expectation.
Moon June Records