| The music played by Lawnmower lives between two neighbor fields of the blues heritage: jazz and rock. It's not jazz-rock fusion, and it's not collage, but something else: jazz in permanent equation with rock, living from the process and not interested in finding a definitive result. This would be the easiest way, considering that the group is committed to presenting problems, not solving them. Jazz drummer Luther Gray picked his trio with the indie rock guitarists Geoff Farina and Dan Littleton (heard on the album "New Salt") and added brilliant avant-jazz luminary, alto saxophonist Jim Hobbs. Gray's purpose was to build a bridge between his past and present musical interests, and in doing so he accomplishes much more: something that makes entire sense in itself, not needing any justification. A former punk musician, Luther Gray established his name with the cream of the freedom fighters using the jazz idiom, Joe Morris, Anthony Braxton, Joe McPhee, Fred Anderson, Andrew White, Ken Vandermark, Sabir Mateen, Roy Campbell, Rob Brown, Steve Swell, and Taylor Ho Bynum, crossing the Boston, the Chicago and the New York scenes. Hobbs got specially noticed with Joe Morris, and his personal ideas about music are openly expressed in the surrealist jazz band he leads, The Fully Celebrated Orchestra. One from Karate, Gloryteller and Secret Stars fame, and the other coming from the folkish duo Ida, and The Hated, Farina and Littleton have folk-rock as the point of departure of their journeys, and jazz as the gasoline. The mix is explosive. |