eMusic Review 0
With Infernal Machines, Darcy James Argue seemed to come out of nowhere: Who was this guy who wrote tunes drawing equally from the big band tradition as well as post-rock and classical minimalism? Why did he call his music “steampunk-jazz?” The reality was that this composer-bandleader came from the practice hall, where he’d been drilling his band for several years. Infernal Machines bowled us over with a fully formed, highly unique vision.
Brooklyn Babylon is his follow-up and, after a Grammy nod as well as three of DownBeat’s “rising star” awards, the album has got a lot of following up to do. A 53-minute suite originally written as one half of a visual-art-and-music spectacle at the Brooklyn Academy of Music back in 2011, the studio-recording version of Brooklyn Babylon raises a few questions of its own: Is this a proper jazz record, or is it a one-dimensional document of a live multi-media project? And: does it matter?
The answer does matter. If this were just a callback to some live event, it would be of interest mostly to those who attended the shows. But the first two tracks — “Prologue” and “The Neighborhood” — advertise that the new music here… read more »
