I will start off by quoting Sean Tejaratchi's twitter page from 1/5/11:
"Musicians: Multiply your song length by 10, add a percent sign. Those are the chances you're just jerking off."
I saw this tweet as I was listening to the new EP from multi-instrumentalist Calvin Fenner, "The Prologue".
It was clearly meant to be, because it sounds like this was in his head as the EP was created. One of the biggest crimes with what would otherwise be good instrumental music is that it runs too long, and I'm not interested anymore. That is, of course, unless you can back it up. On this set, Calvin doesn't cross the 4:30 line. Unheard of.
The music on "The Prologue" definitely gets the job done from beginning to end. Although Fenner is primarily a drummer, he covers a lot of tracks on this record, and it doesn't sound like it. The surrounding keyboard pad on the opener "Just Chill" has the tact to keep you interested, even though the drums are the only thing moving fast. This gives way to a flurry of lines on "Interlude", which features precise and all around killer execution from Reuben Cainer on bass.
"III" is an interesting proposition of a tune. It's hard to tell whether or not to let your ears hang with the drums or the lines on top, but whichever you choose, the other doesn't distract you. It's really like having two things playing at once a little counterintuitively, but you'd never be able to have one without the other. The guitar solo from Alexander David Potts is full of tasteful note choices that never get caught up in the chops.
I know it's not uncommon to basically give a track to another musician on one's own record (see: "Mr. PC" on Coltrane's "Giant Steps", among many others), but Kyle Miles really gives a 10 out of 10 on the aptly named "Miles". What's really cool here is that in-between the long passages of bass, there are keyboard-based interludes that help it not just seem like a bass solo over a groove. Well done.
Although keyboard lines seem to define this record as a whole, it feels surprisingly fresh by the time you get to the EP's last track, "ChickHerb". What is most intriguing about this as an ending song is that the last two minutes of the song seem to drop in dynamic pretty steadily. A rhodes rises out of the din, eventually taking over as the only instrument and letting you off with gorgeous textures to close out the record.
While I had gotten to play with Calvin in a few different situations at Berklee, and respected his drumming very much, I must say I wasn't sure how this EP was going to go over. Luckily, he delivered with a solid five-track instrumental package coming in at just under 20 minutes long. While we live in a world where the LP record is dying, I just hope that Calvin is only thinking of this as a taste test for a wider, longer sound palette to come.
