Rashied Ali Quintet Featuring Frank Lowe – Sidewalks In Motion

Survival

Rashied Ali is someone I know for one of those records that I picked up in that period when your early-twenties brain is susceptible to being bent all sorts of ways. That was with Keiji Haino and Bill Laswell, a belter of a trio that never was followed up on (to my knowledge).

His playing on Sidewalks In Motion bears a fair amount of resemblance — a drummer that’s worth listening to. Lots of big dynamics in paradiddles, ever-present and holding things down, but rarely bandstanding. A lot of skittering goes on, but never into the realm of free improv.

Which is also reflective of the material — this isn’t one of those records that changed the face of jazz. It’s a festival show, and it’s a really good one. There’s heads, there’s solos, there’s melodies and it’s closer to conventional. But a conventional that’s being looked at by eyes that have stared a bit too long into the sun.

“Four Or Less” has touches of blues stride on the piano, cut into parts, Frank Lowe‘s tenor phrases just outstaying a bar here and there. Not something that shouts weird into your face so much as finding ‘weird’ stamped on the inside of the label of your clothes.

The title track is probably the winner for the whole set. It’s not quite sure if it’s a free piece or a set of melodies or some Ornette Coleman-like close jittery lines or something else. Sounds at once outrageously tight whilst also like it could fall apart any second. Or at least like rhythm section and solo instruments are in different worlds.Lowe isn’t a name that’s been on my radar so I definitely need to fix that. A gorgeous tone up and down the register and a confident sense of tone that makes the apparent rhythmic abstractions more comfortably musical. Not a mean feat.

Drifting into the night with “Raw Fish”, Sidewalks In Motion is an album that’s odd in being relatively normal. As I say, this isn’t a ground-breaking record or a record that blasts its way into your face. But that’s also the magic — light touches of obvious melodicism peppered with falling-away forms. Always bolstered by Ali’s gentle pencilling-around the rhythm, there’s a bunch of musicians carefully playing around each other, finding spaces for timbre and rhythmic play, ecstasy and withdrawal.

Sidewalks In Motion is a jazz record through and through and unpretentiously so. Lowe and Ali have since passed, so it’s a shame to have this in record form rather than still treading the boards; but it’s one for the ages regardless.

-Kev Nickells-