Byron

Not Without Risk (2001). The second solo effort by percussionist Byron Metcalf follows his collaboration with Steve Roach, "The Serpent's Lair". On this CD, he lets out all the stops, and dives straight into the heart of percussive, juicy music, with deep rhythms, a bottom that won't quit, and high-caliber production of his own design. This would be great for meditation, contemplation, and others trying to reach a higher state of consciousness…

David Byron's first post-Uriah Heep solo album found the singer trying on a number of new musical styles in a bid to establish a new musical identity. Working with producer/multi-instrumentalist Daniel Boone, Byron created an album that was much poppier and musically ambitious than the gothic hard rock that earned him his fame. In fact, Baby Faced Killer is a veritable genre-hopping extravaganza, covering territory as diverse as rockabilly ("Rich Man's Lady"), pure pop ("Heaven or Hell"), and even disco ("African Breeze"). Surprisingly, the album manages to live up to this sense of ambition because its songs are catchy, well-crafted, and brought to life with imaginative arrangements.

Considering how lackluster some of David Byron's early solo work (and final days with Uriah Heep) sounds today, it is not only refreshing, but astonishing, to run head first into On the Rocks and find the old voice box sounding better than it had in years. Packed with some of the most menacing riffs of his career – check out "King" – and a voice that roars on the right side of anger, On the Rocks is the sound of classic Heep, shot through with both the fresh adrenalin of the NWOBHM and an ear for what was going on elsewhere in the world. "Start Believing" layers in Mel Collins' sax to add an almost funky feel to the proceedings, even as "Piece of My Love" echoes on bluesy piano, while "Bad Girl" is simply slinky.

For while it would be idle to pretend that this 70-year-old virtuoso, struck down at the height of his career with psoriatic arthritis, still commands the velocity and reflex of his earlier years, his later Chopin and Liszt are a tribute to a devotion and commitment gloriously enriched by experience. The First Impromptu is piquantly voiced and phrased while the C sharp minor Etude, Op. 25 No. 7, could hardly be more hauntingly confided, more ‘blue’ or inturned. How you miss the repeat in the C sharp minor Mazurka, Op. 50 No. 3 (not Op. 15, as the jewel-case claims), given such cloudy introspection and if there are moments when you recall how Rubinstein – forever Chopin’s most aristocratic spokesman – can convey a world of feeling in a scarcely perceptible gesture, Janis’s brooding intensity represents a wholly personal, only occasionally overbearing, alternative; an entirely different point of view. Time and again he tells us that there are higher goods than surface polish or slickness and in the valedictory F minor Mazurka, Op. 68 No. 4 he conveys a dark night of the soul indeed, an emotion almost too desolating for public utterance… Janis is no less remarkable in Liszt, whether in the brief but intriguing Sans mesure (a first performance and recording), in a Sonetto 104 del Petrarca as tear-laden as any on record and in a final Liebestod of an exhausting ardour and focus.

Wachuma's Wave is sacred music in the truest sense. It is a portal of travel, a soul retrieval, a ritual of deep time dreaming. Veteran trance percussionist Byron Metcalf teams up with German-based musician and shamanic practitioner Mark Seelig to bring forth a multi-textural blend of Bonsuri flutes, sacred chants and overtone singing, simmering percussion and other hybrid grooves, augmented by rich offerings of deep drift ambient synthesizer and didgeridoo from special guest, soundscape maestro Steve Roach.

Georgios Axiotis was a leading and historically significant Greek composer who was opposed to the ‘Germanisation’ of music education in Greece. His training in Naples led him to conceive of national music of a mediterranean quality related to the naturalism of Italian verismo. The works on this album are his most important and lasting contributions to Greek orchestral music. Axiotis possessed an exceptional instinct for balance and timbre and was a splendid orchestrator. The lyricism in these pieces exudes Greek late Romanticism, while his nature depictions are strongly atmospheric.

Clarinetist Don Byron once again mixes post-bop, swing, and funk into a unique concoction on Ivey-Divey. Just like Bug Music wasn't necessarily '30s swing and A Fine Line: Arias and Lieder wasn't exactly a classical album, Ivey-Divey isn't truly a straight-ahead, mainstream jazz album, although purists and avant-garde fans alike should find much common ground here. To these ends, Byron gets humorously rambunctious and a little "out" on such tracks as the swinging "I've Found a New Baby," the reverent and bluesy "Himm (For Our Lord and Kirk Franklin)," and the funky downtown jam "'Leopold, Leopold…'." Backing Byron here are the always adventurous talents of pianist Jason Moran, drummer Jack DeJohnette, trumpeter Ralph Alessi, and bassist Lonnie Plaxico.