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| Alexander Flood Photo: Nick George/Wellington Jazz Festival |
Mid-evening Thursday night, San Fran filled with a young clubbing crowd keen for some stomping bangers and a bit of a wig out to end the week. It was dancing room only.
Through the mastery of his drum kit headliner, and Adelaide Native, Alexander Flood, creates dense and layered grooves, accentuating his versatility, and virtuosity with a choice selection of cosmopolitan and urban rhythms. Backed by and laidback, yet precise three piece of bass (Dylan Paul), keys (Jake Amy) and flute (Erica Tucceri), he led a new set tonight with a distinctive nod to the best cuts from the Acid Jazz, D'n'b and New Jack Swing eras.
With his kit front stage we had the opportunity to catch Flood's performance up close. He barely moves, which is impressive. His playing approximates a perfect metronome. Yet in that palate there is an endless colour box of nuanced tones and blended rainbows.
His set tonight was a serious slice of material from 2023 album Oscillate (Jakarta Records) and a fairly heavy tasting of new, yet to be released tracks.
First up a house/jazzy number called 'Artifact', which rides the bass line whilst flood navigates his skins through a variety of grooves and tempos. Over that Erica Tucceri's flute gives the whole mess a perfect classy swirl of energy. Her playing is mesmerising at times and a signature lounge feel that lifts your wairoa with positiveness.
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| Erica Tucceri Photo: Nick George/Wellington Jazz Festival |
His kaupapa continues in that vein with variations of a theme, led by his kit and the siren grooves of Tucceri's flute playing. The album title 'Oscillate' has a broken beat jazz agenda. Flood's solo is impressive, showing he really has the chops to adapt to whatever comes his way and is way more than an efficient beat maker.
'Sidestep' is an unreleased broken beat number that serves to introduce the harder edged House vibes of 'Berlin'.
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| Photo: Nick George/Wellington Jazz Festival |
I spied nods to 70's experimentalists Gong and 90's Lounge players Galliano in the threads of another unreleased downtempo piece called 'Cinnamon & Clove'.
Everyone sat up and danced harder on a new unnamed D'n'B/dnb /jungle song build with loops and hardcore beats and more keys and flute.
And just to demonstrate their skills even more, the quartet tried out a bit of a 'workshop' piece. Essentially, these are all unreleased 'bits'n'loops' that the band improvised around. Which was pretty clever, if pointless fun.
The new single 'Life Is A Rhythm' is a chugging locomotive, running over a track of double beat snares and some groove-meister Rhodes
Then there's more D'n'B, ('Deja Vu'), this time more hardcore than before. The kit is alive with sporadic energy as if the machine has been released from the straitjacket of digital mimicry and allowed to wander down under into beats underplayed.
They wrap up with an ecstatic deep house one called 'Can't Get Enough' (no relation to Supergroove BTW), which gets the who floor writhing in ecstasy.
This was a welcome addition to the Festival, and a great decision on the part of the directors. Every year the festival finds an explosive alt-jazz funk act. But not since The Rocket Is Coming a few years' back has there been a really good reason to get up and get down like this. Choosing San Fran for the venue was a wise decision, too. With the Opera House being too much of a restriction in both price and physical environment. Nobody wants to go to a show and be told to st down when clearly you need to dance!
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