New Haven Independent
Jazz Releases Come Out Swinging
Review by Brian Slattery in the New Haven Independent, August 9, 2023
One curio to pop back into the eternal present of recorded music is an album by The Lazenbys, recorded in May 1997 but rereleased just last week. “The Lazenbys were an experimental musician’s collective based in New Haven and were voted one of the top three instrumental bands in the New Haven Advocate readers poll in 1998,” the band’s description reads. The title of the album is Sextet Live at the State Street Fest, May 31, 1997. What was the State Street Fest? It’s lost to recorded internet history (anyone who reads this and knows what it was, please leave a comment).
What we do know, from the recording, is that the Lazenbys came in on a squall of sinister noise and ominous clangs, groans from a bowed bass, crackles from drums, and that the horns bided their time, waiting over 10 minutes before making their entrance, and that’s when the band’s energy deepened, and the sextet went out with the coiled fury of a soundtrack to the freakiest science fiction movie someone never got a chance to make. Was it really performed on a late spring day three decades ago? If so, in the confidence with which the Lazenbys performed, it also could have been recorded yesterday.
Original piece online here.
