Jak Tar is a free/ improv jazz album that slips ‘n’ slides between fierily intense, angularly detailed, and moodily haunting. The ten-track CD/ digital album really is a sonic trip in the best possible way- keeping you nicely on your toes throughout.
 

The album was released by UK’s Discus Music in the early summer of this year. The CD comes presented in a glossy mini gatefold- this is a four-panel affair, which features vibrantly coloured paintings of figures in fantasy landscapes, which rather brought to mind a cruder version of William Blakes's work.
 
The players here are Paul Hession - drums, cymbals and gongs, Michael Bardon - double bass, and Christophe de Bézenac - tenor saxophone. The ten featured tracks have runtimes between one and nearly eight minutes, and clearly, there was both care & thought went into each for both their impact and varied approach/ mood.
 
We open with the wonderful intensely bounding and fiery “Mitch Bryan” which brings together tight bounding double bass lines, baying-to-screaming sax, and detailly tumbling ‘n’ snapping percussion. As we move on have the fluttering, honking, and twitching almost ethnic picks of “Forn Valour”. There’s the tonally scaping ‘n’ tight ruffing meets breathy horn alien-ness of “Mongo Grave” which rather brought to mind the giant orifice fluttering beetle in Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch. With the album playing out stretched out forking to droning haunted moodiness of “Carn Delk”, which sits somewhere between smoky and broodingly ethnic
 
Jak Tar is an impressively tooled, skilfully executed and wholly varied free jazz record. I’d most certainly like to hear more from this three-piece again- so let’s hope this happened down the line. To purchase directly from Discus Music drop in here.