Zap! (Cellar Jazz)

Wah-wah pianos, bold bass lines, legato guitars, and lashings of cowbell: the debut CD from Vancouver drummer Dave Robbins’s electric band is a throwback to a distant and frankly rather dusty time, the years between Miles Davis’s earth-shaking Bitches Brew and the regrettable rise of smooth jazz. In other words, we’re talking fusion here.

The fusion style—a blend of hard bop, funk, and Latin idioms, with rock trappings—exists in an odd aesthetic limbo. It’s too macho and blunt for those who prefer their music to be cerebral, but too emotionally aggressive for the cocktail crowd, and in addition it’s decidedly unfashionable.

Which of course means that it’s ripe for a comeback, right?

Zap! might not relaunch the style, but it’s an enjoyable listen for anyone who still finds time to dust off their Weather Report LPs. Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter’s pioneering outfit is the clear inspiration for the title track, which features snaky horn lines from saxophonist Evan Arntzen, taut clavinet from Brad Turner, and the ultra-syncopated electric bass of Kerry Galloway, who seems to have adopted some of Jaco Pastorius’s snotty attitude along with his pugnacious sound.

Elsewhere, Robbins and band explore soul jazz, with guitarist Jared Burrows getting all bluesy on “Nasty Little Hairs”, and luscious ballads such as the dreamy, almost-Ellingtonian “Slowing Movement”. Robbins shows admirable restraint on that one, the better to show off Turner’s languorous Fender Rhodes solo, but elsewhere he proves himself a powerfully dynamic drummer—and a born leader, too.