Billie Davies Trio is reviewed by Something Else... http://somethingelsereviews.com/2012/09/15/the-billie-davies-trio-all-about-love-2012/
Belgium native Billie Davies first started drumming at the age of
three, and even though she dabbled in a number of other artistic
endeavors, like singing and DJ’ing, her skills behind the kit were
notable enough to garner the attention of Max Roach,
who offered her a scholarship at the Berklee School of Music. It was at
a time of her life when she was having too much fun to engage in
serious studies, so she turned it down.
Eventually though, Davies devoted herself full time toward drumming,
picking up innumerable styles that she has mastered, including
soul/funk, blues, classical, and all shades of jazz. In the last few
year, though, she’s immersed herself into jazz forms exclusively, moving
to Hollywood and forming a trio, the Billie Davies Trio. The fruits of
her collaboration with trio members Tom Bone Ralls (trombone) and Oliver
Steinberg (bass) are set forth in this new CD, all about Love.
all about Love is all about relaxed improvisation, with a hard
swing coming from Davies and a distillation of each song’s melody down
to only its crucial notes. That leaves vast, wide open spaces in which
to stretch out. What sets Davies’ record apart from other drummer-led
records is this: she doesn’t have to play so hard nosed to get herself
noticed, because there’s only a bass and a tactfully played trombone in
front of her. She’s able to attract attention by playing naturally.
Davies, as noted, swings her ass off, but is always layering it with
polyrhythms and tasteful fills, a style not terribly afar from the great
Elvin Jones’ or the subtle complexity of Peter Erskine. There are a lot
of well-worn standards here: “Naima,” “Jean Pierre” (Youtube below) and
two renditions a piece of “Stella By Starlight” and “Afro Blue.” That
might typically trouble me, but the performances themselves make too
much hay for me to pay much mind to what standards have been chosen. In
addition to these tunes, Ralls turns in a melodic original “Downtown In
The Rain,”(Youtube below) and there are a couple of brief group improvs
“Green Cheese” and BUrst!,” as well as a bluesy jam “High Noon.”
The loose feel of all about Love and the
effortless mastery of rhythms displayed by Davies make this an easy
album to sink your ears into, even though it’s also a record that pushes
out the songs to abstract places. Billie Davies has been around a lot
of places doing a lot of different things, but on this record, she seems
to have settled into the comfy environs of modern jazz.
Author: S. Victor Aaron
all about Love is scheduled for release by Cobra Basement Production Services.
Visit Billie Davies’ website for more info.
