The night of June 27th saw Le Gesù playing host to Montreal’s very own Anomalie as well as Toronto’s Larnell Lewis.
This was a pairing that Anomalie himself confirmed had never been done in any official capacity. Indeed, when the show was first announced it felt to me like a funny crossover episode of TV; here we had two heavy hitting Canadian fusion artists that seemed firmly in their own lanes but who were now suddenly collaborating. My initial reaction was of mild surprise which lasted only a moment before realizing: “Oh, yeah. That actually makes a lot of sense.” So how would the stylings of the man behind the groovy and slick sounds of Velours (2017) pair with those of the man responsible for the furious and driving sound on Snarky Puppy’s We Like it Here (2014)? Well, pretty well to be honest.
Prior to the show starting we were informed that what we were about to hear was improvised in its entirety. In other words, a two hour jam by two heavy hitters of fusion jazz. Anomalie, for his part, made use of all the sounds for which he is known including his many lead synths, piano, fast moving arpeggios, and pitch bent chords through the use of an expression pedal. Some soundscapes were sparse, some more groovy and ostinato based, and on a couple occasions he really let himself go with a burning solo. This however, really did only occur on a couple occasions. I don’t know whether it was by design, from nerves, or self-consciousness, but Anomalie ceded the spotlight quite a bit to Lewis who would play significantly more solos on the night. Seeing as it was a duo setting, I would have wanted this aspect to be more equal. And it would have been nice for him to take more risks in his playing as well. He seemingly clung to safety by playing things he knew he wouldn’t mess up. Oh, well. I won’t hold it against him.
Lewis, for his part, employed mallets and hotrod sticks when the music needed to be softer and more sparse, but he quickly ramped things up when necessary by playing dense fills around the kit, quick 16th note grooves on his bass drum with one foot, and even at one point playing quick 32nd notes on his hi-hat in a trap style. A splash cymbal placed on the snare at other points achieved the classic “stacked cymbal” sound. He also got a lot of mileage out of his cowbell grooves which of course made an appearance as well. Lewis, In other words, whether playing sparsely, quietly, or furiously, treated us to a seemingly endless vault of drum vocabulary.
Overall, I have to commend Anomalie and Lewis for a solid evening of music; but in particular their transitions were very impressive to me. Considering there are no real starts and ends to the “songs” in a jam, the transitions are the hardest thing to get right. The musical instincts and experience were on full display by both men, however, as they were able to play off each other and anticipate the other’s decisions. Many of the transitions sounded like they could have been rehearsed in fact. Anomalie even closed out the set with a jazzy cadenza on his piano which he faded out. With that, everyone in the audience seemed to understand that the night had come to an end. I think we may very well see these two play again in the future. And personally, if this was them improvising, I’m now wondering what they could achieve with some time to rehearse.
