Written by Pat Moran
Reportedly, word got to jazz giant Miles Davis that John Coltrane's increasingly lengthy, shamanic saxophone solos were getting out of hand. Coltrane claimed that once he started playing he just couldn't stop. “Of course he can”, Miles retorted, “he can just take the fucking horn out of his mouth.”
Such supposed self-indulgence does not plague San Diego’s ten-piece progressive jazz funk fusion ensemble Starsign. “Sea Grass,” a bright and percolating Latin jazz-infused cut off the band’s Ichiban LP, barrels out of the gate with a brash brass assault – swaggering cocksure trumpets flanked by somersaulting saxophone and spiky organ trills.
A retro groovy vibe infuses the proceedings with skittering percussion and blowsy fluttering trumpet giving way to a pair of alto saxes parrying and pirouetting in a whirligig duel unbound by gravity. A tangle of slipknot soloing unleashes a stray saxophone break that would make The Sun Ra Arkestra green with envy.
Traipsing, tumbling and trilling, the wayward sax slingshots out past the Kuiper belt before plummeting back to earth to join the rest of the ensemble.
Somewhere Trane and Miles are smiling.
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