February 26 2003

A master of trap drums and hand percussion, veteran Bay Area jazz musician Babatunde Lea plunges deep into the musical riches of the African diaspora on Soul Pools, his fourth album as a leader. Tunde, as he's known to friends and fellow musicians, drives the torrential saxophone work of Mario Rivera, the blustery trombone solos of Frank Lacy, and the rippling piano of Hilton Ruiz with polyrhythmic aplomb on the first disc of the double CD, the maiden release for Motéma, an ambitious new San Francisco-New York label headed by singer-songwriter Jana Herzen, who guests on one track. Former Art Blakey band member Lacy's meaty charts give these sextet performances a pronounced Jazz Messengers feel, with Ruiz's propulsive playing adding an Afro-Cuban flavor.

The 11 well-rehearsed studio selections comprising the first disc's 52 minutes are powerful yet only hint at the fireworks found in the less-formal quartet treatment of Wayne Shorter's "Footprints," which makes up all 26 minutes of the second disc. The track was cut last August at Rasselas Jazz on Fillmore Street. Ruiz is again present, his two-fisted assault bringing McCoy Tyner and Cecil Taylor to mind, and Tunde also stretches at length. The primary spark is provided by Ernie Watts, whose Coltranesque tenor-sax flight begins at a fever pitch and builds in lava-spewing intensity. Babatunde Lea performs March 7 and 8, Jazz at Pearl's, S.F. (415) 291-8255. (Lee Hildebrand)

Benumb
By Means of Upheaval (Relapse)

"Wanting people to listen, you can't just tap them on the shoulder anymore. You have to hit them with a sledgehammer." So says the sampled voice at the beginning of By Means of Upheaval's ninth song, "Clouding the Source of Salvation," and that quote sums up the approach of East Bay grindcore veterans Benumb's third album.

Singer Pete Ponitkoff's voice is the sound of righteous, pissed-at-the-system anger personified, and he spits out his words at such a clip on some of these songs, it sounds like he's auditioning for a Micro Machines commercial. Then again, it's not like you can understand much of what he's saying. Grindcore is the only genre in which a band could sing about the evils of multinational corporations or about grilling up dead bodies, and you'd never know the difference just by listening. (Benumb's concerns deal more with the former and not at all with the latter.)