Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Phillips, Simon
Label: Phantom Recordings
Release: 2017
Length: 58:54
Rating: 4.5/5
Simon Phillips, one of the most celebrated drummers around (no intro needed, and you know why), keeps his creative drive at full throttle. He does it in the musical lingo all his own, that of the purely instrumental project Protocol, and this time with a fourth chapter. For the last three years Phillips has been busy with Hiromi Trio, so almost three years passed between »Protocol III.« and the new »Protocol IV.«. That’s great news for piling up fresh ideas and chasing those sweet bits of art-flavored »bizarreness« that always delight Phillips’ crowd of demanding music fans. After two wonderfully tasteful and highly intelligent all-instrumental trips into first-class jazz-rock fusion, which today can easily stand next to what, say, Billy Cobham’s famous album »Spectrum« stood for in the early seventies, Phillips is back with something no less thrilling. While putting the new record together, he shook up the lineup of the quartet a bit. Guitarist Andy Timmons was replaced by the no less famous Greg Howe, and keyboardist Steve Weingart by Dennis Hamm. Ernest Tibbs stays on bass.
The opener Nimbus is the longest track on the album and a superb link to the previous record, because in one single piece it lays out all the typical traits of Phillips’ musical vision and of what Protocol is about. It also makes it clear right away why Phillips could play with a band as high-profile as Toto. Next up, Pentangle, a cunningly seasoned track with Phillips’ syncopated rhythmic rhetoric, tells you this is an album with a bit more funky »mischief« and playfulness, especially when Hamm’s old-school electric piano tone collides in sharp contrast with the incredible Ernest Tibbs and his hyperactive, melodically busy bass lines. Everything on this album is crystal clear, every last detail. The production is perfect. As organic as it gets. The instruments live side by side in sonic perfection and flawless balance.
The third track, Passage To Agra, grabs hold of arabesques. That makes it special, even though a general flirtation with world music (at least in faint traces) runs through the whole of »Protocol IV«, which, given Phillips and his past expressive vocabulary, is just an expected constant. Howe and Hamm are very differently built and profiled musicians than their predecessors in Protocol, and with them on board Phillips once again lets himself effectively pull off some musical ideas he hasn’t tried yet in his career, or has tried only rarely. In Celtic Run you get anything but Celtic folk music. Maybe the message in there is about the Boston basketball club. Judging by the material on the album, this is a sonically sharper trip into the world of top-notch jazz-rock fusion, packed with the core and the fun dynamics of charming funk kinetics that follow the composition at nearly every step. So the guitar gets more of the spotlight here, and Howe stuns with a superb jazz approach to soloing, using his own particular, slightly overdriven tone. Hamm and Howe often team up in a dialogue of in-sync doubling of melodic ornaments within individual passages. As fast as you like, as twisted as you like, following the free-spirited doctrine of momentary inspiration and the dictates of free-flowing jazz fusion, with a ton of extraordinary chemistry and finely tuned sensitivity among all four building blocks of the new Protocol sound. All Things Considered opens in a sophisticated, mellow rhythmic key that Phillips already tried out with Toto, and in its design it’s closest to the opener Nimbus. It also offers exploratory, almost trippy cerebral passages that keep alternating, sensually, with moments of »groundedness« as dictated by the concise rhythmic tightness.
Phanotom Voyage delivers sensual mysticism, especially when the track settles down completely and, in the extended outro, Hamm leads it with the closest-miked classical piano sound, using a pure jazz approach in his solo variation. The closer Azorez brings, much like Celtic Run, another surge of piercing jazz-rock kinetics and funk-flavored vistas to end the album, with absolutely brilliant interplay among the building blocks of this truly special and one-of-a-kind all-instrumental project. This record too has that undeniably attractive charm of events unfolding along the basic musical axiom »expect the unexpected«.
With »Protocol IV« too, Simon Phillips and his crew of exceptionally gifted musicians, who belong to the absolute cream of the best the modern music world has to offer, stay firmly in the saddle of an expressive environment he rules with feather-light ease, one that keeps opening up new playgrounds for his burning, heartfelt creative will and his inner urge to experiment. And that’s the essential thing that keeps the musical artistry of Phillips’ vision moving forward in Protocol too, delivering constant freshness and a high level of lasting appeal, with which Phillips once again effectively speaks to the most demanding breed of listeners in this galaxy.
Lineup
Simon Phillips – drums
Greg Howe – guitar
Dennis Hamm – keyboards
Ernest Tibbs – bass guitar
Production
Simon Phillips
Track list
- Nimbus
- Pentangle
- Passage To Agra
- Solitaire
- Interlude
- Celtic Run
- All Things Considered
- Phantom Voyage
- Azorez
