Label: Phantom Recordings
Release date: February 4, 2022
Production: Simon Phillips
Album length: 52.29 min
Genre: Jazz Rock Fusion
Rating: 10/10
There’s got to be “groove” here, after all. No limits. We’re talking about the fifth album from the famed jazz rock fusion project Protocol, fronted by one of the greatest drum masters, or let’s just say drum wizards, of our time: Simon Phillips. From studio buddying with an endless roster of the most prominent names in music, to the early Protocol days, when he did absolutely everything himself on the 1989 debut, and on through the run of Protocol albums “II”, “III” and “IV”, released between 2013 and 2017, we’ve now landed a fifth one, “V”.
On this one, too, Phillips stays true to his quirks, the ones the Protocol albums from II to IV mapped out so clearly, while still serving up fresh artistic shifts and challenges that fill the album with a one-of-a-kind musical chemistry and expressive charisma. Of the members who played on past Protocol albums, Phillips kept only bassist Ernest Tibbs by his side. This bassist is blessed with outstanding technical brilliance (check out his solo in the closing The Long Way Home), explosiveness and creativity, all tailor-made for Phillips’ versatility and his tireless, almost experimental ‘drum engineering’, which in its unsuspected theatricality never stops appealing to true music gourmets. With Tibbs’s ‘groove’, once again coaxed out by his top-shelf bass playing, it’s only natural for Phillips to keep up the brilliant harmony of his logic of drumming, composing, arranging… The counterpoints, the provocatively set rhythmic keys and the forms in general, all in this flawless, signature collision of drums and bass in dialogue, are once again endlessly fun to listen to, keep surprising you in all the right ways, and remain the core, the focal point of everything going on, on the fifth Protocol album too.
To make Protocol “V” a different album, but still fully devoted to jazz rock fusion, Phillips shook up the lineup. Greg Howe, who gives Protocol “IV” its special flavor, is replaced this time by Alex Sill, while the keys went to a legendary wizard, Venezuelan Otmaro Ruiz, who has worked with John McLaughlin, Dianne Reeves and Frank Gambale, among others. What’s more, Protocol have grown from a quartet into a quintet. Phillips also brought in a saxophonist: Jacob Scesney. It was Tibbs who suggested that Phillips, when picking a new guitarist and wind player, turn to a couple of relative youngsters on the jazz rock fusion scene, Sill and Scesney.
Riding a wave of inspiration to chase the new creative payoff that such a quintet can generate, Phillips also conceived the seven tracks of the new album. The potential of this quintet is boundless, and Phillips wanted to optimize it and squeeze everything out of it. The energy-charged opener Jagganath makes that clear, and it’s then not just complemented but energetically upgraded by Isosceles, with its intensified funk kinetics. Next comes a stretch of sailing in somewhat calmer waters, but ones wrapped in mystery. That’s Nyanga, where a few touches of world music sneak in as well. A singular, standout track on the fifth Protocol album is Undeviginti. That’s the Latin name for the number nineteen. Counting a hugely fun rhythmic figure, or 19/16 time, it could also be called ‘twenty minus one’. It’s one of the tougher but also most challenging pieces on the new album, one the quintet really had to dig into. Fans of the old fusion school, especially worshippers of everything Wheater Report – welcome home! When the Cat’s Away, which given its opening motif could stir up all the fans of Phillips’ Toto days too, is a co-write between Phillips and pianist Jeff Babko. This track opens up more room for Ruiz’s electric Rhodes piano to stretch out (somewhere around the three-minute mark), while later on guitarist Alex Sill lays down one of his wittiest and most sparkling solos on the album. The mystical Dark Star, with its calm opening piano motif, eases off the voltage charge built up before it by Undeviginti and When the Cat’s Away. Alongside the high musical payoff of the warmly distorted guitar sound, Dark Star gets its special character from the passionate language of play and expression of the saxophone, in Jacob Scesney’s solo impressions.
The authors of the last track, The Long Road Home, are all the players on the new Protocol album. It’s the longest composition. If you’re looking for moments where the tightness of the ‘jam’ hits its most intense, that goes for the album’s opening stretch and for the closing track. It has everything in one place. Even added layers of acoustic guitar alongside classical piano accompaniment. Tightness, looseness, sudden stirrings of mood, and then the calming down again. A calmer passage a little before the four-minute mark coaxes out elements of playing reminiscent of the timeless pairing of Pat Metheny and the late Lyle Mays.
The album carries tightness. It’s grounded especially in the openings of the tracks and in their closing parts. In between, there’s a ton of room for expressing a heap of wizardry, which the crew of the new Protocol quintet pulls off with real theatrical flair. Phillips remains unbelievable. Not only is he one of the most fascinating drummers in the galaxy, he’s just as fascinating when he steps into the role of composer. Everything he creates, he creates by ear. The guy hasn’t got one single solitary hour of musical education. The motifs that ring in his head, just as he hears them, he puts down on the piano. Those are the starting points of the compositions. What follows is the development of a majestic voraciousness called the exuberant, unbridled ‘groove’ of the primal form of jazz rock fusion, which today has few parallels. Where a given track will carry the crew is the listener’s biggest mystery, and that’s exactly what makes “V” so alluring. Protocol never stuck to rigid forms. This time is no different. The opening Jagganath already hints at plenty. Its start doesn’t tell you anything yet, but it’s wild how the track unfolds, where it grows to, and where the mighty talents of technical excellence carry it, and last but not least, the highly effective chemistry of the crew sensing and egging each other on, the crew that made this, in every way, yet another phenomenal Protocol album.
Simon Phillips is one of those musicians who, despite enormous mileage, don’t rest on what they’ve mastered and achieved. He wants to keep developing, maturing, perfecting himself. Even at 66 he holds on to an incredibly youthful potency in that regard and, in a way, a still inexhaustible urge to prove himself. The album “Protocol V” is the proof. It’s another sparkling jewel added to the lavish musical body of work behind this drumming giant, who is still an elemental source of inspiration for many younger drummers around the world. Amen.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Jagganath (6:50)
2. Isosceles (6:43)
3. Nyanga (7:46)
4. Undeviginti (6:48)
5. When the Cat’s Away (6:12)
6. Dark Star (6:43)
7. The Long Road Home (11:24)
Lineup:
Simon Phillips – drums
Ernest Tibbs – electric bass guitar
Otmaro Ruiz – keyboards
Jacob Scesney – alto saxophone
Alex Sill – guitar
