|
|
 |
CD Review
|
| Click Here to go back. |
Down Beat, CD Review >>
Abraham Gomez-Delgado leader, songwriter, percussionist, guitarist and singer for Zemog takes a giant leap forward with his second album, sharpening his Latin rock fusion with thoughtful, well-executed arrangements, assured playing and better tunes. Bostonian born in Puerto Rico, Gomez-Delgado grounds his group's music in clave rhythms, but ranges far and wide in his melodic constructions without ever suggesting a glib mish-mosh of ingredients. Some of Boston's most interesting jazz including cornetist Taylor Ho-Bynum and reedist Timo help realize the dense arrangements, but the music's precise matrix of cross-cutting riffs and grooves never crumbles under the weight of ideas.
The tunes are packed with little details, as guitar patterns collide and rub up against acerbic horn charts, and with each bar there seems to be some subtle shift. In some ways this does for Afro-Latin music what Tom Waits did for Weillian cabaret, bringing a madcap energy and willful weirdness to the basic ingredients and blowing it up with his personality.
Gomez-Delgado sings his Spanish lyrics with the same exaggerated elocution and gargantuan-voiced howl, but it never upstages the killer jams. There's nothing revolutionary here, but Zemog has developed an original, satisfying spin on Latin rock that reveals a understanding of the plena and bomba and a desire to subvert 07/01/06
|
| Click Here to go back. |
|
 |
|
|
|
