Mehmet Ali Sanlikol | What's Next?

John Powell

Contemporary jazz composers have a difficult decision to make: steer towards traditional sounds that can’t make for much ingenuity, or hit the avant garde avenue and leave the majority of the general population scratching their heads. In all truth, jazz isn’t for most, so composers know that this decision rides the back of another: whom are you making music for?

Mehmet Ali Sanlikol is praised not only for his composing talent, but for his overall remarkable knowledge of music in general, and it seems that he has his toes spread into all genre waters, meaning that when he develops a creature like What’s Next, he has the ability to step back and see the jazz from different angles, leaving us with a more approachable modern day jazz record.

What helps is a big band. The horn section is huge. The rhythm section rich, and the compositions themselves, for the most part, electric. Certainly, the opener is fire. The big band sound leaps at us like the opening credits of a Hitchcock movie, and it’s rambunctious without being inedible.

With relative ease, he then brings “Better Stay Home”, with rock drums and bass, and the melody coming off more like a James Bond getaway. It’s one of the better songs on the album, if only because it’s got the least amount of swing and the highest dose of indulgence.

Leave it to the contemporary composer, though, to trick us and trump us. “A Violet Longing” is a sparse, gaping hole of a song that would be easier to swallow if it weren’t 11 minutes long. But instead there’s a weird vocal part (no words, just noises), and sloth-like melodies. Pretty? At times, but it can’t sustain for 11 minutes.

“On The Edge of the Extreme Possible” builds and drops like acrobats at the circus. It’s not as catchy as, say, “N.O.H.A.” (with more of that rock drumming), but it’s a fun ride for the eardrums. Another peak is the closer, “Gone Crazy: A Noir Fantasy”, a six-minute romp heavy on percussion.

This is not elevator music and it’s not Coltrane. It’s well-played, and while the CD version’s booklet is offered as a “visual experience…that inspired Mehmet… while composing,” and his enclosed essay points out that you’ll enjoy this better if you knew where he was coming from, (which may be egoist?), What’s Next can be tasty, a bit funky, and it never gets unapproachable.

The melodies are what shake and rattle the album. The horns burst with energy and the band’s ability to simmer on some grooves peels the songs back to basics, something jazz is not usually good at; it's something reserved for world beat. At the production level, the album is great. Each instrument can shine through the speakers. The sound is bold and open on big and small speakers alike.

A great cocktail hour album, throw on when you’re sparking up the BBQ, passing around the Merlot, and setting up your recliner at the edge of the pool. Feel good and groove. Maybe that’s “what’s next.”

Bottom line: With few moments of questionable decision-making, What’s Next is approachable, sometimes catchy, contemporary jazz.