With hints of Freddie Hubbard's "Red Clay", Verboten takes ideological inspiration from the overly sensitive and censorious culture of the modern west which routinely attempts to shield the public from things that are otherwise funny/truthful/productive for fear of risking offense or transgressing a hard-to-define social taboo. The offered cure? To inoculate people with regular doses of brash ‘wrongness’ in order to rebuild the tolerance of a population grown brittle. Duff opens the track in exactly that spirit with a bass solo that begins deceptively gently before probing, questioning, and cussing defiantly, advancing into a driving groove. The group plays with an intensity and an irreverent attitude with solos that are muscular and unapologetic. Maclean starts with a slow-burning intensity giving way to virtuosic Coreaesque lines, before Brownman funkily snakes through the chord changes with Breckerlike aplomb, with Wutzke opening up at the end for some bombastic drum blowing.
from
Convergence,
released October 27, 2023
Composed by Nick Maclean
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Nick Maclean -- piano
Brownman Ali -- trumpet, producer
Ben Duff -- bass
Jacob Wutzke -- drums
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Revolution Recording -- recording studio (Kim Cooke, booker)
Stephen Koszler -- head tracking engineer
Luke Schindler -- assistant tracking engineer
Wayne Ferguson -- piano tuner
Josh Bowman -- mix engineer
Justin Gray -- mastering engineer
Dean Shu -- cover art
Daryl Angier -- liner notes
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Thomas Varey -- director of photography
Brittany Farhat -- camera crew
Matthew Fong -- camera crew
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Canada Council for the Arts -- funding
Ontario Arts Council -- funding
Toronto Arts Council -- funding
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Browntasauras Records -- record label
Steve Danic (Browntasauras Records) -- publicist