Jure Pukl: EARchitecture

The young Slovenian saxist Jure Pukl's latest album (made in New York with locals including the celebrated drummer Marcus Gilmore) is hooked into a taut, hip-hop-influenced contemporary American atmosphere. Pukl is a player of patience and subtlety. On slow music his sound echoes John Coltrane's majestic laments coupled with the tight-edits and stuttery punctuation of Wayne Shorter. On faster music he has more of a layer-building style like Steve Coleman's. He's well supported here by some vivid piano flights from Aruán Ortiz (who also lends an evocative In a Silent Way feel on Fender Rhodes at times) and by trumpeter Jason Palmer, whose improvised counterpoint with Pukl on the slow-building Crazy is one of the session's standouts. But rapper Raydar Ellis's Hot As Summer has something of a bolt-on, street-cred feel, and one or two of the lugubrious rhythm-patterns display a kind of hip nu-jazz anonymity that's slightly surprising given Pukl's culture-crossing origins.