Like Dave Holland, Phil Donkin is a British double bassist with a thundering sound and impeccable time, who has built a transatlantic reputation as a player, and then turned out to be a gifted composer too. His fluent young quartet comprises Americans Ben Wendel and Glenn Zaleski on tenor sax and piano, and US-based German drummer Jochen Rueckert – and in its labyrinthine themes and cool ensemble hipness, The Gate sounds at times like a 1990s Holland band, but with the excellent Wendel’s sax sound drawing equally on the cool school tradition and the 21st-century downtown scene’s rhythmic innovations. Thelonious Monk’s Introspection (with a mercurial, dancing bass intro heralding the swerving sax melody) and Shostakovich’s Prelude No 23 in F major (a sonorous bass/piano weave precedes Wendel’s smoke-rings sound) are the only covers, and Donkin’s 10 originals give us the beautiful ballad melody of the title track, the snakey unison swing of Macon Groove, the snappy postbop of Yesterday At My House, and the 60s-Miles feel of Submerged.
