Meet Reviewer Damian Erskine ~

Alper Yilmaz

“Over the Clouds”

(www.alperyilmaz.net)

NYC residing Turkish bassist Alper Yilmaz has assembled some of New York’s current jazz all-stars for an esthetically pleasing and interesting collection of tunes.  Alper seems equally at home in the groove environment as he is swinging or taking it all a bit ‘out’ and there seems to be equal parts of all of those things in addition to some electro-nebulous sound scape experiments.

All in all, I wouldn’t say that anything grabbed me by the neck but I think this may be a dish best served live.  I would definitely not hesitate to go out of my way to check this band out live.

Alper’s playing is wonderful and inventive and with the addition of David Binney on Alto and Nir Felder on Guitar you can be sure that the music will travel and you will enjoy the ride.  Both drummers on the album (Bodek Janke & Volkan Oktem (who has a KILLER solo on ‘Straight Up’) are new names to me but I just loved every minute of them both.  This is a fantastic band!