Daktari - Lost Tawns (2014)

Daktari  

Olgierd Dokalski - trumpet
Mateusz Franczak - tenor saxophone
Miron Grzegorkiewicz - guitars
Maciej Szczepański - bass
Robert Alabrudziński - drums

Lost Tawns (2014)



By Dirk Blasejezak

I am really happy about this album! After my review of "I travel within my dreams with a German passport" (see http://polish-jazz.blogspot.de/2013/08/daktari-i-travel-within-my-dreams-with.html) I was very curious to see how this promising band would go on. And it's really going well! They're not simply making another album, but instead go a step further and continue their development.

First thing to mention, of course, is that there is only room for one guitar in this formation. However, the absence of the second electric guitar does not limit the creative energy of the now five musicians. At a first listen this development is obvious through the significantly more relaxed way of playing. No strenuous solos or difficult passages that are supposed to show how good the musicians are. Instead, all five play in an unagitated manner along their tracks (still showing their great skills though). Right from the start the solo entry by Olgierd Dokalski lets you question if this is indeed a young newcomer band. To start off with such a hard-boiled and cool, yet free and soulful trumpet solo, makes one wonder! And this is actually inherent in all solos: no uncontrolled ecstasy, instead everybody always knows what he wants to tell and where the whole is going.

And this is indeed necessary, becaus compositionally too the new album of Daktari is much more mature than its predecessor! Was it in the latter sometimes necessary to compensate for lack of compositional creativity or maybe experience through a wilder play, the five pieces on this album here speak for themselves. This too is one reason why the individual musicians can play so much more relaxed. Additionally on this album the rhythm section (to which I would explicitly count Miron Grzegorkiewicz) has a much stronger influence on the whole. This can be heard in many very groovy passages – something the last album only rarely had to offer – and maybe the way Daktari could go in the future. 

So all in all this is by far their best album yet and a true recommendation. And although I doubt that it's possible to continue developing at this pace, I'm still very curious to see how their next album will be!