The Microscopic Septet - Been Up So Long It Looks Like Down To Me: The Micros Play The Blues (CUNIEFORM RECORDS Rune 425)

Historical article recovered from a Wayback capture dated 2018-02-24.

This latest recording from The Microscopic Septet is an investigation of the blues form containing a variety of different takes on the jazz-blues format from blowing tunes to highly arranged orchestral pieces, a blues march, an homage to Ellingtonia, a reharmonized blues version of Silent Night and a couple of Bop tunes thrown in.The band’s prolific composers and co-leaders saxophonist Phillip Johnston and pianist Joel Forester come together with drummer Richard Dworkin, bassist Dave Hofstra, saxophonists Dave Sewelson, Mike Hashim and Don Davis to stretch out their idiosyncratic soloistic styles.The only cover and the only vocal on the album is I’ve Got A Right To Cry written and recorded by the great Joe Liggins an American jazz and blues pianist and vocalist who led Joe Liggins and his Honeydrippers in the 1940s and 1950s.It’s a tune the band has had in its repertoire since inception and although it’s not technically a blues number it seems to fit into this album quite snugly as a showpiece.Stand out tracks come with a hint of Thelonius Monk’s influence from the band on Quizzical and 12 Angry Birds homaging the early works of Duke Ellington and Jelly Roll Morton.The bands musical odyssey traverses territory that’s sometimes strange, pleasingly familiar, consistently revelatory and always entertaining right up to the very last track of a mere seventeen seconds

Barry O’Sullivan