Tom Walsh

Diversion

CD
1 disc
16.95 CAD -15%

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Diversion
Conversation: 1, 46s [excerpt]
Track 7 from Diversion
CD: Ambiances Magnétiques (2003) AM 119
1 July 2005
By Serdar Karabati in Jazz (Turkey), July 1, 2005

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blogue@press-2852 press@2852
1 January 2005
By Luc Bouquet in ImproJazz #111 (France), January 1, 2005

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“… Tom Walsh nous oblige à reconstituer le puzzle d’une musique bigarrée et tendrement malicieuse.”

Côté cour: guitare fuzz basse fretless et batterie funky; force et puissance. Côté jardin: guitare préparée, contrebasse charnelle et batterie frémissante; sensibilité et détente. Au milieu: Tom Walsh, tromboniste flamboyant déjà remarqué en duo avec le batteur Pierre Tanguay (Midi Tapant). Outre une pertnience instrumentale rare (le très émouvant Africa Prayer, dédié à Abdulhah Ibrahim), Tom Walsh se révèle être un metteur en sons des plus habiles. Fusion des styles, structures mouvantes, transgressions assumées, humour perçant, ballades country, art de la déglingue; Tom Walsh nous oblige à reconstituer le puzzle d’une musique bigarrée et tendrement malicieuse. L’une des très bonnes surprises de cette sélection québécoise.

blogue@press-2757 press@2757
1 October 2004
By Rigobert Dittmann in Bad Alchemy #44 (Germany), October 1, 2004

Press Clipping

blogue@press-2626 press@2626
1 September 2004
By Marc Chénard in Coda Magazine #296 (Canada), September 1, 2004

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A musical eclectic, trombonist Tom Walsh has become a fixture of Montréal’s actuelle scene since his move from Toronto in 1990. Around that same time, he put together a middle-size group, NOMA, with musicians from both cities. As a kind of free-form funk band that had definite Prime Time connections, it could groove with the best of them, but the difficulties of holding such a group together led to its eventual disbanding. A decade later, a slimmed down version was re-introduced, this time with an all-Montréal lineup of seven, divided into a funk rhythm section (with electric bass, guitar and drums) and a jazz one (with acoustic bass, guitar and drums), with the leader directing traffic, knob-turning his sampler and turning in a few trombone spots (in that order). Thirteen years after its debut release, Climbing the Waltz, this long delayed follow-up appears, but time seems not to have altered much of its basic portent. Indeed, the groove element is very much at the heart of the music, but the pieces (11 in total) are much more fragmented, or modular, implying they’re never assembled the same way from one performance to the next. Like the first disc reviewed above, this one is also a composerdriven project, albeit looser, with spot solos, mainly by electric bassist Al Baculis, but not that many from the leader himself. The jazz connection is more covert than overt, apart from Bud’s Dub, the rollicking theme of which is actually Monk’s "ln Walked Bud" (uncredited). An unusual feature is that all but two pieces have been further subdivided, resulting in 32 tracks (a deliberate choice of the leader to allow listeners to surf through the music according to their own whims).

blogue@press-2581 press@2581
1 September 2004
By Gabriel Bélanger in SOCAN, Paroles & Musique #11:3 (Canada), September 1, 2004

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“Les compositions sont rondement menées et réinventent ce style si particulier.”

Second disque de l’ensemble Noma, créé en 1989 et mené par le prolifique compositeur et tromboniste Tom Walsh, qui signe la majorité des pièces de l’opus, Diversion est à la jonction du jazz et de la musique actuelle. Les musiciens émérites qui interprètent les œuvres de Walsh sont renversants de virtuosité. Les compositions sont rondement menées et réinventent ce style si particulier. Notons que l’enregistrement en direct est d’une grande qualité.

blogue@press-2598 press@2598
14 July 2004
By Matt Pierce in Splendid E-Zine (USA), July 14, 2004

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Walsh and his bandmates have playing talent to spare and a barrell full of stylistic guises at their fingertips, but the true measure of Diversion’s success is its tight focus.”

Canadian bandleader and composer Tom Walsh and this far-flung group of musicians have their fingers in so many pies — funk, fusion, avant-jazz, prog, even non-idiomatic improv — that it’s a surprise that Diversion isn’t baked into an indigestible lump. Instead, Walsh and his mates avoid the stop-start schizophrenia that characterizes a lot of other genre exercises and stick with a creative but organic sense of development that takes each of these ten pieces on a strange ride, but not before giving them some legs. (It might have helped that Diversion was recorded live over the course of two performances and then seamlessly edited together after the fact instead of cobbled together in the studio.)

A piece like Ouvert Tour, with skittering guitar scrapes that segue into a no man’s land of electronic buzzes and mournful trombone lines, or Two Pair/Deux Couples, which moves carefully from minute improv to Mingus-like horn growls to a vampy swing break, showcase NOMA and Walsh at their most diversified, while straight-up, stripped down (but still adventurous) funk numbers like Capacity or the prog-tinged Bud’s Dub prove they can stay interesting, even while staying inside genre boundaries.

Walsh and his bandmates have playing talent to spare and a barrell full of stylistic guises at their fingertips, but the true measure of Diversion’s success is its tight focus.

blogue@press-2586 press@2586

Other texts in

  • Informator “Ars” 2 #39 (Poland), March 1, 2004
  • Mouton Noir (Québec), February 1, 2004
    “Loin des parodies de genres, Walsh mélange les styles sans les diluer. Épatant. Du plus la prise de son live est plus que convaincante.”

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CD contains a CD-ROM zone with all tracks in MP3 format

  • UCC 771028111923