Review: Brazilian guitarist Fabiano do Nascimento and American saxophonist Sam Gendel join forces for The Room: ten tracks of broken jazzdance instrumentals conjoined by an almost telepathic synergy between artists. Springboarding from an initial collaborative gig at a restaurant owned by Gendel's cousin, the duo was thus born as a before-you-know-it gestalt; and in so coming together as a studio project, the artists realised their mutually jazz-laden upbringings, discovering even that both saxophonists had first picked up the brass at exactly the same age; both shared a fascination with environmentalism and ecology; both were superfans of experimental musician Hermeto Pascoal; et cetera. A serendipitous match, then, the album is synchronous to match, balancing five tracks per side in a sublime homeo-ecstatic equilibrium. Recorded in two days in a basement studio in Pacific Palisades, each track its own dive into the rhythms and regions of a South America without borders.
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