Short Reviews [Jonatan Pina Duluc - 2017 - "Drip/Culebra"]

‘Drip/Culebra’ is a jazz album composed, preformed and recorded by Dominican multi-instrumentalist Jonatan Pina Duluc, who is best known for his work with El Trio. “Drip” refers to drip-style painting as a creative method, while “Culebra” is Spanish for “snake”, and refers to Ouroboros, which is also depicted on the cover. Duluc is unusual in the world of multi-instrumentalists, as he is best-known for providing not only keyboards and guitar, but also saxophone, which is often the lead instrument, and when combined with traditional percussion really has a major impact on the sound. While the album is based in jazz or fusion, there is also a large degree of world music and progressive rock, especially RIO, as it combines all these seamlessly so that it becomes all-encompassing and definitely takes the listener into a world that may not always be melodic, but is certainly always dynamic and powerful. The music swells, retreats, comes forward again, and the listener is never really sure what is going to happen next. The album itself can be broken down into three distinct sections. ‘ Drip’, is an 8 part suite for saxophone, electric quitar and bass, while the second group (‘/’ perhaps?) contains three pieces of more length with the same instruments plus two added percussions in a darker progressive style. The final section, ‘Culebra’ itself, is a more textural suite of four pieces with saxophones, with lots of found and traditional percussions, bass and guitars. Overall, this is a really interesting album which contains a lot of depth, which while not always mainstream is guaranteed to take the listener on an interesting sonic experience.