Jazz Inside NY magazine review of “So To Speak”

By Bob Gish

More and more the bass is thought of not just  as a solo instrument and the bass man is regarded as a likely front man.

Enter Damien Erskine leading a hip group with a Latin-fusion influence on a host of new tunes, all of them composed by Erskine. He’s the Man and proves it in his inventive compositions and in his imaginative ideas and performance.

Straight out of the shoot with the title track comes Chris Mosley, fusion guitarist par excellence, along side Erskine – a double “E” electrically engineered dynamic duo if there ever was one. Mosley drops the distortion tones for “Fif,” bringing on a more melodic, less affected tone which lends itself well to the foregrounding of Erskine’s electric bass funkiness on this tour de force, eight-minute excursion. Reinhardt Melz and Rafael Trujillo bring it all together with a percussion presence, which, all things considered, brings the entire project together. Latin-fusion is the name of the game here, so

to speak, making So To Speak a fantastically rhythmic offering. Much of the “sound” depends on the exchanges and complements of bass and drums, the bass serving as its own kind of percussive presence.  “Kaluanui” features Mosley again on a long solo alongside Ramsey Embick’s piano/organ and Erskine’s bass – capturing a kind of smooth jazz, Foreplay sound without relinquishing the hard-beat fusion character of the group. Embick’s piano solo here both stands out and blends with the group in rapid unison playing.  “American Gyro,” is an otherworldly tune made all the more ethereal by Mosley’s effects and harmonics. Erskine, with his slides and slaps, along with and his two “with-the beat” buddies ramp it up into warp-speed power with their rhythmic and percussive boosters. It spins, it sways, it sustains for a full six-minute blast. Traditional meet techno and say how do you do!  “Light” softens things down a bit with more piano presence but never loses the edge that characterizes the project, the band, and the sound. “Aslant” resumes the heavy Latin beat with drums more or less defining the experience as, again, guitar and piano, sally forth in fine unison playing and respective soloing by drums and the guitar/piano twins.  “Cabrerina” and “Creep” introduce trumpet and saxophones to the core quintet in fine orchestration that makes one, notwithstanding the satisfaction of their predecessor tunes, long for even more reeds and brass. In sum, Erskine and his rhythmic crew take us on an exciting, rewarding trip, so to speak.