A beautiful album that defies any easy pigeonholing, Little Man on the Boat is a collaboration between Toronto musicians Jean Martin and Colin Fisher. Between the two of them they’ve got all the instruments covered: Martin performs here on drums, trumpet, keyboards and loops, while Fisher is featured on tenor sax, guitar, bass, melodica, banjo and vocals. The two share composition credits, and the album was record mixed and mastered by Jean Martin at his own studio, featuring his own photos and art and released on his own Barnyard label. Phew! These guys are busy dudes.
Ostenibly coming out of the jazz scene, the album does feature a fair bit of free improv, with some really nice playing on a variety of instruments, including some really cool skronky disorted guitar work and some blazing hot sax playing from Fisher – who the hell is this guy that plays this well on not one but two instruments, and maybe more and why is he not a household name in contemporary jazz?
But the sound transcends the limitations of free improv with lots of compositional savvy, multitracking (Fisher soloing against himself works well) without falling into that the dangerous and potentially icky/blah territory known as ‘post-rock’. There’s broke-down skronk/funk, pretty peaceful bits, a good mix.
One particularly nice track ends the album, the title track, “Little Man on the Boat” that actually recalls the new age fingerstyle guitar of William Ackerman, taken to a new place maybe a post-Jim O’Rourke world — I could see him doing something along these lines, and I bet if he heard this he’d be jealous he didn’t create this track himself. Again, some incredible guitar playing from Colin Fisher – amazing technique on display, including some lessons that sound learned from the warbly pitch bends of the sitar.
A beautiful and invigorating album, exactly the kind of forward-thinking music that jazz players should be striving to make, but with definite appeal beyond the genre. Well worth checking out.
