Assif Tsahar & Hamid Drake - Soul Bodies, vol.2

Andrew Choate, Coda

The partnership between Hamid Drake and Assif Tsahar has been prospering in concert for over five years now, but it's the wellspring of releases that have arrived over the last 12 months that will finally provide the geographically-challenged among us the opportunity to catch up to the intense jazz workouts they've been punching out. Recorded in 2002, and a follow-up to the 2001 Soul Bodies vol.1 release on Ayler Records, Live at Glenn Miller Café stacks Drake's propulsive and head-bobbing drumkit shakedowns on top of Tsahar's frenetic and adept tenor sax probings of jazz's past and future. Whether it's touching down on Coltrane's sheets of sound during "Praying Mantis" or Rollins's buckets of perfect punctuated bottom-end during the brief "Saint Thomas" coda at the end of the disc, this duo's music leaves little doubt that while history runs through their veins, the future pours out of their sweat. The concert was dedicated to Peter Kowald, who had just recently moved to the next plane, and the duo's rendition of Kowald's "Mother and Father" is full of regalia and mourning in just the right proportion. The 17-minute opener, "Warriors of Stillness", will engulf the fan and convert the uninitiated.