Second Exit - Spoon (ForTune, 2014) ****½

By Ed Pettersen

This album is a revelation.  Often I’ll sign up for a review of an album or artist I know nothing about and it can be a beautiful thing like Second Exit’s latest.  Brimming with innovative, expansive playing, playfulness, bulbous vocabulary and verve it is never boring and constantly tickling the listener.  Sax, bass, percussion, electronics (keys?), maybe some guitar….who cares!  It’s flippin’ fantastic.  

I often wax poetic about space and use of silence but this gang has it in spades.  This album is a joy to listen to.  When they solo you actually hear a lyrical speaking voice and from where I sit you can’t say anything better about a musician.  The question is who are these folks and how did they all come together to make such splendid noise in the same language.  They sound like they were having a ton of fun.  3 tracks, the first “Mysterious Colors” runs over 27 minutes but trust me, it’s worth it, the second track “Some Message From Oliver”  a piano-based meditation just over 5 minutes and “Well Ride” closes it out around 12 minutes.  

Brilliant.  Get.  This.  Album.  It will make you smile.

The band is Piotr Łyszkiewicz on tenor & soprano saxophones, percussion; Ove Volquartz on contrabass clarinet, soprano saxophone;  Piotr Zabrodzki on bass guitar, synthesizer, piano;  Michał Trela - drums, percussion