Ad Perpetuum (UnicornDigital, 2014)
If you are a fusion fan and you don’t know Antoine Fafard, you really need to check out his recordings. He is making some of the most exciting jazz-rock fusion at the moment. It’s not easy to be a skilled instrumentalist and a great composer at the same time. Antoine composes his own superb material and then invites some of the finest fusion musicians in North America to record with him, and brings out the best in them.
Ad Perpetuum is Antoine Fafard’s third album. This time his core band includes celebrated American jazz and rock drummer Vinnie Colaiuta and the fabulous Canadian guitarist Jerry De Villiers Jr that plays in a style similar to Alan Holdsworth, one of my favorite fusion and progressive rock guitarists of all times.
The CD booklet provides fascinating details about every piece, including comments by Antoine Fafard on how the pieces were composed and developed and who plays the solos in every piece. And that’s what makes this album great, the mix of highly enjoyable well-structured compositions and outstanding solos by all musicians involved, featuring electrifying chord progressions, difficult modulations and various enthralling guitar and bass techniques.
A two-day session booked with Vinnie Colaiuta for January 2014 provided the deadline for composing the material, giving Antoine a three-month period to write all the pieces for the album. This was the first time that Antoine had been confronted to meet a specific deadline for a personal project. Colaiuta’s drum tracks on Ad Perpetuum were produced by Jimmy Haslip (Yellowjackets, Allan Holdsworth) and recorded at Stagg Street Studio in Los Angeles.
Ad Perpetuum features several guests, including keyboardist Gerry Etkins on three tracks and saxophonist Jean-Pierre Zanella on another three cuts. Drummer Gary Husband plays a greats drum duet with Vinnie Colaiuta on ‘D-Day.’
Ad Perpetuum is an impeccably recorded album showcasing the talent of one of the rising stars in the jazz-rock fusion scene, bassist and composer Antoine Fafard.