Dave Holland Announces New Album, Band, Internet

by Patrick Jarenwattananon

Dave Holland: bassist, composer ... Internet pioneer? (Drew Goren)

New music from Dave Holland is always good news. But today's revelations are great news. Not only is the veteran bassist and composer announcing a new album, Pathways, with a previously unrecorded band, the Dave Holland Octet -- he's also launching a new daveholland.com Web site built with Topspin, a direct-to-fan music marketing and distribution service. In addition to the standard artist information -- a blog, concert itinerary, biographical and discographical notes -- his team also compiled many videos of previous shows, and created a new home for his publishing company (Lojac Music), which also sells his sheet music and bass solo transcriptions.

The Web site also now houses Holland's own Dare2 Records, which is trying something new with this release. If you pre-order the physical CD of Pathways from the site -- which also comes in a deluxe limited edition if you desire -- you'll get an immediate download of the whole album (MP3 or even CD-quality, if you like). And for this week only, you can also download an album's worth of Dave Holland Quintet live recordings, circa 2007, for $1; he'll be periodically rolling out more music from his own archives through the site.

So how's the music? Well, you can hear three tracks from the album with the embeddable widget below, after the jump.

Those who know Holland's previous recordings as a leader, especially for quintet and/or big band, will recognize the multiple intersecting lines backed by fluid rhythm sections. This ensemble is basically the quintet +3: Holland, Robin Eubanks on trombone, Steve Nelson on vibes, Nate Smith on drums and blastmaster Chris Potter on tenor and soprano saxes, joined by Antonio Hart (alto sax), Alex Sipiagin (trumpet) and Gary Smulyan (bari sax). It's more fleshed-out than the quintet, more lithe than the big band. Lots of balls-out solos, as one might expect. But you know, don't just take our word on it when the man is giving out so much to check out. [Dave Holland: daveholland.com]

-----

Dave Holland's Pathways, recorded live at New York's Birdland club, comes out Mar. 23, 2010 on his own Dare2 Records.

5:10 PM ET | 02- 8-2010 | permalink

comments |