Since relaunching in 2021, Livia Records has only released recordings from its archive – until now. EBB and FLOW is the label’s first contemporary release in nearly 40 years, and features one of the leading current figures in Irish jazz, Michael Buckley on tenor saxophone, with Greg Felton (piano), Barry Donohue (bass) and Shane O’Donovan (drums), playing originals spanning uptempo post-bop, ballads and free improvisations.
Buckley is largely self-taught. His father Dick was a saxophonist (he played with Louis Stewart, amongst others), as is his brother Richie. He’s played professionally since he was six, when he was hailed as a prodigy. At only ten he played flute with George Coleman in Dublin’s National Concert Hall. Buckley’s autodidactism may explain Felton’s comment in the CD’s eight-page booklet that, “Michael hears music in a way that’s totally unique, finding a melody note that no one else would find, chord movements that defy conventional logic.”
I’d go along with that. Take the opener, “Strange Taste” – it has an undertow of the blues, but surface currents shift the tune in unexpected directions. “In a Foul Mode” is an improvised piece that starts with a fast “time no changes” trio performance without piano before being anchored by a 20-bar form with complex chords. “Free-ish” performs a similar trick, starting with just brisk tenor sax and drums, gaining harmonic weight as bass then piano join in, and finally settling towards an F# tonal centre – rather obliquely reminding me of how Coltrane’s “Countdown” from Giant Steps starts with just drums then layers up with tenor sax, piano and finally bass.
In fact, the track title “free-ish” encapsulates the feel of much of this album, as does “ebb and flow” – tunes whirl and scud, but without losing their moorings. “Golden Rod” (at 10:45, the album’s longest track) in particular shifts through multiple moods – from a tender piano/sax duet at the outset to busy drums, warm bass and a harmonically complex piano solo. “That’s all Fowlkes” is a heartfelt ballad dedicated to a friend of Buckley, trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, who died in 2023; sparse and mournful, it nevertheless includes a gloriously fluent and complex tenor solo and abstract piano solo that stretches up into the highest octaves.
The other four tunes on the album are equally full of delights, such as the calypso-like drumming (slightly reminiscent of Max Roach on Sonny Rollins’s “St Thomas”) that provides a pulse through much of “Chewie”; the sleepy, Monkish start to “May Story” that morphs to something more lyrical; the tender melody of “Sea Legs”; and the lullaby-like gentleness of the closing “Sloppy in Time”.
EBB and FLOW is a great addition to Buckley’s discography, and to Livia’s catalogue – a clear sign that the label is not just a curator of the past but also a tastemaker for the future.
