“Ensemble music of a definite currency. Adventurous, a bit electric, loping, freestyling and rocking along with some very interesting lines and excellent solos from the principals… Lundbom has a definitely-subtly-quirky sense of what goes with what… What else? Well it’s engaging music. That should be enough to wet your whistle.”
Kyle O’Brien, ‘Jazz Society of Oregon’ June 2011
“These young musicians push their instruments and their music to the edge. ‘Quavers…’ aurally punches the listener from note one. …a blending of avant-garde, a la Dolphy and John Cage, plus ’70s and ’80s fusion. …All the musicians are bold, young and accomplished…the grooves, as on ‘Meat Without Feet,’ are infectious.”
Tim Niland, ‘Music and More’ 06/05/11
“A wide-open mindset and unique instrumentation of the band provides a lot of depth to the music. …Lundbom’s post-Sonny Sharrock guitar style and raunchy saxophone are welded to a killer backbeat, building music for the booty and the mind. Sort of like if Pharoah Sanders and Sonny Sharrock took a break from late 60’s spiritual free-jazz to cut a massive funk record. …A tremendously fun album to listen to, Lundbom continually challenge the listener and each other and succeed to builds a piece of pan-genre experimentalism that defies pigeon-holing.”
Jordan Richardson, ‘The Seattle PI’ and ‘BlogCritics.org’ 05/28/11
“A boundary-shattering shot of adrenaline that screws with your head and messes with your soul…[Big Five Chord] reconfigure what you think you know about jazz and dump the entrails overboard. …[Big Five Chord] is a maddening catharsis. It releases all of the pent-up ‘properness’ of the jazz scene, that bit of bullshit that sinks discussion of the art form to the very pretentious and the very boring, and resurrects the bones of truly free music to come up and play with the rest of us schlubs. …For those tired of the same old reliable jazz music, this here’s the cure.”
John Sharpe, ‘All About Jazz’ 05/26/11
“Jon Lundbom and Big Five Chord take a skewed look at jazz with rock sensibilities—or should that be the other way round? Lundbom can be hard to pin down… Big Five Chord pays heartfelt but ironic regard to tradition, albeit through the lens of the guitarist’s idiosyncratic compositions.”
Bruce Lee G, ‘Downtown Music Gallery Newsletter’ 04/29/11
“Mr. Lundbom loves to write these greasy, somewhat funky tunes for two sprawling saxes and great, grimy guitar licks dancing in the center. …Although Mr. Lundbom sounds like he does have some fine jazz chops, he would rather push things over the edge in exuberance verging on sloppiness. ‘Quavers!’ is more about having fun than showing off any sort of technical prowess. This includes some of sickest sax solos I’ve heard in recent memory.”
S Victor Aaron, ‘Something Else!’ 05/01/11
“Lundbom’s vision of music is a little different: a grunge/punk disposition but with a great feel for complex harmonic structures and dynamic tonalities that puts his music squarely in the no-man’s land between rock and jazz…not a surprise coming from a band full of subversives… The band experiments a lot and the fun is picking up on their game…call me a fan.”
Ian Mann, ‘TheJazzMann.com’ 04/29/11
“Lundbom’s music straddles the realms of jazz, rock and improv but it resolutely isn’t fusion, this group is far too muscular, intelligent and irreverent for that. Indeed it’s the blend of brain and brawn that makes Big Five Chord such an attractive proposition and while there’s a certain intellectual rigour about the band’s music there’s also a healthy dose of irreverence… Lundbom’s music may be uncompromising but it’s not at all ‘difficult’ and should hold considerable appeal for adventurous rock listeners.”
CJ Bond, ‘JazMuzic.com’ 04/27/11
“How is it possible for a band to rock with such raw, rumbling, kinetic high octane impunity? …a way of introduction to an idiosyncratic genius harboring boundary-stretching notions in his musical make up… [Big Five Chord take] spontaneous improvisation to a new cosmic level and then proceed to jam it hard into tonal, rhythmic overdrive. Be prepared to go far, far out, and deep!”
Chris Robinson, ‘Outside-Inside-Out’
One of six on the “Best of 2011 (so far)“!!!!!