“Take everything you learned in music theory and forget it…Jon Lundbom is charting a new course for modern jazz! Getting bogged down by convention simply is not their wheelhouse…[Big Five Chord is] one of the most inventive yet hard to pin down bands over the last two decades. …This is post modern jazz on steroids. No bullshit. An all star band well on it’s way to charting an incredibly successful path for others to follow. ‘Quavers! Quavers! Quavers! Quavers!’ is an absolute must for any library!”
Yahvé M. de la Cavada, ‘El Pais’ 12/26/11
10(+2) ESSENTIAL JAZZ in 2011!
“El grupo de Jon Lundbom…ha parido este año un disco de una calidad insoportable. Sin fronteras y sin vergüenza, Lundbom, Jon Irabagon, Bryan Murray, Moppa Elliott y Danny Fischer tocan una música tan intensa como difícil de cuestionar. A este disco no le sobra ni un segundo y representa mejor que la mayoría que aún hay cosas nuevas que decir en el jazz.”
in translation by Kelley Smilkstein…
“Jon Lundom’s group…released an album this year of unbearable quality. Without limitations or shame, Lundbom, Jon Irabagon, Bryan Murray, Moppa Elliott and Danny Fischer play music that is as intense as it is hard to question. This disc doesn’t go over by even a second and shows better than most that there are still new things to say in jazz.”
Glenn Astarita, ‘All About Jazz’ 01/09/12
★★★★
“Since 2003, [JL&BVC] have been crashing and slashing through the jazz-rock idiom, often lying on the perimeter of the avant-garde spectrum. …the music is often hard-edged and chockfull of off-kilter innuendoes and ballsy soloing excursions. …Lundbom’s intense phrasings and mind-altering solo spots can exude a semblance of systematic paranoia or command the ensemble like a diesel-powered automaton, wielding a mass of destruction through a heavily populated metropolis.”
Dave Wayne, ‘All About Jazz’ 11/23/11
★★★★ 1/2
“Lundbom dissects and reassembles jazz-rock fusion, grafting on bits of post-Albert Ayler free jazz and hard bop as he sees fit. …’Quavers! Quavers! Quavers! Quavers!’ represents a major step forward for JL&BVC. This is a band that, like MOPDTK, constantly takes musical risks and consistently comes up with inspired and spirited, all-original, poly-stylistic 21st Century jazz.”
Sergio Piccirilli, ‘El Intruso’ 10/14/11
Feature-length article and interview!
Read the full article (Spanish)
Read the interview (English)
Mike Shanley, ‘ShanleyOnMusic’ 07/08/11
“‘Quavers!’ [sic] starts on the wild side and stays there… Big Five Chord isn’t afraid to go for the throat if the music calls for it… This is high energy music, combining somewhat straight ahead foundations with a rock execution, and hopefully Lundbom will start getting more attention for his fresh perspective, both as a writer and player.”
Grego Applegate Edwards, ‘Gapplegate Guitar and Bass Blog’ 06/23/11
“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.”