Lafeyette Gilchrist – Compendium (2017)

January 4, 2023
Lafeyette Gilchrist – Compendium (2017)

I first heard of Lafeyette Gilchrist when someone from David Simon’s crew (or perhaps the man himself) snuck a snippet of “Assume The Position” into a scene from The Wire. Later, the same song would go on to be used in much more dazzling effect as the closing theme to David Simon’s The Deuce, and that’s when I fell in love with this swaggering, jazzy monster of a song.

Compendium is a compilation record that gathers tracks from it seems the first four Gilchrist records, and it makes for a lengthy listen at 2 hours 20 minutes or so. Honestly, on my first run it was kinda hard to tell these songs were all from different sessions; the production is surprisingly uniform.

It’s nice to see this kind of instrumental jazz being led but a gorgeous, smoky piano instead of a buzzing sax. Don’t get me wrong there’s plenty of sax work in the runtime, but goddamn that piano playing is fantastic. Big up to the rest of the band as well who are also on their a-game here across these sessions.

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