Review: Ben Wendel’s BaRcoDe
My PopMatters review of the album from saxophonist Ben Wendel is out.
You’ve never heard an album like BaRCoDe before, with four intensely creative mallet players (Patricia Brennan, Joel Ross, Simon Moullier, and Juan Diego Villalobos) using a variety of instruments (vibes, marimba, balafon, and hand persuasion) in shifting, astonishing arrangements and flowing, contrapuntal improvisations in conversation with the leader’s tenor sax.
Wendel is in top form. His band is like no other, consistently finding rhythmic propulsion - “swing” - in fresh ways. A bit of Steve Reich, a dash of Eddie Palmieri, the buzz of some electronics, the daring arrangement and polyrhythmic flux of the New Jazz … but mostly imagination of a whole new kind.