After one thorough listen to this amazing set by this all-but-unknown American jazz trio, the listener will find herself completely comforted by the fact that there are originals on this date. And it's not because these compositions are so profound or life-changing -- though they are great. No, it's because the way this band treats classic jazz tunes you might swear they had no idea what they were playing. And no, this is not a slight -- quite the opposite. Paul Smoker's trio is so inventive, so wildly original in their systems of melody, harmony, and rhythm that they literally reinvent tunes they play by looking for something in them that remained heretofore undiscovered. The band's read of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Hello Young Lovers, a fairly staid (read: dead) standard that is pleasant if innocuous as it sits on an arrangement page, becomes a haven of rhythmic invention. These cats turn this into a drum jam, and the bass and trumpet float the harmony and changes out there just enough to remind themselves that this is someone else's tune! On Johnny Mercer's Laura, the melody flits through like a wisp of smoke as Smoker ghosts it through with scales and a harmonic adjustment. Mingus' Fables of Faubus resembles itself in the wild blues and gospel charge from the frontline -- this time it is the bass, though W.C Handy's St. Louis Blues is read from the rhythm on down, with Rohovit stabbing the blues solo out of his bass. He sounds like a saxophone player! So, we finally get to the band's own jams, such as Smoker's Tetra, which is modal invention turned on its ear as polyrhythmic funk meets Conte Condoli's tonal wizardry in scalular architecture that suggests Dolphy and Coltrane. This is one of those records that you would pass over in a record store. That would be a mistake. The Paul Smoker trio is an exciting unit with more than a little magic up its collective sleeve. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi

1		Total Eclipse
2		St. Louis Blues
3		Tetra
4		Laura
5		Fables of Faubus
6		Hello, Young Lovers

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