Reinventing the World (feat. Kenny Wheeler & Nils Wogram)

Saxophonist and composer Andy Middleton steps out with his fourth album as a leader on Reinventing the World, an all-original album consisting of compositions written with the fate of the environment in mind. Song titles like "Three Mile Island" and "Atlas Shrugged" hint at Middleton's ecological pessimism, but the music itself only betrays his concerns with a general mood of gentle melancholy and faint foreboding. The mood is not oppressive, though. On the strutting "Ode to Ken Saro Wiwa," which opens the album, Middleton displays both an appealingly straightforward melodic sense, and an admirable facility with complicated harmonic structures; on "Naugahide," he combines jaunty drumming and artful passages of group improvisation to create a sort of new-New-Orleans feel. His use of a sweet, legato melody over a busy and complicated rhythm part on "Les Beaux" is also lots of fun. "Federico" is maybe just a bit too vague and rambly in places, but that's the closest thing there is to a misstep on this very fine album.