Party Factor

Organist Raphael Wressnig (hailing from Graz, Austria) has put together a six-CD discography unknown to the American jazz audience, but with Party Factor, he's finally broken out to a larger clientele on his seventh effort. This danceable soul-jazz is funky as can be, accented by a horn section, and focuses on music best heard in the rave-up club scene. It's a consistent mix of beat-oriented music driven by the thick lines of Wressnig, but the horn section is potent and commanding. They work primarily in tandem, but the saxes (featuring Americans Craig Handy and Sax Beadle) draw most of the attention. Wressnig produces typical themes based in straight-laced boogaloo, as heard during themes with predictable fatback titles such as "Chunky Thighs" and "Dirty Dawg," no-nonsense songs that would make you think he hails from Newark, NJ, Philadelphia, or Motown-influenced Detroit. During the fastest funk of "Afterparty at the Zoo," the organist and his horn-fired band go into a burning, fever pitch of pure instrumental rhythm & blues. There's some light calypso, a flute-based samba, berimbau-tinged reggae, and more jazz-oriented swing, but only in limited quantities. Raphael Wressnig is throwing down for the youth market, although his next project might be purely jazz-oriented, but for now he sticks to an accessible format of blue beats buoying fully formed contemporary instrumental music. ~ Michael G. Nastos|