And a side of Cossack dancing

Funk, rock, hip-hop, free jazz, with a New Orleans marching beat in the case of "New Jack" and a beat that makes me think of a Cossack dance on "Unbreakable." That's what I hear, among other things, in "Towards a Shining Path," from Shantytone/Hyena and pianist Lafayette Gilchrist, whose playing on David Murray's wonderful "Waltz Again" prompted me to buy Gilchrist's own new CD, a septet session with four horns, including two tenor saxes, and the leader's eccentric pianism, Monkian in its own classically leaning way, anchoring it all.

"Elephant Dance" is like a Bugge Wesseltoft "New Conception of Jazz" thing, with more soul and less electronics, which you might say about the whole CD (including the marvelous "The Juggler's Dream"). You also might say that if the Bad Plus was a septet not a trio, and more swinging on the upbeat songs and noirish on the ballads, it would sound like this. Loud and generally interesting, although the horns are repetitious in spots and the bass and drums do largely the same thing all the way through. Still, the disk's worth it to hear Gilchrist, who's excellent, out front.