Julian Lourau, the French saxophonist, has a reputation for groove-rooted jazz populism that probably occasions roughly equal amounts of fidgeting among non-compromisers who wish he didn't, and clubbers who wonder where it came from when they actually hear him live.
Lourau led a band called the Groove Gang in the 1990s, and his uneven recording career has been pulled between rather crass sampling experiments and a Michael Brecker-derived sax virtuosity that has given his more personal work considerable presence. At the Jazz Cafe, he was accompanied by an acoustic quartet including the formidable Belgrade-born pianist Bojan Zulfikarpasic. The latter didn't get as much to do as his talents permit. But the gig was a heartening reaffirmation of what's special about Lourau, and a powerful ensemble, including deft bassist Vincent Artaud, tapped particular strength from the band's exciting Spanish drummer Daniel Garcia Bruno.
Lourau may superficially resemble plenty of contemporary saxists in the density of his long lines and the ease with which he moves between rhythmic approaches, but he isn't really the kind of Coltrane or Brecker disciple who knocks himself out hitting sounds the instrument ought not to be capable of making. For much of the show he explored a rather folksy or world-jazzy mid-tempo music, his tone often grainily emotional (more like a Paris cafe-singer than a saxophonist) with an African or Latin pulse much more in evidence than funk. However, he did confirm to the audience that he was the man they were expecting by playing a tight, repeating-loop groove piece as his opener.
Lourau unleashed some remarkably vocalised sighing and sobbing sounds on an atmospheric follow-up that turned funky in the end, and displayed an attractive aptitude for haunting, movie-soundtrack themes that sometimes sounded as if they were awaiting a missing accordion. Zulfikarpasic reined in his sweeping piano powers to complement Garcia Bruno's boiling percussion with the most telling of fragmentary nudges and vamps, but occasionally opened the floodgates on storms of rich countermelody. The band rarely returned to a hard pulse the audience could jump to until late in the set. But Lourau's long unaccompanied tenor soliloquy, more suggestive of an old Cool-style saxist like Warne Marsh than a post-Coltraneist, had a reserved conviction about it, and the subsequent group development took on the probing, meditative feel of a Wayne Shorter band.
