Coco’s first album, Dream Situation, was released in Canada on the Effendi label in July, right around the time he brought his band out there to play the Montreal Jazz Fest. Anyway we didn’t get to hear it till a while after that, after he brought back enough copies to sell at JZ, where they can be bought now.

I can’t say enough about how impressed I am with the album and the band in general. All the music on there was arranged by the illustrious jazz violinist Peng Fei, whose playing is the essence of the rich textures that permeate the album. Coco’s haunting vocals and poetry really bring out the dreamy feeling of it all as well. And Chris, EJ, and Huang Jianyi are the dream rhythm section of course.

I feel like the deep textural elements are what this album is really about, even though it’s made up of arrangements of old Shanghai songs. This review that came out last week on allaboutjazz.com is quite complementary as well, though I think the discussion about pentatonic and diatonic scale usage representing East and West goes a bit far.

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