The unassuming Todd Sickafoose, whose main gig is serving as bassist for iconoclastic singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco, has apparently been spending his spare time building a modern jazz masterpiece. Tiny Resistors takes elements of Miles Davis, Radiohead, Bill Frisell, and traditional New Orleans old-school jazz, and puts them through the blender of a smart NYC-based mini orchestra/band (two guitars, bass, drums, four horns, and a violin, plus keyboards by Sickafoose himself). Compositionally strewn with memorable motifs and delectably dissonant countermelodies that fade in and out like gauzy movie scenes, this highly sophisticated, harmonically complex musical tapestry is completely, almost unnaturally void of traditional “virtuosic” performance, and yet its ensemble speaks a fluent virtuosity, as one, in the pursuit of its seamless and moving execution. You can only conclude that the ethos is embedded in Sickafoose himself, who wrote, mixed, and produced the entire effort to a rare level of excellence and coherence, and whose fine bass playing disappears—in the best possible sense—in the gorgeous mural of his music. Stunningly brilliant.
Bryan Beller