Marbin’s ‘Breaking The Cycle’ gives easy listening new meaning

The first time you hear Marbin’s “Breaking The Cycle,” you’re already in love. There’s no proper grace period of getting used to some of the tracks, picking and choosing the hits. It’s because every single track on this album – released this past fall – is a hit.

The Israeli-Chicago experimental-jazz duo of Dani Rabin (guitar) and Danny Markovitch (sax) teamed up with multiple Grammy winners Paul Wertico (drums) and Steve Rodby (bass)—both from Pat Metheny’s band, as well as Jamey Haddad (percussion) to put out a second monster album, with recently signed Moonjune Records.

Filling the spaces (on bar stomp with Wertico and Haddad, for example) are Makaya McCaravan, and vocalists Mat Davidson, Leslie Buckleman, and Daniel White.

It’s quite a feat to blow people (the average Joe and real jazzers) away at the first listen. Yet Marbin does just that. They even surpass their freshman effort, their self-titled, 2009 debut album, “Marbin,” with this exploration into layered, technically proficient, and hypnotically languid soundtracks.

There’s a lot of intentional instrumentalization going on, designed to showcase the vast repertoire and amazing chops of each individual musician of record, tell a definitive story through the evocative emotions conjured up through the use of certain instruments, and perhaps pay the ultimate tribute to jazz when jazz is used at higher levels.

“Loopy’s” first track immediately draws you in, with crafty, aerobic percussive beats, a driving, funky-exotic guitar, and screeching sax that weaves in and out. This is a guitarist’s wet dream, as the notes more than meld into a gun-metal wall of sound. Coupled with the dance of the almost primitive drums, it’s a winsome throw-down.

If ever a song paid tribute to polychromatic off-beats, clever use of stretching the melody to a breaking point, it’s the wild and funky, “Bar Stomp,” sure to be a favorite of everyone catching onto Marbin’s latest wave. Halfway in, the catchy, head-bobbing melody goes extreme, conjuring up a picture of half-drunken stoners reeling back and forth to the jukebox music while the club spins off its top.

Marbin offers something a little different this time around with the inclusion of vocals on tracks 3 (“Mom’s Song”), 6 (“Western Sky”) and 11 (“Winds Of Grace”)—not quite verbalizing language on the first two, but hinting at a universal language in extensions of notes, humming, and instrumental replication. Credit Mat Davidson and Leslie Buckleman with the difficult task of lending their voices as if they would wail on a guitar or a woodwind.

Daniel White is a revelation in “Winds Of Grace.” Instrumentalists often cause listeners endless curiosity as to what the music would sound like with lyrics. This song is a great example of when lyrics work with the music, as both come together organically, neither stronger without the other. It feels like this, the last song, summarizes the entire theme Marbin tried to make, reflecting narratively the cycle of life, as the “young consumes the old.”

Marbin’s “Breaking The Cycle” is a marvel of musicianship and imagination. Every original, thoughtful song on this CD is worthy of its own album, concert, and Grammy. Shades of atmospheric, Jewish folk, and foreign film soundtrack are rooted firmly in the Western liturgical, Renaissance music, and jazz—with a lot of whimsical, playful, almost alien-sounding twists and turns, uniquely Marbin.

Go listen to a few samples, then get the CD. You won't stop playing it, I promise.