Live Review: Urbanity

You've got to love a jazz club that requires a bit of hunting in order to locate its entrance door. How many first-time visitors have accidentally pushed on the adjacent, proper-looking door with the HazMat sign on it instead of pushing on a nondescript steel plate of identically clad panel? (Please don't tell me I'm the only one!) The panel pivots and blue-neon strip lighting illuminates a sleek black-and-steel interior, leading us from the cobblestoned alleyway — appropriately named Singers Lane — deep into the bowels of a residential tower. In just a matter of weeks, Bird's Basement — the newest addition to Melbourne's cool jazz scene — officially celebrates its first birthday.

The brainchild of property developer, musician and former Melbourne Umbria Jazz Festival director, Albert Dadon, Bird's Basement is sister venue to the famous Birdland in New York. Dadon designed it to fill a niche in local jazz venues: tantalisingly intimate for the action on stage yet spacious enough for a modest reception, with top-end food and beverages to boot. The stage is expandable to accommodate up to 18 musicians, but tonight it is Dadon — also known as Albare — who is taking up the electric guitar alongside Phil Turcio on keyboard to perform as Urbanity. Accompanied by Gerry Pantazis on drums and Peter Mollica on bass, the foursome delve into soothing rhythms and meditative grooves from their latest album, Urban Soul.

Albare and Bird's Basement regular Turcio teamed up 27 years ago. Their banter on stage purposely reflects the august age of their partnership. Throughout the evening, it almost sounds like two guys having a matey go at each other over how to open the next track or what song they should play next. "We say worst things to each other at rehearsals," Albare winks as an aside to the audience, his thick accent ribbing at Turcio's taciturn responses. 

However, there is no disputing that their musical union is a harmonious match. Albare's dominating, wailing chords are weightlessly borne by a constant stream of Turcio's murmuring keys. Whenever occasion, introspection or improvisation calls for it, Turcio soars with incredibly deft keystrokes and fluid grace, his ivories a resounding riposte to Albare's howling grooves. Their compositions lean towards a nostalgic period from the '70s and '80s, but there are plenty of ephemeral influences to make up the 'urbanity' reflected in their album title: elements of R&B, touches of hip hop, skirting around Latin American jazz, free-wheeling swing and soul. 

The bewitching Something Sweet and light-tripping Don't Look Back will make you shimmy all your troubles away. Funky Girl — from an earlier album, Long Way — is giddily voluptuous, ripe to bursting with crescendos of rapid improv and knee-succumbing guitar riffs, but would have benefited from a live saxophone.