Marlbank reviews (Un)seaworthy

"...​ignites an inner fire as you listen"

Stephen Graham of the UK-based jazz blog Marlbank has written a warm review for (Un)seaworthy. Read the original here (full text below):

Review of (Un)seaworthy
by Stephen Graham (Marlbank)
December 2, 2020

​There is something exceptionally satisfying once again about the Kevin Sun approach. The tenor saxophonist has plenty of room to roam recording at Big Orange Sheep in Brooklyn last year. Without a true harmony instrument in sight only the open architecture of bassist Walter Stinson and drummer Matt Honor to pore over as a blueprint indicate a direction that somehow becomes a destination in itself.

While relatively brief and beware the cover art might make you feel huey green all over (where's an open porthole when you need one?) appetite restored there is plenty of meat on the bone on (Un)seaworthy whether on sinewy opener 'Bad Lady' or in the uneasiness of 'Seaworthy (Unseaworthy)' where rubato is used to destabilise and contribute to a salty sense of alt.swing. Overall there is an emphasis on flux achieved step by step progressing on.

Sun chooses to understate his method. Paying homage to Lester Young and Charlie Parker in his own way via his own knotty approach to harmony and his own tunes this is a modernist homage not made to shock but more to destablise. Together the trio manage to magnify the essential intimacy of their sound and bypass their inspirations and smoulder all over your consciousness in quite the act of subversion that ignites an inner fire as you listen.