Tell Us - Goran Kajfeš Tropiques (2024)

Kajfeš seems never to meet a band he doesn’t want to play in. The trumpeter has more credits as a sideman and a leader than I could list here. Tropiques is his long form groove-trance outfit, which is still primarily jazz but has some definite modernist compositional elements as well.

Made up of just three 12- to 13-minute tracks, there is a ton of room for the group to stretch out into the soundscapes they build. The standard keyboards/bass/drums trumpet quartet adds cello and violin as support, and the group slowly builds layers of groove and flow. When Kajfes drops in, it’s often at an angle to the rest of the group: slightly dissonant but clearly fitting the pattern.

It’s an adventurous outing that keeps your interest from beginning to end.