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Seize The Time Reviewed on Vortex Online


18 May 2009
Vortex Online
Vortex Jazz

This is drummer/leader Ted Sirota's fifth album with his Rebel Souls (though only he remains from such recordings as 1996's Rebel Roots or 1998's Propaganda), and it is 'dedicated to the many musicians who have inspired me deeply as a human being and artist'. The band – Geoff Bradfield and Greg Ward (reeds), Dave Miller (guitar), Jake Vinsel (bass) – have an engagingly homespun, rackety approach that clearly has a great affinity with punk, so it is no surprise to find the album kicking off with Clash's 'Clampdown', and to hear the clear traces of punk's 1970s contemporary, reggae/dub, in some of the band originals that follow. The other 'covers' chosen by Sirota for this rough and ready album speak volumes about his political commitment: Mingus's 'Free Cell Block F, 'Tis Nazi USA', Caetano Veloso's '13 de Maio', material by Miriam Makeba (who died just as this album was being produced), and Stephen Foster's plaint for the oppressed poor, 'Hard Times' (covered most famously by Johnny Cash). These pieces, and the six in-band originals with which they're interspersed, are all addressed with informal verve and energy by the Rebel Souls, so that what they lack in musical polish and virtuosity they more than make up for with their sheer commitment, which is apparent in everything they address. As Sirota himself says: 'With the world sinking deeper and deeper into crisis each day we should remind ourselves that in crisis there is opportunity. SEIZE THE TIME!
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