Kendrick Scott Oracle
The Source
(World Culture Music)
By A.Scott Galloway

It is always a pleasure to get a CD by a drummer who is not only the leader of the band but a composer/arranger of sensitivity for all the instruments at hand. That means this is not an album of time-signature puzzles, speed and skins pummeling. Rather it is a deeply involving mood piece that finds Scott drawing inspiration from everything from a random phrase Dianne Reeves sang that haunted him until he wrote around it on the plane ride home (“View From Above”) to the plight of the people whose lives changed forever post-Katrina (“Retrospect”). Other gems include a transfixing cover of Bjork’s “107 Steps” (featuring Myron Walden on bass clarinet and Lionel Loueke on guitar), “Journey” (a collaboration with vocalist Gretchen Parlato) and the title track “The Source,” described as “an homage to humanity.”