Band : PSP
Album title : Live
Label : V2
Distributor : V2
Release date : 24/11/2010 (= original release; V2 date unknown)
Release : CD

This relatively new band sees Toto drummer Simon Phillips team up with the Who bassist Pino Palladino and multi-instrumentalist Philippe Saisse, the bandname derived from the abreviation of their first names (Phillipps, Simon, Pino).

Their first album was recorded during a concert at Tokyo’s Billboard Live on the 4th & 5th of February (and no, the fact the recordings stem from two evenings does nót mean we get very long album), 2009, and displays the trio’s great talents in 8 instrumental tracks (with a duration of just under 42 minutes) which show musical influences from such a diverse array of genres as Pop, Rock, Fusion and Jazz. For those among you whom frown at the possible “complexity” or inaccessibility of the music, let me put your minds at ease by asuring you the Pop elements réally smooth things out. All it takes, is for you to open up your minds a bit, and suddenly you’ll find a wonderful new world in music! Just to illustrate my point, I had an 18 year-old nephew (plus a friend off his) coming over yesterday. Now I always like some music in the background when I’m having people over, and when I played this album for them, my nephew went “Wow! This is freaky music!” halfway through. When I went, “Freaky?” with a frown, he was swift enough to enthousiastically add, “Yeah! Like in gréat! Huh…and then some!”. The thing is, while the bassist does nót get a “solo” (the others do: the drummer in the track “Drumesque”, the keyboardist during “Keyboard Improv N°1”) he doés shine throughout the album…as do the others, evidently! Each of the musicians (backed on stage with an additional horn section in some of the songs) is a master on his instrument (in the plural for Saisse), and experience has made the tree rehearsed into each other as a perfect match!

Now although he’s used to his uncle playing some weird and diverse music occasionally, I’d never ventured to play him anything of this genre…and if it went over well with a youth whom is normally into more “modern” types of music, it might come over equally as well with people with a broader taste in music! So, just check out the Internet for a site to listen to some of the band’s music (sorry, I’m writing this from home where I’ve no Internet connections…and I failed to look for info due to lack of time – and that’s an indication of how indecently busy I am these days!). Enjoy the search, hope you enjoy the listening session even more!

90/100

Tony.