Named after the cult John Coltrane LP Sun Ship, Sunship is a quintet whose obvious instrumentation—guitar, saxophone, bass, drums, and trombone—not only fulfills but deftly flouts expectations of jazz-inflected grooves and buzz-saw saxophone wailing.
Indeed, after a stellar performance at the Chapel Performance Space last May, Sunship's visibly exhausted saxophonist Michael Monhart gushed, "I can't believe we only played four tunes!"
That exclamation surprised me, too. We might have heard 4 tunes or 40, yet it was a blessing to float adrift: Rather than fill space with extended, riff-based jams, the five musicians aboard Sunship bracketed space and silence by scattering sounds above, around, and behind the audience. While guitarist Brian Heaney casually picked out a moody, slithering riff, Stuart Dempster roved behind the crowd beaming elongated analog synth blats from his didgeridoo. Dempster crept quietly like a ninja from a kung-fu movie; sound would appear and then vanish only to rematerialize a few feet away.
Near the end, Heaney and bassist Andrew Luthringer somehow locked into a fast strumming groove; I expected a segue into the incessant high-hat lick of "It's About That Time" (or the theme from Shaft) and hard-blowing sax solo. But Dempster injected some slurred, bent notes on the trombone; the tempo accelerated, and an avalanche of gongs, bells, and other small percussion instruments led to another molten transition of chimes, quiet gasps on the saxophone, and a single concluding drum stroke.
When I asked Heaney about Sunship's return to the Chapel, he said, "We're going after the same energy." I'm glad: Sunship is one of the few groups that not only plays in a space, but plays with space.
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=459491
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