Tel Aviv’s Calo Wood is less a band and more of a blank canvas. For each album, producer Rejoicer and saxophonist Eyal Talmudi recruit a different guest singer and build songs from loose sessions. I accidentally wandered into their latest, Diving Shadows, and the music fittingly sounds accidental. It plays like a pirate radio station, broadcasting strains of jazz, reggae, hip-hop, and soul at head-nodding speed.
Diving Shadows’ spotlight is on Ester Rada, an Israeli-Ethopian singer who snakes around the beat. “All We Have” is a dangerous, hypnotic song, kept off-kilter by the swaying rhythm. Rada is an inviting dance partner, but Talmudi’s sax stabs through the smoke rings.
Diving Shadows is out now via Raw Tapes Records.
–Art Levy
