good talkers

Francis Davis gives a good, concise description of Lafayette Gilchrist. Although I haven't heard the album in question, much the same could be said of The Music According To (and indeed, I do say it in my Citizen Jazz review):

"In his early thirties and from Baltimore, Gilchrist talks about his love of hip-hop and go-go in interviews, and I think I hear these influences in his solos and septet writing—both of which stress the downbeat in a way more common to black pop since James Brown than to jazz. There might even be an element of crunk in his crashingly rhythmic use of tone clusters. But his music is jazz through and through, and the angularity and elegiac slant of pieces like "Thorn Bush," "Bubbles on Mars," and "Unsolved, Unresolved" suggest nothing so much as Andrew Hill circa Point of Departure. Oh, and did I mention the rumbas and habaneras that creep into his accompaniments? It's all flavorable, even if Gilchrist hasn't blended it all together yet and his sidemen (members of a Baltimore group called the New Volcanoes) aren't quite up to his level. Slide over, Jason Moran—you've got competition."

And The Bad Plus invite you to get lost in the Mehldau Vortex:

"It is a dizzying effect, and one that is particularly devastating to a fellow jazz musician following along the chord changes. It is when a standard played at a very fast tempo achieves a stupefying liquefaction.

(...you are tossed into the abyss and lose all comprehension of form...the piano, bass, and drums become a snake charmer…you gaze into the maw with not just acceptance of your fate but bliss...)"