Press
‘SuperBigmouth’
"Extra-potent...Lightcap ingeniously fused proggy rhythmic drive with floating, almost choir-like themes scored for an octet including twinned guitars, tenor saxes, and drums." -Hank Shteamer, Rolling Stone
"Two guitars, two drum kits, two tenor saxophones, bass, keyboards and a whole lot of reverb. Sounds like a ton, no? It helps that Lightcap writes for this new band with a mix of blissed-out abandon and serious precision: On “Through Birds, Through Fire,” your focus is drawn first to the woven ringlets of sax and guitar that become a buzzing electron cloud. But a lot of the action is really happening closer to the nucleus, in Lightcap’s bold-toned, wide-open bass playing, and the drummers’ throttling nine-beat rhythm." -Giovanni Russonello, The New York Times
"SuperBigmouth unites Lightcap’s two bands...and it works beautifully... Despite the endless echoes of other genres and cultures, the music remains coherent and clear in its intent." -Madeleine Byrne, Downbeat
"Bassist Chris Lightcap has been on so many of the coolest records of the last 20 years, playing with people like James Carney, Regina Carter, Craig Taborn, Matt Wilson, Rob Brown, Joe Morris, and many more…The sound is thick and layered, sometimes reminiscent of the Zappa-styled rock-jazz of The Grand Wazoo…Other times the sound is like the genre-less open spaces of guitarist Bill Frisell…Lightcap himself is at the center of the mix, holding it together, but it’s a joy to hear him featured as a soloist on the collection’s quietest track, “Nothing If Not”, where he is given the foreground in a burbling collective improvisation that comes together in a bucolic theme." -Will Layman, Pop Matters
Conceptually and practically ambitious, SuperBigmouth is a composite of two projects of bassist/composer Chris Lightcap’s, Superette and Bigmouth. Rendered with an eight-piece band, literally twice the size of the quartet on last year’s splendid album titled after the former initiative, it is proportionately more dynamic and dramatic and should prove just as durable... If Chris Lightcap and company prove anything here—besides the fact this work compels many repeated listenings—it is that the intersection of jazz and rock can represent a flash-point of inspiration as potent as the convergence of material and musicianship. -Doug Collette, Glide Magazine
"Bassist Chris Lightcap has two main bands...On this album, he combines them into a single eight-piece unit that absolutely tears shit up...“Queenside,” on which Tony Malaby and Jonathan Goldberger both get time in the spotlight, is built on a massive, complicated riff that sounds like something off a recent Opeth album. Both saxophonist and guitarist are at a peak of screaming intensity; it’s one of the most headbanging jazz tunes I’ve ever heard." -Phil Freeman, Stereogum
The band plays together in a collective fashion in a very impressive way, allowing a variety of colors and rhythms to come to the forefront and then be subsumed as the music continuously replenishes itself with new ideas. This was a very well done album, the musicianship is out of sight, but there is no ego involved, everybody is playing in the service to the music and that is its greatest asset. -Tim Niland, Music and More
YEAR END “BEST OF” LISTS:
Rolling Stone: Best Jazz of 2019
Wilco Recommends: Favorite Records of 2019
JAZZTIMES 2019 CRITICS POLL: BEST NEW ARTISTS OF 2019
Downbeat Magazine: 2019: The Year’s Top-Rated Albums
JAZZIZ Critics’ Picks Playlist: The Best Songs of 2019
Hank Shteamer’s Dark Forces Swing Top 10 Jazz of 2019
The New York City Jazz Record: Best albums of 2019
KEXP: 2019 Top Ten List Spotlight: John Gilbreath
North Shore News (Vancouver): Best Albums of 2019
Healthy Music Obsession: Best of 2019
Giornale Della Musica (Italy): Top 20 jazz releases of 2019:
Radiocitta Fujiko (Italy): Best 10 records of 2019:
POP MATTERS: 12 Brilliant Recent Jazz Albums That Shouldn't Be Missed
REVIEWS:
4-STAR REVIEW IN DOWNBEAT MAGAZINE
JAZZ TIMES FEATURE/INTERVIEW: "Chris Lightcap: TWO BECOME ONE"
GLIDE MAGAZINE REVIEW
REVIEW: New York CITY JAZZ RECORD
Stereogum: Ugly Beauty: The Month in Jazz, October 2019
Music and More review
BEST JAZZ ON BANDCAMP
WBGO's the Check-out fall 2019 preview podcast with Nate Chinen and Simon Rentner:
Downbeat Magazine premiers “Through Birds, Through Fire” single in advance of SuperBigmouth Release.
Jazziz offers sneak peak of “Zero Point Five,” the second advance single off of SuperBigmouth.
Nate Chinen features “Deep River” from upcoming SuperBigmouth on WBGO’s “Take Five”
SuperBigmouth featured on WBGO’s The Checkout podcast fall preview.
Podcasts:
Interview by stereogum's Phil Freeman for his Burning Ambulance podcast.
‘The Jazz Session’ #461: Chris Lightcap - Podcast
Alloy: A Mixture of Music and Conversation
"Dr. Jazz Talks" Interview with Samo Salamon
"JAZZ VINYL AUDIOPHILE" interview with Ken Micallef Part 1
"JAZZ VINYL AUDIOPHILE" interview with Ken Micallef Part 2
"JAZZ VINYL AUDIOPHILE" interview with Ken Micallef Part 3
"JAZZ VINYL AUDIOPHILE" interview with Ken Micallef Part 4
contrabass conversations with Jason heath
A Neon Jazz Interview with Jazz Bassist & Composer Chris Lightcap
Interviews:
INTERVIEW: AUDEZE DIVES DEEP WITH BASSIST AND COMPOSER Chris Lightcap
Musicians as Audiophiles: Chris Lightcap - Interview for Stereophile Magazine
JAZZSPEAKS.ORG INTERVIEW
No Treble interviews Chris Lightcap
‘Superette’
“The writing for the band is superb... Superette is a great new album and promising new band from Chris Lightcap.” -Sean Westergaard, AllMusic Guide.
“The Best pure rock all-instrumental CD in years.” - GoldMine Magazine
"Chipping away at musty genres and sculpting the scraps to suit a recombinant vision has been a jazz strategy for decades now, but occasionally, a record comes along that nails the art of the blend with enough inspiration to sound truly novel. Should’ve figured that Chris Lightcap would be one guy who could pull it off ... The resultant mélange is wildly entertaining." -Jim Macnie, Jazztimes
"if you’re looking for melodic, vibrant, improvisational jazz/rock, Superette is your meat, potatoes and dessert too." -Michael Toland, The Big Takeover
“Superette is as dynamic as it is dramatic, directly reflecting the various and sundry prior projects of Lightcap and his collaborators, including, at selected junctures, guitarist Nels Cline and keyboardist John Medeski; a distinct distillation of those stylistic approaches, the resulting density nevertheless allows for ample space. Radiating the logic of a well-constructed performance transferred to a superior album.” - Doug Collette, AllAboutJazz
"In unveiling his Superette band, Chris Lightcap shows that he invests a fair amount of serious artistry into his work even when he’s making casually fun music." -S, Victor Aaron, Something Else Reviews
ALLMUSIC GUIDE 2018 YEAR IN REVIEW: FAVORITE JAZZ ALBUMS
ALLABOUTJAZZ REVIEW
FEATURE/INTERVIEW: New York CITY JAZZ RECORD
Downbeat Magazine reviews Superette
Superette reviewed in JazzTimes Magazine
REVIEW: New York CITY JAZZ RECORD
Allmusic.com review
Something Else! review of Superette
Review of Superette in The Big Takeover
JP’s Music Blog reviews Superette
‘Epicenter’
“Mr. Lightcap, a well-traveled bassist with a feel for sturdy song form, presents a new batch of tunes for Bigmouth, a band with two expressive tenor saxophonists, Chris Cheek and Tony Malaby, and an adaptable rhythm team. Beyond the loose New York City theme – and a stylistic frame that runs from Ornette Coleman to West African kora music to the Velvet Underground – it’s an album of alert cohesion and unpretentious charm.” – Nate Chinen, New York Times
Chris Lightcap’s Bigmouth, “Nine South”: “Electric piano, two saxes and the open highway. The bassist is the leader and beat landscaper and he’s doing his job well.” – Patrick Jarenwattananon, The Complete List: NPR Music’s Favorite Songs Of 2015 (So Far)
“…a jazz supergroup …Lightcap is channeling the bass thrum and compositional spirit of Charles Mingus, mixed with the genre daredevilry of Sex Mob or the Bad Plus.” – Britt Robson, JazzTimes
4-stars. “It’s a multipolar musical world….The album opener, for example, is laced with a delicious indulgence of Wurlitzer funk, offset by tenor-tagging, a floating pulse and a busy ending flourish. The cadence of ‘White Horse’ brings us back to a kind of rhythmic swirl before we touch down with a taste of Ornette-flavored drive through the title track-the epicenter, in terms of swing, pluck and group unity…. And then there’s the cover of Lou Reed’s ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ whose softly defiant backbeat is an answer to all the rhythmic twists and turns of everything that’s come before, the pulse unobtrusively lurching toward an anthemic cataclysm.” – John Ephland, DownBeat
“Epicenter an egoless all-star set, rocks: funky and modernistic, it sounds like an inevitable incremental step forward for jazz.” – Dan McClenaghan, All About Jazz
“…bold, mellifluous writing and subtle bandleading smarts….outstanding.” – Hank Shteamer, TimeOut New York
“…a riveting report from the front-line of creative American music.” – Cormac Larkin, The Irish Times
“An album filled to the brim with musical originality and personality… the music on “Epicenter” draws influences from many musical corners, always edgy, often harmonious, sometimes discordant (in a beautiful way) and occasionally nonsensically brilliant.” - Mike Gates, UK Vibe
4 1/2 stars: “Conceived as a continuous seven-part extended work for his band, Bigmouth, the first seven tracks on Chris Lightcap’s Epicenter are as remarkable for their diversity as they are for the ways in which they’re tied together. The unifying theme here is ‘New York: Lost and Found,’ and the music could indeed work as a sort of conceptual portrait of the city’s colorful population and little-known, out-of-the-way nooks and crannies.” – Dave Wayne, All About Jazz
“…the all-star bassist deftly combines oddball meters, conventional song structures and stunning melodic washes. Epicenter is one of the best things to come out, thus far, in 2015.” – Dave Sumner, Bird is the Worm
“Epicenter is an excellent if overdue reminder of just how well [LIghtcap] works as a composer and leader in fielding music that at once grooves and intellectually moves.” – Derek Taylor, Dusted
“Chris Lightcap & Bigmouth, with a white-hot frontline of saxophonists Chris Cheek and Tony Malaby, did the inside-outside thing to a tee. Their set’s final number, a majestic take on the Velvet Underground’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” hit the spot for this festival. It was jazz, it was bohemian pop and it was New York City to the bone.” – Evan Haga, JazzTimes, on the 2014 NYC Winter JazzFest
The 2015 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll Top 10
NEW YORK TIMES: BEST ALBUMS OF 2015
THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE: 2015's must-hear jazz albums
THE L.A. TIMES: BEST JAZZ ALBUMS OF 2015
THE CHICAGO READER: BEST JAZZ RECORDINGS OF 2015
The Hartford Courant: Best Jazz of 2015
NBC San Diego: top ten jazz records of 2015
BIRD IS THE WORM: ALBUM OF THE YEAR
MUSIC AND MORE: ALBUM OF THE YEAR
The Big City Blog: Best Album of 2015
No Depression: Best Jazz Albums of 2015
Andrew Batson: Best Music I heard in 2016
JAzztrail.net: recommended albums of 2015
UK Vibe review (4 Stars)
Jazztimes Feature: New York Stories
‘Deluxe’
“Superb” – Martin Johnson, Wall Street Journal
“As impressive as bassist Chris Lightcap’s first two albums were in showing off his distinctive two-tenor quartet, they didn’t prepare us for the richness and emotional reach of Deluxe…brimmingly alive…from start to finish this music sings.” – Lloyd Sachs, Downbeat
“Righteous… this is a steady band, and it shows emphatically in the music….The songs are suffused with locomotion and informed by choice aspects of West African music…it just works.” – Nate Chinen, New York Times
“The lineup reads like an all-star game of musician’s musicians, except none of them, least of all the composer, are slacking.” -Patrick Jarenwattananon, NPR
“Lightcap is a smart composer of driving music; his tunes breathe, with plenty of room for horn interplay…It’s a brawny unit, but also at ease — a muscle car with an unconcerned foot on the gas” - Patrick Jarenwattananon, NPR
“Lightcap’s expertise on the bass is second to none, as he pushes and prods his way through these original works with an absolutely stellar band…The music is centered but perfectly identified by shooting out many sparks and shafts of light. ” – Michael G Nastos, All Music Guide
“Bigmouth is a special band, demarcating its own territory, filled with surprisingly open spaces.” – All About Jazz
“A stellar example of accessible, forward-thinking new jazz, Deluxe pulls at the heartstrings and moves the body, without forgetting to exercise the mind.” – Point of Departure