This one’s a real mix and not such a clear concept, also with a lot more cover songs than the two others I’ve listened to – four out of the seven tracks, in fact. I like this one more than Knights of Fantasy and less than Love Island, and it’s again testament of how much Deodato can do as a musician. Steve Gadd is the only other musician on the record I know and he of course lays down the faultless grooves throughout.

“Funk Yourself” is a fun enough funk bash, probably great to kick your time on the treadmill off with. For me though, nothing beats Herbie Hancock’s “Hang Up Your Hang Ups”. It’s the next gamble that really pays off though: Zeppelin’s “Black Dog”. Deodato’s band actually delivers a metrically better performance, not rushing that one bit of the riff…it’s got enough gnarl to it that it comes off really well when it might not have.

The next track is to be one of my all-time favorite Deodato tracks, I’m sure: “Crabwalk”. Arranging and conducting your own stuff becomes a really amazing credit when there’s such large instrumentation like this. What a great writer. Great composition. There’s a tolerable dub element with the delays on the trumpet lead, but the lush 70s orchestration style is the real star here.

“Adam’s Hotel” is a super fun tune that were it recorded a little different would fit in some scenes of Napoleon Dynamite. I don’t know if I’m trying too hard to self-promote here but it’s a vibe I was going for with my track (as EM/FM) “Into Atlantis”. What I really want to take from Deodato is his deft management of composition and arrangement. His tunes develop and lengthen without feeling either convoluted (like Bob James for me) or uninteresting (like the Jazz Crusaders for me).

The funky boogaloo version of Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” isn’t bad but I don’t need to ever hear it again. This guy really likes doing covers. I love his version of “Speak Low” though – another jazz standard – and I about hiccuped reading in the credits that the lyricist for the tune was actually Ogden Nash, my favorite poet.

The album ends with a classical piece by Delius, the title track basically, but I don’t know what Deodato did to it as it’s un-jazzified. He would have been pushing even his luck trying to make Cuckoo into a funk.