"NEXUS is a thought process laid-out on a human landscape. The music is gritty and the topics from the gut with no cutting at the edges. A sharp band."
- Tom Mongelli, WDHA-FM "Jazz 'n More"
"A fresh new voice... an urban synthesis laid over techno-funk and world-beat rhythms. Tightly knit and contemporary."
- Tad Lathrop, Billboard Books
NEXUS is a reissue on cd of the first release by Paul Serrato & Co. on the indie jazz label Graffiti Productions. It was created in 1990 specifically for this debut project. Originally in cassette format (such were the times), it has not been available on CD until now.
Why this reissue now? Primarily the music. NEXUS was on the cutting edge when first released independently in 1990. This was music where jazz met pop met blues met avant-garde. It has retained its sharpness years later, thanks to all the bright talent. ("and Co."). Paul Serrato composer, musician, and producer assembled for the project.
Indeed, there's a kind of first project exuberance that pervades the record, a kind of "let's go for it!" attitude delivered by the musicians. Chock full of talent and quickly recognizable. NEXUS presents a series of portraits in words and music of a gallery of characters, quirky, romantic, disturbed and often outside society's acceptance. Stage Door Johnny lives life starstruck by a diva; the guy in Make Your Moves On Me is experiencing the thrill, (and danger) of love at first sight; the narrator of (He Was) My Stepdad has over-the-top Oedipal conflicts. Graffiti Artist And Graffiti Blues were both inspired by Michael Stewart, the N.Y.C. graffiti artist who died violently at the hands of police after being apprehended practicing that outsider art in the subway.
Paul hoped to evoke his spirit in both these pieces, (part of a longer composition, actually). The pieces were the catalyst for the CD. The band had performed them in a concert at which DJ Lee Lowenfish from New York's WBAI heard them and invited the group to record them at the station thus, in effect, initiating the NEXUS project.
Street Smarts is a "found sound" urban jazz collage. Paul collected the street bites and arcade "music" on excursions with a boom box to New York’s wild side, (at the time): West 42nd Street before urban renewal took over from the outsider street life. The voice heard hawking, "girls, girls, girls" in front of a porno establishment was as much a familiar mainstay on the block as suburban commuters go scurrying past. The track, in its way, now evokes a kind of period nostalgia similar to Stage Door Johnny. Commenting on NEXUS in 1991 on WDHA-fm, (New Jersey), Tom Mongelli described it as "a thought process laid out on a human landscape. The music is gritty and the topics from the gut with no cutting at the edges. The album is very bright, not glossy. All this and a mighty groove. A sharp band!" Through subsequent jazz releases of original music, Graffiti Productions has succeeded in garnering new venturesome fans in adhering to the label's motto; "Urban jazz not by the rules."
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