Traditional and free jazz purists may deride it, but lite/fusion leaves room for versatility. Take Milwaukee saxophonist Christopher Pipkins and his Christopher's Project. No Deposit NoReturn starts off with the usual suspects of his genre: silk bathrobes, aromatic candles, chocolate-coated strawberries and nights of intermingling limbs. But the Project goes from strength to strength in tackling samba, reasonably driving funk and a semi-smoothed-out take on Jimi Hendrix's psychedelic blues. Pipkins knows that he'll make a name for himself through seductive aural wallpaper, but he's not giving up on a muse that takes him to more varied destinations.
