Jazz musician Bernie Kenerson explores the EWI on new album

One listens to Kayne West crooning on a vocoder for an entire album and cringes. This can’t be the future of pop music, can it?

Digitized sound in place of talent, of real-life voices?

It is and don’t worry — it’s not all bad.

At least that’s what Bernie Kenerson would have us think.

Kenerson, a multi-instrumentalist who specializes in smooth jazz, delves into electronic instruments with his sophomore release, “Bernie Game, The Art of the EWI.”

Vocoders aren’t that bad

The EWI, for those unfamiliar, is an electronic wind instrument (hence, EWI) made to look like a soprano sax, but built to imitate any number of wind instruments — from tin whistle to trumpet.

“Bernie Game” is Kenerson’s second album using the EWI. Kenerson, an accomplished musician on the flute, clarinet and saxophone (he started playing them all before he was 15 years old), has been working with electronic instruments since the late ’70s.

An aficinado of smooth jazz, Kenerson has long explored routes to express his love of the genre and the EWI is just another method.

The sound is something like a vocoder mixed with television static mixed with a saxophone. Kenerson at the helm means the instrument will certainly play its money-worth and, in “Bernie Game,” it does.

Wedding music and smooth muzak

For those who love smooth jazz, this album will be a familiar,  although somewhat strange, sound. It’s good muzak at its best. If you’re not a smooth jazz fan, then you should check it out anyway. It won’t catch you on every track, but overall Kenerson has orchestrated nice background music to demonstrate the power of the EWI.

Most notable are “Cloudless Sky” and “I’ll Remember This Day.”

“Cloudless Sky” is a sweet, ambient laudation with background instruments keys, bass and drums giving space where space is needed. The tune shifts back and forth between soft, melodic meditation to up-tempo jazz shuffle.

”I’ll Remember This Day” is a beautiful love song that needs no words. Excellent rapport between EWI and keys make for a superb soundtrack for weddings, anniversaries or a romantic evening at the house.

It’s also a darn good song.

Jazzed out

The EWI’s only fault would be a tendency to sound raspy and to trail off on tangents when the listener needs to stay grounded.

Call this penchant or opinion, but jazz is such an ephemeral music at times that the last thing you need is some saxophone player to go floating into the distance.

What’s there to draw you back?

That’s the problem on the opening track, “Bernie Game,” which features a lot of stuff going on but none of it grounding. Also, “Queen of My Heart” struggles to maintain itself for over six minutes with just the EWI carrying the entire song through ascending and descending so quickly that the listener has not the option to stay, “Stop! I’m jazzed out!”

EWI the agile

Those are two tracks out of the twelve, though. A majority of the album features some type of weight to keep the song from flying into the distance.

Most notable in this case is “Undun”, a cover of a song by Guess Who member Randy Bachman. Kenerson chose just acoustic, EWI and drums for this with a few minor background noises.

The start-stop stylings of the guitar strumming combined with the unavoidable efflorescent sound of the EWI made the track the most agile and slickest on the album.

If it’s smooth jazz you like, then this album is a worthy experiment in which to partake. But, even if you don’t like smooth jazz (or jazz at all, for that matter), it’s good background music for cleaning your room, doing the dishes, brushing your teeth and, occasionally, dancing around like a fool.