THE PUSSYCAT TAPES VOL 1 (davemacrae.bandcamp.com) 9/10 What’s hits you between the eyes is the sheer energy! Four 24-year-olds playing their take on bebop at full-throttle and with no seatbelts. You feel it in your nerve-endings and racing heart, as if becoming a participant in the spiralling excitement. The Heads…
Category: Album Reviews
ON RUNNING 2 (Kimnara) 8/10 You don’t listen to this music, so much as fall into it. And keep falling. The underpinning cross-rhythm lacework, created by Carl Dewhust (bells) and Simon Barker (bass, cymbals), makes for a sonic version of peripheral vision, while in the foreground Phil Slater’s trumpet improvises…
REFOCUS (Edition/Planet) 8/10 Tim Garland was the late Chick Corea’s orchestrator of choice, the pianist admiring Garland’s capacity for imbuing his scores with both groove and a sense of dialogue with the improvisers. ReFocus highlights this, alongside Garland’s brilliance as a tenor saxophonist. The album takes Stan Getz’s Focus (made…