Category: Album Reviews

October 8, 2020 / Album Reviews - Archive

WAVETELLER (www.waveteller.bandcamp.com) 7/10 Imagine if we walked on our heads, and tripwires kept snagging our ears. This music is like that. Gifted bassist Michael Mear left Sydney for Paris when he was 19, and while away developed a fondness for rhythmic intricacy: for spiking his grooves with unexpected jolts. Yet…

October 4, 2020 / Album Reviews - Archive

PERSPECTIVAL (www.samgillmusic.com) 8/10 Alto saxophonist Sam Gill may have just invented chronological schizophrenia. Gill’s conception for his Scattered quintet slices through time and space to combine the freedom and complexity of now with an almost urbane salon aesthetic that could be a century old. It’s rather like slightly unruly music…

September 28, 2020 / Album Reviews - Archive

WHIRLPOOL (Alister Spence Music) 8/10 One note, and then the options are limitless. When the music’s working, the improviser’s mind is ablaze with possibilities, making microsecond decisions about which of these to pursue, usually to sustain the thread of what is already being heard in the head – or sometimes…