CRAZY TIME (Stubby) 7/10 The title, which dates from before the current imbroglio, certainly suits the manic edge that is one side of this Canadian R&B band’s character. You hear that edge in Richard Underhill’s urgent alto solos, in the three-part horn lines that could cut you off at the…
Category: Album Reviews
FREYA (Edition/Planet) 8/10 Initially the rhythm stumbles with the broken motion of a leg in a splint, while the alto skates blithely by, before drummer Dan Weiss starts treating the thrumming insistence of Matthew Brewer’s bass as something to be tamed rather than healed. Trumpeter Ralph Alessi has already cauterised…
ABSURD IN THE ANTHROPOCENE (Gearbox) 8/10 The monumentalism at work here seems to predate our current little lives. Often trumpeter Dan Rosenboom thinks in mass and density as much as linear ideas; in towers and crenellated walls of granite sound. So even when the music’s lithe and boppish, it still…