SAND LINES
(Earshift)
7/10
The dreamily enigmatic cover image is a perfect pointer to the musical contents. The expansive title track has skipping propulsion without ever seeming to burn any energy, and its melody and subsequent improvising dance across this propulsion without ever touching the ground. It is the musical epitome of a more elfin than ethereal lightness. Jeremy Rose’s timbre on soprano saxophone (as on alto elsewhere) is at one with the prevailing sense of gracefulness and airiness, a mood enhanced at every turn by pianist Jackson Harrison, bassist Alex Boneham and drummer James Waples.
The chunkier groove of The Long Way Home (one of two tracks featuring guitarist Carl Morgan) does not prevent the music maintaining this wafting quality that lends it such a singular ephemerality. Hegemony is more otherworldly, earthed by a compelling bass solo beautifully shaded by Jackson and Waples. Even Mind Over Matter (dedicated to that most visceral of alto saxophonists, the late David Ades) and the slightly ominous Precipice maintain this sense of floating and disengagement with the dirty concreteness of reality. Only the appropriately titled Debt Spiral jolts us back to earth.