TRAVELOGUE
(hellosQuare)
8/10
If the sounds on Sensaround’s last opus were like a mist, here they have thickened into the sort of fog in which your first awareness of the proximity of another creature is colliding with them. The wonder of the use of electronics, Fender Rhodes and percussion by Alister Spence and Shoeb Ahmad is that they generate this sense of a pea-souper without making the music dense. So Raymond McDonald’s alto or soprano saxophone never has to fight for aural space: it can materialise and dematerialise like a character in a dream, and when it does appear it may not even occupy a foreground that is in constant, eddying flux.
The album contains four improvisations (including a live recording), and the striking aspect of the creative process is the mutual restraint. None of the three players imposes himself on the music, and yet nor does this restraint make the results at all anodyne. Quite the opposite, in fact: were you alone in the wee hours and aware that an axe-murderer was on the loose it might well confirm your most unspeakable fears.