The leaves began to fade
Like promises we made
How could a love that seemed so right go wrong?
– Sammy Cahn from ‘The Things We Did Last Summer’
“I’ll remember all winter long”: Newcomer Alice Milburn (25) is an English jazz singer from Portsmouth, doyenne of the Vaults regular jazz night in Southsea. Much more than a demo or statement of intent First Expressions was recorded in the Hampshire summer at a Gosport studio.
If you like Stacey Kent and Naama you will be in your element dipping into these things she did last summer. Very girl next door it’s the show song type Broadway and bebop “classic” approach to the genre driving things along. So it’s retro and very much a period piece. Milburn has a persuasive voice. She’s an old soul. It’s an enjoyably mercifully uncheesy profile raising start to getting to know her sound.
Covers include the 1930s James F. Hanley Thumbs Up song that Renée Zellweger performed on the soundtrack for brilliant 2019 Judy Garland biopic Judy, ‘Zing Went the Strings of My Heart.’
First Expressions is not dark as night or torch song fodder which I prefer. But nevertheless I liked her ingénue take on the Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn 1940s classic that Frank Sinatra interpreted ‘The Things We Did Last Summer’ that has a vibrant bass contribution from bassist George Balmont. There’s a throw your head back gleefulness to the Milburn vocal too on the singer’s winning treatment of ‘It’s Almost Like Being in Love’ later on the song when the verse is carefully negotiated and the formidable scatting kicks in so when the words return it’s like she has shed a skin and found a new carefree spirit inside.
With the singer are also keyboardist Saul Hughes and drummer Josh Turn plus musical director trombonist Lloyd Pearce who solos on Milburn original ‘Brief Company’. The lyrics despair at the flakiness of a man desirous perhaps of a one night stand. The voice has confidence and personality.
‘Brief Company’ and ‘Zing Went the Strings of My Heart’ are among tracks streaming so far. The full album is out on 24 October. Scat is this steeped in the romance of the songs jazz thoroughbred’s strongest suit.
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Carla Bley classic Lawns streams drawn from Andy Sheppard trio’s Salt Catchers
Salt Catchers is new next month from Andy Sheppard with Rita Marcotulli and Michel Benita that includes a freshly recorded take on Carla Bley’s ‘Lawns.’
Drummerless, the album features eight new Sheppard compositions plus the Bley piece.
Sheppard, 69, wrote prolifically during the pandemic, turning toward piano-based writing rather than the guitar led projects of his recent past. He sought a “chamber-like” character while keeping his own sound world intact, and settled on a drummerless trio to sharpen the focus on melody, harmony and space. He cites his years with Bley – who died in 2023 – and Steve Swallow as a direct inspiration for returning to a no drums setting: “I enjoyed the very special challenge of playing without the accompaniment of drums so much,” he says, adding that the new record is “in a certain way tied to those years full of fond memories with Carla and Steve.”
The title Salt Catchers comes from a visit to the Salinas (salt works) near Aveiro, Portugal, where photos of workers catching salt suggested both the physical difficulty of the job and the tricky nature of one of the tunes; the album also nods to the photographer Sebastião Salgado via the track ‘Salgado’ (“salty”). Sheppard notes the influence of his life near Lisbon and the Portuguese sense of saudade – a bittersweet longing – running through the music.
An English saxophonist based in Lisbon, Sheppard has built a distinctive ECM catalogue from quintet and quartet records to the Bley-Swallow trio. His early work with John Martyn and the UK singer-songwriter scene informs his love of “real songs” within a jazz frame, and he describes himself as “a romantic at heart.”
Rita Marcotulli, 67, is an Italian pianist Sheppard has known for years. Think a sound that lands between Huw Warren and Nikki Iles, perhaps, as rough sign posting. Salt Catchers marks her first appearance on an ECM album – fact fans.
Michel Benita, 72, is a French bassist and long-time associate of Sheppard, singled out for his lyricism and his feel for the folkloristic and melodic aspects of Sheppard’s writing. Like Marcotulli, he brings deep empathy and a shared history to the trio.
The collaborative chemistry between Sheppard and Benita is documented across four distinct albums, primarily released through ECM Records. Their partnership took centre stage on the 2012 album Trio Libero, a stripped-back project alongside drummer Sebastian Rochford (Polar Bear, Sons of Kemet).
This foundational trio expanded into a quartet by inviting Norwegian guitarist Eivind Aarset into the fold, resulting in the atmospheric textures of 2015’s Surrounded by Sea and its 2018 follow-up, Romaria.
First released on Bley’s 1987 ECM album Sextet, ‘Lawns’ is a slow, romantic ballad built on a highly syncopated, lyrical melody and a flowing chord progression that balances simplicity with subtle harmonic colour. The theme is typically presented as a 16-bar phrase repeated at the octave to form a 32-bar structure, using four-bar phrases that give the tune its gently unfolding, song-like quality. Harmonically, it leans on expressive devices such as the minor iv resolving to I and richly voiced dominant chords, while inviting improvisers to explore altered and whole-tone colours over its changes.
Though an instrumental in origin, the piece later acquired lyrics by Kurt Elling as ‘Endless Lawns,’ further extending its reach.
Over the years ‘Lawns’ has been taken up by a wide range of players, from John Scofield and Kazumi Watanabe to Noël Akchoté, Fredrik Ljungkvist, Fabrizio Bosso and several European trios and duos. Vocal versions of the Elling lyric adaptation have appeared on records by Kurt Elling himself (with Marquis Hill), Georgia Cécile and others, while solo piano and small group instrumental covers continue to surface in clubs and on streaming platforms.
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Punkt. Vrt. Plastik, Kompress, Intakt ****
A secular hymnal to modernity: rapid fire clusters and dartingly uneasy modernisms wrap the core approach in uncomplacent rhythm
“When the hope of the world stood withered.”
Personally I find the name of this trio off putting. I looked up what it is supposed to mean and certainly finding this out satisfies me a bit but not that much.
Apparently the notion is that the PVP word salad derives its name from combining one distinct word from each member’s native language to reflect their individual origins alongside their collective musical philosophy.
The first element, “Punkt”, is the Swedish word for “point” [the bassist is Swedish] or “dot”. This is paired with the Slovenian word “Vrt”, meaning “garden” [the pianist is Slovenian], which apparently symbolises a fertile creative space where raw musical ideas can be planted and cultivated. Finally, the German word “Plastik” [the drummer is German – he would be, wouldn’t he] connotes the concept of plasticity, denoting the flexibility and physical shaping of sound structures.
Phew. Don’t say we don’t spoil you with slightly abstruse explorations on a Saturday evening as a warm womb of post Lughnasadh darkness envelops the boreens down here in the marlbank neck of the woods where the land is really a lough. The scene and this nevertheless not that overly gloomy release chimes with what Beckett wrote memorably in his novel Malone Dies, part of the great miserabilist’s 1950s trilogy: “The little cloud drifting before their glorious sun will darken the earth as long as I please.”
Lost in translation any of this? Boo. I am being unnecessarily facetious. But it’s not a malign tendency. And the great thing about music – as indeed also, see above, clouds – is things very rarely are lost in translation. So, I wouldn’t have a clue if all this was spoken word in Slovenian, Swedish and German but do get it when the language is avant jazz.
The intrepid three don’t need words so bypass that difficulty entirely. But they do tough love however veiled the impersonation given the tenderness that’s something of an iron fist [the punkish maelstrom of the drum line] in a velvet glove [the magical realism of the piano lines]. Controversially they actually do at least in part resort to melody in a feat of no small harmonic and rhythmical prestidigitation kept artfully under wraps. Because there are – listen hard – melodic stretches on ‘MariaTorget 87’ credited to Eldh and apart from the outlier that is the old Swedish hymn my favourite track.
Eldh was “discovered” by Django Bates and belonged Gollum like “his precious” to the Beckenham genius – exiled to the land of the Toblerone these past years – in Django’s wonderful Bird loving trio, Belovèd.
I read somewhere unreliable but which paradoxically seemed credible that the title refers to the atmosphere of Stockholm’s Maria Square [English for “Torget”] back in the 80s. Let’s hope it’s not fiction. Reader it is a place in any case. Eldh seems fairly roused by thoughts of whatever it is that inspires him. The piece regardless allows one’s imagination to run away with itself beyond his nibs’ own.
PVP’s heyday was before Lockdown
Looky, looky: above they play Berlin in 2017 three blessed years before anyone even began to think about wet markets in Wuhan – let alone look up the place on Google Maps
No strangers to the very serious Swiss hardcore avant and free improv loving jazz gnomes of Zurich, Intakt – earlier albums of this imaginative trio’s where their story began – are Punkt.Vrt.Plastik (2018) and Somit (2021), as well as their live recording Zurich Concert (2022) – one the take the zug to, clearly. No leaves on the track there. Or worse, going all Nobbsian for a minute as thoughts turn inevitably back to Blighty “twenty-two minutes late, badger ate a junction box at New Malden.”
Quite. But pianist Kaja Draksler is quite brilliant at doing disquiet setting the piano lines up pervasively on Kompress – a German word meaning compressed or closely packed. Think Kris Davis or Alexander Hawkins as kindred spirits. This is better than AH’s nevertheless decent one for the cellar, No Nation But Imagination, methinks. While on drums Christian Lillinger reminds one of the admirably wonky style of cult avantist Jim Black.
Surprises? Yes. Fellow muppets, there are some. Just who would have predicted that a hymn or what sounds very much like one would pop up – let’s go hurdy gurdy, hurdy gurdy, gurdy for a minute to try to say out loud ‘När världens hopp förtvinat stod.’
Oh to be a polyglot. But instead puzzled I looked it up and found that it translates to English as: “When the hope of the world stood withered.” A hymn it turns out indeed – the language archaic Swedish. There is no lyric obvs as this is an instrumentals only album but it reverts to a traditional Swedish Christian hymn written by Samuel Johan Hedborn in 1813. I found an orchestrated version of it online shared at the top of this review.
Needless to say the only thing in common with that version by Swedes the Östergötlands Sinfonietta is the melody which then PVP drive a horse and cart through in not at all destructive fashion. Reader if you listen to both versions back to back you will realise instantly and relatively simply how futuristic Punkt Vrt. Plastik are without being at all performative.
Innovation is the name of the game and it’s a game these intuitive Europeans know experly well.
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Kurt Elling and Yellowjackets are in their element
The twist is this isn’t just re-telling it’s finding a context that’s true but not replication and one that finds proper space for vocals that does justice to the instrumentalism.
A slice of live Slovak action that’s twice as nice as it sees a coming together of one of the most credible jazz rock fusion bands since Weather Report in tandem with one of the most applauded male jazz singers since Mark Murphy in Kurt Elling – to reiterate a claim often made in these pages: he is up there with Gregory Porter and Ian Shaw all masters at work and a triumvirate who have fully flowered since the Velvet Fog departed this vale of tears as if he passed on the baton to them.
Kurt Elling and the Yellowjackets have joined forces for a bold, live reimagining of some of Weather Report’s most enduring compositions, captured on Play Weather Report Alive in Europe + Bonus Studio Recordings, out today via Elling and Bryan Farina’s label Big Shoulders Records, his home after a lengthy stint at English indie Edition illuminated most of all by his superb collaboration with Panamanian master Danilo Pérez – Secrets Are the Best Stories and there is a link to that in the glassy stillness and shared communion found on ‘The Fanfold Hawk’ and ‘A Certain Continuum’ lashed together to become a tapestry of dream weaving.
This latest album, recorded during the 50th anniversary of the Bratislava Jazz Days, finds Elling bringing his distinctive vocal approach and original lyrics to a repertoire defined by Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul and Jaco Pastorius, while the Yellowjackets supply their signature blend of acoustic fluency and electric groove.
Shorter’s compositional voice is represented most tellingly within ‘Pallas’ Palace (Palladium)’, which is just brilliant the soaring, harmonically rich piece from Heavy Weather (1977) providing scaffolding. That was Weather Report’s best‑selling album and a landmark of jazz‑fusion that also featured ‘Birdland’ and ‘Teen Town’. ‘Palladium’ has an admirably raucous opening in this arrangement. I prefer the live version to the studio one – Elling’s vocalese here is breath taking and deserves a hatful of awards for just that portion of the number.
The audience start to go a bit potty for ‘Palladium’. After all – you want atmosphere on a live album and you get it here.
Shorter’s influence is further felt in the group’s interplay and improvisatory approach throughout the set. Joe Zawinul’s presence is marked by ‘Current Affairs’, taken from the final Weather Report studio album, Weather Report (1982), a track that blends Zawinul’s synth‑led textures with Shorter’s saxophone lyricism.
For years I thought the natural successors to Weather Report, however different their sound, were Snarky Puppy. But this live recording where Yellowjackets place their tanks on the lawn with hefty authority and conviction debunks such armchair general thinking.
Nestled among these Weather Report classics is ‘Intrigue’, a Bob Mintzer original that first appeared on the Yellowjackets’ 2022 album Parallel Motion – a sleek, jazz‑funk number that sits comfortably alongside the fusion heritage of the main repertoire.
Elling is Zelig like in being in all the right places at all the right times whether it’s in a crowd of rhythm or rattling around in a lonelier avenue of gaping space that only he knows how to fill
The collection is completed by three bonus studio recordings that offer a more intimate, refined counterpoint to the live energy. They are certainly cleaner and less febrile, the yin to the yang of the equally terrific Slovak ones. Featuring Elling with pianist Joey Calderazzo, guitarist Mike Moreno, bassist Dane Alderson and drummer Marcus Finnie, these tracks are ‘The Elegant Ride’, ‘Pallas’ Palace’ and in-one’s-cups ditty ‘The Face in the Barroom Mirror’. The studio ‘Elegant Ride’ is better than the live one, mainly because of the use of sticks on glistening cymbals at the outset rather than the thump of toms on the live opening and the slightly more exacting feel.
‘The Face in the Barroom Mirror’ is another Shorter composition supplemented by Elling’s Waitsian lyrics and isn’t on the live tracks, its moody harmonic landscape providing a fitting close to the album’s dual live and studio narratives. Rating: ****
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The sound of Tony Bennett and Bill Evans touched upon by Asleep at the Wheel’s Ray Benson and Marc Copland
“Love’s the greatest healer to be found” – Willie Nelson
In The Blink of An Eye is a balladic vocals and piano conception that represents the first formal musical pairing for the duo of Philly cousins Ray Benson (75) and Marc Copland (78). To jazz listeners Copland is far better known. He built his reputation as a modern jazz pianist and composer, while to country listeners the nexus of involved interest swivels around a different axis, as Benson spent his career fronting Asleep at the Wheel, an American roots-music group formed in 1970.
Based in Austin, Texas Asleep at the Wheel do Western swing, a genre that blends traditional country, blues and big band jazz elements. With Benson as the central, consistent member through numerous lineup changes, the band has released more than 20 albums and received 10 Grammy Awards over its 55-year history. Their work focuses heavily on preserving and performing traditional American roots music, highlighted by signature hits like their US country chart success ‘The Letter (That Johnny Walker Read).’
By contrast Copland initially worked as a jazz saxophonist in New York during the 1960s before taking a decade-long hiatus to completely retrain on the piano. Since debuting as a leader as Marc Cohen with the 1988 quintet album My Foolish Heart, he has amassed a prolific discography of over 40 albums. His career is distinguished by extensive recordings for the prestigious ECM label and enduring collaborations with jazz icons such as Gary Peacock, John Abercrombie and Joey Baron. I very much liked his 2019 album And I Love Her [click for a review] with Drew Gress and the Frisellian Baron. I often go back and listen to beautiful old Steve Kuhn records especially today Three Waves when I think of Copland’s sound somehow trying to excavate it in my mind – but without resorting – honest, guv in this instance – to an algorithm.
Turning to this new release: it was recorded live at Benson’s Texas studio and involves renditions of original compositions, jazz standards and acoustic interpretations of songs by Willie Nelson and Hank Williams.
I think Benson utilises his fairly deep voice, where you will sometimes also find hints of Mark Murphy in the timbre perhaps, to evoke the stylings of Tony Bennett on several tracks best. And given the skill of the piano accompaniment that approach has authenticity, gravitas and a context. Copland’s sound is as expressive as Fred Hersch‘s and as modally compelling as the man from Plainfield, New Jersey himself – dear Bill. The album’s inclusion of ‘Some Other Time’, ‘But Beautiful’, and ‘Waltz for Debby’, the obvious and striking musical reference point for the project is Tony Bennett’s historical duet collaborations with Evans.
The title track, a Benson original, is quite poignant and one of the best numbers emotionally. However, it steps out of the main core direction of the album a little bit, as does the country song ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’, which I didn’t take to so much although I do like some jazz covers of it including Jack Walrath‘s brilliant treatment many years ago on Master of Suspense.
“I patched up your broken wing, and hung around a while, trying to keep your spirits up, and your fever down” – Willie Nelson
The tracklist of this new release includes intimate treatments of country staples, including Willie Nelson’s poignant Honeysuckle Rose ballad ‘Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground’ which lots of people have covered including Alison Krauss and Bob Dylan whose version is simply wonderful.
In the Blink of an Eye (issued on Benson’s very own Bismeaux Records) is a credible work that is stronger when it sticks to the Bennett and Evans type material but the country inflected material isn’t without merit either and given Benson’s expertise in the area that’s a genre mash up that resonates. An album that sounds more like a jazz album than a country one starts a weekend of new listening on the right footing.
★★★½☆
What’s on
Steve Nelson Quartet PIZZA EXPRESS LIVE, SOHO 3 Sep
Emma Rawicz Jazz Orchestra RONNIE SCOTT’S, LONDON 5 Sep
Derek Nash All-Stars Quartet TAP SOCIAL, BOTLEY 9 Sep
Tom Barford Quintet THE GRASSHOPPER, POOLE 10 Sep
Zak Irvine Quartet MATT AND PHRED’S, MANCHESTER 16 Sep
Chris Batchelor feat. Andrew Bain FRANK AND MARK’S, OXFORD 16 Sep
Florian Arbenz Organ Trio feat. Chris Cheek HIDDEN ROOMS, CAMBRIDGE 18 Sep
Nikki Iles 1000 TRADES, BIRMINGHAM 19 Sep
Yolanda Charles 606, LONDON 21 Sep
Will Barnes Quartet VICTORY CLUB, CHELTENHAM 21 Sep
Rachel Lightbody GLAD CAFE, GLASGOW 22 Sep
Robert Glasper BLUE NOTE, LONDON 23-24 Sep
Zoe Rahman Trio WOLVERHAMPTON ARTS CENTRE, WOLVERHAMPTON 24 Sep
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Hey, Laura – It’s You Again
The song most frequently requested by my live audiences – Laura Lawton
Laura Lawton’s thoughtful reading of Kenneth Laub’s ‘You Again’ suggests a singer moving into new territory in the studio while responding to known positive reaction from the public who go to see her.
One of the recurring pleasures of following jazz is discovering how much talent remains just beyond view. However familiar you think you are with the scene there are always musicians quietly building audiences away from the spotlight to puncture that – as it frequently turns out – delusion.
English singer Lawton, for one, take as current proof and not being at all delulu by doing so. “I sing three or four times weekly at jazz clubs, restaurants, festivals and private events across the South East,” she tells marlbank.
With relatively little digital presence, that side of her work is not immediately apparent unless you have happened to catch her live in Kent and Surrey. I haven’t, so for now the recording is the only way to assess her approach.
The song in question is ‘You Again’, written by New York inspired songwriter Kenneth Laub. I first came across the twisting heart tugs of this quietly devastating song that explores the feeling of doom that is willing self sacrifice through Veronica Swift’s intense version and it is reportedly the song most often requested by Lawton’s own live audiences.
It is in addition worth revisiting the song itself through Swift’s interpretation.
I keep pretending all the lies are true and run back to you again
– Kenneth Laub song lyric
The song explores the familiar territory of returning to an old love despite knowing the damage that has already been done.
Produced by James McMillan, Lawton’s drummerless rendition takes a more understated and nuanced route than Swift’s bravura reading, with guitarist Stuart Jackaman’s sound setting the scene from the opening bars and Terry Pack providing the bass foundation.
The song is about thinking you have moved on to someone new but go back to your earlier love even when you know what hell you have been put through.
- Hear Laura tomorrow night in Kent spot the Grapevine, Tenterden
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Carla Bley classic Lawns streams drawn from Andy Sheppard trio’s Salt Catchers
Flockin’ ‘ell – Sheppard is back
Punkt. Vrt. Plastik, Kompress, Intakt ****
The drought of quality avant piano trio albums is over. Drink the sweet rain
Kurt Elling and Yellowjackets are in their element
Jazz meteorology that’s an el niño of a ride. Another of the year’s top live albums
Jim McNeely with the Frankfurt Radio Big Band, Expeditions, Sunnyside **** recommended
Leaving such a panoramic, magisterially involving recording as this for posterity is quite the way to say goodbye. The latest addition to our top choices of a year of jazz listening
With the Frankfurt Radio Big Band, the project marked the American big band composer and arranger Jim McNeely’s final recorded work before his death last September. He worked as the German ensemble’s composer-in-residence.
A Chicago born jazz pianist and composer, McNeely after graduating from the University of Illinois moved to New York in 1975. He gained a reputation playing keyboards for groups led by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Stan Getz and Phil Woods.
Over his long career, he received 12 Grammy nominations and won a Grammy Award in 2008. He also directed the BMI Jazz Composers’ Workshop for 16 years.
Mentored by Bob Brookmeyer, McNeely developed a bold writing style. He blended rich post-bop harmonies with complex, multi-layered arrangements. His signature sound features fast saxophone runs, punchy syncopated bass lines and dramatic brass accents.
His most celebrated work spans several decades of top-tier big band recordings. He made an immediate mark with East Coast Blow Out in 1989, a groundbreaking suite recorded with the WDR Big Band, guitarist John Scofield, Bass Desires icon Marc Johnson and Sco head Adam Nussbaum, the revered sticksman later known for his work in The Impossible Gentlemen and with Linley Hamilton.
As chief conductor of the Danish Radio Big Band, McNeely produced the Grammy-nominated album Nice Work. During his long tenure with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, he also crafted albums like Lickety Split and Up from the Skies.
As I listen a few times I think of some of the arranging style of Kenny Wheeler a little and reflect on how the sound customised into a new space entirely by McNeely conveys a certain lost in time quality without seeming dated at all such is the essential modernity and panoramic sweep of the ideas.
And there are interesting curveball choices that send me into another space entirely – for instance the rickety use of harp [Miroslava Stareychinska] that releases a curious microtonalism at the beginning of ‘At Twilight’ that leads into a glorious trumpet – or is it flugel, one can’t be quite sure – melodic foray & Gil Evans like response from the wider trumpet section.
During his career, McNeely delivered sweeping symphonic collaborations, including 2022’s Rituals with saxophonist Chris Potter and as here the Frankfurt Radio Big Band.
The great strength of jazz made in Germany is its jazz big band heritage which has no equal anywhere in Europe in terms of quality and quantity at the highest, sustained, level of production and performance curated by a range of broadcasting organisations and supported by the listening public year in year out.
For Expeditions the recording took place in a live setting at Frankfurt’s Hessischer Rundfunk [Hesse broadcasting] Sendesaal studio/hall in June 2024. The very absorbing compositions range from fanfares and counterpoint to solo features across the brass, woodwind and rhythm sections.
The Expeditions suite is tailored directly to the playing styles of the Frankfurt Radio Big Band’s individual members. Principal players include Steffen Weber, Martin Auer, Heinz-Dieter Sauerborn and Martin Scales. But the collectivism in the music making is all and there’s a whole lotta love found here expressed on so many levels.
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Ayumi Tanaka, Thomas Morgan, Thomas Strønen, Windflower, ECM ***1/2
I reviewed a record of Thomas Morgan’s recently called Io Pur Respiro that I very much enjoyed. Probably actually more than this. But Windflower is better than pianist Ayumi Tanaka’s earlier release from 2021, a recording called Subaqueous Silence more to the point.
Tanaka made a firm impression on the fine Thomas Strønen Lockdown era album Bayou which I think is still her best showing on record.
On Subaqueus Silence she was with a different bassist and drummer. But Strønen – best known to British audiences perhaps for his work with saxophonist Iain Ballamy in Food – appears on this latest and clearly there is a lot of rapport between the two. His open colouristic sound suits her free roaming modernistic urges well.
Tanaka shares something in common stylistically with the sparse and weighty avant-garde traditions of a Masabumi Kikuchi-like world compellingly entered into and isn’t afraid to manipulate silence for effect.
Morgan as on his album with the Austrian Stemeseder referred to above is a fascinating player capable of operating completely adrift from an obvious pulsar framework without becoming marooned in some sort of dull morass.
Windflower isn’t dull. But equally won’t get the party started. It isn’t built much for jazz supper clubs that require more of a groove and entertaining vibe. The acres of sonic spaciousness require patience but experiencing these is worth it if in the right frame of mind when you can be cast away on to its desert island of solemnity and lose yourself in its sealed in oxygen. There is a lot of improvisation here in the spontaneous performance sense which is in its great favour but that is surprising given how controlled and often unspontaneous sounding the album somehow seems. The album was recorded at La Buissonne studio in France last year. It is best suited for late night solitary home listening or long uncertain road trips into the darkness when deep thinking and a distraction from the harshness of the night are required.
Autumn Christine Tobin album & tour
Christine Tobin is to release a new studio album Pseudologia Fantastica this autumn.
Marking a distinct electronic shift for the highly revered Irish jazz singer, bandleader and composer, the project blends spoken word performance with improvised sonic soundscapes, live effects and hand percussion.
Thematically, the material addresses a series of contemporary socio-political subjects, exploring themes of barefaced lying, modern disinformation, the misappropriation of new technologies, and the rise of far-right ideologies.
The record is largely an electronic solo endeavour predominantly featuring Tobin’s own soundscapes and compositions. However, regular musical partner and guitarist Phil Robson co-produced, recorded and mixed the project while also contributing guitar parts. Cellist Kate Shortt is also featured on the recording.
A preview track called ‘Brouhaha’ is streaming
Pseudologia Fantastica is scheduled for release on Christine’s own Trail Belle Records with distribution via Proper. Ahead of the full release, a preview hard hitting rap track entitled ‘Brouhaha’ is currently available for streaming via the singer’s SoundCloud page.
Tobin, 63, will launch the project live in London at the World Heart Beat venue on Saturday 21 November,
Born in Dublin, the Betty Carter influenced singer became a central figure on the London jazz and avant-garde scenes after moving to the UK capital in the late 1980s to study at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Her eclectic style integrates jazz improvisation with singer-songwriter sensibilities and literary influences, winning her the Best Vocalist citation at the 2008 BBC Jazz Awards and Jazz Vocalist of the Year at the 2014 Parliamentary Jazz Awards.
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