My listening tastes often extend to pastoral guitar flavoured work.
In this regard Floating Sky fits in snug as a bug in a rug.
I warmed to James Kitchman’s 2022 album First Quartet.
And unsurprisingly perhaps given that fact and further that the personnel remains the same, warm once again.
Tunes are English jazzer Kitchman’s.
He is joined by keyboardist Bruno Heinen of The W, bassist Tom McCredie – known for his work with the likes of Kitchman’s fellow guitarist Rob Luft, and – completing the quartet – Shaney Forbes, the Empirical drummer.
What sort of a writer is Kitchman?
Romantic, keen on detailed angelic harmonies, interested in eking out microscopic detail, reflective. All of these.
It’s quite Metheny-esque in places – but the feel is also reminiscent of the style of John Abercrombie a bit and even to lob in another iconic guitarist as part of this palimpsest of players, Wolfgang Muthspiel (especially on ‘Shadow Dance’).
But Kitchman who hails from Northumberland isn’t as floridly melodic a player as Tom Ollendorff, another English jazz guitarist making a name for himself in recent years.
If Floating Sky has a fault it’s that it needs to deliver more of an impact.
But claiming that is to an extent to miss the point. You do nevertheless require patience as a listener.
‘Gardens’ I tired of. But the other 7 tunes are appealing and reward careful listening. Perhaps room could have been found for a standard as there isn’t quite enough strong material to completely stock the album.
Forbes is fairly subdued but his insistent beat on ‘Reverie’ adds contrasts to the drifting haze of the main theme.
‘Puglian Sadness (‘Paola’s Theme’) is the weightiest of all.
But the album’s overall levels of introspection sometimes permit these instrumentals to retreat perilously close towards background listening. That said the quality is too strong to allow this to happen in the end.
Altogether then this is mature music making by a guitarist who is increasingly finding his own unique style which is fast sharpening its focus.
