Noel Langley – whose Edentide was easier to say, spell and pronounce, was a marvel when it was released more than a decade ago – doesn’t make many albums of his own. He is often busy doing sessions for other people, usually far more famous then he is. In some sense, then, he is something of a chameleon.
Let’s defer for instant karma to the sense of “perfect alignment” for an approach to the word in the title when turning to meaning. As for pronunciation – another minefield – let’s go for “sizuhjee” said as you sort of see it.
Sorted. Racking my brains as to what I have heard Langley on I seem to recall listening to tracks of his that he was on with Radiohead. ‘Bloom’ in particular was striking. Langley has a stellar reputation as a session player with all sorts of people. He is on The King of Limbs from which ‘Bloom’ is drawn which came out about 15 years ago playing flugel and which also features his partner fellow trumpeter Yazz Ahmed who is here on, types slowly again, mouthing the word, Syzygy, in a cameo on the brass band section at the end – more about which later.
The album operates on several levels and there is a fair amount of production on portions of it but never seems over finessed. It is elegiac at its core. That is important.
There is a big influence of Kenny Wheeler on it, most obviously on the beautiful track ‘Beyond Our Ken’ but elsewhere too on ‘Lonely Angel Song’. Yes, obviously I think of Angel Song, Kenny’s 1997 classic. It matches the mood and sense of wonder you find on that album of Wheeler’s. I suppose it’s the plangent modalities NL conjures to achieve this in part and the power he finds unexpectedly often in the most obscure places of the arc of the motif or phrase just as Wheeler did. This isn’t a brash kind of trumpet record at all nor is it wallflowery.
Langley has explored Wheeler’s work before, for instance on an Edentide setting of ‘Four For One’ that had a strict Philip Jones Brass Ensemble aspect to it. But on Syzygy that seam is mined more extensively, more multi-faceted emotionally, and seems to have seeped into his very pores.
The interplay with pianist Alcyona Mick, who was also on Edentide, is brilliant.
Mick, whose Lucid Dreamers work with Brigitte Beraha I admire, I managed to hear a few times a few decades ago playing in a different context with the ex-Mose Allison drummer Paul Clarvis downstairs in the Vortex, is here at her best. My pick of the tracks overall involves her heavily and is called ‘Contemplation.’ You get a sadness on the album. But it is a sadness that is transformative, which is different from dour misery. Langley, who I think is around 63 and like Mick from England, studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and entered the studios, did TV sessions and West End shows. He has an incredibly strong technique. If, kind reader, you are a trumpeter yourself, then you have to get this.
Recorded largely at SJE Arts in Oxford in February 2020 there are originals and improvisations. According to the BBC, SJE Arts was known for its Piano Series, and operated out of St John the Evangelist Church. The Iffley Road church is the main chapel for the nearby theological college St Stephen’s House but SJE has stopped putting on concerts there since.
The acoustics are pretty special, it’s clear even listening on Bandcamp on cheap headphones plugged into a battered laptop. Langley’s sound when it isn’t seeming Wheeler-like reminds me of Chris Batchelor’s a bit tonally on a Zoetic tip.
Alcyona also plays church organ in addition to piano but it’s really the piano passages rather than this or the prepared piano variety – also a factor – that are more interesting. I’d compare her brittle, declarative sound easily enough to what Liam Noble does from time to time. But the track I didn’t like quite as much was the journey from the world of Kind of Blue and ‘All Blues’ glued on to ‘Scarborough Fair’ found on ‘All’s Fair’ measured out by the perky piano punctuation. And yet the signposting of a bridge between classic modern American jazz of the late-1950s and traditional British folk revived by Martin Carthy is interestingly crossed and proves valid enough in their hands.
It’s not all from the church. Because there is an ambient studio portion to the album in addition. This segment came out of Langley’s work for a documentary which is counterintuitively a little less successful than the more unplanned segments which elsewhere prevail. But more positively I find the Sally Army-like brass band arrangement and layerings of ‘Houses to the Sun’ with raw spoken word by one Thomas Popiolek quite moving at the end even though the mix is all over the place. Nevertheless I added Syzygy – warts and all – high up among the top UK jazz releases I reckon this year because of its essential character, vulnerability and beauty, factors that dwarf any iddy bitty irritations because there is more truth than when these are in rather than when than they are ironed out for the sake of sleekness. An album for slick Ricks this is not.
- You can find my full list of selected top UK jazz in ’26 here.
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