Newcomer Kai Craig is a drummer and he’s more than the match for trumpeter James Copus whose dappled lead lines dominate things early on shadowed by sax.
Pianist Rainer Böhm takes up the slack and the quintet arrangement does meaningful work when they come together on this tune of Craig’s.
Recorded at a studio in Cologne last year produced by Gregory Hutchinson, the drummer known for his work with Soweto Kinch in recent years, the full album from which it is drawn is called A Time Once Forgotten and is out in early August.
Craig is Brighton born and graduated from London’s Royal Academy of Music in 2022. He was taught by both Hutchinson and the understandably “marvellously” monikered late-Spin Marvel and John Taylor trio drummer Martin ‘Marv’ France.
With the stickman is saxist Sean Payne who sounds less Lee Konitz like than when he first emerged jamming in clubs like the Vortex far more than a decade ago.
As for Copus we liked the hard bopper’s album Dusk and saw him in the Jazz Cafe when the clubs were starting to re-open again in a break between various lockdowns 4 years ago.
Bassist Géraud Portal has his work cut out keeping up with the punishing tempo that Craig sets but fits in OK.
If you know the work of Marijus Aleksa then Craig is for you and why not? Aleksa certainly cut the mustard with Keyon Harrold stepping in at the last minute at Ronnie’s one time I seem to recall.
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