Category: Jazz
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Michael Janisch: Paradigm Shift
As we slotted this into the Review Corner CD player we wondered: “Will this CD change our lives?” It looked that kind of music. The answer was no but it’s still a very powerful CD that a fortnight’s playing and a short review can’t do justice to. Bad news first: the downside is that (at…
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Stuart McCallum: City
Although Manchester guitarist McCallum’s album is out on Naim Jazz (his second on the label), this is more a soul album than jazz. The more jazzy sections are on the verge of being easy listening, though they stay the cool Pat Metheny side, rather than going all Bob James. It’s a chilled, late night album,…
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Ant Law: Zero Sum World
We’ve had this a few weeks, but it’s proved difficult to review: on one level it’s fairly mainstream, relaxed jazz, on the other we feel Ant Law’s prodigious talent needs more to be said. It’s partly his fault: despite the obviously talents of all the players (three of whom featured on Law’s debut Entanglement), it’s…
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Frank Sinatra: Ultimate Sinatra
Francis Albert was born 100 years ago this December — yes, Frank is as old as the First World War — so we can expect much in the way of Frankobilia in the coming months. The first question must be why you should be interested in a man who’s been dead for some time and…
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Spectrum Orchestrum: Suburbs
There is nothing more likely to warm the hearts of the Review Corner than a polite email from a Frenchman asking if we would review his band, especially when the forthcoming EP (though it’s long) subsequently turns out to be lovingly packaged with an imaginatively designed sleeve. Prelude opens the EP gently and is slightly…
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GoGo Penguin: v2.0
We actually bought this ourselves — paid our own money for it — mainly because it was on Gondwana records, and we had a press release from them quite recently and they sounded cool. Gogo Penguin are a jazz trio and to our ears it sounds like Bob James, the famous inventor of easy listening…
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Quartet Base: Le Diapason
Another release on the French Circum-disk label, Quartet Base is a jazz outfit that, like Troyka, seems to rely on some degree of improvisation, and, again like Troyka, seem a band capable of a little humorous mischief. This is an album which we’d guess is avant-garde jazz, though the sound is varied. It opens with…
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Troyka: Ornithophobia
This progressive jazz album from the talented trio Troyka (players include Kit Downes, Mercury nominated in his own right) is book ended by fairly traditional sounding jazz. Opener Arcades sounds like any modern jazz track you might care to hear, before it suddenly takes off in a prog rock direction. Prog because of the frequent…
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Neil Cowley Trio: Touch And Flee
Previous albums from Cowley that we’ve had have been fairly lively but this new one is more of a slow burner. Cowley says that he had a moment of epiphany during a gig at the Barbican, when he realised his band was best in a concert hall (quiet, excellent acoustics), and had to produce music…
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