The Listening Guide
🎶 The listening guide: five albums, released during the past twelve months, chosen around a weekly theme 🎶
This week’s picks centre around artists from Scotland’s thriving jazz scene. If you’d like something short, sweet, and thoughtfully composed, guitarist Nathan Somevi’s debut release Can’t Be Done is the record for you. Four songs, each featuring his outstanding hybrid guitar work (Charlie Hunter fans, take note) and an assortment of sideplayers including drummers Ifedade Thomas and Niall Ford, saxophonist Mateusz Sobieski and violin player Roo Geddes. By contrast, Paul Towndrow’s Deepening The River features just under an hour’s worth of material, with a staggering cast of musicians executing its bold, genre-crossing vision. From saxophonist Helena Kay—the Young Scottish Jazz Musician of the Year for 2015—to Treacherous Orchestra pipes player Ross Ainslie, a wide range of musicians from Glasgow and further afield feature on the project. Another Young Scottish Jazz Musician award winner, guitarist Joe Williamson, features on the fantastic Graham Costello record, Second Lives. A stylish, minimal, and beautifully recorded LP, it also features the playing of pianist Fergus McCreadie, whose own album Cairn is another terrific listen! Costello is one of several musicians involved in Rebecca Vasmant’s debut album for her own Rebecca’s Records label. With Love, from Glasgow includes contributions from vocalists Luca Manning, Nadya Albertsson, Emilie Lassus Boyd, Nikki Foster, and Paix (Gillian Katungi), alongside musicians such as horn players Harry Weir, Cameron Thomson Duncan, Danielle Price, pianist David Austin Grey...the list goes on! We always love a live recording, and round off the list with a beauty from Norman Willmore’s quartet, which was captured in a ‘tiny wooden public hall in the Shetland Islands surrounded by sheep, cliffs and hundreds of miles of water between us and anything else.’ You can support all of these projects on Bandcamp, and go digging for the many other fantastic Scottish artists we haven’t managed to cram into this short guide!
Rebecca Vasmant – With Love, from Glasgow
Norman Willmore – Alive & Well At The Muckle Roe Hall
Album of the Week
Our NQ Jazz album of the week is an experimental and genuinely unique album from Ches Smith’s We All Break. It hears the drummer and composer blending elements of Haitian Vodou and contemporary jazz, alongside a remarkable band featuring pianist Matt Mitchell, saxophonist Miguel Zenón, bassist Nick Dunston, vocalist Sirene Dantor Rene, and master drummers Daniel Brevil, Markus Schwartz and Fanfan Jean-Guy Rene. Smith’s first encounter with Haitian music was over twenty years ago, and as he explains: “I was captivated, likely because things central in the various musics I play – polyrhythm, polytonality, improvisation, extended timbral awareness, tension and release, channeled aggression and power, and most vitally surprise – I found again, and anew, in this traditional form.” Saxophonist Miguel Zenón described participating in the project as “the kind of thing you live for.” High praise indeed from the experienced bandleader and MacArthur Fellow. The near-fourteen-minute centrepiece Lord of Healing is a standout track, with meditative piano playing, beautiful solo and ensemble vocals, crisp hand drum rhythms, and fine soloing from Zenón. The album is out via Pyroclastic Records and you can support it on Bandcamp!
Classic Album
This week’s classic album is an avant-garde jazz classic from the orchestra led by composer and horn player Bill Dixon. Described as ‘an expansive collection of forward-thinking compositions’ in a five-star review for All About Jazz, the LP features saxophonists Robin Kenyatta and Byard Lancaster, and bassists Jimmy Garrison and Reggie Workman amongst notable others. This dark, textured record was reissued on vinyl a few years ago by Superior Viaduct, but remains hard to track down.