John Hardaker | ‘…the writing and the playing have a lot of humanity – a lot of soul.’
Category: Reviews
Exhilaration does not fade for those who are listening rather than assuming. It builds as the bricks seem to be stacked more rapidly to form more complex percussive patterns. Or are thrown one by one through the air.
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‘The whole work was beautifully measured, finally showering us with brilliant sound and sensation. This was a triumph to be stored in memory…’
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Phil Treloar reviews Sarcophile in his Recollections Twelve | here and now of Hannaford, Pankhurst and McLean – ‘This music pays tribute to the jazz tradition but in no way competes with it. Nor does it emulate.’
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That Galaxstare are capable of creating this huge, deep, wide, bottomless universe of music in a room on Cleveland Street using only bass clarinet, voice, accordion, bass and drums is astounding and humbling.
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From electro-popping whimsy such as ‘Rotovibe’ – a collage of scratch-mixed ideas – to the entirely acoustic pieces such as ‘Special When Lit’ – a beautifully measured sound-river featuring his current band of Matt Penman on bass and Jochen Rueckert on drums – Slave To The Machine Vols 1&2, has an over-arching cohesion that belies the fact this music was recorded over a 5-year period, from 2007 to 2012.
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More praise for Conjuror – ‘Like reading Gregory Corso meets Medeski, Martin and Wood, a cadence of heavy-footfalls, sophisticated rhythm and jive.’ – Kent MacCarter
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Sydney tenor giant James Ryan – as well as being a startling instrumentalist – is a truly gifted and, in a world where the word has been buffed clean of all its edge, a truly creative composer and arranger. He recently arranged a selection of Ray Charles tunes for his powerhouse big band, The Sonic Mayhem Orchestra, a collection of Sydney’s best and brightest and that rare bird: a large ensemble bristling with astonishing soloists that play as an ensemble, as one.
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‘…a true collection that is at once a retrospective of his remarkable 25-year career and at the same time twelve new recordings.’
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Throughout the entire evening the trio communicated in a common language, no matter what ‘genre’ or ‘style’ they were traversing.
