Made up of guitarist Cameron Henderson, double-bassist Elsen Price and drummer Tully Ryan, The Trio are one of the current young bands that make me jump for joy. Genre-hopping is admirably rife in the modern jazz world, but done as it is here on their debut – Dubious Blues Trio – so unselfconsciously and with a real blues wildness, is a buzz.
‘…cued by Komunyakaa’s use of multiple voices, Evans assembled discrete bands for each piece, including no less than 11 different lead singers, plus Michael Edwards-Stevens reading some poems as spoken word with musical accompaniment.’
‘Dan Sheehan, whose conception and compositions (largely) are the reason for Infinite Ape, moves like the ocean behind all this – his playing, whether acoustic or Rhodes, is as big as the room, whether it be a sprinkling of notes or a killer riff or – yeah! – big, big chords.’
The third album, Kinetic Conversations, is an extraordinary and rare find, a heady 100%-proof concoction distilled once and only in the off-hours of a March afternoon at the University of California, San Diego, in 1986. Let loose in the lab were two electric and eclectic and eccentric maestri: the Visiting Professor, Australian Keith Humble, on piano and electronics and Bunsen burner, and the Resident Professor, American Bertram Turetzky, on mortar and pestle and contrabass.
‘…cross-cultural mash-up worked beautifully across the entire suite – a testimony to Robertson’s smart writing, deep research and even deeper emotional connection to the music.’
Network of Lines is a work of ethereal and pure loveliness – albeit one with a red-blooded heart.
