Swailing is as free as This is Always is restricted; it is as open as the quartet recording is closed. Swailing is the magpie, picking from electric Miles, Massenet and Fats; This is Always is the osprey, its eye fixed on the one prize.
And both are deliriously beautiful for all of these qualities and more.
It would be silly not to have this in your collection of music.
‘…The Acronym Orchestra and many of their contemporaries joyfully celebrate and integrate and build upon the musical language of, and beyond, the jazz tradition – blues, gospel, jump, New Orleans, and even further back to Africa and the Middle East and both West and Eastern Europe.’
Few players besides Pochée have been members of six pivotal Australian jazz bands: in the ’60s the Heads (subsequently the Bernie McGann Quartet); in the ’70s the Judy Bailey Quartet and the Last Straw (which continued into this century); in the ’80s the Bernie McGann Trio (and Quartet, both also running into this century) and Ten Part Invention (ditto); in the ’90s the Engine Room. Furthermore Pochée led the Straw, the Engine Room and Ten Part, the latter involving the Herculean task of keeping a 10-piece band together for three decades.
Rhythm. Heat. Lines. Movement. Energy. Since 2010’s ‘The Singularity’, The Sam Bates Trio have naturally progressed into the force of nature that we hear here.
His sound is dark and it has a grain and an edge, except when he plays in a soft burble or croon. It can bark and crack with a brittle edge, yet all of it is done with tone, with timbre. His lines are full of invention, expressed in melody and in abstract shapes.
