The carefully-crafted originals on the album are a summary of the writing Clarke has done over the past twenty years, ‘Three Wishes’ dating back to 1993. ‘Busline’ was written for an unreleased ABC recording after he won the 2001 National Jazz Award at the Wangaratta Jazz Festival, while the medium-up ‘Billycart’ was written specially for the album.
‘Another thing I came to realise when I had to spend a few years really lost in my film and unable to practise music, is that when singing, because the breath is really focussed and controlled over a period, it has a meditative, almost yogic quality that is incredibly good for health and mind.’
‘a strange and beautiful world conjured among the bricks and grime, the litter and the 7-11 stores’
It can all shimmer and ripple like an ambient cloud, underpinned by a deep oscillation from Zwartz’s bowed bass under trills and pings from Dewhurst’s guitar, before bursting forward with irresistible momentum.
‘The whole work was beautifully measured, finally showering us with brilliant sound and sensation. This was a triumph to be stored in memory…’
Throughout the entire evening the trio communicated in a common language, no matter what ‘genre’ or ‘style’ they were traversing.
Gest8 perform Tony Gorman’s piece ‘The Emperor’s Old Clothes’, at the SIMA Sound Lounge in Sydney in 2008. Featuring Sandy Evans on soprano saxophone, Phil Slater on trumpet, Carl Dewhurst on guitar, Steve Elphick on bass, Paul Cutlan on bass clarinet, Satsuki Odamura on koto, and Greg White on computers and electronics.
