This latest release finds Molley’s group fully immersed, working with a quartet of leading Rajasthani traditional musicians in a custom-built studio in the western Rajasthani desert.

It’s a productive and rewarding relationship as both sets of musicians are able to express themselves in their own musical languages and to interact with one another, trading phrases, combining on extended melodies and improvising together with a genuinely mutual understanding.

Asin Langa is a marvellously agile, soulful vocalist and a master of the sarangi, the three-string, bowed instrument that gives the album a very distinctive quality. His fellow Rajasthanis bring various drums and percussion instruments including the khartal, a wooden clapper, and the jew’s harp-like morchang to the ensemble sound.

The effect can be both sedate and animated as the music flows between Molley’s essentially melodic compositions and the variously loping and supercharged rhythms. The opening Cottonpolis/Dhologee combines a groove reminiscent of Molley’s youthful interest in Manchester’s indie music scene with a lilting traditional Rajasthani song and features typically concise tenor saxophone phrasing as all eight musicians drive towards the coda.

Kama finds Molley operating as a fifth member of Langa’s group, luxuriating in its folk song melody, and Journeys in Hand in Hand, a track originally found on Molley’s second album and redolent of Indian music melodically, features the superb Tom Gibbs digging in on piano as the two groups resume their conversation.

Gibbs is also to the fore on Parapraxis/Livar Jivaro, another Scottish-Rajasthani medley that features a wonderfully intense vocal from Langa and a full-bodied call and response between Molley’s tenor and Langa’s sarangi. These tracks, along with Two City Tales, which depicts the musicians’ respective hometowns of Glasgow and Jodhpur with contrasting characteristics and strong interaction, represent a musical relationship that works very effectively and sounds as if it has much more still to be discovered.

Journeys is released today 7 February 2025

The post Brian Molley Quartet and the Asin Langa Ensemble – ‘Journeys’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

A bigger feat saw Rae add big band horns and a full pipe band to his award-winning sextet Celtic Feet, which married hard-swinging jazz with Scottish traditional-styled themes.

Rae’s partner in Thick Records, pianist Ben Wilcock also has a Scottish connection. When a New Zealand theatre company offered him a gig at the Edinburgh Fringe, Wilcock bought a one-way ticket and spent the next five years working in blues and R&B bands as well as playing jazz in the UK.

Although Splendid Isolation favours the pair’s more reflective sides, it also shows their liking for springing surprises. The title track begins life in persuasive swingtime before morphing into something reminiscent of 10CC’s “I’m Not in Love”. An attractive ballad somehow emerges from “Say it with a Smile”’s initial tone poem. And bassist Patrick Bleakley moves centre stage to add a plaintively hopeful vocal on Rae’s “Tri Tone”.

Rae, Wilcock and Bleakley are joined on selected tracks by saxophonists Dan Yeabsley and Jabin Ward and Scottish guitarist Kevin Murray, who joins in the locomotive rhythm of Brainiac, but mostly this is a vehicle for Wilcock’s often blues-inflected pianism and Rae’s super-sensitive drumming.

“The Expanse” is the sort of glacial-paced piano ballad at which Tord Gustavsen excels, with Rae adding judicious beaters. Archie’s Rumble rolls and tumbles with its playful melody and Wilcock’s pearly toned, enquiring improvising. “Position Normal” is unashamedly bluesy, with Wilcock patiently exploring his ideas, as he does with the theme on “Always Alone”. And “Apple Road”, which is dedicated to Rae’s bass-playing father, Ronnie, looks wistfully to Scotland for its inspiration.

All in all, an understated and elegantly adventurous collection that rewards repeated listening.

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Several observers have already heard the mighty Thad Jones-Mel Lewis band in this team of reservists’ smartly despatched energy and there are echoes of Gil Evans and George Russell in the sense of drama and suspense created.

The album opens with a fanfare that gives way to a melody shared by trombone, trumpet and baritone as the orchestra explores trumpeter Mike Costeloe’s “Behemoth of the Bathyal Wastes” with its changes of tempo from relaxed swing to greater urgency and a Cuban episode.

All the music is from New Zealand, six of the seven compositions from within the orchestra itself, and the seventh, Drifting, from the pianist-educator Anita Schwabe. This captures exactly what the title suggests with beautifully lush, warm voicings and an atmosphere that inspires imaginative trombone and piano solos.

There’s something of Stravinsky, or maybe Saint-Saens, about tenor saxophonist Blair Latham’s “Birds of Prey”, with its characterful clarinet solo, and its sibling piece, “Pigeons Reprise” has much avian humour in its playfulness.

“Let’s Not Fall in Love” introduces the sole vocal, from Stephanie Paris, in a song that’s sung clearly and with a coy tone that suggests it might be too late to resist the temptation. And the classic swing of “Royal Blue”, by alto saxophonist Oscar Lavën, manages to convey the same effervescence his quintet delivered on his fine Questions in Red album last year in a highly mobile big band performance.

All in all, there’s much to enjoy in an album that was co-produced by the Wellington-based Scottish drummer John Rae, whose orchestral experience includes playing with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra and leading his own Big Feet, an amalgamation of jazz big band and traditional pipe band.

The post Royal New Zealand Air Force Jazz Orchestra – ‘Kaiwhakatere – Navigator’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

Lavën is at once both old school and new. His tributes to Ben Webster and Ornette Coleman sit easily side by side, in the shape of Rasp and the splendidly titled Jesus Saunters Across the Hudson Wielding a Plastic Saxophone, and his improvisations consistently reveal an immersion in the tradition balanced with a fearless, joyful and searching personality of his own.

Both the opening and closing tracks could be calling cards for the album and for Lavën’s quintet equally. The former, Marigold, is a lengthy demonstration of their ability to vary pace and dynamics at will, with a strong theme offering inspiration for dramatic soloing from Lavën, trumpeter Mike Taylor and pianist Ayton Foote. And the latter, Captain Kākāpo, while brief and to the point, captures the quintet in its brisk, crisp pomp.

The understanding between Lavën and Taylor is sibling-like, bringing to mind Wynton and Branford Marsalis’ early 1980s tenure in the Jazz Messengers, with the commensurate New Orleans-esque squeals and squalls as they fly in tight formation.

Lavën’s writing lends itself ideally to this partnership, with the mischievously prowling Night Forest Cat an especially evocative example. Meanwhile, his conception has a terrific interpreter in Scottish drummer, the now Wellington-based John Rae, whose grasp of the saxophonist’s need for support and drive in throaty full cry and delicate colouring in more tender moments is complete.

Île De Batz, a ballad feature for Lavën, with Foote contributing a marvellously complementary solo, offers an ideal opportunity for contemplation before Over-Caffination on a Tiny Scooter lives up to its name with whip-smart ensemble work and a lovely smeary solo from Lavën. 

Apart from the fact that it is a digital-only release for now, however, you could drop the needle on any spot of Questions in Red and find satisfying, thoroughly involving music.

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