Super sized up from the trio, last heard just a few months ago from super busy bassist Fergus Quill, it's raucous stuff and fairly rough around the edges in places but certainly full of a Zornian spirit and a certain excellent anarchy in the thinking. This Leeds lot recall Loose Tubes more directly than the other UK big band around - there must be something in the water for big band in the north west these last years - and even closer: big brothers from above the Watford Gap, Beats & Pieces. Personnel include saxophonists Tom Richards, Hannah Mae Birtwell, Harry Fowler, Will Gibbon, Bess Shooter, Alex Fisher, Hamish ‘Sonic’ Dixon, reedist/flautist Joel Stedman brass players Felix Burling, Emyr Penry Dance, Sam Ehret’Pickett, Adam Wilkin, Aiden Ruffle, Oli Smedley, vocalists Amy Clark, Rebecca Herrington, Sunday Lendis, Rosie Miles, bass Fergus Quill, Chris Williams, guitarists Ed Allen, Will Lakin pianists Nico Widdowson, George MacDonald, Tim Malkin drummers/percussionists Josh Ketch, Theo Goss, Jon Lodder, Richard Molton and spoken word poets Lubomir Jovanovic and Tallulah Howarth. While it can be a bit exhausting overall their bull at a gate super charged sense of propulsion and adventurous tinkering with the supposed norms are far more preferable than the usual tuxedoed-up retro swing big bands out there coasting to Charlie Barnet or even the fairly orthodox but more progressive Scottish National Jazz Orchestra that has nevertheless de facto been the best jazz big band from anywhere in these islands for years. Slim the Quill a bit and then they all will be sucking diesel even more as a lot of the detail gets lost in the sheer oomph and derring do of it all right now. And yet Quill and whoever the quorum he has with him at a particular time are where it's at for big band right now beamed down from the no nonsense north of England as much as planet Ra. Out on 24 February. 'Gutterball' is streaming
MORE READING:
- A review of Quill's "¡Blamo! - 2022
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