Unrecognisable now to the band I first saw more than a decade ago. Only pianist Chris Illingworth, always the heart of the band, remains. When the piano trio first emerged I remember talking to Chris at a fine jazz club show in east London in 2012 maybe 70 people in the Vortex that night when bassist Grant Russell soon to depart and drummer Rob Turner were in the band. Chris told me about how much he liked e. s. t. Last time I heard this incredible Manchester outfit - things had massively changed by then - and they were playing a pretty full almost son et lumière strobe-strafing Royal Albert Hall spectacle and that place is massive, more than quite a few thousand there - in 2018. Nick Blacka was in on bass. And now Turner has departed, the band's Blue Note years behind them, and it's the former Kairos 4tet drummer Jon Scott who extends the palette of the sound beyond Turner's beloved drum 'n' bass preferences. Scott - one of the top jazz drummers in the UK - is an excellent addition to the band and builds on Turner's considerable high energy legacy. Bassist Blacka was grieving the loss of his mother and older brother to cancer and Illingworth lost his grandmother when this album was being made. The tunes on this album are mighty and there are many moving passages, Illingworth excelling particularly on 'Saturnine'. As good as my favourite record of theirs 2014's v2.0 it's a new dawn and yet Illingworth remains a hugely fluent lead line man. Lovingly sound-engineered and far less ravey davey than on some of their lesser work the parallel vision of Blacka here in his luxurious ostinato odes pings into the night air in close lockstep to the crisply captured panoramic catch of electronic keyboards. A band the jazz establishment can be quite sniffy about show they can blow anybody away any day of the week given such original thinking honed the hard way. Change has made what they do even stronger and in the process their sound penetrates to the soul of things even more than ever. SG
GoGo Penguin play the Roundhouse on 25 May l-r: Jon Scott, Nick Blacka, Chris Illingworth. Photo: Emily Dennison
Out today
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