Paul Dunmall and Mark Sanders, The Quiet Mind ***

Onosante's reissue see more appealed to me more than this upcoming Paul Dunmall and Mark Sanders duo album Unity certainly on what we know of it so far. Sanders is one of the UK's best free-jazz drummers and carries the main interest in the duoplay. But this is a slightly frustrating track that nonetheless is strong on development but less so on reaching any kind of conclusion. Dunmall, a veteran whose sound lands in the interstices of late-Coltrane and Albert Ayler, seems distant for some reason and all I could do was latch on to the skilled timbral command and expression that he generates successfully. But the track doesn't really gain any momentum. Yet there's enough to grip on to and so read more on Sanders in the context of a recent more compelling Collapse Uncollapse performance and listen here. SG.

Unity is out on 577 on 14 May

Tags:

Having heard this happy day for the first time all of The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running for Their Lives, it was released on Friday, I'll not add much more to the earlier marlbank articles, see this link and this. Suffice is to say that all the tracks are excellent, Shabaka Hutchings' bass clarinet playing on 'Kamau' and Anthony Joseph's iridescent, beautiful, homage to his late father on 'The Gift' are to be flagged up. As are Jason Yarde's arrangements that deserve every award going. But above all dear readers absorb, there is so much here, a record that's like a novel written in poetry and prose, talking with the spirits. Anthony articulates what instrumentalists cannot and is in a way their interpreter and companion the observation becoming participation. An event release and must listen. Check on 'Swing Praxis' when Shabaka kicks in this time on saxophone from exploratory beginnings after 3 mins 31 secs and when the track later gains a whole lot more Fahrenheit. There's some outrageously compelling playing here. The album title is drawn from C. L. R. James' 1938 book The Black Jacobins. SG. On Heavenly Sweetness

Paul Dunmall and Mark Sanders, The Quiet Mind ***

Anthony Joseph, The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running for Their Lives *****