Sharp Little Bones with Tony Kofi, Volumes I and II, Ubuntu ***1/2

l-r: Andrew Wood, Tony Kofi, Simon Paterson, Paul Deats. Photo: Martin Makowski. You won't know the tunes here yet given their newness - they are originals written by Sharp Little Bones bassist Simon Paterson. But the style or styles more …

Published: 26 Apr 2023. Updated: 12 months.

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l-r: Andrew Wood, Tony Kofi, Simon Paterson, Paul Deats. Photo: Martin Makowski.

You won't know the tunes here yet given their newness - they are originals written by Sharp Little Bones bassist Simon Paterson. But the style or styles more accurately these inhabit are familiar without being at all derivative. Above all there is a sense of beginning, middles and ends to the tunes - in other words they are strong on structure so at no time despite not knowing the pieces do you feel lost.

There is a questing non-complacent side to what saxophonist Tony Kofi - probably one of, even, the, most in-demand touring post bop saxophonists on the UK jazz club scene at the moment - and relative unknowns keyboardist Paul Deats playing piano, Rhodes and synths, upright and electric bassist Simon Paterson and drummer Andrew Wood do.

It's an album which isn't about all guns blazing and that takes its time without being tedious. And you get a certain narrative arc within each piece. It's not like it's a procession of formulaic Buggins turn soloing.

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'Chromatose' certainly has real meat and the best soloing of tenorist Kofi's formidable work on the album is contained there. But there are other highlights from the 56-year-old and the tender lead line on 'Downfall' also is among the best bits of all. The trio who back Kofi are knowing and steady: they work a lot at Nottingham venue Peggy's Skylight. Kofi also hails from the east midlands city. The saxist on 'Roo's Blues' goes a little more retro than anywhere on the record. On this same tune Wood is quite Art Blakey-like. To an extent role models are from the golden age and Kofi while a chameleon stylistically given his sheer instrumentalism and versatility (on other records in recent years such as Another Kind of Soul he has paid tribute to Cannonball Adderley) is quite Sonny Rollins-like. The band decide to groove a bit more on 'Mackerel Sky' and on 'Troll Stroll' there is a great mash-up chopping between a bugalú type rhythm and very contained more recent almost drum 'n' bass-like feel. While too ponderous early in the tune 'Trailblazing' finds Kofi trilling more later which shows another seam of phraseology in his capacious repertoire. As introductions to the rhythm section that is Sharp Little Bones go this is an ideal calling card and as album art goes the cover, which has an almost woodcut-like linear repeated motif contained in its crisp graphic design, is a cool flourish visually and worth mentioning.

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Rudy Royston and Flatbed Buggy, Day, Greenleaf Music ****1/2

Chamber jazz isn't a useful term but sometimes it is the only one closest available. Americana also isn't a useful term but sometimes it is the only one closest and anyway similarly amenable to some sort of bird's eye view. If you created a Venn …

Published: 25 Apr 2023. Updated: 11 months.

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Chamber jazz isn't a useful term but sometimes it is the only one closest available. Americana also isn't a useful term but sometimes it is the only one closest and anyway similarly amenable to some sort of bird's eye view. If you created a Venn diagram stripped down from the two preceding sentences Day would fit somewhere there and in the evening - probably around dusk.

Imagine pre-jazz whatever chamber jazz might have been like if that isn't too paradoxical a thought. Because Day sounds like how you would imagine pre-records American jazz might approximate a long way from New Orleans. But there are no ragtime or quasi-classical sounds at all here and yet still sounds as if belonging well before the 20th century.

Maybe it is the rural parlour music feel in the arranging that conjures such a subliminal first coat. Drummer Rudy Royston's Flatbed Buggy isn't a new band at all. It has already established a sound that means something and that sound sits alongside some of Bill Frisell's work without being the same, just compatible.

Most of the tunes are Royston's. Day is a long play listen - usually a good thing and it's not a patience requirement - each piece seems to fit inside a vision rather than interlock in a cryptic mechanical sense or reflective of a mysterious theorem of the composer's own oblique design.

Royston, who is in his fifties, was born in Fort Worth, Texas and grew up in Denver, Colorado. The setting here is once again quintet - Royston with bass clarinettist John Ellis, accordionist Gary Versace, the Frisellian cellist Hank Roberts superb last year on Pipe Dream's Blue Roads and double bassist Joe Martin - who was on the excellent Mark Turner album Lathe of Heaven in 2014. We chilled to Martin and Royston swinging with Art Hirahara on Balance Point more recently. Described by issuing label Greenleaf Music as ''a musical evocation of Royston’s youth spent in rural Texas'' the album is dedicated to Rudy's brother Ritchie who passed away last year and to his erstwhile bandstand bro cornetist Ron Miles who also died in 2022 and with whom Royston worked on such work as 1990s album My Cruel Heart.

Joe Martin's 'Limeni Village' and Hank Roberts' 'A.M. Hours' fit well with Royson's writing style and do not jar.

Flatbed Buggy's first album was in 2018 featuring the same line-up on the self-titled release. One of the best jazz releases this year - we will certainly include the campfire sound of Day in our next best-of overall update when it is published in late-June. Rudy Royston photo: John Rogers/rudyroyston.com

MORE READING AND LISTENING:

· Royston is on Bill Frisell's Valentine - review, 2020…

· … also on Rudresh Mahanthappa's Hero Trio - review, 2020

· … and head all the way back to Frisell's Beautiful Dreamers (2010, Savoy) that shares congeniality and a sense of independently arrived at collegiality with the future Flatbed Buggy approach.