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| Personnel: |
| Phil
Bancroft (sax) |
| Kevin
MacKenzie (guitar) |
| Tom
Bancroft (drums) |
| Brian
Finnegan (flutes and whistles) |
| Tracklisting:
|
| 1) Ant's
Milk |
4.36 |
| 2) Station
|
6.05 |
| 3) Oddity
|
5.16 |
| 4) Yet
|
6.41 |
| 5) Sundance
Phil Bancroft |
5.33 |
| 6) Stuff
Swing |
6.46 |
| 7)
The Clock |
8.48 |
| 8) Fin
|
6.34 |
9) Curiouser
and Curiouser
|
5.23 |
| 10) Two
|
7.17 |
|
| Trio
AAB |
| 'Stranger
Things Happen at C' |
| Caber
027 |
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| Album
Notes : |
‘Stranger Things Happen at C’ is Trio AAB's third
album. This outing on the face of it represents a change of
direction for the bass-less Scottish trio following their critically
acclaimed and punk rock spiked 2nd release (Top 10 Jazz Albums
of 2001 - The Guardian) and their eclectic folk, drum n bass,
ECM and hip hop influenced debut (Jazz Album of the Year 1999
BBC Radio 3). Since
their last recorded outing the band has been ripping up jazz
festivals across Europe, as well as doing critically lauded,
madcap deconstruction's of Broadway musicals in Edinburgh
Jazz clubs. The music has continued to evolve because the
increasing familiarity, and comfort and freedom in the bass-less
format, that comes from a band playing together over an extended
period.
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| Album
Notes (Continued): |
This
album features the virtuoso traditional Celtic whistle player,
Brian Finnegan, from the band Flook and Northern Ireland. Celtic
music has always been a major influence on the band, and all
of the musicians play with folk musicians on the ‘integrated’
Scottish scene (including Karen Mathieson and Charlie MacKerron
of Capercaillie, Martyn Bennett, Simon Thoumire & John McCusker).
In fact their improvised folk tone poem "Abstract' from
Cold Fusion(Caber 004) , is reputedly played to students on
the Newcastle University Traditional Music Degree Course, but
the Celtic influences were more submerged in the second disc.
This album
has been recorded in the lead up to a overtly jazz/folk crossover
CMN tour "Double Helix' a double bill featuring the Annie
Whitehead/Alistair Anderson band 'Northern Lights' and Trio
AAB with Brian Finnegan, a musician who the band first met at
a revolutionary "folk/jazz music melting pot" festival,
BigFest, held in Newcastle in the late 90's. Finnegan immediately
stood out as one of the few leading young traditional musicians
who was a genuine improviser, whose technical command and speed
of thought allowed him to genuinely react 'in the moment'.
Although
this Cd contains 5 tracks without Finnegan, including the searing
funky bagpipe opener "Ant’s Milk" and the impish
Ornette inspired 'Stuff Swing" - both of which contain
the uninhibited AAB trademarks of flowing group improvisation
and pulsating groove - the band's centre of gravity, though
conceptually constant, is here built around the quicksilver
lightness of his flutes' and whistles' agility.
Possibly as a result this album is mellower and lighter at heart
than the previous CD, but contains all of the underlying elements
that have earned Trio AAB recognition as "one of the most
interesting contemporary small groups" The Guardian or
"the most complete mix of originality and invention"
The Times.
This album, like a omnibus of short stories from around various
worlds, beautifully captures the musician's individual voices,
irreverent sense of fun, and avoidance of the cliché.
This is not the more common type of jazz/folk collaboration.
Here Finnegan is at the centre of the music making, playing
his part like an eccentric bird in the 'magic realist' african
tinged short story that is "The Clock', and weaving a beautiful
and seamless web with the trio in the "soft on the outside/hard
on the inside" drum ‘n bass in 7 "Oddity".
The
most overtly Celtic opening to a tune, on Yet, then heads of
somewhere else entirely, like a jazz-folk Radiohead. This album
should confirm Trio AAB’s status as one of the most rigorously
original and creative bands working in Jazz today.
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