MARTIN ARCHER + ENGINE ROOM FAVOURITES - Safety Signal From A Target Town
DISCUS: 66CD
Martin Archer: sopranino, alto, baritone saxophones; bass recorder; Peter Fairclough: drums, percussion; Walt Shaw: percussion; Johnny Hunter: drums, percussion; Steven Dinsdale: floor percussion; Seth Bennett: double bass; George Murray: trombone; Mick Beck: tenor saxophone, bassoon; Graham Clark: violin; Laura Cole: piano; Rhodes; Kim Macari: trumpet; Riley Stone-Lonergan: tenor saxophone, clarinet; Corey Mwamba: vibraphone.
Recorded 18th and 19th March 2017 by Patrick Phillips at Real World Studios, Box, Wiltshire.
A new Martin Archer release is always a special occasion for me – and they seem to be coming thick and fast at the moment, with little sign of stopping and each one creating an original and vibrant take on contemporary jazz. This CD contains a 5 part suite – which is, of itself, an unusual venture for Archer as he is not normally one for the elaborate or programmatic when it comes to composition. Given that the pieces were composed in the last 2 months of 2016, and the titles include ‘The Playground in the Desert’, ‘One minute to midnight’, ‘Happy Birthday Mr President (aka POTUS F U )’, you can read into them a critical appraisal of America’s involvement in military activity across the world. But these are not heavy-handed sermons, and there is much scope to listen to the pieces from many different perspectives.
The tunes were composed by Archer, alone in his studio, with him playing all of the instruments. The audio recordings of these were then used by Laura Cole to create the charts from which the players in the ensemble worked – although, to my ears, there is still plenty of scope for the improvisational twist, coming as it does from his insistence on live recording (as opposed to a ‘studio collage’). As with all of Archer’s work, there are layers of influence at work in the pieces. He cites an abiding and long-standing love of the AACM and the enthusiasm and sophistication of their music haunts the pieces here. But there are almost more differences than parallels, as Archer blends in traditional English folk music - particularly apparent in the way that Clark’s violin creates a hybrid music that feels unclassifiable (I hesitate to call it folk-jazz because that fails to capture how he fits with the tunes and the rest of the band). In the liner notes Archer says that he can hear, in these pieces, “echoes…from the very English tradition of ambitious, large scale jazz and jazzrock releases, the like of which are maybe not so common these days.” I have an idea of some of the recordings that he is nodding towards in this, but strongly believe that what he has been developing, particularly with Engine Room Favourites, is something entirely new and contemporary – and so, what is not so common these days, might simply be people who sound like Martin Archer.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
DISCUS: 66CD
Martin Archer: sopranino, alto, baritone saxophones; bass recorder; Peter Fairclough: drums, percussion; Walt Shaw: percussion; Johnny Hunter: drums, percussion; Steven Dinsdale: floor percussion; Seth Bennett: double bass; George Murray: trombone; Mick Beck: tenor saxophone, bassoon; Graham Clark: violin; Laura Cole: piano; Rhodes; Kim Macari: trumpet; Riley Stone-Lonergan: tenor saxophone, clarinet; Corey Mwamba: vibraphone.
Recorded 18th and 19th March 2017 by Patrick Phillips at Real World Studios, Box, Wiltshire.
A new Martin Archer release is always a special occasion for me – and they seem to be coming thick and fast at the moment, with little sign of stopping and each one creating an original and vibrant take on contemporary jazz. This CD contains a 5 part suite – which is, of itself, an unusual venture for Archer as he is not normally one for the elaborate or programmatic when it comes to composition. Given that the pieces were composed in the last 2 months of 2016, and the titles include ‘The Playground in the Desert’, ‘One minute to midnight’, ‘Happy Birthday Mr President (aka POTUS F U )’, you can read into them a critical appraisal of America’s involvement in military activity across the world. But these are not heavy-handed sermons, and there is much scope to listen to the pieces from many different perspectives.
The tunes were composed by Archer, alone in his studio, with him playing all of the instruments. The audio recordings of these were then used by Laura Cole to create the charts from which the players in the ensemble worked – although, to my ears, there is still plenty of scope for the improvisational twist, coming as it does from his insistence on live recording (as opposed to a ‘studio collage’). As with all of Archer’s work, there are layers of influence at work in the pieces. He cites an abiding and long-standing love of the AACM and the enthusiasm and sophistication of their music haunts the pieces here. But there are almost more differences than parallels, as Archer blends in traditional English folk music - particularly apparent in the way that Clark’s violin creates a hybrid music that feels unclassifiable (I hesitate to call it folk-jazz because that fails to capture how he fits with the tunes and the rest of the band). In the liner notes Archer says that he can hear, in these pieces, “echoes…from the very English tradition of ambitious, large scale jazz and jazzrock releases, the like of which are maybe not so common these days.” I have an idea of some of the recordings that he is nodding towards in this, but strongly believe that what he has been developing, particularly with Engine Room Favourites, is something entirely new and contemporary – and so, what is not so common these days, might simply be people who sound like Martin Archer.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
