TIM ROSE – Fact & Opinion
Tim Rose Music: TRCD 0001
Tim Rose (guitar and keyboards) Graeme Flowers (trumpet) John Humphrey(Drums) Phil Donnelly (bass) Recorded at Arnos Grove Studios UK, 2018/19
Like the musicians he has assembled for his second release as a leader, guitarist Tim Rose is a hardworking, freelance session musician whose technical attributes have taken him to the four corners of the commercial popular music scene. Happily, for us he is equally at home as a purveyor of quality contemporary modern jazz and in this privately produced recording he presents eight solid examples of his acumen as an instrumentalist, composer and bandleader. In terms of performance a number of obvious stylistic influences are apparent but nothing is hackneyed or slavishly derivative and though rock and fusion elements are employed he avoids the tedious shredding that can often vitiate sessions of this type. All his solos have substance and hold your attention as do his compositions which combine extrovert energy with minor key introspection, catchy hooks and riffs with themes of a more attenuated complexity.
He shares the role of articulating and developing his tunes with trumpeter Graeme Flowers and together they produce a pleasingly distinctive band sound. Flowers plays with a clarion clear, open and emphatic sound, making little use of vibrato and only employing a mute on one tune. On the more abstract pieces his tone becomes affectingly bleak whereas in the `cookers` he achieves a dynamic stridency that puts me in mind of a cross between Chet Baker and Jack Sheldon or the Candoli brothers. Like his leader, Flowers knows his way around the block and as an occasional member of the Lat/Am group Cubana Bop and a onetime sideman to Kyle Eastwood, his jazz chops are firmly in place.
Often playing against his own double tracked keyboard cadences Rose shares rhythm section chores with Humphrey and Donnelly, the former an agile rock oriented drummer whose busy snare and cymbal accents actively stoke the momentum through which the latter weaves a fat Pastorian counterpoint, occasionally breaking out of the undertow with a well- constructed solo. Together they build a layer of percussive vitality which the horns ride upon with confidence and nowhere is that confidence more explicit than in the final tune of the set. `Langdale` is a bright optimistic theme that has all concerned scaling the heights of their abilities and bringing to a stunning conclusion an album that deserves the widest hearing.
Reviewed by Euan Dixon
Tim Rose Music: TRCD 0001
Tim Rose (guitar and keyboards) Graeme Flowers (trumpet) John Humphrey(Drums) Phil Donnelly (bass) Recorded at Arnos Grove Studios UK, 2018/19
Like the musicians he has assembled for his second release as a leader, guitarist Tim Rose is a hardworking, freelance session musician whose technical attributes have taken him to the four corners of the commercial popular music scene. Happily, for us he is equally at home as a purveyor of quality contemporary modern jazz and in this privately produced recording he presents eight solid examples of his acumen as an instrumentalist, composer and bandleader. In terms of performance a number of obvious stylistic influences are apparent but nothing is hackneyed or slavishly derivative and though rock and fusion elements are employed he avoids the tedious shredding that can often vitiate sessions of this type. All his solos have substance and hold your attention as do his compositions which combine extrovert energy with minor key introspection, catchy hooks and riffs with themes of a more attenuated complexity.
He shares the role of articulating and developing his tunes with trumpeter Graeme Flowers and together they produce a pleasingly distinctive band sound. Flowers plays with a clarion clear, open and emphatic sound, making little use of vibrato and only employing a mute on one tune. On the more abstract pieces his tone becomes affectingly bleak whereas in the `cookers` he achieves a dynamic stridency that puts me in mind of a cross between Chet Baker and Jack Sheldon or the Candoli brothers. Like his leader, Flowers knows his way around the block and as an occasional member of the Lat/Am group Cubana Bop and a onetime sideman to Kyle Eastwood, his jazz chops are firmly in place.
Often playing against his own double tracked keyboard cadences Rose shares rhythm section chores with Humphrey and Donnelly, the former an agile rock oriented drummer whose busy snare and cymbal accents actively stoke the momentum through which the latter weaves a fat Pastorian counterpoint, occasionally breaking out of the undertow with a well- constructed solo. Together they build a layer of percussive vitality which the horns ride upon with confidence and nowhere is that confidence more explicit than in the final tune of the set. `Langdale` is a bright optimistic theme that has all concerned scaling the heights of their abilities and bringing to a stunning conclusion an album that deserves the widest hearing.
Reviewed by Euan Dixon
