Babelfish: Chasing Rainbows

Rating: ★★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Barry Green (p)
Brigitte Beraha (v)
Chris Laurence (db)
Paul Clarvis (d, perc)

Label:

Moletone Records Moletone

July/2015

Catalogue Number:

006

RecordDate:

20 June 2014

According to the liner notes, this second release from the quartet named for the fictional translating animal in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was recorded in a day but it sounds like the result of deep planning and sophisticated conceptualisation. ‘This album is about love, about the cycles and stages of relationships,’ explains ethereal-voiced Brigitte Beraha, ‘just love in many different forms (including love for sushi!)’ (And indeed one of the 16 substantial-to-suggestively-fragmentary pieces here is called ‘Sushi Hero’.) Beraha, in the best jazz tradition of Norma Winstone, deals in evocative sounds as much as fully formed words. Her enunciation is beautifully crisp on the standard ‘I’m Always Chasing Rainbows’, but for the most part the pitch of this shimmeringly low-key set, both thematically and sonically, is best summed up by song titles such as ‘Unspoken’ and ‘Brigitte's Confusion’ (the latter is a witty tour de force of extremely precisely executed mis-steps). 20th-century US classical great Aaron Copland provides a tune, W.B. Yeats and Benjamin Britten pitch in with some words and an arrangement, but this remains a highly original suite that deserves to reach a wide audience.

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