Elliot Galvin: The Influencing Machine

Rating: ★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Tom McCredie (b)
Corrie Dick (d)
Elliot Galvin (p, synth)

Label:

Edition

February/2018

Catalogue Number:

EDN1103

RecordDate:

28-30 May 2017

Elliot Galvin is the most conceptual and intellectual of the Chaos Collective, the former student friends whose most public platform is Laura Jurd’s Dinosaur (their drummer Corrie Dick joins Galvin here). This third solo album was inspired by 18th century double-agent and paranoid schizophrenic James Tilly-Matthews, and his intricate, prescient delusions. ‘Monster Mind’, with its smashed hi-hat, and piano which alternates between nervous investigatory creeps and confident sallying forth, most obviously describes a divided soul, falling at last into a misty dreamtime. The pensive, mostly solo piano of ‘Society’ seems a pre-emptive elegy before some looming apocalypse, its American classical and blues touches suggesting the American Civil War. ‘Bees Dogs and Flies’ then borrows a Renaissance folk tune which is the album’s best, rooting it in common soil absent elsewhere, and ending in another inconsolable refrain. This is jazz in its open mind, and post-modern in mode of thought. Knottier and cooler than its predecessor, Punch, its labyrinth repays repeated exploration, revealing heartfelt sadness amidst the twisting ideas.

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