Jim Mullen Organ Trio: Catch My Drift

Rating: ★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Jim Mullen (g)
Mike Gorman (p)
Matt Skelton (d)

Label:

Diving Duck

June/2014

Catalogue Number:

DDRCD019

RecordDate:

2013

This is the UK's premier guitar soloist swinging his regular touring trio through some neglected and indeed completely forgotten standards, and in the process somehow making them sound deeply familiar. Being a Scot, Mullen's unusually deep blues sensibility is always tempered with a little Celtic melancholy, but there's almost a surfeit of it here. The atmosphere is so laid-back that one gets the feeling the music was laid down at three in the morning, possibly after a long drive back down to London from somewhere in the wilds of Ross and Cromarty. Another factor that might have been dealt with in the studio control-box is a deep bass-wrap sound that seems to pervade everything. All the treble dials on all the instruments seem to be set at zero, as if everyone were playing beneath a duvet. For all that, there's a lot of fine music here. Gorman and Skelton manage to swing without ever becoming flashy and obtrusive, and Mullen's lines are as clean and fluent as always. The only difference here is that the group's glow seems subdued and liquid, flitting around like the Northern Lights.

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