Andrew McCormack: Graviton: The Calling
Author: John Fordham
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Musicians: |
Andrew McCormack (p) |
Label: |
Ubuntu Music |
Magazine Review Date: |
July/2019 |
Media Format: |
CD |
Catalogue Number: |
UBU0025 |
RecordDate: |
November/December 2018 |
Andrew McCormack's early-2000s introduction to the UK jazz scene came via Gary Crosby's and Janine Irons' game-changing Tomorrow's Warriors – since which, this gifted pianist/composer's work with such creative singers as Eska Mtungwazi, and reeds originals Jason Yarde and Shabaka Hutchings, has regularly leaned to the margins of the regular jazz loop. He launched his prog-rockish, song-oriented Graviton band in 2017, and Graviton: The Calling simultaneously draws on the practical education of road-life, and his own hero's-quest song-narrative, inspired by Jungian psychologist/philosopher Erich Neuman, and bestselling culture warrior Jordan Peterson. Fortunately for the more testy of maxim-avoiding improv fans, the music is more airborne than the story. The eloquently airy Noemi Nuti, often taking a Flora Purim-like wordless-chorus role, gleams through the keys ostinato and hip-hoppish drums tick of ‘Walled Garden’; the title-track juggles Josh Arcoleo's rugged tenor sax motifs, acrobatic scat-singing, and tightly capricious rhythms. The pulsating ‘Crossing The Threshold’ has a cinematically-building urgency; Arcoleo and Nuti snarl in their respective ways through the rocking ‘The King Is Blind’; ‘Belly of the Whale’ is an electronic-orchestral hum – and throughout the set, McCormack keeps cutting loose with hard-driving piano improvisations. Like former David Bowie saxophonist Donny McCaslin's recent music, this is contemporary jazz fuelled from the dancefloor – but jazz is crucially and unmistakeably alive and well in it nonetheless.
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