You expect new jazz albums to be good, bad or indifferent according to taste – but joyous and life-affirming is a delightful surprise. Ultrasound is inspired by coming out of London’s Covid-darkness into the light, and it’s filled with an airy sense of winning, playful energy. As the insightful sleeve note says, “…this album celebrates getting back: to each other, to the music, to a definition of ‘normal’ with a detour.”
Over five hook-filled compositions – four by band members, plus Russell Hall’s lovely ballad ‘The Loneliest’ – the quintet follows an easy-swinging yet reflective aesthetic, with trumpeter Mark Kavuma and tenor saxophonist Theo Erskine chasing each other’s tails across a Monkish landscape of angular peaks and troughs. The solos are always interesting but never outstay their welcome, with neither frontman milking their horn dry, as an old saying has it. While Kavuma – the Banger Factory founder who, as a youngster, took the Miles Davis role in a Tomorrow’s Warriors homage to ‘Kind of Blue’, among many other achievements – is relatively pure-toned and classic in his approach, Erskine has a real rough and tumble, story-telling feel to his playing that, appropriately, puts one in mind of Monk associates Charlie Rouse and Johnny Griffin.
The rhythm section is outstanding, with Noah Stoneman sounding like a star on piano. He can sound like Sonny Clark (high praise in my book), and writes the wonderful opener to Side B, ‘June’, which sets a ‘Poinciana’-style shuffle groove against an insistent Monkian theme. Michael Shrimpling, who writes the galumphing Side A opener ‘It’ (named for Monk’s It Club), provides an articulate double bass foil for the front-line while keeping in lock-step with drummer Shane Forbes – of Empirical and much else – who excels throughout.
To what extent the album can be described as “retro” is worthy of an argument. It’s respectful of the past, certainly, but it sounds very contemporary London to me, filled with confidence and, yes, joy. For a jazz musician of any vintage to ignore Thelonious Monk would seem perverse. As the poet Basil Bunting wrote in ‘On the fly-leaf of Pound’s Cantos’: “There are the Alps, fools! Sit down and wait for them to crumble.”
Ultrasound was recorded at Theo’s, London, engineered by Theo Erskine and produced by Theo and Mark. It was mixed by Ben Lamdin, and mastered by Caspar Sutton-Jones at GearBox Records.
LIVE DATES:
15.01.24 – Manchester, NQ Jazz
19.01.24 – Sheffield, Crookes Social Club
26.01.24 – Bristol, Stranger Brew
17.02.24 – London, PizzaExpress Jazz Club Soho (album launch)
22.02.24 – Guildford, Pavilion
23.02.24 – Brighton, The Verdict
21.03.24 – Cambridge, Hidden Rooms
15.03.24 – Southampton, Turner Sims
