Out Entrance
(Glass Room, St George’s Bristol. 30 November 2023. Stay evaluation by Jon Turney)

St George’s Bristol is a 200 year-old Church however a fancy new addition provides us the Glass Room, a wonderful smaller area to get pleasure from this rip-roaring five-piece band up shut. It was a stirring homecoming gig for Out Entrance’s instigator, trumpeter Nick Malcolm, tenorist Jake McMurchie and Somerset resident, drummer Dave Smith, after a stretched out seven-date tour with bandmates Jason Yarde on alto sax and (co-leader) Olie Brice on bass.

Much more stretched out than the tour was the band’s gestation, which started in early 2020 however solely got here to fruition after uncommon vicissitudes, not all of them pandemic-related. However the wonderful notion behind this ensemble, to discover the compositions of two of Malcolm’s fundamental males, Booker Little and Andrew Hill, carried them via.

From the primary quantity, Hill’s traditional Black Fireplace, this was music price ready for. All three horns responded joyfully to Hill’s insistent theme. This band, pianoless, lent it a freer sound than the unique, the extra in order Brice and particularly Smith are much less involved with maintaining strict time than Roy Haynes and Richard Davis had been again in 1964.

That, because the band made clear over two blistering units, was the place this music was headed greater than half a century in the past. Hill, whose type Brian Morton and Richard Prepare dinner aptly termed “forceful dissonance”, and the woefully short-lived Little each pointed towards the period when rhythm grew to become implied as a lot as acknowledged, complementing horn-players who had been liberated by the broader harmonic palette of post-bop. It’s music that’s uncompromising in its approach, resolutely exploratory, filled with excessive drama. The place there’s lyricism, it’s normally barely tart; when there’s poetry, it might have a couple of cracks. Their composing, for all that, was nonetheless extremely organised, and the unpredictable, generally precariously maintained steadiness between inside and out of doors enjoying gave their music a scrumptious stress.

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It should additionally nonetheless be a few of the hardest music to play properly, however these 5 grew up with that problem and on this band they provide an actual thrill-ride of soloing and intensely focussed ensemble enjoying. Brice’s large bass sound is ever-present – he can provide the deepest groove whereas getting a bounce from the strings worthy of Johnny Dyani. That enables Smith to boil and poo across the beat like water on a sizzling plate. The soloists are of their aspect. Malcolm, as ever, recollects the hyperlinks between Booker Little and Kenny Wheeler’s intervallic leaps, McMurchie has a wealthy compendium of tenor kinds at his disposal, and Yarde’s alto, as soon as heard with Hill himself, is as incisive as he’s creative.

Collectively, they make Hill’s Nightfall and Yokada Yokada, Little’s Bee Vamp – memorably recorded in 1961 with Eric Dolphy – Bee Tee’s Minor Plea, and Moods in Free Time, from the album the band takes their identify from, into important up to date music. Hill’s later piece Time Strains, combining a wondrously off-kilter bass determine with three horn polyphony, is a second set spotlight.

This isn’t only a revival challenge, although. Each units additionally characteristic new compositions for the band by Malcolm. They plan to report in 2024, and little question there can be extra new music by then. Meantime, let’s hope this uncommon quintet’s diaries permit them to schedule extra dwell dates, and rekindle the fires that blazed on this chilly night in Bristol.

Jon Turney writes about jazz, and different issues, from Bristol. jonturney.wordpress.com

LINK: Nick Malcolm;’s web site