Reviews
Artist:Nye Banfield Album: Trails And Traces
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 7
Website: https://nyebanfield.bandcamp.com/
Beautifully recorded at Fish Factory Studios, produced and written by Nye Banfield, TRAILS AND TRACES is the tenor saxophonist's debut album. Fronting a six piece of carefully matched musicians this an album that is both melodic and interesting without ever being difficult.
"Rockhopper", opens with the front line of Nye Banfield tenor saxophone, Mark Kavuma trumpet and Wilf Diamond trombone. Calling and questioning and full of Blue Note sweetness its a great opening. Nye moves between Coltrane edge and soulful as the other brass players call, bird like around him as bass, drums and piano add accents ahd fills. "Bellarom Gold" broods with some exchanges between tenor, trumpet and Rubert Cox's vamping rhodes. Banfield's playing is melodic, chilled with a little bite, over Ewan Moore's terse percussion. Nice tasteful solo from Mark Kavuna too on a wonderful soul jazz track. That funky Blue Note soul continues on "Pocket Tissue Blues", its funky beat and Rhodes bringing a touch of Cannonball, a fine trombobe solo and some sizzling tenor playing. On "Four Years Later" a sorrowful tenor, dances around Hamish Nockles- Moore's questioning bass and piano trills with a beautiful final section. "E11" is another reflective piece that stars Cox's understated limpid piano and Nye's tenor, with bursts of brass that cut through the chamber jazz music. Again Hamish's bass is the beat beneath Moore's drum and percussion work.
"Song For Grandad" is, stately and utterly majestic, stirring brass chords and bowed bass carry real emotion. From its languid opening piano and talking bowed bass "Characters" is a long form piece full of poetic tones. The bass, piano and drums nod to each other in a 'Kind Of Blue Way'. Nye's Saxophone may occasionally cut through the miasma but this is a very 'Cool Jazz' closer. The pace is measured and languid with a real space around the notes and a palpable sense of restraint. Like the classic "Flamenco Sketches" this is meditative music you can just fall into. Feeling sketched rather than written there's room for a little stretching out, but never any noodling. Ewan Moore manages the rare feat of a understated, restrained solo drum passage with some watery cymbal splashes. Kavuna has the final say with waves of piano, where minimalism meets angular Stan Tracey, before a final 60s Blue Note soul close.
There is lot to hold onto here, 60s soul flavours, hints of Blue Note classics like "The Siderwinder", alongside Shorter or Coltrane bite. There are also moments of modeen skittering jazz and a sense of quietly going beyond on the expansive and meditative "Characters".
Marc Higgins
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