The Urban Folk Quartet
Album: The Escape
Label: SAE
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.theufq.com

This CD has been eagerly awaited here! And as it turns out, The Escape is an exciting, supremely dynamic disc, exceptionally well recorded and alive-sounding, brimming over with foot-tapping nervy hyper-energy and spine-tingling electricity and with a fantastic sense of presence. It's very much edge-of-the-seat, sure, but in a thoroughly good way.

The internal dynamic of the ensemble has altered significantly since the earlier UFQ albums, for the very obvious reason that founder member and oud supremo Frank Moon has (just last year) "escaped" from the lineup and been replaced by clawhammer banjo ace Dan Walsh, a change which will inevitably impact on the overall complexion of the ensemble and its internal dynamic as well as the material performed to some extent. Just sample the frenetic, roof-raising klezmer-cum-breakdown of track 5 (The On On medley), or at the other extreme the almost painfully lyrical expression of The Language Barrier, or any one of the four vocal tracks - notably perhaps the band's somewhat unorthodox treatment of The Snows They Melt The Soonest, where the adopted irregular time signature gives the traditional lament an most unusual perspective, or the pronounced Americana-fusion flavour of Boat Up The River.

The UFQ has always been noted for the brilliantly organic, flexibly groundbreaking feel of its musical adventures, but the musicians excel themselves this time round as they dart even more naturally between musics and idioms with unashamed panache and expert virtuosity. Sparky fiddle motifs are underpinned by an increasingly inventive use of electric bass, as on Barnstorming, while elsewhere, as on Resiste (Paloma's Cuban excursion) the nimble, insistently active trademark UFQ cajón rhythms mutate into spicy Latin grooves.

Even on first acquaintance, The Escape is a blinder of an album, and I can't imagine its impact diminishing in any measure on subsequent plays - there's so much intense detail being revealed on each hearing. And so it proved on successive plays… Also, and it might seem mildly heretical to say this, I do feel that the unstoppable, unquenchable energy of the UFQ as a cohesive and madly inventive performing unit has never been more potently conveyed - not even on the band's previous live albums! And although I realise that may not quite have been Joe Broughton's stated ambition for the record, the end product is still tremendous.

David Kidman