George Stevens
Album: A Toad In The Hand
Label: GPJ
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.gstevensluthier.co.uk

George is a Kent-based musician with over 30 years' experience of playing, and learning from, music of different kinds and from various cultures and genres. He's been perennially fascinated and inspired by everything from traditional folk to heavy rock, Celtic to jazz, early and world music to reggae, but the overriding interest for him has invariably resided in the rhythm element, and his core instruments have always been of the percussion family, followed closely by the bouzouki, which he took up in the 1990s and on which he has since majored for composing and accompanying.

A more recent stint with hurdy gurdy and bagpipe duo Snaketown led to a purchase of Border/Flemish pipes; and these have joined the bouzouki and percussion to form the principal elements of George's first full-length solo CD A Toad In The Hand, which presents "acoustic experimental music" taking the form of a suitably eclectic collection of self-penned tunes with a strong traditional or ethnic flavour. The principal variety is maintained by an alternation of two basic kinds of track. The first is based around the driving force of bouzouki riff propelled along by percussion (mostly djembe with/or bodhrán, sometimes darabouka), with occasional bass and acoustic or electric guitar, whereas the second is centred around the sound of the Border pipes, either played solo (three tracks) or with accompaniment (bouzouki and percussion on Gallows Birds, or percussion, violin and hurdy gurdy on Sasha's Wedding).

In addition, George rings the changes a bit by inserting a violin-and-bouzouki duet (Flint And Steel) and two bonus tracks which feature some kind of vocal part alongside the pipes and percussion (rhythmic chanting on Four Tree Hillock) or a keyboard and drum programming (a rap on The Ryton Ruse). Aside from selected contributions (violin, guitars, gurdy, beats) from musician friends Jennifer Bennett, Mick Mepham, Simon Raine and Kevin Burt), all the playing on the album is by George himself, and his technique can't be faulted. Three of the album's tracks (Age Of Empires, Two Camels and Polesworth Abbey) have appeared before (albeit in slightly different versions), on a "taster" EP George released around the middle of 2011.

George clearly has a lot going for him in terms of capable musicianship and a well-developed skill for arrangement of instrumental colours and timbres, and to listen to a representative sample of, say, four or five tracks will almost certainly provide a satisfying and interesting listening experience. George has definitely tried hard to inject variety into the album as a whole, and by and large he succeeds, but on some of the tracks the tunes themselves are not always especially memorable in nature, so by the time of "third circuit" they may begin to feel a touch repetitive. I'd therefore recommend that, notwithstanding the alternation and variation techniques, the album's probably best listened to in three or four stages rather than all at one sitting.

David Kidman