Lost Something
Matthew Bourne (piano and sampler)
Steven Davis (drums / percussion)
Dave Kane (bass)
Bourne Davis Kane abhor complacency. Their desire to connect, to really connect with an audience is palpable in everything they do. They demand not just attention but engagement too. These three like-minded musical partners commit themselves totally to the performance.
Lost Something, Bourne’s second appearance on Edition Records, brings him together with Steven Davis on drums and bassist Dave Kane. Compositional duties fall to Davis and Kane on this set that mixes four originals with four pieces from other composers. Lost Something is most definitely a group record – one that explodes all notions of the Jazz trio as ‘a soloist plus rhythm’.
Annette Peacock has long helped fuel Bourne’s own aesthetic with her left-field and idiosyncratic approach to composition. Her Kid Dynamite, written in 1968 for then partner Paul Bley, is a case in point. Its notes spit and splatter like paint thrown onto a canvas. In a way Bley is the ghost at this feast, as ex-wife Carla’s Donkey ambles awkwardly into view before settling into a more comfortable stride. John Surman’s In Between (from 1970’s The Trio) does much more than reveal the group’s grasp of Jazz history, as the piece coalesces into a fine, dynamic and distinctive trio piece. This sense of three musicians working as one unit, where solo voice and rhythm section are one, is extended further by the group’s irreverent deconstruction of Monk’s Round Midnight. Truth is the composer would’ve loved this witty take on his standard.
If anything, the four group originals are even better. Dave Kane’s Paul showcases his articulate and percussive playing, while its stuttering rhythms convey a sense of disorientation and panic. The bassist’s title track, however, is a stately and elegant walk across a cityscape. By contrast, drummer Steven Davis’s De Selby’s Earth – a reference to the character from Flann O’Brien’s novel The Third Policeman – is a driving, pulsating vamp and his lovely, limpid Melt is a delightful and quiescent ballad and the record’s finest moment.
This is music made with both wit and intelligence and heart and soul. I suspect there is more than a little irony in the title. Lost Something – not a chance. Bourne Davis Kane have found it.
If you like this album check out ‘Dismantling the Waterfall’ by Matthew Bourne and Dave Stapleton
design/layout by Burning Red
