MUSIC

Coronation Tap, Bristol (Sun 21 Aug)

It’s been a scorcher of an afternoon and the streets of Clifton are mighty quiet by sunset. The Cori’s small (but enthusiastic) crowd includes a disproportionate number of bass players checking out Will Harris’s less usual electric rig. There’s a lot of gear: as well as Andy Tween’s drumkit and Harris’s mass of gizmos, Andy Nowak is almost hidden behind his proper three keyboard rig. It’s appropriately excessive, though, to recreate the synth-driven electrojazz of the 80s. In a provocative start Nowak riffs over white noise bursts suggesting system failure, with Tween’s drums scratching and hinting before Harris slams a proper full-on FX bass sound and things drive along. It’s the first of many Wayne Shorter tunes with typically tightly drawn rhythms, urgent evolutionary bass and wafting synthetic keyboards. Though Novak has fine style and uses his keyboard palette well, the sound lacks, inevitably, the cut of a soprano sax and at times that feels an oversight (bits of ‘On The Milky Way Express’ end up sounding like a Barry White number going off piste). At other times, however, their open three-handed economy is exactly right: the fiercely complex rhythms of the unsurprisingly drum-centric Bill Bruford’s ‘Hell’s Bells’ coupled with impassioned wah-wah bass (oh yes!) and locked-tight keys is right on the button, and the briskly no-nonsense reading of Shorter’s ‘Over Shadow Hill Way’ that closes is triumphant. On this showing Prototrio is a great addition to the local jazz menu, lacking only a few capes, perhaps, some dry ice… and maybe the occasional guest reed player? (Tony Benjamin)

Copyright Tony Benjamin 2011