Dunmall, Paul Sun Quartet

Ancient and Future Airs

Label: Clean Feed Country: Portugal

"The day after a rare and triumphant presentation in New York (with Henry Grimes and Andrew Cyrille, at the 2008 edition of the Vision Festival), British saxophonist Paul Dunmall recorded this album with Tony Malaby, Mark Helias and Kevin Norton. It was hot, very hot, in that day (the 15) of June, and the music here recorded has the same high temperature. But that doesn't mean you'll find in "Ancient and Future Airs" an explosion of sounds. His present musical approach, less and less Coltranean (his reference in the use of the tenor saxophone), is meditative, even in the most expansive moments, atmospheric and with a generous use of spaces. In this encounter with American musicians, we find him more close to the free/bop tradition - and that means this CD swings more (blame Helias, very specially, for the balance of this music), and is more bluesy (Malaby's direct responsability), than all those that document his European combos. One particularity of this new edition is the larger timbral spectrum considering that this his a quartet, with Paul Dunmall also playing bagpipes in full effect, Norton adding the vibraphone to the drumset and Malaby choosing the soprano sax as complementary voice. What great combinations they propose for this slow combustion of improvisational skills!"-Clean Feed