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allaboutjazz.com - Severence Review

Mick Padden, All About Jazz, www.allaboutjazz.com

Phil Slater: Strobe, Coma Virgo, Newmarket Records, NEW 3116.2
Band of Five Names: Severance, Newmarket Records, NEW 3115.2

Phil Slater is one of Australia’s most restlessly inventive younger musicians. It is five years since the studio recording time which was his prize for winning a band contest run by Sydney’s main jazz station enabled him to make a CD of the music they had played as the Band of Five Names. Since then he has appeared regularly in all the city’s jazz venues (and won several more prestigious awards) with his diverse playing bands ... each of them elliptically named. He often plays with the same musicians. The two musician with him on both these CDs - Matt McMahon on keyboards and Simon Barker on drums - are ever present. But each band has a slightly different focus, reflected in the way the other musicians respond to Phil Slater’s trumpet, and in the writing and arranging to which they often contribute.

Of the two CDs reviewed here, Strobe Coma Virgo is a bit closer to the mainstream of jazz traditions. It shows an influence of the Miles of “In a Silent Way” refracted through some of the Necks long, slowly emerging patterns. An acknowledged mix of classic tradition and contemporary Australian influences. I saw a version of the band just before I heard the CD and felt confusion, as film reviewers must when confronted by a movie version of a book, in whether I should be writing about the live gig or the CD. Phil Slater favours two horns voiced in unison. On the CD he manages this himself on trumpet. At the gig he used a tenor play to voice alongside him. I could not honestly say I prefer either. Much like Phil Slater’s musical diversity they were just different ways of working with and around the music. On the CD he is joined by Carl Dewhurst on guitar, and two bass players - Brett Hirst plays acoustic and Alex Hewetson is on electric.
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