Brooding

It was intense and brooding music that the Andy Butler group played at the Band Room. Andy led a bass-less quartet playing original music by Andy and also trumpeter Alex Raupach. Given there was no bass, I’d expected Andy to play organ, but this was piano, so in many ways it was a unique outing. But more on the bass later. One friend thought it was Northern European influenced and I asked Andy later, but he said his recent influences were more classical. He’d written most of the charts only in recent days and he’d been playing lots of classical piano especially Australians. He especially mentioned Carl Vine as an influence for a piece with heavy piano arpeggiation (amusingly called Arp arp arp). The piece was all floating arpeggios on piano, cymbals (no snare or toms) on drums and a unison trumpet/tenor melody that diverged for an occasional pure harmony. Another of Andy’s tunes was an off-beat piano feel with a very pretty melodica melody joined by horns and solos from trumpet and tenor. There was a flugelhorn/piano duo from Alex, another arpeggiation from Andy, MB (a Michael Brecker dedication) from Alex, and others. There were times when the solos, especially from Matt Handel on alto or tenor lifted with a new world brashness and energy and abandon, and Aidan on drums responded. But mostly this music remained restrained and low volume: essentially intellectual not physical. I appreciated it and admired it rather than out-and-out enjoyed it. Euro jazz is like that and the classical influence is why that it so. There were some lovely quizzical melodies with unexpected intervals and unfinished lines that mutated into extended passages. There were some wonderfully detailed drum and other solos, and right hand piano solo lines that flowed with dense harmonic invention, even if I felt Andy’s right hand was tempered by accompaniment duties in the left. I sat down the back for a few minutes and noticed the thrumming bass drum. This was really loud and clear. Why? Partly the acoustics, but partly because there was no acoustic bass. There was piano, but it’s more defined (and in this case quieter), not rounded like organ or resonant and billowing like double bass. But probably more importantly, there were not the heavily syncopated tonics that bass provides and that drums bounce from. The music swung often enough, but not raucously. This was serious, intelligent music to ponder. Leave the dancing to the new world.

Andy Butler (piano) led a quartet with Alex Raupach (trumpet, flugelhorn), Matt Handel (alto, tenor saxes) and Aidan Lowe (drums) at the Band Room.