Disc of the day: 16-11-09
Jim Hart’s Gemini: Narrada (Loop Records LOOP1010)
This is a persuasive disc if you give it time to persuade you. When it starts out, it is clear that the playing is most accomplished and the writing strong but it feels that as a composer Jim Hart might have fallen, like so many of his contemporaries, under the spell of the music/mathematics masters like Steve Coleman. Certainly Four Little Words has that “funk for the head” kind of mental appeal, and it does throw the unsuspecting listener in at the deep end.
But, let’s get back to the beginning. Gemini is Hart on vibes, Ivo Neame on alto saxophone, Jasper Hoiby on bass and Dave Smith on drums – all four players are strong giving the band a fine balance, with Hart’s vibes tone and Neame’s relatively rich alto sound stopping things getting too harsh, and Hoiby giving a powerful bottom end. Smith is pushy when he needs to be but is always very musical with it.
Dark Moon starts with loads of atmospheric stuff from Smith and Hart coming in on marimba, before we are headlong into mind games once more, with Neame and Hart in parallel.
It’s when we reach the long title track that the heart makes an entrance to complement the head. Narrada is a place on Bodmin moor where Hart grew up, and this more elemental, lyrical music begins to leaven my initial wariness that this might just be clever-clogs music. Nifty, funky tune taken in harmony by sax and vibes, followed by expressive and finely formed solos from Neame and Hart. Then Bodmin is inexplicably annexed to Cuba at the end!
Other stand-out tracks are the thoughtful Kindred, the driving Crunchy Country and the elegaic Last of the Leaves, which sounds a bit like it was written by Django Bates and J.S. Bach in tandem – not bad role models for a young composer, I’d say.
A really fine record from a group currently touring to support it and are in Nottingham at the Bonnington Theatre on Thursday, Derby at the Eden Gardens on Friday and in Birmingham at the Yardbird on Thursday 26 November.
