Phil Slater Quartet
The Thousands
(Kimnara Records)
By John Clare
This is one of Australia’s most satisfying bands, live or on disc, and it must take its place with the great bands we’ve had.
Rather than present a series of pieces that are fast, slow, bright, moody and so on, they offer compositions that are like seas, capable of being held in thralls of tranquility or moved by local winds or distant storms into dynamic and even violent motion. If this were a formula it would soon be felt as such but action or near-stasis are triggered by group interactions of great subtlety.
Read the full review on The Sydney Morning Herald website
Phil Slater Quartet
The Thousands
(Kimnara Records)
By John McBeath
Rating: ****
These four players, some of the best in the country, know each other’s work well. Leader, Sydney trumpeter Phil Slater wrote all seven tracks, at least a couple of which have been previously recorded. But these are more elongated versions with ample time for everyone to thoroughly explore, especially for Slater’s long term simpatico pianist, Matt McMahon.
Burden of Corners runs over 10 minutes, moving through various tempos and moods from plaintive and mystical to superheated swinging. With Lloyd Swanton’s double bass and drummer Simon Barker substantially underpinning, piano and trumpet are free to meander poetically or stoke excitement to a delirious level, as they do in the climax to Tedium.
Slater’s soft brass tonality in slower passages introduces a magical atmosphere, while elsewhere when bass and drums lay down an ineluctable beat, the trumpet flies high overhead, pulsing, fluttering and declaiming. McMahon’s piano is never less than superbly complementary, building out the melody’s harmonies, using tremolo and rippling chords and soloing with great invention and rapport.
This review first appeared in The Weekend Australian is republished with permission of the author.
