CD review Night and Day, Tim Willis and the End by John McBeath
First published by The Australian
Album: Night and Day
Artist: Tim Willis and the End
Release Date: August 2015
Label: Newmarket
This third album in the recorded life of Melbourne guitarist Tim Willis’s The End expands the group from a quintet to an octet, retaining Willis and bassist Gareth Hill plus the instrumentation from the previous band and adding a second guitar, trumpet and piano.
Six of the eight Willis originals were written for the PBS 106.7 Young Elder of Jazz Commission in 2012 carrying a $10,000 award, and premiered at the 2013 Melbourne International Jazz Festival.
Liner notes describe the music as blending genres of jazz, post-rock and minimalism, drawing on influences from John Adams, Phillip Glass, Steve Reich, and The Necks. All of those wide-ranging influences are certainly present in varying degrees.
A hastening jazz-rock rhythm driven by bass and Sam Young’s drums begins the opener Night, only to fall silent as trumpet, alto and tenor – from Brae Grimes, Jack Beeche, and Kieran Hensey respectively – reiterate an insistent four chord theme over the re-emergent rhythm. Two guitars join the mounting climactic as the rhythm section disappears again leaving the horns floating Reich-like to introduce a wild, heart-stopping alto solo with jabbing contributions from everyone.
Throughout the album good use is made of diminutive scoring and interstitial silences to promote various moods: somber, murky, melancholy, or sometimes lightness and joyful expectation.
These compositions and arrangements are of a high and unusual order, if occasionally verging on the repetitive. The overall atmosphere is one of building tension and portent, skillfully illustrated in an original style of music.
