COMPOSERS: Neon Quartet
LABELS: Edition
PERFORMER: Neon Quartet
CATALOGUE NO: EON 1024
There are pros and cons to having a band identity in a sector traditionally dominated by ad hoc groups. Since Neon’s trio album of a couple of years back the group has seen the arrival of a new pianist and the addition of a drummer.
Either development would have re-written the group’s internal dynamic, but with both in play we’re really hearing a new concept altogether. It sounds a little less well bedded-in than it might be and the recording (particularly the drum sound) is murkier than I’d like, but on the other hand if the trio had never existed this would be a pretty commendable exploratory work-in-progress, so I’d offset these elements of uncertainty against the pleasingly dark, edgy musical approach which has to an extent displaced the band’s previous sound.
If the trio Neon shone out with well-defined colours, the quartet Neon hums and sputters menacingly on rain-swept streets. Roger Thomas