COMPOSERS: LOOSE TUBES
LABELS: Lost Marble
PERFORMER: Steve Buckley, Iain Ballamy, Mark Lockheart (sax), Django Bates (piano), Ashley Slater (trombone) etc
CATALOGUE NO: LM 005
One-third Sun Ra, one-third Carl Stalling and two-thirds sheer inventiveness (on the grounds that the band always did sound like more than the sum of its parts in every sense!), this exuberant outfit rewrote several of the most dog-eared books on big bands.
Gathering up many of the UK’s finest young players of the 1980s, Loose Tubes drew on the extrovert and frequently irreverent thinking of members such as Django Bates to produce a stream of lively compositions which nonetheless never abandoned musical discipline.
The result was as captivating a sound as jazz has ever achieved. The band’s roster now serves as a who’s who of some of today’s most significant leaders and this sonically atmospheric live album sounds more contemporary now than when it was recorded during the band’s residency at Ronnie Scott’s in 1990.
The following generation could learn much here; the rest of us can just enjoy the experience. Roger Thomas