COMPOSERS: Finn Peters
LABELS: Accidental Records
ALBUM TITLE: Finn Peters
WORKS: Butterflies
PERFORMER: Finn Peters (flute), Dave Okumu (guitar), Nick Ramm (piano), Tom Herbert (bass), Tom Skinner (drums), Matthew Yee-King (keyboards)
CATALOGUE NO: AC29CD
British multi-reeds player Finn Peters says this album doesn’t have the same sound as his band’s gigs. ‘What works in a club can be different to what works at home,’ he explained in a recent interview. Certainly this multilayered and carefully crafted programme of originals is best appreciated without the accompaniment of clinking glasses and idle chat. Peters’s own natural habitat seems to be the great outdoors and these reflective arrangements are decorated with the sounds of birdsong and rainfall. He draws on his fascination with Balinese music, too, setting a gamelan ensemble against whirring electronics. The ‘organic’ feel of the album is reinforced by Peters’s flute playing, a pure-toned pleasure. The music has so many subtle sonic surprises that it doesn’t so much entertain as pleasurably insinuate. Garry Booth