Jazz breaking news: Partikel To Debut
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
A bungee jumper has a lot in common with a jazz musician who forms a group without a piano or guitar as harmony instrument.
It’s an adrenalin-fuelled venture.
The piano-less Partikel, whose eponymous debut is released on 15 November, are the latest to step into that bubble of the unknown, part of the new wave on the UK scene which includes newcomers saxophonist Binker Golding, drummer Eddie Hick of the South Trio and Orient House Ensemble, and trumpeter Mark Crown.
Whether a sense of daring matters to the hard bop-into-free jazz-rooted Partikel – saxophonist Duncan Eagles, bassist Max Luthert and drummer Eric Ford – audiences are likely to achieve a certain rush caught up by the leap of faith the idea of which they are entertaining.
Partikel are really only known so far for the Monday night jam sessions they host at Hideaway, a jazz and comedy club that opened up in Streatham in south London earlier this year. But Eagles, 25, has come through the demanding fast track Tomorrow’s Warriors training ground and has been picked out as a writer working at the west end pub Spice of Life in the Dune Records new writers and arrangers nights. Drummer Ford and bassist Luthert studied, as Eagles did, at Trinity College of Music, and the trio now graduating on the bandstand fit like a glove on Partikel which is now confirmed for CD and digital release just a few days after the London Jazz Festival gets underway next month. The album bookended by short intro and outro tracks gets very serious from track four on, ‘Cryptography’, which despite the title of that track owes more to a 21st century reading of Sonny Rollins than M-BASE. Eagles has a grainy, slightly gruff sound enhanced in a group context by the low mix. The harmonic onus shifts between all three players throughout the album.
Partikel has the potential to make a dent on the Britjazz scene – check out the scene-setting on ‘The Steep and Thorny Way’ – a sure indication of the maturity of the trio. The band looks to build on the achievements of players such as Denys Baptiste and Empirical, all without the aid of a harmony safety net. Partikel play Hideaway next Monday.
– Stephen Graham
For more go to www.hideawaylive.co.uk/jam-session-partikel-2510. Sample tracks at www.partikel.co.uk