ACROSS A FIELD AS VAST AS ONE (Earshift) 8/10 In a cover note bassist/composer Sam Anning acknowledges the late drummer Allan Browne “for illuminating everything”. It’s heart-warming to hear Browne’s legacy live on, however indirectly, in Anning’s work. Primarily you hear it in the lack of pretence with which the music is presented, and in […]

SONGS FROM A MIDNIGHT ROOM (ericabramham.com) 8/10 In 2017 Melbourne’s Erica Bramham set about writing a song a day, sustaining the project for an impressive 203 days. This double album contains some of the results. Working in a musical world where a fine mist obscures any lines between jazz, folk, improvisation and rock, she writes […]

QUE BOM (Alobar/Planet) 8/10 More than most idioms Brazilian music has a way of sucking non-Brazilian musicians into its rhythmic, harmonic, melodic and textural vortices – aided by the dominant mood being irrepressible optimism. Once it really gets under their skin they tend to be lost causes. When it comes to the prime purveyors of […]