FELLOW CREATURES
(Edition/Planet)
8/10
I know this sounds radical circa 2017, but Jasper Hoiby conceived of this album to be heard in its entirety, not cherry-picked. He wanted the listener to absorb a long-form narrative; a journey through successive sonic ideas that cohere. It’s worth the effort. Hoiby, best known as one third of the ground-breaking trio Phronesis, here spreads his composer’s wings a little more, writing for trumpet/flugelhorn (Laura Jurd) and saxophones (Mark Lockart) as well as his own bass, piano (Will Barry) and drums (Corrie Dick).
Ultimately the ensemble functions as a more conventional jazz band than Phronesis does, yet Hoiby’s compositional ideas remain idiosyncratic enough and laden with sufficient surprises to keep you constantly engaged. As in Phronesis his work contains a fascination with the generation of seething energy at low dynamic levels, although here that can also boil over into something more rampant, with the horns discharging spiralling duets of real force. As ever with Edition, the recording quality is superb, so Hoiby’s bass sounds vigorously expansive as he builds those distinctive knots of his into the music’s grain.