Album review: Joe Steels' Borealis - Borealis

Joe Steels (guitar); Asha Nicholson (voice); Ferg Kilsby (trumpet); Dan Brown (piano); Paul Susans (double bass); John Hirst (drums)

Guitarist Joe Steels couldn't have anticipated a pandemic. If lockdown scuppered his plans to record and release an album, perhaps the enforced isolation offered the recent (2019) Birmingham Royal Conservatoire graduate the opportunity to write, reflect, perhaps rewrite. Whatever his circumstances were, Steels has emerged from the dark days of pandemic Britain to produce a fine debut recording. 

From Cumbria to Northumberland, a keen sense of place and the rural landscape in which he lives appear to have informed bandleader Joe Steels' compositional process. Four of the five musicians heard on Borealis are based in the rural north of England, the fifth member, a fellow northerner, now residing north of the border in Glasgow. Five tracks with a total running time just shy of forty four minutes incorporate myriad influences - folk, jazz, jazz-rock and more.

Assisting Steels in his endeavours are five highly empathetic musicians: Asha Nicholson's ethereal, soaring vocals (more accurately 'voice') create in the mind's eye a series of watercolour sketches of a rural landscape and constantly changing skies. Perhaps the opening track, Re-emerge, tells a story, perhaps it's commentary on our pandemic/post-pandemic world. Through the Burn and Lost in the Woods are clearly rooted in the rural - or are they? The former, yes, the latter, that's a whole other ball game. Lost in the Woods is the album's atypical cut, referencing myriad forms, from jazz to jazz-rock, off-kilter rhythms to electric era Miles Davis (there's a real edge to Steels' playing reminiscent of a stoked-up John Scofield) and, talking of Bitches Brew, Ferg Kilsby lays down some killer trumpet.        

The Wait swings, it's lyrical, it sounds familiar, but try putting a finger on it! Pianist Dan Brown produces a great sound (the album in its entirety is beautifully recorded) and the bass and drums of Paul Susans and John Hirst could be said to be the making of Borealis (Susans' wonderfully dry, resonant, woody sound, Hirst's mightily impressive drumming throughout). 

Joe Steels' Borealis is available now, for details visit: www.joesteelsmusic.com. Highly recommended. Russell                  

Track listing: Re-emerge; Through the Burn; Lost in the Woods; The Wait; Farewell