Here we have 28 not even sketches, (one for each letter of the phonetic alphabet plus Ampers And and Hi, Phen). Brevity is the dominant feature of the first 26 pieces. In fact I’d barely copied the cover picture off the internet and written the title and musicians’ names before I realised I had just missed November and was now onto Oscar, rapidly followed by Papa. After Zulu, however, Ampers And and Hi, Phen Stretch out to 5 minutes 50 and 17:21 respectively, taking up nearly half the album.
The 26 preceding sketches
do all have characters of their own but most are gone in a flash. None of the
‘alphabet’ pieces lasts more than 2:21 and most clock in at less than a minute. It
opens with a 7 second fanfare for Alpha, gives
us a foxtrot for Foxtrot, but I was
disappointed that Golf didn’t really
swing. I particularly liked the
violin lament of Juliet (and Sierra strikes a similar tone) and the percussive rattle of Tango. Whiskey is another piece of
nominative determinism in that it is a snippet of an Irish jig; Yankee, similarly, is a hoe-down. There
is a lot of humour in these snippets, perhaps best exemplified by the attempts
at parlering francais in Quebec and
its touch of the Gallic nightlife. The opening of Ampers And gives us scuttling
crustaceans and violin scratchings before a pause leads into, at times quite
elegant, plucked violin. Closer Hi, Phen is indescribable. The longest piece on the album, it is brimming with ideas,
mixing folk music, hints of the Orient, rolling drums, open landscapes and
sections where Garner seems to chase himself around his instrument. More comes
out with each listen.
In fairness, and to reflect the almost cursory nature of some of the music, the CD is available on BANDCAMP for only £4.50 or £3.00 if you’re download minded. Dave Sayer
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