I don’t think I’ve personally come across Brian Molley before, even though he has been recording since 2013 and has been well-documented on this site. Gibbs would appear to be his longest standing confederate but the ones whose work I am more familiar with are Bowden and Henderson who form the rhythm section from Fergus McCreadie’s trio. Despite the fact that Molley and various iterations of his band have toured extensively across many continents, once back in the UK he seems reluctant to venture out of Scotland. One cannot dispute his musical ambition, however, and this album follows previous work with musicians from Morocco, Brazil and Rajasthan amongst others. This album is an ambitious through-composed work that aims to draw out the links between traditional Scottish music and the origins of jazz.
He starts with a lament, Ode to Frederick Douglass, Parts One and Two,
with a solitary sax foregrounded over a wash of treated tones as if to say
‘This is the journey we’re going on but this early reference to (escaped slave
and abolitionist) Frederick Douglass should tell you that it’s not all good
news’. Ristornello Ceilidh, then,
acts as a sort of overture setting out both ends of the story with Molley’s
tenor jigging in grand trad.arr. fashion contrasting with the background of
rolling jazz blues funk before Molley brings his instrument into modern times. Cianalas (longing for home) captures
both longing and the celebration of the freedoms of the new world for the
ex-pats with the yearning of the opening section being replaced by rolling,
high stepping, urban celebration on the piano that makes NOLA sound like the
place to be.
Dance
of the Waves moves the story along with a delicate jig
suddenly accreting jazz chops and turning full stream Blue Note with a long,
joyous solo from Molley, swooping from conversational to celebratory to declamatory
while the piano solo hints at the roots again. The closing passage returns to
the home sickness of Cianalas with a
lament in the piano line and yearning sax. There is a similar yearning in The Man and the Lion in which hope
eventually overcomes mournfulness as Molley returns again to the life of
Douglass who argued that “by re-writing his own history he was able to change
the narrative from that of slave to free man.” The Trail of Tears tries to capture the forced march of Native
American from their ancestral lands into the West. Intertwined with the strict
percussion there are the wails of those on the march, pieces of Scottish music,
and when the march drops out to be replaced with more delicate drums and
cymbals, a beautiful duet between piano and a tenor playing a simple repeated
phrase, displaying a hope too shackled to turn to belief.
The melancholic mood
continues into Frederick’s Lament with
the same simple sax figure behind an increasing forceful piano solo, full of
bells chiming out and, at last there is some of that hitherto suppressed hope.
The stately, contemplative bass solo that follows breaks with a sudden growl
into what will be a piano led Baptist service to introduce Storm, Whirlwind and Earthquake. It’s a Blue Note soul-blues stomp
that shows its roots in New Orleans with Molley’s sax punching away in between
wails and long fluid runs that carry the listener along on a wild ride with
Gibbs romping away on piano before it fades away with a restatement of the
earlier lament.
Tùs/Origin is an ambitious concept for a thirty-six minute album and, I suppose, the question one has to ask is whether or not Molley’s ambitions are met. I think that, presenting the work as a through-composed entity allows his aims of combining Scottish folk with New Orleans strut, more contemporary sounds and even Native American voices to succeed. The quality and intensity of the work never lapses, so, yes, the ambition is met. It may be that the discipline he has imposed here is necessary because, these days, recording an album on limited resources requires enormous focus so it helps that he has been able to surround himself with some of the best players in Scotland. Live, perhaps with added imagery, it could be expanded and would become a real tour-de-force. Dave Sayer
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