Artist: Inner Space Music

Date of Release: 07/07/2008

Catalogue no: 1475

Label: Spherical Records

Price: £9

Add to Shopping Basket

Track Listing

Appearances by

Chris Biscoe, Loz Speyer

band: INNER SPACE MUSIC
Loz Speyer - trumpet/flugelhorn
Chris Biscoe - alto sax/alto clarinet
Julie Walkington - double bass
Seb Rochford - drums

Reviews

01/07/2008 Chris Parker

Inner Space Music comprises leader/composer, Loz Speyer (trumpet, flugelhorn), Chris Biscoe (alto saxophone, clarinet), bassist Julie Walkington and drummer Seb Rochford, and on this ten-track album, recorded in November 2004, the band occupies musical territory that will be familiar to anyone who’s heard early-1960s Ornette Coleman or (closer to home) the cruelly underrated Buckley-Batchelor band.Relatively straightforward heads, ­strident melodic fragments, or lengthier, more discursive lines ­provide the springboard for spirited, garrulous improvisation from the flaringly brilliant, chattering trumpet of Speyer and the multi-textured reeds of Biscoe (all slithery querulousness one minute, gruff dignity another, declamatory urgency the next), all intelligently underpinned by the steady bass of Walkington and the briskly scurrying or tautly percussive Rochford.Centred on a suite of pieces inspired by Speyer’s interest in the eponymous Five Animals Qigong practice (designed to cultivate ‘pure Chi energy in body, mind and spirit’), this is wonderfully vigorous, sprightly music, packed with unexpected felicities of texture and timbre, and infused with bustling, fiercely interactive energy. Recommended.Chris Parkerwww.vortexjazz.co.uk/cd-reviews/five-animal-dances.html

05/10/2005 Karl Dallas, the Morning Star (live review, Halifax)

"...one of the happiest evenings I've heard in jazz for many a long night. Like all the best innovators, they're hard to categorise... Music as rare as this defies description. Go along and see them, if they come down your way. Or get their forthcoming CD when it's out."

29/09/2005 Mike Butler, Metro

(CD preview)
'The obvious comparison is Ornette Coleman. That's the young Ornette, who burst onto the scene with such startling freshness in the late 1950s. It's there in the melodies - beauty is an essential component - and the bond between Chris Biscoe on alto and Loz Speyer on trumpet, so reminiscent of Coleman and Don Cherry's working relationship.

These players are musical twins, typically starting in tight unison, moving on to glancing counterpoint and taking off in freewheeling solos before a joyful reunion. But Inner Space Music functions as a collective unit, and Julie Walkington on bass and Seb Rochford on drums are just as vital. It's music of marvelous clarity, buoyed by loping, shifting rhythms. More lyrical than free, and human than abstract, this is serious fun of the first order. The imminent CD, Five Animal Dances, is a monument to a great band.'

13/11/2003 John Fordham, The Guardian (live review, London)

"Sophisticated and harmonically intriguing pieces… well worth waiting for."