Artist: Remote Viewers (The)

Date of Release: 01/11/2011

Catalogue no: RV9

Label: RV

Price: £10

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Track Listing

Reviews

01/02/0012 Daniel Spicer, Jazzwise

The Remote Viewers originally arose out of London's improv scene as a sax trio in 1997. Fifteen years and 10 albums later, they've metamorphosed into something considerably stranger and less easily quantifiable. It's still obviously rooted in improv, and the sturdy presence of ubiquitous bassist John Edwards adds a certain heft, with stiff creaks and groans sounding a little like a sailing ship becalmed on a moonless night. But there are other avant-garde imperatives at work too, with multiple saxophones navigating angular, austere and carefully mapped-out charts that feel more like dry, contemporary classical scores. At the same time, marimba and woodblocks generate cyclical percussive figures that trundle along like an absent-minded minimalism that keeps forgetting why it came into the room. Add the always-engaging Adam Bohman providing the sound of friction and tension through the manual manipulation of every-day detritus and you have something very much like Bohman himself: extremely English, pleasingly eccentric and ever so slightly tongue-in-cheek.