Artist: Jonathan Bratoeff

Date of Release: 26/06/2006

Catalogue no: 941

Label: F-ire

Price: £7.99

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Track Listing

Appearances by

Julia Biel

Pete Wareham: Baritone sax, Tenor sax , Flute
Oskar Gujonsson: tenor sax
Tom Arthurs: Trumpet, Flugelhorn
Nick Ramm: Rhodes, Nord Lead analogue synth
Jonathan Bratoëff: Guitar
Tom Mason: Double bass, electric bass
Guy"Wampa"Wood: Drums, electronics
Seb Rochford: Drums

Special guest Julia Biel on vocal, Dj vital on turntable

Reviews

16/06/2006 Chris May

London-based guitarist Jonathan Bratoeff's Between Lines (F-IRE, 2005) was a collection of edgy small group improvisations which delivered plenty and promised more. The recording placed Bratoeff's classically rooted but adventurous electric guitar—somewhere out of Jimmy Raney, heading in a more abstract direction—alongside the leaders of Acoustic Ladyland and Polar Bear, respectively: Pete Wareham (tenor saxophone) and Sebastian Rochford (drums), and Tom Mason (bass). The compelling recording focused on extended real-time soloing and group interplay.
Points Of Perception paints on a larger canvas. The previous album's quartet stays in the lineup, this time augmented by three other outstanding stylists—Tom Arthurs (trumpet, flugelhorn), Nick Ramm (keyboards) and Julia Biel (vocals on two tracks). Listening to this recording, there are times when you can't help wishing Bratoeff had left it at that and used this bigger dream lineup to explore the ideas he mapped out on Between Lines in more depth.
Most creative artists, however, have an aversion to standing still, and Bratoeff is as restless as they come. He rings the changes on this new album with the recruitment and foregrounding of hip-hop and drum 'n' bass studio-wiz Wampa, who also co-produces and replaces Rochford on some tracks.
At the planning stage, the collaboration would have promised a genre-bending, thrills 'n' spills adventure, but in practice, it doesn't always get there. Wampa's contributions are of the moment, but they sound imposed upon, rather than bonded with, what's happening around him. He doesn't sound like a fully integrated member of the band, and relatively few of his interventions bust current hip hop and electronica paradigms.
As you'd expect from a lineup of this quality, there is some fine music to be enjoyed here. Bratoeff rips off a handful of terrific solos, sometimes dreamy, other times agitated. Wareham and Arthurs are underemployed, but their duets on "Shrinking World" and "Idiom" are class A. Biel, who here sounds a bit like a warped version of Norah Jones, is divine on the ballad "Cloud Shapes Over A Purple Sky." There's also a good hidden track, which kicks off a couple of minutes after "Forgotten Dreams" and features Pharoah Sanders-ish tenor and agile acoustic bass.
Jonathan Bratoeff is a serious talent, and his desire to push boundaries is to be applauded. He'll likely find his focus and make our hair curl yet.

23/06/0006 John Fordham, The Guardian

French guitarist bratoeff is a F-IRE Collective member now living in London – and F-IRE luminaries such as Polar Bear’s pete wareham and seb Rochford, Jade Fox’s Pianist Nick Ramm, and new trumpet original Tom Arthurs perform his compositions on this intriguing set. Bratoeff has enlisted producer wampa to add drum programming and electronic effects, but rather than being nods to fashion these elements are integral to a musical imagination that thiks orchestrally.Bratoeff’s sounds as if they could be anything from Jim hall to wolfgand Muthspiel via john Scofiel, and the music sometimes touches on the lazily jazzy horn sound of polar bear and the curling melodies of Wayne Shorter. Spacey guitar, and the tenor-sax snort mingle with machine sounds on Shrinking World and Staring at Stars, Reverie is more of a jazz throwback, Dialectic is the funky push-and-pull the name implies, and idiom is a snaky post bop horn hustle over Rochford’s pin-sharp percussion.Occasionally a rhythm-section groove sounds as if it’s awaiting players who haven’t turn up, but Oskar Gudjonsson’s tenor sax is magnificient on the brooding Pond at Dusk, and pete wareham is wailing and coltraneish on the closing untitled. Imagintive 21st- century jazz.
The Guardian - John Fordham -