Artist: Seb Pipe

Date of Release:

Catalogue no: Seb Pipe CD 001

Label: Seb Pipe

Price: £12.99

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Track Listing

Appearances by

Larry Bartley

"Featuring a diverse gamut of highly innovative, original and electrifying compositions inspired by life - blending high intensity grooves, idiosyncratic melodies and raw energy."

Reviews

04/01/2008 John Fordham (The Guardian Newspaper)

The appropriately named young UK saxophonist Seb Pipe is a prizewinning former Trinity College student who includes influential New York M-Base saxist Steve Coleman and former Jazz Messenger Jean Toussaint among his mentors. You can hear in his playing the influence of Coleman's rigorous rhythm-pattern investigations, as well as some east European and Latin American allegiances. Pipe and his group recorded this set at London's 606 Club in February 2007 (with help from the Musicians' Development Fund), and the leader's serpentine melodic fluency, improv resourcefulness and controlled freedom with pitch all confirm that the early accolades he has received were well deserved. The recording is a shade muted, which hardly enhances the vividness of an idiom already more concerned with patterns than dynamics, but there's enough to confirm that Pipe's group is right in his ballpark for expertise. Bassist Larry Bartley and Brooklyn-born drummer Chris Vatalaro are tucked tightly into the bump and clatter of the grooves, with excellent pianist Arthur Lea sometimes sounding like a preoccupied salsa player, sometimes like a 21st-century Thelonious Monk. On the liltingly lyrical Antarctic Twilight, Pipe and Lea both sound - untypically- as though they have heard a lot of conventional standards players. Jazz Face shows what they can do with more or less straightahead swing, and the three-part Balance and Contrast moves across contemporary styles, ending up on a slow, trancelike Latin jazz. It's a group we'll likely be hearing from in 2008. *** (3 Stars)

01/12/2007 Claire Martin and Jack Massarik

"I'm impressed..this is good stuff...it is deep"
- BBC Radio 3 Jazz Line-up

17/11/2007 Chris Parker (The Vortex Jazz Club)

This self-produced eponymous album by alto player Seb Pipe and his quartet was recorded at the 606 Club in February 2007 and was partly funded by the Musicians' Development Fund.

Pipe lists his musical interests as rooted in 'the African Diaspora, the Balkans and the Far East', and his saxophone teachers include Jean Toussaint, Steve Coleman and Julian Arguelles. The strongest of these influences on the music and playing on this lively, pleasingly varied album is possibly Coleman; the American M-Base pioneer's slippery, endlessly inventive, attractively nervy sound is apparent on many of Pipe's pieces.

Other traces, however, are also discernible: the tricksy speediness of Balkan music and the odd Eastern timbre can occasionally be heard. Overall, though, this is distinctive, highly original quartet music, addressed with musicianly verve and commitment by the agile Pipe and his energetically responsive band ¨ pianist Arthur Lea, bassist Larry Bartley and Brooklyn-born drummer Chris Vatalaro ¨ and as well as showcasing the leader's strengths as both composer and soloist, the album is a great calling card for a fine, vigorously interactive unit.