Richard Glassby: Travels

On his second recording, Travels, Scottish drummer Richard Glassby makes a giant leap forward from his debut Eclipse (self-produced, 2020), catapulting his take on the post-bop idiom to a whole new level, with a little help from pianist Pete Johnstone, tenor saxophonist Matthew Kilner and bassist Ewan Hastie. While his last album saw the drummer playing things rather safe, at times not quite able to muster the scope of vocabulary necessary to tread these harmonic waters, Travels proves a new sense of refinement, and demonstrates a band which has gained a lot more experience. As a result, there is a heightened sense of freedom and joy in the group's playing and composing.

Take "Here, There, And Everywhere" for example, which, by the way, is not Glassby's take on the Paul McCartney-penned song. Instead, the Glassby-original sees the band navigating folkloric changes with dancing rhythm, hymnal ostinati and joyful major melodies. There are gospel and folk-flashes in the chordal improvisation by Pete Johnstone who takes Fergus McCreadie's place on the piano stool. In comparison to McCreadie, who was a standout on Glassby's debut, Johnstone favors deliberate but patiently constructed improvisations over rapid keyboard maneuvers, inducing each cut with a special air of concentration.

"Backwards" and the title track "Travels" could be considered the album's more traditional swingers, with the band seamlessly shifting from Tin Pan Alley progressions to modal constructions at a tight mid-tempo pace, as Glassby lets the cymbals sing and swing. The title tune is an especially accomplished performance which reveals some McCoy Tyner influence in its modal undercurrent, and finds drums and bass in particularly radiant interplay. Kilner's saxophone cries at the top of its reed in the track's vibrant last third.

What really sets this program apart from Glassby's first leader-statement —beyond the group's high-spirited performance —is the striking compositional inventiveness and versatility, which sees the drummer blending all sorts of jazz strands from the last century with something more primal, more melodically immediate, maybe even more personal. It is there in the main theme of the title piece, as well as in the contemplative subject of the ballad "And Again," delivered on saxophone—and, again, in the folkloric rhythm of "The Path 'A' Head." The latter is an expansive, just under 10-minute long examination of a few-chord vamp which develops into a hard swinger halfway through.

Most of all though, it is there in "Familiar Roads," the album's closer. Overcast with comforting melancholy, a simple melody sits on top of a straight 8-beat, layered into a three-chord cadence. As the song progresses, interplay and intensity increase until they reach a peak with the arrival of a vocal- choir harmonizing in unison (contributed by Fraser McGlynn and The Song Shop), as Johnstone spins a couple of final notes around the progression which, at this point, like a mantra, has acquired a ceremonial character. It is an engaging and emotional finale. If Glassby continues to move forward with these great strides, there is no guessing what he might achieve in future endeavors.

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