Jazz Articles
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Merry Peers: Merry Peers
by Bruce Lindsay
The collective name under which Brad Henkel and Yoshiko Klein operate suggests that the duo's debut release is a record filled with jolly songs about inconsequential things (or that it's a tribute to the Grand Slam winning French tennis professional, Mary Pierce). Whether such intentions are deliberate or not, it takes only a few seconds of “Glad We Did" to make it clear that jollity is thin on the ground, even if some sections of these two lengthy compositions might ...
read moreTom Challenger and Kit Downes: Black Shuck
by Karl Ackermann
The great--and often dark--writer, Neil Gaiman, in his recently published book of short stories titled Trigger Warning tells the tale of the mythical dog-beast--the black shuck--that is to be avoided at night because ..."if you see him--you die.." Well, that's fairly dark and it sets the tone for the third duo outing from Kit Downes and Tom Challenger. Black Shuck follows the pair's Wedding Music (Loop Records, 2014) and Vyamanical (Slip Imprint, 2016). Black Shuck has been issued ...
read moreTom Challenger and Kit Downes: Black Shuck
by Bruce Lindsay
"Atmosphere" is one of those oft-used, hard to pin down, words that music writers are wont to distribute across their outpourings. Sometimes, it's used without qualification--an “atmospheric" piece, a song that has “atmosphere"--much in the way that people speak of having “blood pressure." So when a work such as Tom Challenger and Kit Downes' impressive Black Shuck appears, laden with atmosphere, some further discussion of the term is crucial--especially when the album's own press release refers to it as “dusty ...
read moreKit Downes Tom Challenger: Vyamanikal
by Duncan Heining
This a beautiful and elegiac record but one that is not afraid to walk in the shadows. Other artists have utilised the combination of saxophone and organ--John Surman and Howard Moody's Rain on the Window and Jan Garbarek and Kjell Johnsen's Aftenland spring to mind. However, Kit Downes and Tom Challenger's Vyamanikal is quite different in its approach. This duo of church organ and tenor saxophone focuses less on form and more on the purity of sounds themselves. ...
read moreKit Downes and Tom Challenger: Vyamanikal
by Bruce Lindsay
Five churches, five church organs and a saxophone or two: the instrumentation to be found on Vyamanikal, the British duo of Kit Downes and Tom Challenger's follow-up to Wedding Music (Loop Collective, 2013). Downes (ENEMY, Tricko, Troyka) and Challenger (Brass Mask, Ma, Dice Factory) recorded Vyamanikal during a 2015 residency at Aldeburgh Music. The venue was established by composer Benjamin Britten in the 1960s in a disused Victorian maltings in the Suffolk village of Snape and is now ...
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