Jazz Articles about Stuart McCallum

About Stuart McCallum

Album Review

Acclaimed drummer, composer and producer Richard Spaven has forged a distinctive musical identity by blending jazz, drum and bass, electronica and hip hop. His technical fluency has seen him collaborate with a wide range of artists, including Cinematic Orchestra, Flying Lotus and Loyle Carner. Spaven, initially grounded in big band jazz, was heavily influenced by the London club scene, immersing himself in drum and bass, garage, dubstep and other styles. This has evolved into a singular approach that ...

Album Review

Dave Stapleton: Quiet Fire

Read "Quiet Fire" reviewed by Geno Thackara

by Geno Thackara
March 14, 2026

Fourteen years on from the previous album under his own name, the music world is a different place, and indeed, Dave Stapleton is a very different musician. While his distinct ear for melody is recognizable, this affair is a world away from 2012's Flight (Edition). The pianist's breakthrough-at-the-time solo outing was an ambitious and expansive chamber-jazz affair crossing acoustic combo with string quartet. The feeling here is likewise evocative and picturesque, but on a more introspective and intimate scale.

Album Review

Slowly Rolling Camera: Flow

by Geno Thackara
August 4, 2023

At first glance, it looks like an album they were always destined to make. Natural flow has been one central characteristic of Slowly Rolling Camera since the start. From their beginnings in quasi-trip-hop/jazztronica fusion, through a shift into a picturesque instrumental outfit, they have always been effortlessly fluid and comfortable with a good slow burn. They have seemed to be following a sort of elemental theme as well, with Juniper (Edition, 2018) setting down some earthy roots and Where the ...

Album Review

Stuart McCallum & Mike Walker: The Space Between

Read "The Space Between" reviewed by Vic Albani

by Vic Albani
March 8, 2017

Già piuttosto impegnati con le rispettive formazioni in cui militano attualmente (l'uno con Cinematic Orchestra e Slowly Rolling Camera, l'altro con Impossible Gentlemen e Printmakers), i “due di Manchester" ci riprovano e un paio di anni dopo il precedente Beholden, ripropongono un nuovo CD chitarristico. Parliamo di Stuart McCallum e Mike Walker, amici di vecchia data e tra i più attivi chitarristi nel contemporaneo dell'area jazzistica e para-jazzistica britannica. Momenti pastorali abbelliti da appena accennati archi, cadenzate ...

Album Review

Stuart McCallum & Mike Walker: The Space Between

Read "The Space Between" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
October 22, 2016

The Space Between is the follow-up album to this intriguing guitar duo's first album from 2014, Beholden. Both of these British guitarists, long-time friends hailing from the North West of England (the Greater Manchester area to be precise) probably need no introduction since they've been making waves on the jazz scene and beyond for years. The opener, paradoxically entitled “And Finally" begins with a melody that teasingly almost perverts that most well-known theme from Beethoven's “Ode To Joy." ...

Extended Analysis

Stuart McCallum: City

by Phil Barnes
September 8, 2015

Much of what passes for progressive radio programming, whether that be traditional live to air or internet stations, has been pushed into genre ghettos in recent times--where a record can be enormous within a particular scene but invisible to 99.9% of the world at large. Even in Europe, where the genre constrained formats common in the USA didn't take hold until relatively recently, it feels as if anything that does not fit a mainstream pop template has been farmed out ...

Album Review

Stuart McCallum: Distilled Live

Read "Distilled Live" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
December 19, 2012

Emerging from the interzone inhabited by post-Pat Metheny guitar jazz, electronica, minimalism and ambient, Manchester guitarist Stuart McCallum's music combines the lush, the layered and the looped with real-time emotional engagement and vigor. Made with a large ensemble including acoustic string and woodwind sections alongside the electronica, Distilled Live sounds rather like an orchestrated version of Steve Reich's shimmeringly beautiful “Electric Counterpoint," written for Metheny and recorded by him in 1987 (and also available in a brilliantly articulated concert recording ...