Flock: Flock

One of the strengths of the alternative jazz scene which has grown in London since around 2016 is the interconnectivity of its players. Everyone knows each other and ad hoc bands constantly come together.

Flock is the latest such conclave and it is something of a supergroup. On this its first album—others are promised—the lineup is reeds player Tamar Osborn, keyboard player Danalogue the Conqueror, pianist Al Macsween, vibraphonist Bex Burch and percussionist Sarathy Korwar (check Additional Personnel below for full details of instruments played).

These musicians are members, and most are leaders, of vanguard bands such as Collocutor, The Comet Is Coming, Vula Viel, Maisha, Upaj Collective and Emanative.

What unites Flock are, first, enthusiasms for musical traditions beyond jazz and, second, the ability to convincingly combine acoustic roots with electronic futurism. There are resonances on the album of Terry Riley's early minimalism, Sun Ra's space jazz, Maghrebi trance music, Javanese tuned-percussion music, Jon Hassell's audio collages, and Tony Scott's 1964 Verve album Music For Zen Meditation (an oxymoronic title if ever there was one, but that's not important right now).

There are ten tracks, some of them epic and wide screen, others close-up and miniaturist, and the prevailing mood is sunny. Motor rhythms pulse through everything, for the most part understated until the closing track. Fresh textures and unusual combinations of instruments succeed one another front of stage. It is hard to tell where composition ends and improvisation starts (but that's not important right now either). The production and mix are clean, spacious and inviting. The result is hugely enjoyable.

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