REVIEW: | ||
Mornington Lockett, Etienne Brachet, Mike Gorman | ||
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| Three trite facts: a pick-up band usually takes two or three numbers to settle into the groove, nobody these days can play with the effortless swing of Benny Golson and due to strange licensing laws there’s never time for an encore at the Spin. All three were contradicted last week. Tenor saxophonist Mornington Lockett has played here on other occasions but never before with French drummer Etienne Brachet nor with pianist and organist Dave Gorman. Yet by half way through the first number the band, completed by Raf Mizraki on bass and Pete Oxley guitar, had gelled as if they’d spent the last month on tour. By the end of that first number Mornington Lockett’s soloing had put me in mind of Benny Golson. Not that Lockett sounds like Golson, far from it. But throughout the evening he displayed the same ability to play lightening fast passages with effortless grace and maximum swing building excitement without unnecessary tension or empty phrases. And so, by the end of the evening the audience were so fired up there was no way the band could leave the stage without playing an encore. The tight groove that characterised the music was undoubtedly due in large part to the energetic and responsive playing of guest drummer Etienne Brachet backed up of course by Raf Mizraki on bass and given a funk edge by the work of Mike Gorman on Hammond organ. Brachet has recorded with Oxley in the past and was over in Oxford at the guitarist’s invitation. There was a funk feel to much of the evening with numbers such as Schofield’s Green Tea and Oxley’s fine original Finsbury Park. In their soloing Lockett and Gorman make a great contrast. While the saxophonist moves forward, building and embellishing, Gorman uses the organ sustain to tease out endless reflections and inversions, both players maintaining the drive of the music provided by bass and drums. With two such soloists on the stand Oxley took more of a back seat but his soloing was richly infected by the electricity of the evening. An driving energy which enforced that lawless encore. | |
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