Guitarist Dan Messore hasn’t really stopped for breath since releasing 2012’s first release by Indigo Kid – joining Get the Blessing saxophonist Jake McMurchie in Michelson Morley , playing grunge-folk music in Welsh band Little Arrow, and running a residency at London’s Vortex club devoted to British jazz composers. He writes invitingly songlike tunes to which saxophonists Iain Ballamy (Messore’s former teacher) and Trish Clowes impart an intimately affecting sheen here, and the rhythm-section of former Steeleye Span bassist Tim Harries and Loose Tubes drummer Martin France add both subtlety and force. The scale-like Snow on the Presellis and the dreamy Carpet Boys and The Healing Process reveal Messore’s talent for evoking rural-landscape spaciousness (and also bruised emotions), while the hard-rocking From Nowhere to Our Place or the drum-charged Mr Randall come closer to the trippy sound-textures and sinister percussion undercurrents of Nils Petter Molvaer. Messore is a gifted and accessible composer, and a sophisticated guitar soloist whose jazz roots go deep – Ballamy and Clowes play as if warmly sympathetic to both qualities.
