The second album from versatile Jamie Cullum trumpeter and arranger Rory Simmons’s group with creative young guitarist Chris Montague thickens the textures within a band that was already bridging American downtown jazz, prog-rock and ambient music in sonically intriguing ways. Simmons’s cinematic and conceptual approach (We Drift Meridian was inspired by reflections on oceans and islands) has a broader palette here, with synths and vaporous computer sounds wrapping around the vocals of Emilia Mårtensson and Ed Begley, Montague’s spacey guitar, and his own shapely, clean-toned trumpet lines – new resources that bring a warmer sound than formerly to this bass-less ensemble. Folksy guitar hooks introduce plaintive, Kenny Wheeler-like melodies over pattering electronic percussion; pumping house-like burblings and skidding dissonances underpin Begley’s languid vocals; arrhythmic snare figures badger long horn lines, and Mårtensson’s quiet mellifluousness deepens the set’s sense of space. Simmons makes highly personal music from quite a private place, but this is a big step beyond its predecessor, though still fuelled by his grasp of many contemporary idioms.
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