PETER KNIGHT’S GIGSPANNER - Layers Of Ages
Private Label GSCD003
This trio’s second studio album is another remarkably imaginative and eclectic sequence of arrangements, mainly of traditional pieces, centred on Peter Knight’s reedy mellow voice and his sublimely expressive fiddle voice as artistic keystone.
With band companions guitarist and vocalist Roger Flack and percussionist Vincent Salzfaas (djembe, congas and vocals), Peter’s trio again displays its intuitive alchemy in crafting music rich in mood, movement, tempos and texture. Three longer pieces (She Moved Through The Fair, broadside ballad Death And The Lady and Hard Times Of Old England), each exceeding eight minutes, come as mini-suites with movements freely exploring melodies and theatrically dramatising the song stories with that sumptuous fiddle often ranging and soaring over finely consummate rhythmic detail.
Anyone interested in fiddle music should listen to this release. Peter’s classical and improvisational experience is ever apparent in the seemingly exquisite ease with which he uses his instrument to communicate with an effortless elegance and legato accuracy and his command of devices serving to enhance and enrich his fiddle voice, whether hovering, shimmering and lilting with light or evoking menacing dark.
Anyone interested in contemporary music should also listen in. Never clichéd, this group has its own distinctively tight pulse and precision and a markedly collective aplomb that can realise deeply atmospheric and hypnotic qualities. Comfortably embracing a gamut of genres from classical, jazz, world, folk and rock music, they innovatively reanimate, develop and extend traditional music pieces in delightfully intricate and ever melodious ways; entirely captivating on first hearing.
www.gigspanner.com
Kevin T. Ward
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this CD online from The Listening Post The Listening Post is the CD mailorder service of The Living Tradition magazine. This album was reviewed in Issue 108 of The Living Tradition magazine. |