Radio Silence - Neil Cowley Trio Album Review

Neil Cowley Trio

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Album Review

I bought 'Displaced', the first album by the Neil Cowley Trio; because it won 2007 BBC Jazz Award for best album and at the age of 42 I thought it was about time I listened to some jazz!

It proved to be a wise move as it's had regular outings ever since, but with 'Radio Silence' this musical threesome have eclipsed even that promising debut.

One of finest things that Cowley does is that no matter how much discordance he layers over his compositions there is always a strong melodic element running through, which stops the tunes floating off into the ether on wispy streams of musical pretension (just like that sentence just has).

There's real emotion and power here, especially on tracks like 'Monoface' with its pounding piano and splashy drums, which is a brave choice for an opener given that it's not an easy listen. There is also great delicacy in the playing, nowhere better than on 'Vice Skating', which builds from slow beginnings to a measured crescendo.

And a sense of fun pervades on tracks like 'Gerald and Hug the Greyhound', although the latter did remind me of the theme from Charlie Brown and all I could think of was Snoopy dancing around his kennel.

The band bares his name, but much of the credit for the finished sound must go to the consummate playing of Richard Sadler on bass and Evan Jenkins on drums; these cats are as tight as a Labour, or Conservative, Chancellor!

Jazz may well be the genre, but this is music that lolls about in your head and gives you a different aural taste every time you choose to dip in and if you're like me you'll want to dip again and again.

Radio Silence by Neil Cowley Trio is released by Hideinside Records is out April 19th.

Adrian Phillips