Latest CD releases reviewed

Action Action Action Blue Note
***

This session with trumpeter Charles Tolliver, vibist Bobby Hutcherson, drummer Billy Higgins and bassist Cecil McBee tends to be overlooked amid the trail-blazing altoist's mid-1960s efforts. Possibly it's because it hasn't quite got that white-hot sense of discovery that characterises many of his other recordings. But it's full of good playing and it lacks neither heat nor thought. The most "outside" playing is on the harmonically open title track, and the rest of the material, which includes a standard, a down home romp and two striking Tolliver pieces, evokes relatively conventional responses. But the solo work is fresh and personal throughout, with Hutcherson outstanding. Ray Comiskey

You Live and Learn (apparently) Lost Marble
**

Keyboardist, composer and alto horn player, Bates is a gifted maverick and perennial pigeonhole-defier. Here, in his first album in six years, he has one of his musical habitats, Human Chain, with another maverick, saxophonist Iain Ballamy, plus a string quartet, singer Josefine Lindstrand, guest soloists Jim Mullen (guitar), David Sanborn (alto) and rapper Nikki Yeoh, and material by himself, Gilbert O'Sullivan, David Bowie and Paul Anka. The results are brimful of ideas, packed with enough wit and cleverness to fill a concert, and put over with enough zest to obscure the feeling that it's like a series of punchlines jostling for attention. Or, to mix metaphors, music as self-absorbed as shadow-boxing, floating like a bee and stinging like a butterfly. www.djangobates.co.uk - Ray Comiskey