Camouflage

We Say...

Review by Nick Southall

Before saxophonist Pete Wareham’s quartet became the iconoclastic, genre-mashing punk-jazz experimenters who produced 2005’s energetic, funky and aggressive Last Chance Disco and 2006’s bona fide modern electric masterpiece Skinny Grin, they were simply an excellent jazz band. If such things ever are simple.

Camouflage, if you read between the lines, explicitly reveals the source of Acoustic Ladyland’s name — the liner notes claim “music gratefully inspired by J.H.,” and while nothing is outright recognizable to the layman as being a Jimi Hendrix cover, all eight pieces presented are derived one way or another from the legendary guitarist’s milieu.

And so “Routinely Denied (No Return)” is the oddness child of “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)” (retitled thus because that’s what happens to all requests to the Hendrix estate to re-use material) as played by young jazz men in suits, “Little Miss Wingate” is somehow related to “Little Wing” and “Angel” is rearranged as “Nagel.”

Essentially just the sound of four men playing acoustic jazz together live in a room, with none of the electric/studio trickery that pushes their subsequent material wider and deeper into pop/rock/grunge/experimental territories, Camouflage is nonetheless cutting edge. Wareham’s Coltrane-esque playing utilizes multiphonics and hints at the electric-guitar-like squalls he’d produce on subsequent material, while Tom Cawley’s breathtaking piano occasionally spirals deep into avant-garde territory, and Tom Herbert and Seb Roachford’s astonishing rhythm play, particularly Roachford’s occasionally alarming drums, is never less than excellent. A terrific debut by this renowned London jazz band.