Strange Courage (****) sees Michelson Morley switch label from F-IRE to Babel for this new very poised and contemplative album. The video above relates to the second track.
It’s two years since the Bristol band first surfaced with Aether Drift, the band instantly much more than a side project for the hit post-jazz Get the Blessing’s sax player Jake McMurchie.
They are now even tighter plugging in the Mike Walker-level artistry of the hugely underrated Dan Messore probably the most original ‘new’ jazz guitarist playing anywhere in Britain today to emerge still waiting for wider discovery beyond the jazz underground.
Saxophonist/leader McMurchie is joined in the M&Ms by bassist Will Harris, Messore, and by Harris’ fellow Moonlight Saving Time bandmate the powerful drummer Mark Whitlam.
Think Food, minimalism, more than a soupçon of electronica... the band not in thrall at all to the machine.
Experimentalists... Messore, above left, Whitlam, Harris & McMurchie