Dreamland

Elliot Galvin trio
Dreamland
Chaos Collective ***1/2
Taking its title from an iconic amusement park in Margate pianist Elliot Galvin isn’t content at producing a conventional all-the-fun-of-the fair piano trio album here by any means. Using toy piano as well as piano he is in the company of bassist Tom McCredie and drummer Simon Roth, a trio who have been together for a couple of years and who make their recording debut here. Galvin’s method and style to an extent reminds me a bit of dazzling Polish pianist Marcin Masecki who has made a speciality of deconstruction, in his case, Scarlatti and beyond. And while the raw materials are different deconstruction is still top of the agenda with Galvin’s trio and there’s a dazzling cerebral array of often thunderous and always adventurous improvising routes the gold medal winning student at Trinity Laban is willing to take, from Art Tatum to Cecil Taylor and even into areas Alexander Hawkins at its more arcane might well venture into. Take ‘13’, a piece that delves into the wild soundworld of early free-jazz but also manages to leverage this with sinuous interplay later in a different idiom, all in the space of just over three-and-a-half-minutes. A promising trio debut by a pianist tipped, understandably, for great things.    

Released on 10 March