Kyle Eastwood
The View From Here
Jazz Village ***1/2
It’s uncanny although not a drummer’s record, The View From Here has that Jazz Messengers feel subtly transformed organically with the passage of time. “The View From Here” could even be an outlook on a pivotal period of jazz history, the Golden Age in the 1950s and 60s, rather than in some literal sense of a landscape or babbling brook. It’s scenic though, with the two Graemes (Blevins and Flowers) on saxophone and trumpet/flugel respectively, Martyn Kane on drums and Andrew McCormack on piano with Eastwood working as one on some pretty melodies. As much a film composer in recent years he’s no slouch at releasing records with his band and at only 44 Eastwood has packed in a great deal in his career so far. I think From There to Here right at the beginning is his best album to date, but this latest one builds on the huge advances made in Songs from the Chateau, and is easily his most mature album. Eastwood isn’t the most showy of bassists, and his instrument is quietly amplified whether on double or electric bass, and often not that demonstrative even on some of the solos he takes. That’s to his credit to an extent leaving the two Graemes as the public face of the album, with the harmonically advanced McCormack taking up the slack when he chooses to let off some steam. But The View From Here is also a classic hard bop quintet record, and not about the individuals as individuals. So in that sense, and perhaps it’s the first time in Eastwood’s jazz work so far, all the elements of his personal musical interests mostly steeped in the golden age of Blue Note records have come together on one set of tunes. ‘Sirocco’ has a perky “unsquare dance” feel to it (one of the most notable tunes, which each of the band had a hand in writing), and the album is also imbued with a link to the winds of the Mediterranean, and to Africa, with some track titles to reinforce these connections. There’s also, characteristically, an air of romance in Eastwood’s writing, and ‘Luxor’, which Eastwood has co-written with McCormack, is a good showcase for the Clifford Brown side of Graeme Flowers to emerge, with a melody that has a gracenote-leading character, before his peach of a solo. An unashamedly retro album that could have been made in the late-1950s or early-1960s, but no worse for this. If you’re an Eastwood fan already you’ll love this. For the unconvinced The View From Here is as good a place as any to start.
Stephen Graham

Released on 25 March