Shatner’s Bassoon are back – did they ever really go away? – after causing a favourable stir with Aquatic Ape Privilege two years ago.
Their new album The Self-Titled Album: Shansa Barsnaan is to be released on their own Wasp Millionaire label on 23 September.
What’s there to expect? Well, a bustling proggy punkified “up yours” attitude will shake you out of your easy listening jazz stupor quite possibly judging by early listens. The Bassoon pick up, in their audaciously fractured fashion, where Led Bib or TrioVD left off.
Mischievous free blowing plastered all over squawky breaks for the border where the barbed wire might just catch you on the way over the fence as a sting in the tail, the sound is free improv-friendly in its more acoustic sections but lightly coated with a squeakily tweaked electronic top coat elsewhere.
The core six-piece – saxist Oliver Dover, guitarist Craig Scott, keyboardist Johnny Richards, bass guitarist Michael Bardon & drummers Andrew Lisle and Joost Hendrickx – recorded the album on homeground in Leeds and are joined in generous helpings by the strings of the Botanical Bardon Quartet plus a raucously creepy ‘choir’, populated by Armley Pure Charmers, on theremin-flavoured Zappafied closer ‘Will You Be My Friend?’