Blue Touch Paper
Drawing Breath
Provocateur ****
Colin Towns is one of the most talented jazz composers and arrangers, particularly within the jazz-rock idiom, to come out of the UK or anywhere for that matter since John McLaughlin, Wayne Shorter, and the late Joe Zawinul’s heyday, with a vision and breadth of influences that encompasses in Towns’ case Zappa, Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Miles, and the intricacies of jazz arranging often in a big band setting particularly with his Mask Orchestra and leading German big bands where he’s in demand. His six-piece Blue Touch Paper’s follow-up to last year’s debut Stand Well Back hones his long established and broad ranging approach in several complementary directions: firstly it’s post-Bitches Brew jazz-rock fusion that doesn’t sound as if it still belongs in the 1970s: no mean feat. Also, on a track such as ‘Isadora’ there’s a sense of the Weimar period, that Kurt Weill strand Towns has deep within his compositional craft and beautifully rendered here. ‘The Joke’ takes this one stage further and straps on a jaggedly anarchic dimension with hugely chromatic abandon and a roughly hewn wonky fervour in the improvising. There’s also a strong theatrical element to Drawing Breath, more so than Stand Well Back, most obviously in a setting on ‘Fair is Foul’, the seventh track here and the album’s most significant achievement, of the occult Act 1, Scene 1 Witches scene from Macbeth complete with the voices of actors.
Blue Touch Paper is an Anglo-German sextet, featuring Towns’ highly individual keyboards style showcasing sampled sounds surging from the top of a powerful band in which he’s joined by Troyka guitarist Chris Montague, the McLaughlin of his generation, electric bassist Edward Maclean, super slick fusion drummer Benny Greb, percussionist Stephan Maass, and Ellington in Anticipation bandleader Mark Lockheart. The latter's solo at the beginning of ‘Heaven’ is one of his most serene solos on record; and it’s just one of the many highlights here, Lockheart's later contribution on ‘Juggling with Strangers’ beautifully Shorter-esque another memorable feature. Towns has clearly found a new seam of inspiration, and with Drawing Breath continues to make a vital contribution to jazz around the world. It’s a tonic for the senses. SG
Released on 14 October