Chris Higginbottom
Where Land Ends
F-IRE CD 63 ****
Water is there where the land ends, and in this natural element ancient and modern civilisations have always found a way of coming together, a life force. Chris Higginbottom has found his own sense of time and tide with this astute, mature quartet release, a record pooled from discipline, study, and performed here with great skill. The drummer composer has been on quite a journey that a decade ago saw him studying at the New School in New York whose new generation alumni have included Robert Glasper and Bilal. Higginbottom’s career since has seen him return to the UK following a fruitful period in the States, but it’s seven years since he released his album One. More acoustically inclined that debut outing was recorded in America with a band that included the formidable US saxophonist Seamus Blake. On Where Land Ends recorded in London at the same studio as the recent Ivo Neame record Yatra there isn’t a sax in sight, instead the album is characterised initially by the agenda-setting jazz-rock guitar of Mike Outram with former Acoustic Ladyland keyboardist Tom Cawley (who’s on another fine drummer Tom Bancroft’s First Hello to Last Goodbye), and impressive electric bassist Robin Mullarkey.

Listen to Cawley’s part say on ‘The Wide Open’ for an example of some of the light and shade on this six-tracker that thankfully does not burn itself out too quickly, although at times you’re wondering what the musical satnav of the band is set for, as clearly no one wants to give the destination away until you as a listener get there. The blues-rock that in the 1960s, on the London scene at least, jazz-rock learned from and then promptly discarded comes to the fore a little (say on ‘Taters in the Mould’), but there’s no exhausting charging about or retro cul de sacs anywhere to be found on this record even if there is the odd nod to the likes of a classic later jazz-rock behemoth like Return to Forever (in terms of what Cawley is doing) and even Derek Trucks-like Indofusion in the latter part of the record, in the hands of Outram.

Higginbottom knows how to pace things, a bit like Adam Nussbaum plays perhaps, and in his tunes he has come up with some great material for the band that is as strong as say those by drummer/composer Alyn Cosker on his album Lyn’s Une, the last time for me an essentially straightahead UK jazz drummer/composer made such an impact from a compositional point of view clearly pushing outside the core of his style. I don’t want to give the plot away too much, and this album does have a sort of narrative because the track sequencing is well thought-through, but zone in on what’s happening after about six minutes on the epic title track with the quick-as-a-flash bass line, Indo-jazz vignettes and a barnstorming guitar solo.

Stephen Graham
Released on Monday 29 October. Chris Higginbottom plays a F-IRE Festival gig that night with his band at the Pizza Express Jazz Club, London W1.

Chris Higginbottom , pictured top