Kate and Mike Westbrook are to release their latest album The Serpent Hit on 23 September, followed by a concert at Wilton’s Music Hall in London on 1 October. Originally commissioned by the Delta Saxophone Quartet for voice and four saxophones singer/lyricist Kate Westbrook and her husband pianist/composer Mike Westbrook (pictured), who have been performing together since the mid-1970s, The Serpent Hit features the text and voice of Kate Westbrook and music of Mike Westbrook joined by the quintet of alto saxophonist Chris Biscoe, baritone saxophonist Chris Caldwell, tenor saxophonist Karen Street, soprano/alto saxophonist Andy Tweed, and drummer Simon Pearson.

The new album, featuring a painting by Kate Westbrook on the cover and released on the pair’s label Westbrook Records, was recorded in Sutton earlier this year and produced by Jon Hiseman. Tracks are ‘Throw’, ‘Lob’, ‘Hurl’, ‘Pitch’, ‘Trigger’, and ‘Strike’. Each of the first three tracks is an absorbing meditation on the wanton destruction, respectively, of innocent pleasure in the opener ‘Throw’; art in ‘Lob’; and the environment in ‘Hurl’, Kate Westbrook’s text quoting John Masefield in one telling section. Following an instrumental titled ‘Pitch’, the destruction of the planet is then meditated upon in ‘Trigger’, with the coda ‘Strike’ culminating in these final lines: ‘Man from the apple bites a bit,/And, once again,/The Serpent Hit.”
Look out for a review of the album in marlbank in the autumn