Loop 1010 | Jim Hart (vbs, mba), Ivo Neame (as), Jasper Høiby (b) and Dave Smith (d). Rec. 15-16 December 2008

It is of course invidious and even pernicious to compare bands containing similar personnel but it’s rare that two such dynamic bands – Hart’s Gemini and Neame’s quartet – get to release such strong recordings so closely together. In Neame’s piano-led band, drummer Maddren often lays down a filigree of shapes as a back patterning or as a circumnavigation of the two highly percussive front men. Gemini, however, is more spacious, with Smith very much the high-octane engine room. Neame, on sax in Gemini, is gleefully liberated from all the harmonic infrastructure of his own band and is given his head by Hart to just go out and blow. There’s a wonderful freedom of spirit in his alto that leaves Hart equally free to conjure textures, patterns and effects rather than to take full on “soloing” duties. If Gemini are a little rougher round the edges than Neame’s quartet they also have a wider emotional palette which makes them perhaps more immediately accessible: Neame is positively soulful on ‘Kindred’ which features the warmtoned pulse of Høiby who also swings through the boppish thrust of ‘Crunchy Country’. Each track covers its individual ground, and though you may wish to hear more of Hart himself, Narrada’s ultimate strength lies in its deeply grooved ensemble playing, each player, classically, a part yet apart. An hour’s worth of music which repays much re-listening and presages great things from an impressively questing band.

Andy Robson