Edition Records EDN1024 
Stan Sulzmann (ts, ss), Jim Hart (vibes, marimba), Kit Downes (p) and Tim Giles (d). Rec. 29-30 April 2010


It’s not often a troupe loses a member as ferociously gifted as Gwilym Simcock and the qualitative impact on its output is negligible. It’s a tribute then to the imaginative power of the pianism of Kit Downes (formerly of Empirical, recently Mercury Prize-nominated in his own right) that Neon’s second disc is at least as engaging as the group’s first – probably more so, indeed, thanks to another change in the ranks. Last time out, on 2006’s From Here to There, Stan Sulzmann and Jim Hart’s elder statesman-meets-young lions outfit was a drummerless trio. This time around they’ve added Tim Giles, so opening up whole new percussive vistas.

One of the biggest treats is hearing the different generations of Britjazzers pushing one another out of their comfort zones. If Sulzmann’s luminous title track, which opens the disc, explores comparatively familiar chamber-jazz territory, nonetheless the pulse provided by Giles whispers insistently of fresh horizons to be further examined on the following tracks. Hart’s ‘Cloak and Dagger’, for instance, begins with clattering, cannonading drums and darkly descending piano chords supplemented by a snaking sax line from Sulzmann that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Fraud album. Exciting stuff.

- Robert Shaw