Storyville | Django Bates (kys), Iain Ballamy (s), Michael Mondesir (b), and Martin France (d) plus the Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra. Rec. 1997

A welcome release that superbly complements last year’s “lost” live Loose Tubes album. It’s also an album that has a significance beyond its splendid content. It features the now infamous take on ‘New York, New York’ which contributed to Bates’ early departure from Polygram. Here though it’s a celebratory calling card: with the winning of the Jazzpar Prize Bates won a recognition long denied him and it set him on the path to his residency at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory where his writing continues to mature while he nurtures a generation of European players. The content here though looks back over the songs of the previous decade – a joyous ‘Armchair March’, a deliriously self-enfolding ‘The Loneliness Of Being Right’ and a riotously swinging title track. Old pals like Ballamy join the party, but it’s the razor sharp discipline of the DRJO, doing their version of Delightful Precipice, that impresses and gave Bates the confidence to realise that, at last, he’d discovered a home from home (as long as they learned how to make a decent cup of tea).

– Andy Robson

This is just one of over 100 CD reviews in Jazzwise Issue #158 – to read them all click here to subscribe and receive a FREE CD...