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Neil Cowley Trio

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This album comes with a faux label giving its genre as 'nujazz' (presumably a nod to the slightly rocky feel that characterises some selections), but aficionados of more conventional piano-jazz trios need not be alarmed: pianist Neil Cowley writes relatively straightforward, jazzy, often simple riff- or motif-based themes, and explores them via forceful, climactic solos packed with displaced rhythmic accents and infused with rattling, percussive energy.

There's even a slow track with brushes. All the compositions, whether catchily melodic hooks, tripping waltz-time melodies, or simple repeated chord sequences funkily dealt with by a fiercely interactive band (bassist Richard Sadler, drummer Evan Jenkins) are Cowley's, but it is the band's overall cohesiveness, their infectious enthusiasm for mutual spark-striking, interspersed with the odd positively grandiloquent climax, that really impresses throughout this highly promising debut album.

What with the likes of Tom Cawley, Zoe Rahman, Robert Mitchell et al. all putting thoroughly contemporary spins on this archetypal jazz subgenre, piano-trio jazz is entering a purple patch in the UK at present.

 

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Degree in Intuition