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Fraud

Fraud

Babel CD-BDV 2766

Anyone who witnessed either their 2006 Cheltenham Festival performance or their more recent gig at the Vortex will have been eagerly anticipating this, Fraud's recording debut.

They don't disappoint; all the ingredients that render their live shows so exhilarating and absorbing are present in spadesful: the grainy, vocalised intensity of James Allsopp's saxophone playing and his more restrained but equally effective bass clarinet work; the roiling, tumbling percussion of the band's two drummers, Tim Giles and Ben Reynolds; the 'wild card' interventions of baritone guitarist (who seems able to switch at will between bass and lead duties) Stian Westerhus; and the extraordinary keyboard textures (ranging from organ to glockenspiel and touching all points between) of Philip Hochstrate.

Judiciously alternating beefy riffs with slow, sinuous grooves and the occasional burst of free jazz, Fraud's music is as much about textural and dynamic variety as about either the tricksy bombast of fusion or the boilingly intense stew of, say, Miles Davis's 1970s bands, but they are skilful and canny enough to be able unaffectedly to draw just enough from all these sources to produce wholly original-sounding music.

This is an album that should have wide appeal; for sheer punch and viscerally affecting energy, Fraud are near unbeatable.