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Carlos Lopez-Real's Mandorla

Carlos Lopez-Real's Mandorla

F-IRE CD25

All the members of saxophonist Carlos Lopez-Real's Mandorla will be relatively familiar to Vortex regulars: guitarist Justin Quinn (Teak Project), bassist Oli Hayhurst (Zoe Rahman, Gilad Atzmon), keyboard player Simon Colam (Theo Travis etc.), drummer Ben Reynolds (Fraud); his guests, trumpeter Tom Arthurs, cellist Ben Davis and singer Fini Bearman, have also played and sung quite frequently at the club.

There is, consequently, a pleasing air of familiarity about this album, despite the fact that it casts its stylistic net pretty widely, embracing everything from the subtly shifting, slippery rhythms of the title track (which tellingly features Quinn on acoustic guitar) and the tastefully restrained but punchy sound of 'JK' (Quinn just as effective on electric guitar) to the dreamily meditative 'Valentine' (a setting of a poem by Carol Ann Duffy, sung with elegant assurance by Bearman) and the absorbing closing Tom Arthur feature 'Fireflies'.

Hayhurst, Colam and Reynolds mesh well throughout, whatever the musical mode, and the album as a whole has a bright, optimistic, fresh feel to it, attributable not only to Lopez-Real's skill and versatility as a composer, but also to his saxophone sound, which while it is used quite sparingly (two pieces, indeed, have no saxophone on them at all), is always cogent, his choice of texture and use of the full dynamic range of his instruments impressive throughout.

He himself says his aim was 'to create an album which takes you on a musical journey, through different textures and colours' – with this recording, his debut as a leader, he has done just that.