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Ray Russell Quartet

Turn Circle

Vocalion CDSML 8436

As Oliver Lomax points out in his liner notes to this reissue of guitarist Ray Russell's first CBS album (recorded in 1968), distortion and feedback, wah-wah and other special effects were everywhere being applied to guitar playing at the time, courtesy of Jimi Hendrix et al., but Russell (mostly) eschews them.

As those who've witnessed his recent gigs at the Vortex will know, Russell can provide some of the sharpest, neatest runs you're likely to hear, his articulation clean and fleet, his musical imagination always fertile.

On this album, he's joined by one of the UK's most accomplished and versatile bassists, Ron Mathewson, sometime Graham Bond drummer Alan Rushton and pianist Roy Fry, but the focus is very much on Russell, both as absorbing soloist and composer, providing as he does all but two of the album's pieces.

The opener, Wayne Shorter's classic 'Footprints', sets the tone: although it starts in 6/8, it shifts almost imperceptibly into 4/4 during Russell's solo, imbuing the whole with a highly effective rhythmic ambiguity. Such understated subtlety is the band's hallmark, whether they're musing through the odd ballad ('Bonita'), indulging in bouts of free improvisation during the propulsively vigorous original 'Peruvian Triangle', or easing their way through Charles Lloyd's relatively straightforward 'Sombrero Sam'.

Concluding with a richly varied three-piece suite, 'A Day in the Working Life of a Slave of Lower Egypt', which touches all the above bases, this is a fascinating glimpse of a fine musician launching himself, apparently already fully formed, on a career that would later see him perform with the likes of Mike Gibbs, Ian Carr and Gil Evans, not to mention composing for TV ('Bergerac', 'A Bit of a Do' etc.) and playing with touring outfits such as the Four Tops and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.