Quiet Fire

Quiet Fire is the first Dave Stapleton solo album since Flight in 2012. Hardly inactive, he runs Edition Records, the influential 21st century label he founded. He is also a member of Slowly Rolling Camera, the Cardiff-based trio globally recognized for their unique brand of "jazz hop," which melds modern jazz, trip-hop, and electronic music. His collaborators on Quiet Fire include alto saxophonist Olga Amelchenko, trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer, bassist Jon Goode, Slowly Rolling Camera drummer Elliott Bennett, guitarists Tara Cunningham and Stuart McCallum, and violinist Victoria Stapleton (Astri Strings). The set was mixed by Deri Roberts, who is also a member of Slowly Rolling Camera. The title-track opener marks the albums aesthetic path. Resonant, sometimes distorted chords from Rhodes piano are framed by looped electronics and tight beats via the bassist and drummer. The spacy, lushly textured "What Next" offers a gorgeous piano melody; Molvaers understated trumpet sets out to explore, while snares and kick drums deliver a haunting rhythm as the rest of the instruments and loops are adorned by the frontline players. Following the trumpet solo, Stapleton trades lines with Molvaer. "Portrait Mode" is proggy; it strongly recalls the atmospherics -- if not the music -- of Pink Floyds Dark Side of the Moon, with piano, synth, bass, guitar, and a rolling drum kit. "Music for Evolution" is uptempo with Bennett playing a syncopated junglist rhythm over Stapletons synths and Rhodes. Amelchenko enters and immediately begins trading knotty lines with Stapletons synthesizer and Cunninghams guitar. The track provides a lovely contrast between beat- and loop-based production and the energetic discipline and instincts of a live jazz band. The short piano and reverb interlude "Echo State" intros the gracious, elegant "Character Box," with its pitch-bent Rhodes offering a blues-tinged vamp as synths pulse in the backdrop and McCallums guitar ramps up. The sets true highlight is "When It Rains," which offers a spacy, drifting piano melody while Goodes electric bass and Bennetts dancing snare and tom-toms add heft before an organ slides in, underscoring a lithe, nearly funky vamp atop cinematic electronics and Victoria Stapletons multi-tracked violins; the latter expand the tunes textural and harmonic reaches. Closer "Wave Form" is illustrated by a looped synth vamp, breaking drum kit, and layers of lush Mellotron-esque keys and Rhodes piano, allowing the chord changes to reveal their distorted edges. Quiet Fire is beautifully composed, carefully produced, and cannily mixed. Its sequencing showcases the bands dexterity, restraint, and finesse, and the imagination in Stapletons accessible, gloriously cinematic compositions. ~ Thom Jurek