Last year on this page, I reviewed guitarist Stuart McCullum’s last performance for the Manchester Jazz Festival. That performance was in the festival tent, and he was first on the bill with Trio VD and The Golden Age of Steam. Then he was performing solo with laptop and electronics. This year, launching his new album, ‘Distilled’, McCullum had the RNCM Theatre, a string and woodwind section, harp and rhythm section to back him up. Behind him on a huge screen were there projected visuals of Linder (Sterling).
Stuart McCullum is happy to eschew many of the harmonic and rhythmic complexities of what might conventionally be called ‘jazz’. As noted before, McCullum is a virtuoso not only on the guitar but on the laptop, echoplex and loops. This means that the ‘simplicities’ of his music owe a lot to American minimalism and trance. Another important influence on his writing is his time with Cinematic Orchestra, where Jason Swinscoe’s large melodies are often felt in McCullum’s compositions. Sometimes this means that you have sit back and bathe in the block chords and the repetitions rather than concentrate on individual moments.
The evening started with a piece called ‘World’s Beauty’ over which emerged the voice of guru Krishnamurthy. Robert Fripp has tried this kind of thing before and I was reminded of Jocelyn Pook’s use of Robert Oppenheimer’s famous recording of his witnessing of the first atomic explosion. McCullum underpined the speaking voice with compelling repetitions and loving writing for the strings.
The string section on an evening like this must think it is easy money as they are often asked to play little more than four notes per languid bar and the woodwinds had little to do as the evening progressed. In addition, McCullum used the string section on the laptop to fill in quite a lot. There was also a slight sameness to the dynamics of the evening which was a pity. McCullum is a virtuoso guitarist and almost the high point of the evening was a trio between McCullum, the superb Robin Mullarkey on acoustic bass and drummer Dave Walsh. Mullarkey is a session musician who’s played with Zero 7 and his own vituosity added a necessary depth to an evening that might just have seemed a little short on real thrills. There is a peculiarly ‘English’ restraint to McCullum’s writing and occasionally one wishes he would just push the boundaries in ways his great gifts as a player undoubtedly suggest. Still, I bought the album that this gig launched and I’m looking forward to spending time with it.
Ian Pople