Purple/Black Vol. 2

Description

This album is a companion to David Preston’s 2023 debut under his own name: a set of recordings that confounded expectations as much as they delighted audiences. He went into the studio with a coherent set of compositions that focused on texture and mood as much as improvisational virtuosity, and a band of front-rank players whose ability to work outside the confines of genre matched his own. The sessions were so productive that they yielded two albums worth of material, of which this is the second. Like its predecessor, Purple/Black Volume 2 combines the unique talents of Kit Downes, Kevin Glasgow and Seb Rochford into an intuitively coherent unit that explores the carefully crafted material in a way that impresses with its focus and control as much as with its spontaneity. The result is an album that combines the directness and accessibility of mainstream popular music forms with the depth and subtlety of jazz.

Where Volume 1 presented a bright, extrovert personality, Volume 2 invites the listener to lean in to the music, the better to enjoy the intricacies that are hidden below the surface. “It’s an invitation to come closer, now that you’ve met us.” Opening tune ‘Ostina’ sets sail onto waves of rippling arpeggios into a harmonic odyssey, the blissful melody gliding across depths of dissonance.

Piano and guitar switch between lead and accompanying roles throughout, notably on ‘Deco’ which provides a simple framework for musical exchange over a buoyantly grooving performance from Rochford. By contrast, ‘When You Were Real’ explores the freedom of the pulseless rhythm. “Kit and Seb are so great at expressing music that way, and making it mean something.”