Description
The Fraser Fifield Trio's new album Slow Stream was recorded as a two-day live session, Fraser plays low whistles, & soprano sax, Graham Stephen (electric guitar & guitar loops), Stuart Ritchie (percussion) Lots of inventive group interaction on mostly Fraser's own compositions. Cutting edge Scots music.
"A tremendous piece of work moving traditional music very swiftly into the 21st century". An Drochaid.
Slow Stream; Snow Angel; Strathspey A93; Before And After; Lament For The Children; Are Polska; Smoke Signals; The Leitrim Fancy; South Of Here; Suite De Larides; Kaval; Fa Wid Wearir In A Wid; Eitnach; Dark Reel.
The SUNDAY HERALD said:
The steadily growing overlap beyween the Scottish folk and jazz scenes has been a rich source of invention in recent years, but even in this context, multi-instrumentalist Fraser Fifield has emerged as one of todays's outstanding talents.
His mastery of the soprano saxophone, compositional gifts and fluency in both traditional and jazz idioms have prompted comparisons with Norwegian legend Jan Garbarek. Fifield, though, is also a brilliant exponent of the low whistle and the Scottish smallpipes. The pipes don't actually feature here, on his second recording - and the first with his now-regular trio, flanked by Stuart Ritchie on drums and Graeme Stephen on electric guitar - but the fertile breadth of technique, traditions and material opened up by this instrumental toolkit resonate through both the writing and delivery.
Most of the tracks are originals, alongside a few thouroughly reinterpreted traditional tunes, but in either vein, Fifield doesn't so much fuse different styles - including jazz, rock, Celtic, Scandinavian and Eastern European elements - as sublimate the need for such distinctions. He's found the ideal musical soulmates, too, in Ritchie and Stephen, whose intelligent sensitive responses to Fifield's dynamic lead round out an album full of excitement and lyricism.