Music / Jazz
Review: Safrial, Colston Hall foyer
As with Dakhla, the other band with which saxophonist Sophie Stockham is associated, her newer five-piece outfit Safrial has a strong musical identity. The former blends North African melodic style with a New Orleans second line brass chorale, the latter takes a sparser terrain of contemporary post-rock as its starting point.
The impressive thing with both bands is the way they are evolving their signature sound through composition and it’s great that most of Safrial’s set in the Foyer featured original tunes, some so newly minted they didn’t yet have names.
When three three tunes were announced as ‘This one was written by Matt’ it was not very helpful for a reviewer, of course.
Happily the opener did have a name, bass guitarist Greg Cordez’ ironically picked Last Things Last, and it announced them well: a wistful, stately anthem led by Stockham’s alto twined closely to Jake McMurchies tenor. The tune grew in a nicely controlled way to an assertive climax with a clattering payout by Matt Brown on drums.
Given the style of the band Joe Wilkins was an excellent choice as guitarist, clearly as comfortable with no-wave stabbings as florid Metheny-esque outbursts and acute to the texture of guitar tones. On one (untitled) tune he worked over a bouncy Mariachi bassline, chopping it nicely as Stockham cranked up the tension, before unleashing a sizzling guitar solo that fractured into shards allowing the melody to float through. On another (ditto) he shimmered, Johnny Marr style, while McMurchie’s full-toned sax reined the swampy groove of the melody with restraint.
There was an echo of Dakhla’s Arabism in John Zorn’s ‘Karaim’ but the gritty of bass and guitar took that straight to New York and the final flourish of Lee Morgan’s L’Afrique motored the set to its close with Brown’s drumming finally unleashed in a solo that included some great hi-hat abuse.
They may not have known the names of their tunes but, on this showing, Safrial did know where they were going as a band and it will be very interesting to follow their progress.
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