This UK quartet is making its way across Canada this summer with gigs at assorted jazz festival. Check you local programs and, if they are playing, grab your friends that can’t shut up about Mogwai and the others ones that continue to think there were good moments in fusion and take them to see this group. Because both subsets will get their socks rocked right off by the punky filfth of bassist Jim Barr’s dirty whoomps and drummer Clive Deamer’s swinging-but-hard grooves. That this is the rhythm section presently playing behind Portishead and Deamer is Radiohead’s second drummer on its next tour should flicker a few switches. Then add in saxophonist Jake McMurchie and trumpeter Peter Judge blowing weird lines around none other than vocalist Robert Wyatt on “American Meccano” and know that you’ve finally found a CD to play at social functions that all can agree on. This really is an eye-opener of a good time that hearkens back to the days of Pigbag or Bill Bruford’s Earthworks in only good ways.
Grade: A-
At the Venue, June 28, 9 p.m.
