The Gareth Lockrane Big Band – Box of Tricks

This impressive album delivers everything you would want from a top-drawer contemporary big band recording…

Whirlwind Recordings WR4839

Gareth Lockrane (compositions/arrangements, flute, alto & bass flutes, piccolo); Sam Mayne, Mike Chillingworth (alto & soprano saxophone, clarinet); Graeme Blevins & Nadim Teimoori (tenor saxophone, flute); Tom Smith (baritone saxophone, bass clarinet); Tom Walsh, James Davison, Steve Fishwick, Henry Collins (trumpets); Trevor Mires, Mark Nightingale, Olli Martin (trombones); Barry Clements (bass trombone); Ross Stanley (piano, Fender Rhodes, Hammond organ); Mike Outram (guitar); Ryan Trebilcock (acoustic & electric bass); Ian Thomas (drums); Hugh Wilkinson (percussion); Pat Levett (chromatic harmonica on ‘Memories in Widescreen’); Nick Smart (conductor)
Recorded at Livingston Studios, London on 16 May 2023

It has been a while since Gareth Lockrane last recorded his Big Band – eight years in fact since the debut album, Fistfight at the Barndance (2017) – but the release of Box of Tricks has been worth the wait.

This impressive album delivers everything you would want from a top-drawer contemporary big band recording: quality band players and soloists (check!); skilfully crafted compositions and arrangements (check!), the collective power to move and blow you away (check!); pin-point precision (check!); the ability to accelerate to top speeds within seconds, but also the control to come back down again, varying texture and tone (check! check!); and, of course, bucketloads of swing (check!).

Lockrane, much in demand as a flautist with a highly distinctive sound (inspirations include Roland Kirk, James Moody, Hubert Laws and Eric Dolphy), brings nine pulse-quickening original compositions arranged for his 20-piece band, some brand new and others new arrangements of older pieces.

I very much enjoyed the first album, but Box of Tricks comes across as even stronger and more complete. Lockrane’s writing is very cinematic, painting vivid images with sound which feel like themes from imaginary movies. And his arrangements are cleverly nuanced, but at the same time pull no punches, fully harnessing the big band armoury at his disposal. Recorded in a single day, it is all played with a collective energy that clearly shows how much the band members were enjoying themselves. And this studio session is beautifully captured with an immediacy and vibrancy you might associate with live performance, such that I found myself expecting a crowd to erupt at the end of each track.

The opener, ‘All the People’, is a pulsing, swinging number with the band fully engaged, punctuated by Lockrane’s dancing flute, Mark Nightingale’s coursing trombone, and the fine splayed chords of Ross Stanley on Hammond organ. On the title track that follows you get a sense of something special building through a repeated horn refrain and revolving melody that ushers in Mike Outram’s wandering guitar solo and Lockrane’s twisting and ascending flute.

Blasted horns open the racing ‘Dennis Irwin’, named after the American bassist, which builds a bass-propelled and tenor sax-coloured swirling cloud of sound, with Nadim Teimoori and Graeme Blevins whipping up the storm, then dissipating to Steve Fishwick’s trumpet runs over a simmering stew and Lockrane’s piccolo cutting through. ‘Memories in Widescreen’ is quieter, more contemplative, with Tom Walsh’s soulful trumpet tones and Pat Levett’s chromatic harmonica (very Toots-sweet!) collectively building to a gorgeous conclusion.

‘Grooverider’ does exactly what it promises, bringing a propulsive funky backbeat and rising energy to frame Henry Collins’s flighted then singing trumpet calls, Blevins’s intricate tenor statements, and drawing in Outram’s tracing guitar, which gradually applies rising heat. And when the full band punches through it is with anticipation and joy.

With a track titled ‘Leviathan’ you just want the sound to be big, very big; and you are not disappointed. The piece opens with guttural horn blasts sustained over a driving drum and bassline, giving heft and clout, from which Tom Smith’s baritone sax emerges, taken on by Olli Martin’s trombone, then Mike Chillingworth’s alto. The bigness continues to build through repeated brass soundings around which the growing band gathers.

Box of Tricks is an album of rich sonic variety and impact where Lockrane aims high and scores high. Just make sure you turn up the volume for the full effect!