Reviews for Trio AAB

Caber 027 - 'Stranger Things Happen at C'

John Fordham

Friday February 21, 2003

The Guardian Jazz CD of the Week

"Trio AAB may be one of the numerically smaller manifestations of the upsurge of Scottish jazz energy, but it is also one of the most audacious and spikily engaging. The partnership of the Bancroft brothers on saxes and drums is significant in the local scene's general profile-raising, since the two were founders of Edinburgh's Caber Records. Trio AAB (guitarist Kevin MacKenzie is the third regular member) skids between Scottish folk music, the melancholy defiance of John Coltrane and the sprightly melodic laterality of Ornette Coleman, but has given its music a rootsier feel on this session by admitting Brian Finnegan's flutes and whistles on half the tracks.

The opener (Ant's Milk) is a typical AAB free-jazzy confection of Phil Bancroft's piper's skirl intertwined with Coltrane over MacKenzie's stuttery guitar lines and Tom Bancroft's bristling drumming. But the tracks featuring Finnegan engagingly widen the AAB horizon. MacKenzie is loose and eloquent over whooping wind sounds and hollow, bumpy, Celtic/Latin drumming on Station. Mournfully deliberate sax-jazz crosses jig-like music on Oddity, and mazelike Middle Eastern melody joins them on the zigzagging Yet. A band of real character on the up."

Scotsman CD Review
JAZZ
Trio AAB: Stranger Things Happen At C
Caber Music, £13.99 ****
"TRIO AAB’s third disc marks another significant progression for a key band on the Scottish jazz scene. It contains many of their trademark qualities, including relentlessly inventive soloing, a joyous multiplicity of musical idioms, and a shifting, but always energised, rhythmic pulse.
Saxophonist Phil Bancroft, guitarist Kevin MacKenzie and drummer Tom Bancroft also explore some new avenues, and introduce a guest into the band for the first time. Flautist Brian Finnegan finds his own niche within their prodigious creative energy, and will feature with the trio on the Scottish leg of their Contemporary Music Network tour all this week."

The Times CD reviews 4/3/03
".....but then no one’s managed to make party music in 11/8 time yet.
There are probably those who’ve tried, including the Scottish mavericks Trio AAB. Led by the saxophonist Phil Bancroft, this highly regarded unit also includes guitar and drums but no bass player, and thus takes a freewheeling approach to rhythmic matters.
On Stranger Things Happen at C (Caber) the band create an unlikely but convincing sound world that spans Celtic folk to Ornette Coleman. In aid of the former, Brian Finnegan joins them for half the tracks on flutes or whistles. Trio AAB make quirky music that avoids self-conscious clever-dickery while sounding thoroughly individual."

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Trio AAB 'Stranger Things Happen At C' Caber 027
in JazzWise April 2003.
'Like many others I was a huge fan of Trio AAB's 'Wherever I Lay My Home That's My Hat' with its myriad of knowing references from American minimalism to mock rock by way of Coltrane and ECM - it's subtlety resourcefulness and wit undoubtedly made it one of the strongest releases of 2001. Finding the band in even more exploratory mode 'Stranger Things Happen At C' sees them augmented to a quartet on half of the album's ten tracks an inspired collaboration with the brilliant Co. Armagh flute and whistle player Brian Finnegan (from the band Flook) whom the trio first met at Newcastle's BigFest in the late 90's. Bristling with invention- a palpable quirkiness and a refusal to imitate-the album possesses it's own distinctive voice- a rare thing indeed. Dispensing as ever with both the thick chording of the piano and the bottom end of the bass- the group's core sound - with the addition of Finnegan's high-octane and driving style-has a incredible clarity and edge to it. Idiosyncratic to the last-'Yet' begins in jig-time with sax and flute doubling up on a strangely contoured melody- two minutes in- a fast dissolve - and the listener is suddenly plunged into ambient free fall-as if Stockhausen had suddenly swept into the control room and taken over the control room and taken over proceedings. 'The Clock' - a crepescular- African-inspired meditation-combines finely-wrought melody with equally fine improvisational flourishes (Finnegan's quotation of 'The Butlers of Glen Avenue' sits well here). Guitarist Kevin Mackenzie's melancholic 'Two' - with it's impassioned unison melody outburst at just over the two thirds point- closing this magnificent album on a surprisingly wistful note'

Trio AAB 'Stranger Things Happen At C' Caber 027

Review MOJO April 2003

"This bass-less trio have a light, skittish, quality and a surfeit of characterful wit. The tremendous virtuosity of Phil Bancroft (saxes-sometimes sounding like bagpipes), Kevin Mackenzie (guitars) and Tom Bancroft (drums) is enhanced on half the album by the flutes and whistles of Brian Finnegan helping their rigorous, playful jazz/folk into the most natural sounding of fusions"

Trio AAB 'Stranger Things Happen At C' Caber 027
Jazz Review April 2003
"Fresh from a recent CMN tour of England, Trio AAB try something a little different on this, their third album. Known for post-modernist eclecticism and a puckish sense of humour, their earlier efforts sounded something like Trio Clusone colliding with Frisell/Lovano/Motian, whilst paying homage to Ornette's Prime Time. Their approach is rather more subdued on this release, largely due to the presence on five tracks of Celtic whistler Brian Finnegan. He foregrounds a strand of their music that was always present, if only a little submerged. The disc's lively opener 'Ant's Milk' , played by just the trio, perfectly illustrates that point, taking a folksy Scottish melodic motif, delivered forcefully on tenor, and placing it above a skittering drum 'n bass inspired rhythmic pattern, further adorned by MacKenzie's intricate harmolodic guitar webs. This is what the trio have built their burgeoning reputation on. 'Fin' perhaps gets closest to a true jazz/Celtic folk fusion, with MacKenzie switching to acoustic guitar and Tom Bancroft playing bodhran. Brother Phil's plaintive tenor makes no concessions to the genre, but the result is not dissimilar to some of the best music made by Tim Garland's Lammas. Unlike that group the focus is not exclusively Celtic. "The Clock" is more an african sketch (via Don Cherry) than a product of the Glens, though the similarity in timbre between the Irish whistle and traditional wood flutes is striking. The essential point is that Finnegan sounds at home in the tight knit unit of Trio AAB, and it never sounds like a forced attempt to 'do' some heritage.

'Stranger Things Happen At C' cleverly avoids a wholesale re-run of the trio9s hitherto successful formula. More a sideways step, it wont disappoint existing fans precisely because it is such a logical extension of the trio's longstanding interest in their roots. With a record label that has a goal of documenting jazz particular to it's time and place, the Bancroft brothers succeed again with this CD”

press play to
hear mp3 of
‘The Clock’

press play to hear mp3 of  ‘Yet’