Malija

“Instinct”

(Edition Records EDN1096)

“Instinct” is the second album from the trio Malija who issued their début recording “The Day I Had Everything” on the Edition label in late 2015.

Malija is one of those collective group monikers that incorporates elements of the names of its individual members. In this case the band is something of a ‘supergroup’, a trio featuring some of the most respected performers on the UK jazz scene in the shapes of Mark Lockheart (reeds), Liam Noble (piano) and Jasper Hoiby (double bass).

The three first worked together on Lockheart’s 2009 Edition Records release “In Deep”, a quintet recording that also featured trumpeter Dave Priseman and drummer Dave Smith. As well as leading his own projects and acquiring a reputation as a brilliant jazz educator Lockheart is also a member of two of the most seminal UK groups of recent times, Loose Tubes and Polar Bear. He was also a co-founder of the eclectic and consistently engaging quartet Perfect Houseplants who recently performed a sell out reunion gig at the Vortex as part of the 2015 EFG London Jazz Festival.

Born in Denmark but based for a long time in London Hoiby is most closely identified with his leadership Phronesis, the phenomenally successful Anglo-Scandinavian trio featuring pianist Ivo Neame and drummer Anton Eger. He has also performed with vibraphonist Jim Hart, vocalist Julia Biel and as a member of saxophonist Adam Waldmann’s Kairos 4tet. More recently he has formed a new quintet, Fellow Creatures, that features Lockheart on saxophones alongside trumpeter Laura Jurd, pianist Will Barry and drummer Corrie Dick.

The chameleon like Noble is less closely identified with specific bands than his two illustrious colleagues. A highly versatile performer he has recorded in a variety of instrumental configurations including two solo piano albums “Close Your Eyes” (1994) and the more recent “A Room Somewhere” which was released in 2015 to great critical acclaim. Others with whom Noble has recorded include saxophonists Julian Siegel, Ingrid Laubrock, Chris Biscoe, Tim Whitehead, Stan Sulzmann and Zhenya Strigalev, guitarist Phil Robson and drummer Tom Rainey. Noble also has a long established trio featuring bassist Dave Whitford and drummer Dave Wickins, this line up releasing the album “Brubeck” in 2009. Noble has also appeared on disc with Pigfoot, the band led by former Loose Tubes trumpeter Chris Batchelor. Yet to be documented on record is Noble’s superb Brother Face quintet featuring Batchelor, Whitford, Wickins and multi reed player Shabaka Hutchings. A highly busy musician and another acclaimed educator Noble has performed with many other jazz luminaries from both sides of the Atlantic in a variety of styles ranging from mainstream to free via the ‘punk trad’ of Pigfoot.

“The Day I Had Everything” revealed Malija to be a highly democratic unit with composing duties shared just about equally between the members of the trio. The same approach applies to “Instinct” with Lockheart contributing four tunes and Hoiby and Noble three each.

The début also revealed that despite the drummer-less line up Malija was a chamber jazz group with “balls” and with plenty of  plenty of harmonic, rhythmic and improvisatory gristle about their music, 
These qualities are in evidence again on “Instinct” with Lockheart speaking of the “wonderful intuitive connection” between the members of the trio that “sparks a higher level of interplay and communication”. Meanwhile Hoiby describes the group’s music as being “weird, simple, complicated, free, tight, floaty, ugly, beautiful and heartfelt – depending on your mood”.

The album commences with Lockheart’s brief but elegant “Kindred Spirit”, an apt title and a piece that seems to function as a kind of overture for the rest of the album.

The real nitty gritty begins with Noble’s intensely rhythmic “TV Shoes” with its vigorous left hand piano rhythms and yearning sax melodies. Hoiby’s bass gains greater ascendancy as the piece progresses and temporarily assumes the lead mid tune. There are moments of prettiness, but this is ‘chamber jazz’ at its most robust and rigorous – although it’s somewhat ironic that the piece fades out just when it sounds as if the trio may be about to divert into more uncompromising free jazz territory.

Hoiby makes his compositional bow with “Hung Up” which is centred around a recurring rhythmic motif, shared between piano and bass. This acts as the fulcrum for Lockheart’s airy tenor sax extemporisations while Hoiby subsequently holds the rhythmic fort as Noble is given license to wander with a concise piano solo. The roles are reversed towards the end of the piece with Hoiby allowing himself a greater degree of freedom.

Lockheart’s “A Wing And A Prayer” commences with a passage of unaccompanied tenor saxophone from which develops the rhythmic / melodic hook around which the subsequent musical conversation is centred. Noble’s piano temporarily assumes the lead before Lockheart takes the opportunity to stretch out further on tenor. But Malija isn’t about jazz solos per se, it’s more about musical discussion and interaction, the focus shifting from one instrumental voice to another, as in any human conversation.

Noble’s “Moon Stairs” offers a variant to those voices with Lockheart switching to soprano and Hoiby alternating between arco and pizzicato techniques on an evocative piece that accurately evokes up images of tentatively climbing a flight of moonlit stairs.

Like much of Malija’s music Hoiby’s attractively melodic “Mila”, which again features Lockheart on soprano, borrows readily from folk and world music sources. The legacy of Perfect Houseplants lives on in Malija’s work. Hoiby’s piece scores highly in terms of both melodic content and dynamic variation. It’s an arresting and evocative piece of work.

Solo piano introduces Noble’s “Panda Feathers” and it’s the composer’s playing that acts as the bedrock of the performance as Lockheart’s tenor dances airily around the pianist’s rhythmic configurations.

Lockheart’s gently brooding, melancholic “Sanctuary” is one of the album’s most distinctive pieces and features Hoiby again performing both with and without the bow. The bassist’s slow paced, melodic, and deeply resonant pizzicato solo is supremely evocative, as is the breathy whisper of the composer’s tenor. This is a piece that wouldn’t sound out of place on an ECM recording.

Also by Lockheart “Elegantly Posh” presents a more playful side of the trio with its jaunty left hand piano figures and ebullient tenor sax melodies.

The album concludes with Hoiby’s “Spaced Out”, again presenting a lighter side of the band with the composer allowing his plucked bass to come to the fore alongside Lockheart’s breezy tenor sax.

Inevitably this second album lacks something of the impact of the trio’s début and the reviews this time around have been somewhat mixed. The trio’s admirers have been less fulsome with their praise while Nick Hasted, writing for Jazzwise, offered a particularly scathing review, citing a lack of dynamism in the trio’s music making. I’ll admit that I sometimes miss the presence of a drum kit and it’s true that Malija’s albums can initially appear a little one paced but this is music that demands a little work from the listener. Although superficially pretty the real substance of Malija’s music often lies just below the surface. “Instinct” is an album whose secrets and subtleties become more and more apparent on subsequent listenings.

 

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