Every once in a while, an album drops into your inbox and isn't going anywhere. Morse Code Through The Lights is just such an album. Incontrovertibly controversial, this won't be everyone's cup of tea, but this one has absolutely, instantly, made it onto my list of top albums of 2024.
Drummer Tom Bancroft and his band Playtime, which began in Edinburgh as Adventures in New Music ten years ago as a weekly session, have produced something delightfully experimental and brilliantly creative. Four of Scotland's most-established jazz musicians - Martin Kershaw (sax), Graeme Stephen (guitar), Mario Caribe (bass) and Tom Bancroft (drums) - tried out new music and new ideas together. Once lockdown struck in 2020, they decided to explore the possibilities of improvising music together online, partly for something to do, and partly because it was something they could do for their audience.
Most of us discovered - or thought we had - that improvising online was difficult or impossible, particularly if it involved a shared pulse, as signals travel over the internet from one musician to the others. Playtime had for six years been doing a proportion of their performances as continuous whole-set improvisations and they quickly discovered that it was possible to do this together despite the inherent delay of audio latency. Inviting guest musicians from further and further afield means that Morse Code Through The Lights includes Laura Jurd (trumpet) Byron Wallen (trumpet), Ernst Reijseger (cello), Denys Baptiste (sax), Satoko Fujii (piano) & Natsuki Tamura (trumpet), Iain Ballamy (sax) and Corey Mwamba (vibes).
Engagingly, the album includes a narration that explains the creative process - don't be tempted to skip tracks!
All the tunes are extraordinary, but something particularly struck me about Syncopatico V3, featuring the sax of Denys Baptiste. There's a hypnotic quality about the sax lines above Playtime's sympathetic and sparse backing. Meanwhile, there's a complexity to the Ernst Reijseger track Looking Right Into The Eyes Mix 2 which creates a sense of mystery that is somehow deeply Scottish and reeks of Edinburgh, even through the bounds of the online recording.
As well as the album itself, there's a kind of anti-Spotify website created by drummer Tom Bancroft's brother which allows access to many more tracks from the sessions. In a brilliant piece of marketing using all that the 21st century internet allows musicians, paying supporters and reviewers of the album can also hear the full continuous sessions, which show in fascinating detail how one idea evolves into the next.
Drummer Tom Bancroft and his band Playtime, which began in Edinburgh as Adventures in New Music ten years ago as a weekly session, have produced something delightfully experimental and brilliantly creative. Four of Scotland's most-established jazz musicians - Martin Kershaw (sax), Graeme Stephen (guitar), Mario Caribe (bass) and Tom Bancroft (drums) - tried out new music and new ideas together. Once lockdown struck in 2020, they decided to explore the possibilities of improvising music together online, partly for something to do, and partly because it was something they could do for their audience.
Most of us discovered - or thought we had - that improvising online was difficult or impossible, particularly if it involved a shared pulse, as signals travel over the internet from one musician to the others. Playtime had for six years been doing a proportion of their performances as continuous whole-set improvisations and they quickly discovered that it was possible to do this together despite the inherent delay of audio latency. Inviting guest musicians from further and further afield means that Morse Code Through The Lights includes Laura Jurd (trumpet) Byron Wallen (trumpet), Ernst Reijseger (cello), Denys Baptiste (sax), Satoko Fujii (piano) & Natsuki Tamura (trumpet), Iain Ballamy (sax) and Corey Mwamba (vibes).
Engagingly, the album includes a narration that explains the creative process - don't be tempted to skip tracks!
All the tunes are extraordinary, but something particularly struck me about Syncopatico V3, featuring the sax of Denys Baptiste. There's a hypnotic quality about the sax lines above Playtime's sympathetic and sparse backing. Meanwhile, there's a complexity to the Ernst Reijseger track Looking Right Into The Eyes Mix 2 which creates a sense of mystery that is somehow deeply Scottish and reeks of Edinburgh, even through the bounds of the online recording.
As well as the album itself, there's a kind of anti-Spotify website created by drummer Tom Bancroft's brother which allows access to many more tracks from the sessions. In a brilliant piece of marketing using all that the 21st century internet allows musicians, paying supporters and reviewers of the album can also hear the full continuous sessions, which show in fascinating detail how one idea evolves into the next.
No-one ever said that great music has to be easy to listen to and Morse Code Through The Lights demands intentional listening: and pays off in spades.
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