Phil Bancroft: 'Finding Hope (When All Seems Lost)'

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If the New Year is leaving you wanting to find new music, I may have found somewhere for you to start. There is a mesmeric quality to Scottish saxophonist Phil Bancroft's new album: 'Finding Hope (When All Seems Lost)', combining as it does guitarist Graeme Stephen and table master Gyan Singh. This debut album from Bancroft's new trio - The Beautiful Storm - is out now on his own Myriad Streams platform.

Taking influences from a multitude of sources, this is a brilliant album, recorded and mixed in a home studio but with a stunning sound and exciting rhythms and combinations of these three exceptional performers.

Bancroft says: "This album breaks new ground for me, in multiple ways. It comes at the end of fourteen years of study with a new approach to learning and practising, opening up a whole new concept of rhythmic structure, a new approach to composition and improvisation. This is the first album to present these findings to the world.”

During the recording and mixing process, it became clear to Bancroft that the improvised piece Finding Hope (When All Seems Lost) was becoming the pivotal track. “Suddenly, I realised maybe this has to be the title track. Then the question was, ‘Can I call an album Finding Hope at such a difficult time in the world?’ and I concluded that I think I have to!”

With some of these tracks, the insistence of the combination of instruments is genuinely mesmeric. Particularly so on Insect Love: sax, guitar and tabla weave their rhythmic magic in an impressive whole where the musicians seem to come together and separate at will. A guitar solo inspires the sax and they momentarily join before setting off on their own paths. Don't try to follow, but just get swept along by this stunning improvisation that is inspired by Bancroft's compositions. Enjoy Gyan Singh's vocal solo using Konnakol, the vocal language of rhythm used to learn to play the tabla: a truly extraordinary track that floats away into the Scottish distance.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Thank you for this review - I totally agree. This is such a beautiful sound, hopefully there will be much more of it to come! - Fiona Mac
06/01/2025, 16:23

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