Frank Kimbrough

| Meantime | Newvelle NV001LP

What a way to launch a label dedicated to high-end audio on vinyl! The sound! This is among the best-recorded albums I have ever heard, but not in a clinical way. Turn this up, close your eyes, and the band is in the room, such is the dynamic range, accuracy and richness of the sounds. Despite having assembled a quintet, pianist Frank Kimbrough keeps renditions of the mostly original songs to around five minutes, so they sound like fierce little distillations of ideas. Among the highlights are the quirky title track and the dream-like Elegy for PM, on which Andrew Zimmerman’s tenor saxophone cries softly against the piano, and Chris Van Voorst Van Beest’s bass and RJ Miller’s drums are so minimal and grounded they sound like the earth itself is breathing. which a touch of ambiguity or mystery compounds the interest. Tenor saxophonist Karl Laskowski highlights the ambiguous elements with his dry sound and fine sense for weighting a solo, so evident on the pretty Pop It. The restraint of bassist Brendan Clarke and drummer James Waples deepens the music’s shadows (rather than adding garish colour), and this helps Cody to generate a striking luminosity from the piano’s upper register.