DESERTION TRIO WITH JAMIE SAFT

Midtown Tilt 8/10

Levitational jams from the Solar Motel neighbourhood

Connoisseurs of spidery psychedelic guitar jams might just recognise Nick Millevoi’s name as the guitar foil to Chris Forsyth – Lloyd to his Verlaine, or possibly Verlaine to his Lloyd – in the fantastic Solar Motel Band. There’s plenty of Television love apparent in Millevoi’s own project, Desertion Trio, though Midtown Tilt (their second album) goes off on plenty of radical tangents, too. Drummer Kevin Shea brings an octopoidal free-jazz clatter to these gripping instrumentals, while Saft (like Millevoi, a sometime John Zorn sideman) has something of Brian Auger about his organ work. Ultimately, though, the spotlight’s on Millevoi: an incisive, flexible player who can switch from downtown freakouts to, on “Numbers Maker”, the sort of twanging desert motorik workouts that were once the hallmark of Scenic and Pall Mall.