DAVID GRUBB – High Rise (Shake‘Um’Dud SUD001)

High RiseTraditional folk meets mood music and jazz with found sound and a few other things in an album I’m still trying to categorise.

David Grubb is a fiddle player and composer, born in Scotland, trained at the Royal Welsh College Of Music And Drama and a citizen of a musical nation that’s pretty much all his own. His debut album High Rise consists of eight original pieces – two of them over ten minutes – with titles inspired by city-scapes; ‘The Climb/86th Floor Jig’ and ‘Bleecker Street/The Busker’ are particularly suggestive of New York.

Take the former of these as an example of the album. It opens with a traditional sounding fiddle tune underpinned with acoustic guitar and piano then breaks into a brief pizzicato section followed by a gentle version of the tune which swells into a full band passage before beginning the second section. In this the melody is introduced and then overtaken by jazz piano and percussion before breaking free again. Finally, a delicate guitar phrase briefly appears before the fiddle achieves supremacy at the end of the piece. And all that in six minutes and three seconds.

David has gathered together a very special band including RWCMD alumni Corben Lee and Katie Lower and guitarist Daniel Whitting – he shares arranging credits with Corben and Whitting – and composer and electronic artist Samuel Barnes. There are also clarinet, whistle and accordion and although there are no lyrics there are six vocalists, heard to greatest effect at the beginning of ‘Milestone’.

The philosophy of the album would appear to reflect that of The Tripp Ensemble, with whom he also performs, in that it aims to bring together disparate elements that would not usually be heard in a single performance. The strength of the approach is that High Rise is never dull because something else will be along in a minute (or even less), but some ideas drop in for a bar or two and disappear without being fully realised, which is a shame. This is David’s album, however, and if I want to hear more of the guitar I’ll have to find something by Daniel Whitting. High Rise still defies categorisation but I’m prepared to say that it’s a brilliant album.

Dai Jeffries

Artist’s website: www.davidgrubb.co.uk