Scott Tinkler Trio

1995-200 Scott Tinkler Trumpet Simon Barker Drums Adam Armstrong Bass

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday December 16, 1996

JOHN CLARE

SCOTT TINKLER: Dance Of Delulian. Origin ORO28.

EVEN your lowly reviewer can yearn for immortality. Not often, it's true - but when Scott Tinkler asked me to write the liner notes for this album, a certain conflict of the vanities was set up.

On the one hand I wanted my name on an album that will be seen in future as one of the main achievements of this period. On the other, I wanted to be the one to bring it to your attention. After all, my only claim to fame is that I was the first by many years to champion, in specialist and mainstream publications, such now-acclaimed local musicians as Bernie McGann, Dale Barlow, Roger Frampton, Chris Abrahams, Lloyd Swanton, Sandy Evans, Warwick Alder, Bob Bertles, the late Charles Munro, Stewart Speer and Keith Barr, and a number of others. Myself and Trevor Graham, that is.

My solution was to waive payment. Tinkler is an important talent as trumpeter and composer, who now steps into the ranks of those listed above. He has recorded twice before, but this is the first to fully reveal the strength of his playing and the depth of his originality. Six tracks feature the sensational trio he has led for the past year or so, and on four tracks the extraordinary multi-reed player Elliot Dalgleish is added on bass clarinet (on one track he plays a duet with Tinkler).

Trumpet, bass and drums is on the face of it a gaunt and rugged combination, and that aspect is exploited here rather than disguised. It is pushed so stringently and powerfully that its superficial limitations are forgotten in the stark forces and the tonal and rhythmic variety that accost the listener. Bassist Adam Armstrong and drummer Simon Barker are voices conversing with Tinkler's trumpet with equal weight and intensity. This is quite an achievement, as Tinkler deploys a unique tone - hard and soft at the same time, as Warwick Alder has described it, brilliant and ringing, but surrounded by a kind of haze of fuming overtones - in perhaps the most forceful trumpet lines we have heard in this country. The fact is that they are important talents, too.

While Tinkler employs a very wide range, including low notes that groan and bark massively in the trombone register, he avoids those high note set-ups that cry out for applause. No names, no pack drill. Rather, he uses his range to execute huge and often distinctive shapes, and sometimes to come jabbering out of the stratosphere when you least expect it, with spine-chilling effect.

When Dalgleish joins in the expansion of sound is practically orchestral. Bass, drums, trumpet, bass, all find additional tonal resources, and new textures appear. On Fregs Logs Dalgleish plays a superb solo, brilliantly alluding to Eric Dolphy and Oliver Nelson but avoiding direct quotation. Recorded sound on all instruments is brilliant. The trio will launch the CD this Wednesday night at Cafe de Lane, Brisbane Street, off Oxford. *

"Dance Of Delulian" Origin recordings 1996

"Sofa King" Origin Recordings 1997

"Shrike Like" Independant 1998