DON RENDELL — Dusk Fire (as Don Rendell-Ian Carr Quintet) (review)

DON RENDELL — Dusk Fire (as Don Rendell-Ian Carr Quintet) album cover Album · 1966 · Post Bop Buy this album from MMA partners
4.5/5 ·
Sean Trane
Dusk Fire is an improvement on the Quintet’s debut album, not just because of the replacement of Purbrook with solo-artiste Michael Garrick (a much better suited pianist for this quintet, IMHO), but Rendell also introduce a flute and a clarinet into the group’s soundscapes. Graced with a much warmer artwork, the album was recorded over two days in the spring of 66 (some 18 months after SoB), and released on the same Columbia UK label, DF benefits from the DR and MG co-leaders’ sense of competition, with Carr slowly burgeoning and pushing from under.

Opening on the rather-traditional and bluesy low-paced Ruth, the album is off to a slow start (despite the track slowly crescendoing), but the flute and muted trumpet add immediately an extra dimension absent in the Quintet’s predecessor. It (DF) takes a giant and dramatic leap forward with the huge Tan Samfu, where Garrick’s enthralling piano challenges the two horn-blowers, with the rhythm section playing as if their lives depended on it. The much-softer and shorter Jubal is quite a contrast, but it’s a fitting rest between two outstanding numbers, in the light of the CD reissue.

The flipside opens up on the challenging Spooks, with the muted trumpet and clarinet soaring over some Garrick’s most eerie piano trills and breaks, and indeed the mood can be a tad spooky. Awesome stuff!! And Garrick’s Prayer piece is just as immense, with Rendell’s clarinet sending chills down your spine, while the piano nails your coffin one day shorter of breath. And what to think of Hot Rod’s 200 MPH’s very own life, firing from all five cylinders? It can only be followed by the closing title track, one that sets fire to the membrane of your speaker and spewing lava into your living room. What a album, man!!!!!!

IMHO, Dusk Fire is a vast improvement and the quintet is planting the seeds of that typical and characteristic English-jazz songwriting that will soon blossom and breakdown the barriers with the rock realm. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not dealing with Collier’s Darius or Tippet’s Dedicated To You albums just yet, but Dusk Fire can indeed be considered one of their grandfather, and almost an older brother of Collier Deep Dark Blue Centre (yup, that good!!). In some ways, I wish that BGO would have coupled the present album with Phase III (rather than the SoB album) but DF is essential enough an album to buy that 2on2 reissue. RUN FOR IT!!!!!
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