Paul Dunmall Quintet - ‘Soultime Again’

(Stoney Lane. Album review by Phil Johnson)

Everyone should know that Paul Dunmall is one of the most powerful and expressive saxophonists on the planet. In whatever format he plays, he gives his all. But getting that raw improvisational energy and creativity to work within the written arrangements of a 14-piece big band, however unconventional, would seem like asking a rhino – if you can find one these days – to eat with chopsticks.

It’s not that Dunmall is in any way an incomplete or untutored musician. Quite the contrary. But what he does above all else is improvise, that is to spontaneously compose in the actual time-bound moment of performance, whether making it all up as he goes along or adapting his playing to a pre-existing holding form or theme, often based on his own compositions. This absolutely triumphant live recording from May 2022 takes its essential impetus from the second of these options, a modus operandi decided upon in a previous post-gig meal in a Birmingham balti restaurant when the multi-instrumentalist Percy Pursglove – who plays trumpet superbly on the recording – suggested Paul should record his compositions with a big band and recommended the arranger Ed Puddick.

“Ed and I discussed how to go about this project, and I thought that at the core we must allow the quintet to play freely, with the written music arranged around them, and the band almost like a sixth member of the group”, says Dunmall. The essential concept, indicated in the project’s title of ’Soultime Again’ – and the stroke of genius that makes the music so distinctive and listening to it such a foot-tappingly physical experience – was Dunmall’s decision to look back to his roots as a young saxophonist playing in soul bands: “It goes back to my earliest times on gigs aged 15 playing the music of Otis Redding and the Stax label.”

The soul theme, however, goes further than that. Later in his young career Dunmall lived in Los Angeles and played with both Alice Coltrane and the rhythm and blues and soul star Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson (the Snoop Dogg of his day), whose killer 1976 album ‘Ain’t That A Bitch’ was just about the first recording he played on: quite a curriculum vitae entry for a chap from Worcestershire; in fact for anyone. . 

But the ’Soultime Again’ proof is in the pudding, and both Dunmall, his excellent quintet, and the Conservatoire Big Band play with real passion on a suite of original tunes that channel the raw fervour of gospel, blues and jazz (both early and late) into startling new shapes. You can think of Eric Dolphy with Mingus, or John Gilmore with Sun Ra, or Dunmall himself with Keith Tippett’s Mujician or the Dedication Orchestra. It really is amazing stuff. For the quintet, alongside Pursglove on trumpet, Glen Leach plays piano, Dave Kane, bass, and Miles Levin (son of legendary drummer Tony Levin, of Mujician and much else) on drums. The Big Band sound perfect for what they do, and the album’s artwork is by Dunmall himself.

LINK: Bandcamp

from https://londonjazznews.com