After the duos with drummer Moses Boyd and pianist Elliot Galvin, and the modish free impro that in fact had a long pedigree, saxophonist Binker Golding casts farther back, plucking from antecedents – Midwest rock, blues, swing, R&B and mainstream romance – features that announce his versatility and catholicity of taste in band format.
The R&B influence is always there in Golding’s sinewy tenor style, whose phrases often begin with upwardly mobile note flutters that settle into solid simplicity of utterance. The opening track begins with a lingering intro by Billy Adamson on slide guitar, evoking a long glance back to a place and a tradition.
Adamson plays a magisterial solo on Love Me Like A Woman, a blues whose noisily self-indulgent coda is not a patch on the stomping one that ends My Two Dads, a tune bubbled along by drummer Sam Jones. Bassist Daniel Casimir and Jones drive the swinging episode on Howling And Drinking In God’s Own Country, its fidgety tenor theme calmed by pianist Sarah Tandy in an extended solo urged on by a few Jones rimshots, a device one would not normally associate with a Golding performance.
As for detail in the concentrated width of sound achieved by engineer Matt Mysko and mixer Hugh Padgham, one might cite Tandy’s lovely echo-chamber riff that begins and ends ’Til My Heart Stops, and the range of guitar timbres extended on the “feelgood” number With What I Know Now. All ends joyfully with the meditative slow rock-cum-anthem that characterises All Out Of Fairy Tales.
Discography
(Take Me To The) Wide Open Lows; Love Me Like A Woman; My Two Dads; Howling And Drinking In God’s Own Country; ‘Til My Heart Stops; With What I Know Now; All Out Of Fairy Tales (53.58)
Golding (ts); Billy Adamson (g); Sarah Tandy (p); Daniel Casimir (b); Sam Jones (d). London, 12-13 July 2021.
Gearbox Records GB1578CD
