The Gavin Fairhall Lever trio on complex fusions of folk and jazz, Balkan and Celtic, meet to nourish those hungry for proto-prog brain food.

Release Date: 5th February 2025

Label: Self-Released

Format: CD / digital

Yes it does sound a bit like a bit of arcane industrial equipment, a leftover from some redundant mechanical manifest, a groundbreaker in it’s day, but now surplus to digital provision. It isn’t, of course it isn’t, silly, being rather the names of the three individuals who comprise this trio. As ever, the detail belies the who the devil they are, each with a pedigree in that hallowed space where jazz and folk commune.

WHO THEY?

James Gavin is a fiddler, from Northern Ireland, allying his tradition with sufficient insouciance as to turn heads. Tim Fairhall is a master of the upright bass across many settings, to include time with Yasmin Levy. Rounding the three, Adrian Lever sings and plays guitar, the former a precision tenor instrument, the latter awash with classical training, alongside flamenco and Balkan excursions. All these colours cascade into a freeform fusion, unfettered by convention. Cue Louis Balfour?

Strummed guitar and plucked bass together open the album, for Taurus, ahead Gavin sewing a slinky seam of counter rhythmic sonic from his fiddle. A low key start, there is enough going on here to inspire interest. Notes blend and blur in a slow processional, ahead Lever upping the ante with a flurry of notes, tipping Gavin into a rotating crescendo. With Fairhall’s bass growling a bowed pattern, it then all unravels into an interlude of pastoral reverie, before the main theme repeats.

HARKING BACK TO YES

Mam’s Here, up next, opens the vocal selections, showing Lever to have a voice pitched slightly higher than anticipation, with a tone not dissimilar to a slightly harsher Jon Anderson. Or possibly Supertramp’s Roger Hodgson, with his elocution tickled up a little. His guitar play has the knack of evoking, in turns, harp and/or piano, and his vocal phrasing, as well, is a further hark back to Yes. The song sort of goes nowhere, being more a vehicle to offer up this part of their whole. Violin vies with the voice and guitar, an instance where to have abbreviated to fiddle would seem wrong.

Polkas then actually does feel like fiddle, Gavin a rare proponent of being able to coax both out the same instrument. With his compadres providing a comfy rhythmic bed, he extemporises, maintaining the applicable dance step. Fairhall offers boomy and bouncy springboard bass, a Balkan flavour increasingly making itself present. As the space gets crowded, so the tempo jumps the gears, a unison effort that foregoes any stalling. Fired up, next, The Road Not Taken is a slower piece, a contemplative air which breaks into a renaissance theme of paired guitar and bass. A terrific tune and track, my favourite thus far.

YES. AGAIN.

The longest track, where most come in around the five minute plus mark, is Set Sail, which changes tack, opening with a squall of bowed notes and what sounds like a heaving mainframe. Vocals cut in, over eerie fiddle ululations, Lever joined by the guest harmonies of Méabh Ní Breaglaoich. The effect is again akin to early Yes, were banshee fiddle ever part of their arsenal. An additional sound is also present, as Ní Breaglaoich’s concertina segues alongside the fiddle. With rhythm syncopating the changing meter, it all becomes very proto-prog, not least by ever extending the thematic propulsion. Electric baritone guitar, from Lever, squeezes also in, allowing Fairhall to bow his bass into submission.

More Eastern European trends infiltrate Baba’s Bus, which starts with Lever finger picking as Gavin pizzicates. Either it is high note bowed bass, or is it double tracked viola, seep in sideways, this being an instance where a little too much is squashed into the time allotted. The never more Jackie Levenesque entitled Night Sky With Exit Wounds plays it a little straighter, with a sense of foreboding about the slow start. I get a sense of red sky at night, but with the shepherds still up for disappointment. Brimming with melancholy, it breaks for some additional medievalism, a slow dance before dawn, maybe at the court of Henry VIII.

GENESIS, OF ALL THINGS

Maybe second guessing a wakey wakey call, Ness Point is more upbeat and edgy, if only slightly so. With talk of Herring Girls and Stornoway, it is the tip of the Isle of Lewis referenced, with distinct Gaelic fumes captured within the melody, more piano/harp guitar rippling in the wake of the vocal. Possibly staying in the Hebrides, Standing Stone could well be in honour of Callanish, at the other end of the island. With a busy rhythmic drive, this particularly grabs my Celtic heart, and the boys chuck the tune between them with grace and aplomb, not a butter finger in sight. A middle section has them now conjuring up, of all things, early Genesis, Trespass era, with the violin replacing Peter Gabriel’s flute and bowed bass Mike Rutherford’s bass pedals. It then returns to a wilder frenetic revisiting of the original theme.

12 string guitar ushers in Petit Céūse, almost classical by compare, if then with paired bass and fiddle sidling off with a sepentine wriggle. The Genesis mood returns as the 12 string guides the direction away, into a confusing mix of complex and pastoral, fitting where it really shouldn’t, now with jazzy basslines, Fairhall is shining here, running up and down the fretboard. It goes then full pelt gypsy jazz for a finale. Now all I need to know is what a céūse is!

BALKO-CELTIC FUSION

The title track, late in the running, brings yet more bass to appreciate, and more of that Balko-Celtic fusion, switching between one to the other, and moving back again, keeping always one step ahead, before the sun sets slowly, in the East. This leaves only Reprise. Of what, it doesn’t say, but rather than a ruse to catch out the unwary reviewer, failing to keep up, this is more a raggle taggle reprise of the sounds and textures offered thus far, bringing back the concertina of Ní Breaglioach into the mix. Agreeably more loose and ragged than anything before, as if this is how they let their hair down, after the fiece concentration of before. It repeats and fades, repeats and fades.

This is probably music more for the head than for heels to be tapping, and can be quite a demanding listen, needing some of your own concentration, yet is diverting enough as to be not quite the effort that might sound. On occasion the excursions feel a little over-extended, but the opportunity to catch a less structured presentation, as in the closer, nearly makes up for that, especially as other in the set stay just the welcome required. Which way they go, in a live setting, might be anyone’s guess.

Lo and behold, as if forewarned, here is a live version of Standing Stone, my personal highpoint, with thanks to Black Dog Radio for the lift of the vid.

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