The good thing about the Mercury Prize is that there is usually a jazz act up for the award which gives me a chance to expand my horizons. This years nominated act is Scottish pianist Fergus McCreadie (who sounded like a thoroughly nice guy in his piece on BBC6Music this week).
I was unaware of McCreadie before his nomination so I fired up Spotify and gave ‘Forest Floor’ a couple of run throughs before scurrying away to see if he had any vinyl to snaffle up. 10 minutes later I had ordered the album on ‘Raspberry Beret’ coloured vinyl (if they give it a name like that I’m not going to buy it on black vinyl now, am I?!)
I find it really difficult to review jazz records as I’m no jazz aficionado but I know what I like and I like this album. I like it so much that I’ve been listening to McCreadie’s previous album ‘Cairn’ too. After a couple of blasts of that I scurried away again to see if he had that on vinyl too. I’m now waiting for that to arrive on beautiful olive green vinyl.
According to the official blurb on the cover, ‘Forest Floor’ “blends contemporary jazz with Scottish folk music, inspired by the country’s sublime landscapes.” I’ll take their word for it, all I know is that I’ve been listening to this for the last couple of days and it is cracking.
Tracks To Try: ‘’The Unfurrowed Field’, Morning Moon’, ‘Glade’.
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