Recording: The Ryan Driver Sextet

Artist: The Ryan Driver Sextet

Song: Birds in Spring

Recorded at Array Space, January 11, 2014.

The Ryan Driver Sextet - Birds in Spring

Full review to follow. If you've ever looked the window and lost track of time as your daydream thoughts spun pleasantly away from you, then you already know what Ryan Driver's new album is all about. Consisting entirely of songs from the pen of local composer Stephen Parkinson, they tend to be in the lonely boy/falling in love/feeling alright vein of many a standard. The album (a double on wax) also contains ten songs in seventy minutes, so each one has time for his sterling band (including Rob Clutton on double bass, Nick Fraser on drums and Brodie West on alto sax) to stretch out. The live experience is now slightly different than what we hear on the album: not only has the band grown to include new vibraphone textures from Michael Davidson, but Martin Arnold's guitar work pushes against the songs a little more, with touches of gentle distortion more in the foreground. All of these musicians play in groups employing more "outside" approaches to improvisation, so it's interesting to contrast how working within these structures doesn't so much constrain them, but force them to find the means to get the music across within the tunes' languid drift.