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I knew you knew that

The first time I met Dylan Howe, he was about 15 and looking extremely uncomfortable. His father, distinguished guitarist Steve Howe, had asked me to come over and give the kid a lesson. Dylan’s drums were set up in a small tiled cubicle, minute in space, and deafening in volume, and the poor fellow had to imitate a crab to play anything on the set at all. We moved him out with all possible speed before he became the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The first lesson, then, was never ask a guitarist to recommend a drummer’s rehearsal space! Thus liberated, the young drummer grew and began to fly, and given his hazardous start I’m thrilled to be back some 20 years later, commenting on the recording of a mature and thoughtful band-leader, composer and drummer.

While there are nods towards a more contemporary guitar-based sound with pieces by Scofield and Luiz de Almeldia, Howe’s music is based firmly in the classic two-horns-plus-rhythm sound of the golden age of Hard Bop from the mid 1950’s to the mid 1960’s. The musicians may speak in the language and dialect of an older, possibly more gentle, world, in which the bass drum wasn’t automatically the loudest thing on the record, but it is none the less potent for that. There remains something astonishing about listening to a great group of jazz musicians in mid-flight, akin to the eighth wonder of the world. The intensity for one; the speed of reaction for another. There seems to be no gap between the thought and the sound that appears to express it.

So it is with Dylan’s superb young British group on this, his second recording. The leader himself has a “deep pocket”, as our American friends would say, and they wouldn’t be referring to either his clothing or his bank balance neither of which were in famous condition as I remember on the last occasion we met. They’d be describing a deep, effortless swing that just won’t go away. Try Sam Rivers’ Fuchsia Swing Song or Howe’s own Teeni; the Blakeyish hi-hat on two and four just won’t quit—the star around which all the planets revolve. When I say Dylan speaks with a quiet voice, I mean he is no hurry to impose himself on the music, which he knows as well as any that he exists to serve, rather than the other way around. He luxuriates in the warm, natural sound of his cymbals and his Gretsch drums; not for him the brassy, glassy, louder, higher, faster world of much of today’s jazz. He understands intuitively what the great Billy Higgins used to say; that he’s playing a family of drums, and families work best if the individual members don’t all talk at once.

Chances are that today’s modern drummer-leader also plays piano (Gary Husband, Jack de Johnette ) and writes his socks off ( Bill Stewart, Peter Erskine) , and so it is here. Dylan is duetting with himself on both piano and drums on Unitune. His beautiful Can We Whisper and swinging Teeni rub shoulders with the Sam Rivers standard Fuchsia Swing Song and Woody Shaw’s Beyond All Limits, and prove every bit the rich harmonic vehicles which his fine group of colleagues can get their teeth into. Mature beyond his years, Collins blends well with Edwards to make a front line whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Note particularly Collins’ poise and timbre on the repeat of the melody of Beatrice, and his delicate muted dialogue with Andy Crowdy’s bass on Can We Whisper. Brian Edwards’ slurred opening to Mingus’s Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love is brilliantly evocative of the great Johnny Hodges, but elsewhere, as in Scofield’s I’ll take Les, he opts for a grittier edge. The rhythm section members are well up to the mark and sounding like their own men. Andy Crowdy’s driving swing is established from the off with the unstoppable Fuchsia, while Frank Harrison on piano can be thoughtful and sparse, while comping with unfailing rhythm and accuracy (Fuchsia) , or ferocious as a soloist when he need to be. On Howe’s own Proper Noun, he’s either getting the best out of Dylan or Dylan is getting the best out of him. I don’t mind; either way we get the best.

Despite the best efforts of many commentators, the jazz we know that requires courage, commitment, and dedication just to play at all, let alone at the standard on this CD, refuses to lie down and die. When you want your contribution as a musician to be measured live in performance with your peers, you play jazz. When it is the contribution of your colleagues, on an almost telepathic level, that provides the context which gives meaning to your playing, you are playing jazz. It may be a lousy word, redefined on a weekly basis by the advertising industry, but it’s the only one we’ve got. But if you still don’t know when you are in the presence of it, try asking Dylan Howe. He knows. “This Is It”.

  Bill Bruford, Surrey, U.K.

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