AGE review SK Leon Gettler

ONE out of the box, but even more so. Maybe it is because we don't get to hear trumpeter Scott Tinkler as often since he left Melbourne; maybe it is because this album has been a long time coming. Saying Tinkler has an original style is as much an understatement as saying Uluru is a big rock. He eschews the conventional and you would have to search long to find trumpet played like this anywhere else. It's not just the burnished timbre that can reach a shattering intensity, but the flux of ideas, those extraordinary analogues where sound conveys emotion, where the vast tonal range covers a landscape of unexpected effects that leave you feeling as if you have just shaken hands with an exposed wire. Combined with Adam Armstrong, who seems to extend the possibilities of the bass as a melodic instrument and Simon Barker on drums, this music burns like a blast of lightening. Ideas are offered, then seized and recast as the instrumentalists work off each other, playfully tossing cues back and forth and keep moving, loose and free but digging deep into the beat, until they reach the other side. The passages with Armstrong and Barker alone are an added treat.