Fluid Architecture

British guitarist and composer Ray Russell has enjoyed a prolific, varied six-decade career. At 15, he joined the John Barry Seven and played on many James Bond soundtracks. He subsequently led an early jazz fusion quartet that released several iconic recordings, then spent decades as a composer, arranger, producer, and session player on thousands of sound library sessions. He worked with Gil Evans, and won awards for his own film and television soundtracks. Fluid Architecture is Russell's first album since 2015's Celestial Squid, an explosive avant octet collaboration with Henry Kaiser. Fluid Architecture was recorded by Russell and Rik Walton, solo and amid a cast of old friends. Its 52 minutes of new material delivers the closest thing we have to a career overview as it touches on the many aesthetic aspects of Russell's musical life, solo and in ensembles.
"Escaping the Six-String Cage" is a ten-minute soundscape comprised of in-studio improvising, ambience, sampled drum and flute loops, as well as a section from Live at the ICA/Retrospective. Russell plays over and around the atmospherics, mating ethereality to thrumming beat consciousness. "Turn Right at Ventura" features a quartet with clarinetist Chris Biscoe, drummer Simon Phillips, bassist George Baldwin, and keyboardist Jim Watson. It journeys from bluesy hard rock to acrobatic, soulful fusion and out jazz, before settling in an uneasy middle ground. On "Endure," a duo with Phillips, Russell plays bass and guitar. It weds a lithe funk vamp to chromatic guitar fills that are restless to break out. Phillips' fat breaks offer a sea change, and Russell delivers a screaming, knotty solo drenched in prismatic blues and psych. The quartet on "We Go Back a Short Way" is comprised of drummer Nic France on drums, Baldwin on bass and Chapman Stick, and Jim Watson on keys. Russell's intro riff engenders post-bop swing from the rhythm section. The guitarist explores North African modalism like it's an action soundtrack motif. He adds drifting chords to decenter the vamp, then solos along edgy chromatic lines. "One for Geoff" is a short acoustic tribute to late keyboardist Geoff Castle, a longtime collaborator and friend. "Six In -- Six Out" begins slowly and tensely before transforming itself into scorching fusion with Biscoe's wailing soprano sax, Phillips' pile-driving kit, and Watson's painterly keys. They create a dynamic textural backdrop for Russell's fragmented, multi-tracked tonalities, ominous chord voicings, and soaring leads. Closer "A Room Within a Room," with Biscoe, drummer Ralph Salmins, and bassist Mo Foster, choogles along a spacy progression rife with sonic EFX and hypnotic riffing. Russell's solo lurches from arpeggiatic jazz to flamenco and Hendrix, while Biscoe's avant tenor playing recalls the snaky free jazz on Yusef Lateef's Live at Pep's. Eventually, they find a progression and explode into meaty exploratory fusion. The diverse musicality on Fluid Architecture doesn't sum up Russell's career. Instead, it reveals the way his past informs his present, and how the moment of creation intuits the future. ~ Thom Jurek