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