Bratoeff is a young French guitarist living in London who
has, in recent years, become a significant figure in the eclectically
creative F-ire Collective movement of multi-genre instrumentalists, singers
and dancers. Between Lines is Bratoeff's second album for F-ire, a headlong
and confident contemporary-bop set in which the guitarist is joined by
Acoustic Ladyland's Pete Wareham on tenor sax and Seb Rochford on drums,
and Tom Mason on upright bass.
The tunes crackle with invention. Wareham adopts a tumultuously fast-moving
Michael Brecker-like sound on the uptempo pieces and an affectingly fragile
one on the ballads. Bratoeff's brittle phrasing and rhythmic energy put
him up there with leading UK guitarists such as Mike Outram, Phil Robson
and Mike Walker. And Seb Rochford's drumming offers new turns in the most
familiar of grooves.
Some of the music has a dreamy Latin-American samba feel; some explores
slow-moving minimalist long-note patterns over ambiguous pulses and then
heats up; some works like a Joe Lovano ballad session; some is like a
whirling Coltrane lament with an early John McLaughlin rhythmic pungency
under it. Some of it is so rhythmically ingenious you'd feel happy just
to let the grooves go on and on. Subtle, spontaneous, informed contemporary
jazz.
