The Breakdown
For a musician who puts out an annual album release, pianist, cellist and composer Raffy Bushman manages to keep surprisingly under the muso-radar but you sense that’s just how he likes it. His music is part, yes a significant part, of what he recognises as his whole life. Watching any of the documentary shorts, which he puts together to partner each album (check them out HERE ), and you’ll appreciate what this means. Bushman is an educator, a meditator, a jiu jitsu devotee, a Londoner and simply making it in the traditional music “industry” sense is not what drives him. You get the feeling that in another five years’ time he’ll probably be ten albums in, whatever or whenever, definitely or maybe.
It’s such self-awareness that underpins his latest set of thrilling contemporary post-bop, ‘Here Today Gone Tomorrow’ available now via Bridge The Gap. As Bushman reflects “Five years and five albums into my career, I still need to remind myself that the future comes too quickly if you aren’t able to appreciate the present.” The new mini-album has that unpretentious, taking ‘joy in the moment’ feel about it. Raffy Bushman isn’t trying to be anything but himself while the tunes he and his band present have a clarity and openness about them.
First cut Fitzcarraldo, referencing the Herzog film, has the mood shifting feel of a soundtrack and is energised with that dramatic intent. From Bushman’s teasing latin toned intro, a cool horn croon, walking bass and hesitant beat settles you in, then pow! Brass pumped fanfares, a furious piano-led bop break and full powered big band dynamism drives the tune back to its starting point. That’s a lot happening in a giddy five minutes but arranged and executed so sensitively that the momentum never dips.
As we’ve come to expect from Raffy Bushman this fluency comes in part from his compositional detailing but also in the relationships he instils as a band leader. Significantly several of the players from last year’s ‘Silver Lines’ ensemble return on this new recording, Luke Wynter from Nubiyan Twist on guitar, the Banger Factory’s Theo Erskine on sax and trumpeter Johnny Woodham. This means there’s a continuity binding the ensemble’s sound but balanced with a commitment to maintain freshness. So in comes flautist Arran Kent plus a new rhythm section of Matt Davies (drums), Dwayne Kilvington (percussion) and Alec Huwes on upright bass.
Beats have always been an essential ingredient in Bushman’s music whether drawn from hip hop, jazz, soul, funk or fusion and this new config brings their own distinctive groove-blend to ‘Here Today Gone Tomorrow’. The romping Love Of Mine rolls between sharp jabbing afrobeat, complete with those tight-hugging horns, a smoother R n B swoon and Bushman’s classic jazz ballad piano swirls. As it gears towards a wild carnivalesque stomp you start getting Fonseca like vibes from the ambition of it all.
Elsewhere Nocturne goes shoulder-dipping funky, those characteristic Luke Wynter guitar ticks with Kilvington’s nimble congas simmering nicely while Arran Kent’s flute lifts the horn lines upwards. Over the strut, as so often happens on the album, Bushman’s incisive piano sparkles. For further evidence of such flare there’s the bopping Trap come Broken Beats of Bolo where Bushman picks up the snappy flute melody and rings a perfect rolling, bluesy solo over the gorgeously thick squelch of a bass line.
What comes across from this latest Raffy Bushman communication is a sense that as a composer he is reaching that sweet spot where the influences are more blurred and the music is taking its own path. That gets underlined in the emotional close to ‘Here Today Gone Tomorrow’ with its title track. Nothing is hurried or forced, there’s an affirming natural flow from the tumbling, virtuosic piano opening to the elegant soul-food warmth of the song’s main theme. As Bushman guides the whole band through the beaming melody line then brings things down with his resolving keyboard ripples the album has arrived at exactly where it should be. Wherever Raffy Bushman goes from here, you know it’s likely to be on his terms and that’s more than just fine.
Get your copy of ‘Here Today Gone Tomorrow‘ by Raffy Bushman direct from Bridge The Gap HERE
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