Callum Allardice: Elementa (Earshift/digital outlets)

We'd hope that Wellington-based guitarist Callum Allardice wouldn't need much of an introduction: he won a number of awards for his compositions (three APRA jazz awards) and his group The Jac have been featured at Elsewhere as was he with his previous album Cinematic Light Orchestra.

There is a fluidity about his style – more correctly styles, his reach is wide – which has reference points in the more restrained fusion players of the Seventies and the enjoyable range of John Scofield who grew up with rock music as just part of the musical landscape worth tapping.

Allardice notes the opener here Stone Eyes was inspired – albeit it secondhand through Mike Moreno's interpretation – of a Radiohead song Glass Eyes (on A Moon Shaped Pool).

What elevates this album isn't just Allardice's compositions and playing but that he is in the company of such fine players who have been mainstays of their jazz generation: pianist 
Luke Sweeting, bassist Thomas Botting and drummer Hikurangi Schaverien-Kaa (who have also appeared at Elsewhere over the years).

Their intuitive mutual understanding is evident on the eight minute-plus title track which seems to deliberately wind down to let another player take over, and that allows you to appreciate the considerable intelligence of each, notably pianist Sweeting who shines again in Odyssey and surely must have an album of his own in the works.

The group revisit the orchestrated Dark Love from Allardice's Cinematic Light Orchestra and allow it to breath a bit more freely and the beautiful tune to be given prominence.

Although this appears under Allardice's name – rightly so as composer here – this is very much an album where the four individual voices come together in a common purpose with sometimes uncommon results.

.

You can hear this album at Spotify here and buy it from Earshift Music here