LEDLEY by LEDLEY

Exploratory taps, scurrying clatters of industrial acoustics: the musician's fingers finding their positions. Electronic howls like Dylan's ghosts of electricity, snaking brass, quickening staccato pulses and we surge into the engineered space of the record. Raph's cinematic trombone splutters, low, swampy, almost menacing, whilst Chris's alto saxophone weaves in and out, establishing recurring motifs as he probes & questions in searching conversation.

Woven as two long-form sides of music, these individually titled pieces present a narrative thematic arc: an absorbing psycho- geographical North London jazz suite on the chronology of musicians Raph & Chris's long friendship, season tickets & shared passionate love for a football club. An instrumental record populated with many voices, Raph, Chris & the electronics of vital third voice Riaan Vosloo act as conduits for a storied, moving & curious soundscape. Riaan's voice weaves through like Lordship Lane & Seven Sisters Road run through North London boroughs to Tottenham High Road.

Tensions abound: towering saxophone & trombone rumbles, dissonance & light, spectral electronic shimmers underneath foreboding brass. And of course, we have the band's namesake, Tottenham Hotspur and hero player Ledley King at the centre. An album then that sits in the rich, though particular, company of Mogwai's 2006 film score for the portrait of French footballer Zinedine Zidane and Will Gregory's Moog Ensemble orchestration for a film study of Tim Henman. However, though track titles draw King into the narrative arc, this is less character study of a totemic sporting figure than explorations of where it takes us – ritual, friendship, commitment, glory & struggle, pride in place & one's roots; a dense meditation on what forms & shapes community.

For me, the album's emotional high-points are similarly located in each half: two thirds into side A, Away Days arrives in a landscape of monochrome synth wash; long, processed trombone fades in and dissolves out with the soaring, suspended elegance of melodic alto lines that recall Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen, who has himself explored places of worship & loss. Melodic lines underpinned by shimmering electronics & stately trombone. Halfway through Side B, omnipresent electron- ics like the cold, glacial movements of tundra field recordings or the 90s urban ambient explorations of Biosphere & Higher Intelligence Agency, give way to saxophone & trombone that dance in fading afternoon light. We hear the swinging street music of London township jazz, evoking rehearsal rooms, schools, big bands & community celebrations. It locates Ledley's voice in the lineage of jazz music's integral position in the city's evolving identity and social history. Here, saxophone and trombone bring light and colour to grey match day streets with a knowing nostalgic air and nod towards the football terraces of old.

This is a powerfully rooted record of place and memory, from specific locations to the in-the-room intimacy & trust of improvising musicians. Moments of joy & uplift counterpoint suspended & unresolved tensions. At the close, we hear distant sirens in a fog of anticipatory synth bubbles: a final reminder of the intertextuality of sound, a relationship & story that is always more than simply the music presented.

Benny Dart