Sutton Coldfield Festival of Arts

• Venue: The Gate Inn

THE GATE INN, SUNDAY JULY 13, 4pm

The quiet village of Marston on the outskirts of Sutton Coldfield is the backdrop to one of the finest CDs ever to have been released by a local performer.

Mike Gates, who lives there, has come up with the home-recorded gem Resistance To The Passage Of Sound, in league with Brum saxophone ace, Ninja Tune and Soul Jazz recording star Chris Bowden.
The pair have teamed up with percussionist Andy Wheeler under the collective name Scorched Earth for the folk-jazz oriented disc, which well and truly transcends the early comparisons made between Gates and the seemingly omnipresent Nick Drake.

True, Gates shares a sort of poetic yearning with the late hero, who also lived in rural Warwickshire - something in the air, perhaps.

But he has added something grittier and darker to this recording, with Bowden supplying some arrangements full of melancholy, aching beauty, empty spaces and warm textures.
Opener Out Of The Darkness (Parts 1 & 2) - the titles are nothing if not weighty - sets the tone for this set which, Coltrane-like, seems forever to be questing for eternal truths, and which soon earns the right to be taken seriously.

Gates delivers this acoustic guitar-led meander with a Mark Hollis-style vocal, and those who enjoyed Talk Talk’s more accessible experiments will soon latch on to this, the musical equivalent of a glorious autumn walk in the park.

Track two Colours echoes Gershwin’s Summertime but adds some extra hues and a different melody, while Gates and Bowden do their best Pat Metheny-Michael Brecker link-up on the instrumental Seven Four.
Where Did All The Bebop Go? finds Gates getting all worked up, Roy Harper-style, while the epic Wait begins like a Devendra Banhart ballad before Bowden hints at Paul Desmond and Dave Brubeck’s Take Five, then Gates takes it out with a waltz reminiscent of Ennio Morricone.

Sometimes Flowers Live Longer is a psychedelic folk-pop song distinguished by Bowden’s dramatic ascending chords on what sounds like a Mellotron.

The beautiful Tibetan Folk Song echoes the sentiments of All You Need Is Love, albeit setting itself against China’s oppressive foreign policy.

The meditational, reflective and gorgeously melodic approach continues with Golden Leaves and Lipcurl, the quirky instrumental If Brad Mehldau Could Sing providing some unlikely Indian flavours, before the tender Matters brings the album to a close.

It would have been nice to hear a real string section on some of the tracks rather than the keyboard equivalent employed here, but that’s just being picky.

This is a multi-faceted set, with lovely sleeve artwork deliberately recalling the covers of the kinds of early 70s British jazz-rock LPs that DJ Gilles Peterson has been heavily plugging of late.

Gates (right) is pictured with Chris Bowden.

Visit www.rehabrecords.co.uk