Recording of the Week, Lewis Wright - The Colour of Intention

The title of vibraphonist Lewis Wright’s new album, The Colour of Intention, is a classic attempt by a jazz artist to try and put into words exactly what it IS they do when they are on stage improvising. Wright says ‘The Colour of Intention refers to the creative process itself: that in order to express yourself honestly in music, you have to generate clear intentions developed from thoughts and emotions which then colour the work rather than explaining every aspect of it. In the moment of performance, the goal then becomes to put all these previous investigations out of mind and exist in the present.’ You’d be excused for thinking he’s been hitting the Eckhart Tolle (happens to the best of us), but in layman’s terms he’s basically saying ‘don’t get in your own way’ when performing, and in that sense he succeeds, as there’s a marvellous sense of flow to his playing here; he’s got his mojo working. Of course, it helps that he’s got double-bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Marcus Gilmore (check this for impeccable lineage - Gilmore is the grandson of none other than Roy Haynes) providing endlessly nuanced and shifting support throughout, and a lack of showboating on Lewis’s part makes this feel like a real ensemble effort.

Wright came to prominence as a member of Empirical, one of the most interesting UK jazz groups of the past couple of decades, who revived an Eric Dolphy-esque modernism for the 21st century, with Wright’s vibes making an unavoidable connection to the Bobby Hutcherson of Out to Lunch. Although there are echoes of that kind of abstraction on The Colour of Intention (most noticeably on the opening track ‘Mettle’, which has a loping, circular motif reminiscent of Dolphy’s ‘Hat and Beard’), on the whole Wright offers a more lyrical side to his art. There’s a gentle rocking motion on ‘Resolve’ into which Wright incorporates a memorable long-form melody in the opening statement, which then provides plenty of material to build his improvisation around. Throughout the record Wright builds in generous space for Brewer and Gilmore, with frequently dropping out or thinning his textures right back - as on ‘Raise for Z’ which has haunting bowed lines from Brewer, or Gilmore’s intricate shuffle ‘Les Lilas’.

There’s nothing too angular that’s going to offend anyone here, and If it’s not sacrilege to say this, there's a breezy, exotica atmosphere to parts of The Colour of Intention that I thoroughly enjoyed, as if Honalulan Arthur Lyman had added a dash more bebop into his lounge music. At its core Wright has written (alliteration a-go-go!) a set of tunes catchy enough to stand alongside the closer, a romp through Monk’s ‘Brilliant Corners’.

Also worth checking out is Wright's first album for Signum, with pianist Kit Downes