It may not be exactly what he intends to portray, however, Melbourne trumpeter Scott Tinkler has this incredible gift in pushing a horrible drawn out inhuman groan through his instrument. It sounds like a wounded animal, a long distended wail that seems to morph into a more conventional brass sound and suddenly it’s become music. It’s the first track on Tinkler’ debut album of solo trumpet, called Duet for Fingers and Bell End, in which he seems to be playing some kind of musical game, a frenetic hide and seek with the bell, that pushes him headlong into some incredible tones. Backwards is a live album, in the sense that it was recorded in real time without overdubs and effects, in a single four-hour session, totally improvised. It moves through a series of techniques and gestures, keeping a very tenuous hold on music, teasing out texture, pitch and tone, or as his label likes to say, “Exploring the boundaries of music.” Tinkler is a renowned jazz musician, having played with the Australian Art Orchestra and The Paul Grabowsky Quintet as well as having two Arias on his mantle-piece. However, it’s when you have a great musician dedicated to exploring the outer reaches of his instrument that interesting things begin to happen. With just trumpet it’s an incredibly stark record, yet Tinkler does much to utilise the space, his jazz background readily apparent in some of his runs, yet it’s the aforementioned wails that he seems to conjure up from some other place that offer the most interest here. It’s almost like a trumpeter this talented needs to unlearn everything he’ been taught to tap into this intangible place. And he does, music is turned on its head, chopped up, reconfigured, and recontextualised, exploring that fine line between music and sound.
Bob Baker Fish
