Fly Agaric – In Search of Soma

This London-based jazz quartet, having worked over the years with contemporary luminaries including Oren Marshall and Mor Kabasi, have pooled their talents on In Search of Soma to craft a debut LP that draws upon classic influences (Charles Mingus, Rashaan Roland Kirk) without being in thrall to them. The music’s boisterous, brass-heavy element (courtesy of Zac Gvi’s sax and clarinet) is countered by the kind of intricate piano improvisation, from Francesc Marco, for which Keith Jarrett is known.

In Search of Soma consequently demonstrates a confident grip of jazz orthodoxies, but the LP is also eager to move beyond those realms. Il Niege a Pontault, for example, draws gentle, impressionistic clarinet strokes over a background of shifting accordion washes, in a manner that owes as much to ambient electronica as to jazz. As such pieces illustrate, Fly Agaric understand the distinctive freedom that can be cultivated by scholarly discipline and attentiveness.