Stu Brown - Twisted Toons Vol 2

The Guardian 80

Lickety Splat

Jazz connects, sometimes bizarrely, with most genres of music, and Scottish drummer-composer Stu Brown is fascinated by the musical gags and “rapid fire cut-and-paste” sounds that accompany classic cartoon films. These 17 tracks vary between fairly straight transcriptions and free reworkings of music from soundtracks to Tom and Jerry, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Road Runner etc, minus the crashes, splats and thuds that punctuate the originals. Brown’s ingenuity in arranging all this for just nine musicians is matched by the amazing versatility of the performers, who manage 25 instruments among them – 26 if you include “fart samples”. It takes very good players to make music as hilariously ramshackle as this.