Partikel - Counteraction

The Guardian 80

(Whirlwind)

The stylistically supple south London outfit Partikel have made plenty of trenchant contemporary jazz simply as a sax-led trio featuring saxophonist/composer Duncan Eagles, but recent expansions to their lineup (fine jazz violinist Benet McLean in 2015, and now the innovative young guitarist Ant Law) have significantly stretched their appeal. Law adds both ambient dreamscapes and rock-riffing rhythmic punch, sound designer Sisi Lu wraps orchestral-electronic tapestries around the pithy acoustic phrasing of Eagles and McLean, and the saxophonist’s clever, rhythmically drum-tight but occasionally impassive compositions often get a newly inviting warmth. Land and Sea’s swaps of swaying and then staccato sax melodies against soaring-seabird electronics confirm the expanded palette, while Law’s gliding improv lines and gleaming sound show what a gamechanger he can be on the folksier Scenes and Sounds. McLean applies both his languidly Stephane Grappelli-like swing and brittle free-improv to the rhythmically capricious title track, and the hard-swung violin/sax exchanges on the New Orleans-inflected Bolden Days are as loose and vivaciously jam-like as anything Partikel have recorded.