Colin Steele Quartet - Diving for Pearls

The Guardian 60

(Marina Records)

This project – a tribute to an obscure Glaswegian indie band by an equally obscure Edinburgh jazz musician – is an oddly satisfying exercise in wilful Caledonian obscurity. The Pearlfishers, led by David Scott of the BMX Bandits, have been recording dreamy, elegant, adult-oriented pop since the early 90s, pitched somewhere between Brian Wilson, Steely Dan and Prefab Sprout. Colin Steele, the self-taught trumpeter behind his own Scottish-accented modern jazz quintet and jazz-folk outfit Stramash, here dismantles 10 of Scott’s cleverly written songs and reassembles them as glistening modern jazz, his Harmon-muted trumpet turning the melodies into a pleasantly chromatic blur. The Bluebells is transformed into a polyrhythmic piece of Cubop; We’ll Get By becomes a fluttering ballad; while The Vampires of Camelon mutates into a Bacharach-style jazz waltz. It would be fascinating to hear Steele apply this approach to the music of other indie bands, Scottish or otherwise.