Laura Jurd/Dinosaur - Wonder Trail

The Guardian 80

(Edition)

In 2017, the UK trumpeter/composer Laura Jurd and Dinosaur’s Together, As One was Mercury-nominated for its captivating balance of Miles Davis trumpet poignancy, Celtic folk music, and Django Batesian capriciousness. Typically, Jurd has opened another door for the follow-up rather than revisiting a winning formula. Wonder Trail is an invitation to her sure-footed and adaptable Dinosaur quartet to explore what a contemporary jazz take on 1980s synthpop might sound like. Jurd’s trumpet still takes centre stage, sometimes in cryptic Miles-like asides, sometimes in eerie tremors suggestive of Arve Henriksen or the microtonalism of north African music. But pianist Elliot Galvin plays old-school synthesisers throughout, there are a couple of quietly confiding vocals, and bassist Conor Chaplin and drummer Corrie Dick deal in floorshaking fuzz tones and earthquake rumblings, as well as attentive restraint. Renewal, Part 1 bursts open as an orchestral-electronic tidal wave before developing as an acoustic trumpet break of patiently spun trills and percussively prodding phrases. Quiet Thunder is a soft unison melody for keys and brass that anthemically swells in skidding synth sounds, while Shine Your Light is hymnally spacious (with Jurd, as she often does on slow music, recalling the Miles Davis of In a Silent Way). Old Times’ Sake is a perky folk dance, Swimming a quirkily resolved ballad that becomes a Ghostbusters-like gallop, and And Still We Wonder contains a softly-rapturous vocal. The tighter grooves of this music seem occasionally to cramp Jurd’s improv freedom by comparison with Together, As One, and the inventive Galvin is mostly a scenery changer for kaleidoscopic electronic backdrops. But Wonder Trail advances Jurd’s beguiling story, as a fitting present for the ambitious Edition label’s 10th birthday, and an invitation to new friends beyond the jazz loop.