Bonuru - Thin Places (Blue Adventure)

The Slow Music Movement
Aug 13
2 min read

This is album cover for Bonuru's Thin Places LP on the Blue Adventure label. It shows a black and white photo of a silhouetted tree against a bright sun in a cloudy sky in the middle of a grassy field. Text reads "bonuru thin places." The picture has a slightly moody atmosphere.

Ipswich isn't best known for its jazz or even musical heritage - Extreme Noise Terror and (I think) Photek hail from there off the top of my head, but Jacob Marshall-Tierney is out to put this county town on the map with his newly formed Bonuru outfit, which are doing their bit for the UK's fertile, ever morphing jazz scene from the East Anglian flatlands. A guitar playing composer and now bandleader he's marshalled a bunch of solid marines: Alfie Buckley blowing Trumpet, Cameron Scott sliding theTrombone, Flo Redmods handling Saxophone and Flute plus Fabian Marshall-Tierney banging the Drums.

The band Bonuru stand under a brick archway, looking at the camera. The image is in black and white, capturing a calm and confident mood.

The outfit's debut LP dropped at the end of July and has been getting support from all the right heads - Gilles Peterson, Soweto Kinch and plays on BBC Radio 6 & 3 plus Jazz FM, so they must be doing something right. The album plots a fairly sedate, thoughtful and polite course on the whole, with musicians patiently waiting turns or holding hands to nice melodic effect, with a bit of krautfunk bump on, "Calluna" and "Anemoi" freer Ethio-rock tickle thrown in for good measure. It's a solid listen.

The track that jumped out at me though was the album finale, "Flammarion" which launches with the horns in sweet unity repeating a pleasingly restrained refrain that synergises with the repeated minimal guitar motif that acts as the tracks ever present driving force. The horns and flute then take it in turns to give praise for the good things in life, both Redmods & Buckley in particular showing off their chops to great effect as they glide across the six minute duration. It's a fine way for the album to sign off, and heralds the arrival of a new young outfit filled with promise.