Samuel Eagles - Summer Noir

Samuel Eagles -
Saxophone

Yesterday (19/06/2013) I was lucky enough to be at the point of creation when Samuel Eagles stepped into Clown's Pocket Studio in Kent to record his debut album. It's too easy to be over dramatic and of course these new tunes have been bubbling away in Eagles' life for sometime and hadn't just materialised as we would like to imagine in our romantic zeal



Ralph Wyld -
Vibraphone

Most Jazz musicians balance a quiet studious demeanour and an on-stage persona. Quite often there is a downtime bon-viveur air about them too that is instantly affable. Samuel Eagles possesses the former attribute in spades, he most  definitely is a thinker and introvert. Whether due to his youthfulness or circumstance I do not know. He doesn't control the stage when leading his quartet and often steps aside to let others take the limelight.





Eric Ford -
Drums

The affection I have for Eagles is a British kind of affair, that of the underdog and unassuming flair but on first hearing the music I am transported to the Continent or at least that taste of Europe that once seemed so exotic to us. 50 Pound Friendship is a case in point, the hints of darkness rest like the deep shadows cast by a southern sun, punctuations. Eagles is conversational but as an eavesdropper in a French New Wave film. If he is going to be one of the autuers of this new romantic sound then it is the space he evokes that will be his signature.

Expecting a spikier introspective sound I was totally switched 180 degrees upon first submersion in this music. It is that type of noir that isn't American in its violence nor Germanic in brooding dark percussion but a has a lightness with its devil may care of the French. Ralph Wyld epitomises this sound on vibraphone and it is easy to cast off your inhibitions and skinny dip in his melodies. Remembering Myself is an exponent of this serious happiness where Saxophone and Vibes ride the melodies together. They flirt in the dabbled shadows of the plane trees, perhaps Spanish this time, with a splash of Gaudi architecture peaking through the heat haze.

Fergus Ireland -
Bass

Ferg Ireland (bass) plays a strong swinging role on The Place I Live and Eric Ford (drums) calls a ripping 'Ferocious' once the track has been completed. He should have yelled 'Yabba Dabba Do' as the tune has more than a hint of 'The Flintstones' theme.

After casting off his trademark cowbell, Ford is the driving force on the Outsider and I get the chance to hear Smells Like Summer before I have to leave the session, apt subject matter as we feel the warmth on this June day. The doors to Derek Nash's studio are open and his wife, Beverley, tends to the their garden as I disappear into the Kent landscape.

What the rest of the session reveals I will have to wait to find out. I am a little tentative because Samuel Eagles is not a natural leader of men but maybe he might just be one of those inspirational figures that lets his creativity do the talking.
By the time this album sees the light of day, nights will be drawing in and Samuel Eagles' taste of Summer Noir will be only refuge for our blue sky optimism.

AL.