Latest alum review. 9/4/15
Song Fwaa
SONS OF NO GUNS FOR WE ARE ANOMALOUS (Fwaa)
★★★★
Musicians are said to “play” music because ultimately it is a game, albeit sometimes a very high-stakes one. Song Fwaa’s Martin Kay (alto saxophone), David Reaston (eight-string guitar) and Jamie Cameron (drums) are gamesters of the highest order. Even when their music is so delicately poignant that it threatens to shred your heart, or is as mesmerising as an incantation (Twice Bitten Once Shy), it is still underpinned by an essential playfulness. At other times the game becomes the focus via compositions containing rhythmic puzzles that they solve with panache and via a mischievous edge of anarchy in the way they interact. Then suddenly you are aware that amid the fun and mayhem they have quietly raised the stakes: between the urgency of the alto, the keyboard-like guitar and the turbulent drums they have arrived at a language all their own, but one that is never foreign to the listener precisely because it is played with infectious abandon. JOHN SHAND