Edinburgh Jazz Festival review: Hidden Orchestra, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh

By DAVE POLLOCK
Published on 26/07/2012 12:27

ONE of those nights that seemed designed to emphasise the contemporary side of the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival’s roster, this show was a cool crucible of the kind of alternative sounds the city has a fondness for.

With support from Czech producer Floex and his band, the homegrown headliners were in fact graduates of the Edinburgh school themselves, with bandleader, bassist and electronics manipulator Joe Acheson having fronted his own eponymous quartet before pulling this group together from their remains.

A band who deal in precision playing and slow-burn instrumentals, it said much for the Hidden Orchestra that one of the least attention-grabbing things about them was the fact they play with two drummers. Assembled in a horseshoe formation, with Acheson one of the furthest players from the audience, a kit was placed at either end of a special six-piece arrangement that included guest players Phil Cardwell on trumpet and Su-a Lee on cello. The group lived up to their name, those dual drums rattling like rain on the streets, the car horn sirens of a trumpet or a briskly bowed cello in the background adding atmosphere.

From one track that sounded like a funeral march to the slick soul-jazz of new songs Seven Hunters and Spoken, the latter featuring a piercing solo from Cardwell, the music was infused with an understated dynamism. The main set closer Wandering was a highlight, leaving things on such a high that the first few notes of encore Antiphon were greeted with an excited scream from amidst the crowd.

Rating: ****