European Union Quartet

The Dark Peak

(O.A.P. Records)

***

Manchester is cosmopolitan for its own European Union Quartet, which is to say that three members of the EUQ are exotic staples of the homegrown scene: guitarist Ulrich Elbracht (Germany), drummer Marek Dorcik (Slovakia) and native-born bassist Gavin Barras. The fourth member, saxophonist Iman Spaargaren, lives in Amsterdam, and is the maverick of the outfit. It's not just geography that gives him an air of displacement, as he crafts lines of surprising shapes with concentrated effort, or approaches a piece from an odd tangent (Zieleroersel). These idiosyncrasies actually make things more interesting. The control and accuracy of Elbracht's guitar, rooted in bop but with surpassing harmonic freedom, is a wonder, and Dorcik and Barras are far from conventional timekeepers. If things sometimes drift - a very European foible - they drift in unusual rhythms and with a rare tunefulness (Mike Butler, M.E.N., CityLife).