Search - percussion, guitars, keyboards, bass flute, bass clarinet), Byron Wallen (trumpet), Nicola Alesini (soprannoo saxophone, bass clarinet), Robert Grey((djembe) Felix Jay (bases :: Cardamom & Coriander

Former music journalist and multi-instrumentalist Jay founded the crossover label Hemetic in 1995 and on this latest recording he is joined by trumpeter Byron Wallen (with whom he collaborated on the 1998 album Acoustic Masks), soprano saxophonist and bass clarinetist Nicola Alesini and, on one track only, the erstwhile Wire drummer Robert Grey on djembe. Apart from the more overt influences of jazz and ambient music, Cardamom & Coriander also fruitfully intersects with the austerity of folk music as well as with a kind of home-grown minimalism. Ever present layers of exotic percussion provide a circular, non-developmental background over which the more dramatic solo lines are superimposed, notably Wallen's utterly transfixing kudu horn solo on 'Calling Agwé' which seems to invoke some long-forgotten ancient rite. Equally entrancing is Alesini's keening soprano sax on the bleak, primordial 'Badunjari' which calls out into the firmament over the hypnotic polyphony of Jay's striking backdrop, or the probing bass clarinet melody that winds its way through the enigmatic soundscape of 'Water drums', rotating around sweeping synth pads, gurgling water sounds, irregular flashes of electric guitar and the rhythmical pattern-making of a solitary drum.

Jazzwise: May 2001