Part folk band, part funk outfit, Junction Pool unites a diverse array of instruments, from fiddle to electric guitar; flute and whistles to djembe drums with pipes and brass. Under the direction of ace piano player Harris Playfair, the band welds traditional and contemporary melodies with uplifting grooves and cutting-edge arrangements, resulting in an original and infectious musical experience. Startlingly good music!
Musicians: Harris Playfair: keyboards, grand piano James Thomson: pipes, whistles, vocals Jamie Young: Pipes vocals, acoustic guitar Laura Grime: fiddle, vocal Gillian Payne: flute, vocal Orren Karp: electric guitar, vocal John Riley: bass guitar Ryan Playfair: djembe, percussion Tamir Karp: drums, trumpet Charles Dearness: trumpet Chuck Barton: trumpet Jo Stark: trompbone Chris Payne: alto saxophone Additional trumpet tr 11 Neil Cuthbertson
"Ear-opening volley of musical fire from the rising Borders-based big band, fusing folk with all the juicy bits from jazz and funk, to great effect." - Radio 2 website
"A superior record...a wonderful band" - Michael Marra
Media Reviews
Junction Pool is a mighty reservoir of talent
"Pianist Harris Playfair has earned deserved praise for fostering traditional music at Kelso High School. This folk big band, comprising largely former pupils, raises the bar big time, though. Think bagpipe, fiddle and whistle tunes given something of the harmonic and rhythmical sophistication of La Bottine Souriante, London jazz mavericks Loose Tubes and even Aja-era Steely Dan. The playing exudes crisp vigour and the writing has imagination to spare. Playfair’s own The Piper’s Nightmare is an unbelievable chromatic adventure, dispatched with fabulous brio. If the one vocal track, Kincardine Lads, sounds rather workaday by comparison, that’s only because, instrumentally, Junction Pool is a mighty reservoir of talent."
..an iconoclastic, irreverent, but deeply, rhythmically musical beast.
This big band is a confluence of musical ideas, coming together in the Borders but with French Canadian, Doric bothy, contemporary celtic, New York jazz/funk and psychotic piping roots. Pianist, composer and arranger Harris Playfair and a few former Kelso High School pals are shaping an iconoclastic, irreverent, but deeply, rhythmically musical beast...........Review 19/11/2006
..flies in the face of those who say that folk music is far from a progressive genre.
The aptly titled 'Big Wellie Set' opens the album, a raging opener which manages to dance effortlessly between a multitude of genres whilst still bearing the folk (or folk/rock) standard, it's a Sunday afternoon in Sandy Bells, it's a field full of hippies at a Peatbog Faeries gig, it's radio city music hall, it's Wolfstone, it's... Well, it's what happens when you bring together thirteen of the brightest musical stars on the Scottish Borders music scene and it flies in the face of those who say that folk music is far from a progressive genre.
Harris Playfair's Piano & Keyboards are the glue which holds the album together, though sometimes contradicting all known laws of folk - the Jazz chords, backed by the big band shouldn't work with traditional/traditional style tunes, but they do - beautifully. Orren Karp is described as Junction Pool's very own Jimi Hendrix, and he opens 'Funky Whippets'. For the first minute it's funk through and through, then a fiddle joins the party, and it's folk-funk fusion, the brass comes in and it's jazz-folk-funk, back to funk - and - back to folk - and then it truly is Hendrix at Woodstock.
My favourite track on the album though is 'Kincardine Lads' - though that's because I'm a folkie through and through, and a songster as opposed to a tunester (not that I don't enjoy a good tune though). It's the closest you'll get to a folk standard on the album, but it's still very much Junction Pool.
As you can see, it's very difficult to describe the Junction Pool sound, as each comparison contradicts the last. Suffice to say - Junction Pool's sound is extremely ecclectic, and a very succesfull fusion of genres (it has to be heard to be believed). Great things surely beckon.
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