Welcome to another Aussie Friday. Last week I received this feedback / request about Aussie Friday from Andrew...
I notice that the Friday Australian selection is very NSW-centric. How about a Victorian for next week?
Which was a bigger challenge than I expected. It turns out the intersection of my knowledge of the Melbourne jazz scene (past and present) and artists with albums on Spotify (a necessary constraint because of the playlist) is vanishingly small.
So I asked my son Oli for suggestions, and he came back with
Do a speedball tune, all guys from Melbourne. Well, actually originally from WA. Their music is the some of the hottest Aussie jazz at the moment.
Oli was fortunate to have all of them but the drummer Daniel as teachers during his jazz degree. I’ve heard several of them play live, but not together as Speedball, so I looked them up.
Speedball formed in Perth in 2000, but found themselves all moving around the globe to take up bigger opportunities. Mat and Sam moved to New York. Grant Windsor moved to London, and Daniel Susnjar to Miami. Then suddenly, within the space of a year, Mat, Sam, Grant and Carl all moved to Melbourne, and Daniel moved back to Perth – hence the name of the album.
So only four fifths of the band live in Melbourne, they have lived all over the globe, and they formed in Perth, but that’s close enough for me Andrew. As Mat Jodrell said about working together with Daniel still living in Perth, but it's close enough to still be able to regularly tour and record. I figure if 3400km is “close enough”, then Speedball qualify as Victorian.
This is a powerhouse album from a powerhouse group. It was nominated for Best Australian Instrumental Jazz Album, and Best Produced Album in the 2018 Bell Awards, and the track Judgement Day won the Bell for Best Australian Jazz Song of the year.
I’ve listened to this album several times now, and I finally decided on Gospel. This is what Roger Mitchell’s review of Speedball’s gig at the 2017 Melbourne International Jazz Festival says about the song:
... Which brings me back to Speedball — not a big band, but so loud at times that in the front row I was tempted to break out the improvised ear plugs. Amid all the swing and spirited power of this quintet, which entertained us for such a long set that nevertheless seemed to flash past, it was drummer Daniel Susnjar’s composition Gospel that stole the show, featuring bowed bass from Sam Anning and an opening piano solo from Grant Windsor in which you could have heard a pin drop, the audience being so rapt.
