Finn PetersMusic of the Mind Review

The title is to be taken literally. Multi-reedist Peters, a consistently adventurous presence on the UK scene for the past decade or so, returns with a project in which the application of neuroscience, specifically, the Brain Computer Interface software, enables him to "think music into being". In other words, ideas equal sound.

It’s an intriguing concept, especially given that jazz is, perhaps more than any other genre, the thinking man’s music, and certainly there’s a whole lot of cerebral shakin’ goin’ on among the likes of Cecil Taylor or Anthony Braxton, whose work has a decidedly scientific if not mathematical edge. So the big question here is what might Peters have in his head before it is channeled into his music, and is there a concrete sense of a real time connection between the two, of mind mapping sound in some way?

Yes and no. Leader and accompanists – drummer Tom Skinner, percussionist Dave Price, tuba player Oren Marshall and laptop tyro Matthew Yee King – all play a range of parts that sound composed, improvised and maybe conceptualised with the aid of the grey matter decoders, and, for the most part, things gel. The slower, more ambient pieces, often crackling with a kind of roaming computer generated flak, feel like skeletons that may have been fleshed out with on the fly ideas for textures, while some of the up-tempo, funkier workouts have sharp, precise rhythmic structures that lean to anything from lithe, fluid Afrobeat to squelchy, bass-heavy hip hop. They come across as very written. Furthermore, the grainy distortion that Peters applies to his reeds – either wah-wah or electrification a la Eddie Harris – gives the session a distinctly Digital Age feel.

Yet it would be wrong to assume that the object of the exercise here is a kind of free association of zany sonics. In moments of real inspiration, the music comes across as early Arthur Blythe remixed by Sa-Ra Creative Partners, which is as appealing as it sounds. But the whole set also suggests that more could be achieved if the players gigged extensively before new studio dates.