Review: Number Junky at Ellington Jazz Club

Number Junky’s Birak album launch at Ellington Jazz Club
w/ Jamie Oehlers
Tuesday, November 26, 2024

Progressive jazz trio Number Junky launched their second album, Birak, at the Ellington on Tuesday night. With special guest saxophonist Jamie Oehlers, they worked their way through the album’s nine tunes then ended with their signature piece, The Elf from their 2022 release, Earth Matters.

The trio, led by Danish guitarist Kristian Borring, with Zac Grafton (double bass) and Pete Evans (kit/percussion), was formed in 2019. In the five years since, they have built a solid profile around Perth, regional WA and interstate. The players themselves are among Perth’s most highly sought-after sidemen, featuring individually and together in many of the merry-go-round of ensembles that constitute the jazz scene here. There is pure magic though when the three of them get together to play Borring’s startling and sophisticated original material.

Kristian Borring is the real deal. Born in Faaborg in the south of Denmark, he gained his bachelor’s degree in jazz guitar from the Conservatorium Van Amsterdam, studying under Jesse van Ruller. After completing this highly specialised course, he relocated to London, where, under John Parricelli at the Guild Hall School of Music, he gained a masters degree in jazz performance.

On graduating, he quickly established himself as a rising star on the London scene and soon had a stellar reputation for his performances and compositions. Both as a sideman and bandleader (the Kristian Borring Quartet), he performed in London, around the UK and throughout Europe. He was a regular at Ronnie Scott’s and appeared in many European festivals, including the London Jazz Festival and the Sounds of Music art festival in Groningen, Holland.From 2012 to 2015, he was associated with the progressive London-based SE Collective through his work with British/Scandinavian organ trio Acrobat and saxophonist Jon Shenoy’s quartet Draw By Four. As well as five British albums of his own material, during his London tenure Borring co-released Make Your Stand with Acrobat.

His record Out of Nowhere (2021) was album of the week on both ABC Jazz Australia and Danish Radio Broadcast P8jazz. Reviewer Ian Mann (The Jazz Mann) described it as: “A typically classy, intelligent, and sophisticated offering,” words that capture the essence of Borring’s compositional and performance style.

Between 2014 and 2016, he worked in a duo with pianist Bruno Heinen. Together they released Postcards to Bill Evans, an album of classic compositions by the legendary pianist. The album garnered four-star reviews. The two continue to perform together whenever Borring returns to Europe.

In the timeworn tradition of international musicians relocating to Western Australia, it was love that did it. While living in London, he met and fell for a Perth girl. In 2017, she finally convinced him that her hometown was the best place to raise a family. They have been based here ever since.

It took Borring a few years before he fully engaged with the Perth jazz scene. Instead, he focused on his PhD studies at the Academy of Performing Arts and maintained his European profile by regularly returning to London. Eventually, though, the community here drew him in. Borring is now enamoured of the Perth jazz scene. Although small compared to other cities, there are many international-quality jazz musicians living and working here. It is a delight for him to perform with them.

Number Junky grew out of Borring’s PhD studies, an ‘investigation into odd meters in jazz composition and improvisation’. He is addicted to those odd time signatures: 11/8, 5/4, 15/12.  Birak, named after the Noongar first summer, abounds with them, the classic being The Birthday Song, which opened their second set on Tuesday night.

Written over a John Coltrane melody, 26/2 (Coltrane’s son’s birthday), Borring originally thought to name his re-composition 26/11 as a nod to the tune’s 11/8 time signature. Given that the album launch was held on November 26, it would have been apt had he stuck to this idea.

Beginning with a shimmering atmospheric guitar, the tune builds through sweetly coordinated syncopation of guitar and bass. As with many of the tunes, the pulse quickens and jumps as the tension mounts. Each artist takes turns to feature, though rarely in the classic solo. A turn on the bass is always underpinned by a tasteful chord progression, the lead guitar counterpointed by a syncopated bass line, the drums in both pulled back but still brushing or tomming away gently underneath. Masterly, organic, tight.

Perversely, the show opened with the album’s closing track, Etude 12.  A tight guitar figure wove through a range of keys and morphed into a tight bass line before the two melded, then took off into a complex chord progression as the rhythm of the kit built. Moving through more keys and other time signatures, it returned to the original figure, branched off into other melodies and breaks, more gentle chord progressions, then ended abruptly back where it began.

Like all of the tracks on the album, it was an adventure, a journey, an ever-moving feast of rich sounds and unexpected combinations, perfect jazz.

On the album, the sax is delivered by the internationally lauded Will Vinson. Based in New York, he and Borring started collaborating while he was touring England in the mid-noughts. He played on Borring’s first English album, Nausicaa. In 2022, Vinson had a short stay in Perth to deliver a WAAPA masterclass. While here he performed at one of Number Junky’s legendary Villa House Sessions (anon), and the next day he put down the sax parts to four of the album’s tracks. A great day’s work.

At the launch, the sax was delivered by the equally lauded international saxophonist, Perth’s own Dr. Jamie Oehlers. (PhDs abound in this band!) Funny to think of a player of Oehlers calibre depping for someone else. You would not want to pick between them. On disc and on stage, the sax was equally brilliant, at the limits of what neo-bebop can deliver. It’s always a thrill to hear Oehlers play, and this material brought out the best in him.

The core trio, Borring-Grafton-Evans, are incredibly tight together, largely due to their Villa House Sessions. Affectionately dubbed Kristian’s Kitchen or the Katakomb Klub, these off-the-grid performances are held once a month in Borring’s Osborne Park studio. The tiny room can barely hold a dozen people, the guests right up against the musicians. Performing with featured players—this is where the real work is done. The music is made in the moment, the players figuring it out as they go, cooking hot like a pot to the boil. Raw, rich, wild, totally alive—a laboratory at the edge of what jazz can do. If you stumbled across such a place in New York, you’d come away thinking that you’d just seen the best jazz in the world. And here it is in the backblocks of Perth.

There were many highlights in the launch. One favourite was the title track, Birak, that closed the first set. Borring introduced it as his response to the overwhelming heat of the Australian summer, the ‘saurian torpor’ as D.H. Lawrence famously described it. A languid tune, it started with a sequence of rich chords reminiscent of a southern American spiritual, a hymn or folk song, then broke into a series of lazy rising runs that built and built but never quite erupted. Grafton’s bass climbed towards a plateau he could never reach; Evans drums shimmered, like the heat bouncing off the bitumen.

Other standout moments were the harmonising sax and guitar on Into the Night, Grafton’s Bass Interlude, and the constant ascent of Pop Queen, Borring’s tune for his wife, Genevieve.

They rounded out the set with The Elf. Oehlers came back on stage for a tour de force performance of this frenetic bebop tune. The whole band came alive, each of them featured. Borring with a frantic solo, Evans moving manically all across his kit, the ever-cool Grafton underpinning them, holding it together. Oehlers’ second solo was spooky with its tremolo, his final crescendo a fitting end to a very fine show.

Number Junky will round out their year with performances this weekend in Denmark (WA) at the Arts Centre. Plans are in development for an Eastern States tour in 2025, and, further down the track, the aim is to get the trio over to Europe. In the meantime, there will be other gigs at the Ellington and those monthly Villa House Sessions.

You can pick up the Birak and Earth Matters albums along with Kristian Borring’s other recordings through Bandcamp and the usual streaming services. For those into the progressive end of jazz, you can’t do much better than this.

IAN LILBURNE

Photos by Adrian Thomson