Big Satan ~ Souls Saved Hear
After brief solo passages, the trio begin playing in spiderlike unison. The sound of Berne's sax is like a gentle benediction, but the intricacy of the lines he traces has a lunatic edge to it. There's something implacable and almost terrible about Souls Saved Hear because it never seems to tire or pause. This impression is heightened by the lack of a bass which lends the music the feeling of a trapeze act conducted without safety net. All the while, the players circle and shadow each other, exchanging their roles as hunter/prey/ally from moment to moment. In the process they produce whirling vortices against which it feels necessary to resist as though one might otherwise be sucked under. Big Satan’s music is marked by an inward-looking complexity as if all three players were members of a particularly marshal sect. This is ferocious, adrenaline-fuelled music which demands, and rewards, concentration.
Colin Buttimer
August 2004
Published by Jazzwise magazine