MOUNTAIN PEOPLE

‘Mountain People’ is the name of a tune and an album from 1992. It inevitably became the band’s name once we toured with it. It came out of the yearning European soprano sound of John Surman and Jan Gabarek, whilst wanting to be a driving ‘tape’, like Pat Metheny or maybe some 90s London ‘garage’. Mark Edwards and I had met in 1988 and he moved to Brighton soon after. We saw eye-to-eye on ‘genre’ ..i.e. there isn’t one, and played regularly as the band behind visiting artists at the Brighton Jazz Club. The amazing Dave Wickins and I had started to just spend time working on stuff and this process inspired lots of writing. The great Thad Kelly suddenly couldn’t make the recording dates at short notice, so my good friend from university, John Bedford stepped in and completely made it his own! And yes, it’s a cassette …

[CDs now available!]