Album of the Week – ‘Artefact’ by Jeremy Sawkins Organ Quartet

‘Artefact’ by ‘Jeremy Sawkins’ Organ Quartet’ is Eastside Radio’s Album of the Week.

Back in 2004 Jeremy Sawkins formed organ trio ‘Jazz Organism’ with Darren Heinrich and drummer Dave Goodman, performing regularly at Sydney jazz events such as SIMA, the Town Hall Hotel and more, it was an impressive collection of musicians. The group then came to an end when Sawkins went to live and work in Dublin, Ireland for 19 months however after returning back to his native Sydney in 2006 a new version of Jazz Organism was born.

With organist Darren Heinrich and adding saxophonist Spike Mason and Toby Hall on drums, Jeremy Sawkins Organ Quartet was formed, a group made up of four Sydney-siders who are well known for their talents in the Sydney jazz scene, both individually and with their own previous bands.  This March they released their latest recording, ‘Artefact’. Across six tracks, the album takes you on a journey of a mixture of sounds, such as the opening piece ‘Blues For Sera’ which starts off quite calming, then there’s some tracks with bluesy sounding guitar rifts and there is also some surprising sounds, like the traditional Irish sounding track ‘She Moved Through The Fair’ which Sawkins must have got the taste for in his time spent in the ‘Emerald Isle’.

There’s also some up-tempo tracks to get you up-and-ready. The great advantage of the use of electric guitar is that one minute it can be a rhythm and blues lively sound, and then swiftly change course to more folk sounding fine notes. It’s one of those albums that you know would makw for a really memorable live experience. Generally throughout the album all instruments complement each other well and are well-blended, apart from the fifth track on the album ‘Tobes Malone’, where you get to hear a solo piece from each artist, letting you hear individually what talent is on the record. With such an array of talent on the album, the quartet shines through their ability to effortlessly showcase thier capacity to accommodate to the intricacies and range of different melodies. The final track ‘Hello, Goodbye’ is quite the ballad sounding piece with a relaxed saxophone and Toby Hall brushing off the symbols it makes for a lovely tone to take out the album.

Overall the album makes for an easy listen that could be played in the background as you commute to work or potter around the house, without bursts of quirky unnecessary tweaks the artist’s produced an album with the listener in mind. Some may say that six tracks are short but with some tracks being over nine minutes there is plenty of enjoyable listening time.