‘Fragment’ is the next instalment from Moscovitch Music (Terror/Prey), the brainchild of producer/compiler Joel Martin (Quiet Village/Velvet Season & The Hearts of Gold/Maxxi & Zeus) whose ‘de Wolfe Music’ compilations ‘Bite Hard/Bite Harder/Witchfinder General)’ are considered essential primers of the library & soundtrack genre.

Composed by veteran English Jazz saxophonist/flautist - John Scott (Symptoms/Wake in Fright/Craze) and musically comparable to classics like Chico Hamilton’s ‘Repulsion’ and Krzysztof Komeda’s ‘Cul-de-sac’, the score to cult horror movie director Norman J Warren’s (Terror/Prey/Inseminoid) unique 11-minute short about a disturbed young woman wandering through a wintry London landscape, is a treasure of unheard British jazz from the Golden era.

This EP is almost a companion piece to Scott’s rare Columbia Lansdowne LP ‘Communication’ (1967), a firm Gilles Peterson favourite, with its Conga-tastic version of Ellington’s ‘Caravan’. For fans of filmic UK Jazz this release is a real gem, and there are strong musical connections to the 60s American ‘Third Stream’, Dorothy Ashby, France’s Michel Magne and Francois de Roubaix and of course our own talented composers like Tubby Hayes, Graham Collier and Neil Ardley.

‘Ride in a Pontiac’ with its driving bongo rhythm is pure Spy-Jazz (Courtesy of KPM Drummer Barry Morgan) - Remarkably similar in feel to tracks from the legendary ‘All Night Long’ (which also featured John Scott alongside friends such as Tubby Hayes and Johnny Dankworth). ‘Night of Love’ is an evocative mood piece, pensive yet gentle, with an air of Miles Davis’s smoky ‘L'Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud score while ‘Waiting/Revelation’ begins with a lonely Flute motif which erupts into a percussive hard bop workout worthy of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers!

Prepare yourselves to be transported back to an icy night in Soho where the year is 1965 and you’ve just left Ronnie’s with the haunting flute of Johnny Scott echoing through your mind. It’s 3am and you pull up the collar of your sheepskin…

Another Scotch for the road?