Many contemporary English bands, such as The Ivo Neame Quintet, Fringe Magnetic, the London Jazz Orchestra, Solstice, the Cuban Orquest Timbala and even country legend Lee Hazlewood, always gladly fall back on Tori Freestone’s earthy tenor saxophone.

And with her very first trio album, she caused a sensation beyond the British Isles. The 44-year-old Londoner drew attention with unwieldy and smoky jazz originals which evoke the diffuse feeling of an aesthetics in the vein of Albert Ayler or John Surman, respectively, while at the same time displaying abundant inventiveness.

With El Barranco, the British scene’s wiry front-row lady has thrown yet another log into the fire, one that roots her attitude toward melodic improvisation even deeper within jazz tradition. In the course, her irresistible, mature, and detached sound in combination with her congenial partners Dave Manington and Tim Giles provides a source of overwhelming expressiveness.

An impressively original and formidable trio with a lot of space between jazz and folk. Even if El Barranco translates as "the hell mouth", and the trio does not shy away from atonal passages and some outbursts, the tempo usually remains restrained, and one can give a clear all-clear against free-jazz.