Nat Birchall is a tenor and soprano sax player from Manchester who plays amazing soulful jazz in the direction of Pharoah Sanders, John Coltrane and Alice Coltrane. He as also played in albums by fellow Mancunian trumpet player Matthew Halsall, owner of Gondwana Records, on which he has released two albums. Below are four of Nat's albums.
Nat Birchall - The Sixth Sense
This 1999, much underrated debut album is less immersed in spirituality and possesses a stronger hard-bop sound and contains a cover of McCoy Tyner's "Passion Dance." 1999 cd on Sixth Sense.
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Nat Birchall - World Without Form
This is his fifth album, and having heard the previous two,
Akhenaten and
Sacred Dimension, I think this is the one where he moves toward spirituality and sky-reaching majesty, whereas the aforementioned albums were still in a Coltraney
My Favorite Things vein before he himself went up in the sky with
Ascension. Contains the amazing piano playing of Adam Fairhall and the supreme ballad "Dream of Eden." 2012 cd on Sound Soul And Spirit.
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Nat Birchall - Invocations
This is even deeper and more soulful, while also being more free-form. Includes a cover of Coltrane's "To Be." Highly recommended shit. 2015 cd on Jazzman.
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Nat Birchall - Creation
His latest album has an amazing sense of uplifting, liveliness and intensity not found so much in his earlier stuff, and this is certainly influenced by the inclusion of two drummers. Whereas the cosmic vibe - central in all albums - up to this point was more reliant on atmosphere, here it reaches another level accentuated by the energy of the players, who are constantly sprouting colors and ideas.
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