Small-town Fiction

At first glance, Small-town Fiction is ostensibly a jazz group, featuring as it does a quintet of outstanding improvising jazz musicians. But in an attempt to reconcile unabashed straight-ahead jazz with his formative non-jazz influences, group leader Douglas Whates blurs genre boundaries and nudges the group off-piste. Post-rock sits unapologetically alongside 60s jazz. Afro-beat rubs shoulders with off-kilter waltzes. Musically the group liberally exploits the visceral energy of alternative rock, the laissez-faire attitude of shoe-gaze, subverting and probing the raw material via heady group improvisation and interplay.

Small-town Fiction line-up:
Douglas Whates—bass/composition, Pauli Lyytinen—saxophone, Phil Cardwell—trumpet, Tom Gibbs—keyboard, Doug Hough—drums.