Nat Birchall – World Without Form

Saxophonist Nat Birchall remains one of the UK’s hidden jazz treasures, a spiritual, soulful saxophonist happily based in a quiet village in the Northern hills. Birchall who first came to the jazz world’s attention with 1998’s debut album Sixth Sense, a burning slice of hard-bop, has more recently found acclaim for a series of fine albums on trumpeter Matthew Halsall’s Gondwana label, albums that have found the saxophonist and composer drinking deep from Coltrane’s well while bringing his own soulful conviction to the music.

‘My music is very simple, harmonically and melodically, so you have to play with as much conviction and soul as possible because there’s nothing to hide behind, just the truth of how you feel the music.” And for Birchall, his fifth album World Without Form is a further continuation of the music he has been developing for the past few years as he attempts to compose and play in a way that the results are a pure representation of the origin of the sound/idea, unencumbered by conscious thought or action. For Birchall then a ‘world without form’ is the starting point, from which the artists begin their creations.