Night Time Shadows + Singles (Remastered)

Recorded when Kalima and A Certain Ratio were almost entirely inseparable — the only ACR member not on the album was Donald Johnson — Night Time Shadows, the band's 'debut' full-length, if one doesn't count the Swamp Children's sole effort, is a more polished and focused effort overall. The murkier aspects of the Swamp Children days, while a distinct and involving element in its own right, had been tempered by the time of Night Time Shadows to favor slinky, sly jazz-funk recorded and performed with polish. In retrospect, the album couldn't have been more perfectly titled, suggesting an ambience of late evening moods, candlelit clubs and slow dancing (an even more appropriate song title and lyric: "After Hours"). For an eight-piece band, the feeling that all bandmembers are playing to each other's strengths rather than trying to stand out is welcome — Martin Moscrop and Chris Hornerman complement each other on percussion excellently, Clifford Saffer's saxophone gently drops in here and there, and the whole ensemble performs with a flowing energy evident on songs like "Father Pants" and the concluding high point, "Love Suspended in Time." Ann Quigley's singing is all the more to the front from beforehand, a strong singer but very much a part of the band rather than simply the frontperson — hear the way she spikes up her energy just as the band does in the concluding breaks on "Mystic Rhymes." That said, moments like her wordless start on "Black Water," majestic and darkly passionate, are solo turns in excelsis. If the songs start to blend into each other to an extent, it can be forgiven by the bubbling joy of the performance and the combination of mood and skill on display — there's no need to showboat when everyone's so clearly in the pocket. LTM's reissue once again does band and label proud — besides an essay and some archival photos, six bonus tracks appear, taken from the two pre-album singles where the Kalima name was first used, "The Smiling Hour"/"Fly Away" and the Four Songs EP.