Vinyl: Amancio D'Silva Integration LP Ethno Jazz GRAIL Original Don Rendell Ian Carr

Integration (1969) was D’Silva’s UK debut collaboration with the Rendell Carr Quartet, followed soon after by Hum Dono. Anglo-Indian jazz was a brief flirtation in the late 60s and very early ’70s. Integration is probably the least “Indian” of Amancio’s albums, absent Indian instruments, but the melodic lines, sometimes long and complex solos, make occasional reference to Indian scales.

D’Silva’s electric guitar playing also shows influences of the British blues boom at the time, though without the signature distortion and vibrato: his lines are linear and clean. The Gretsch hollow-body has an all-round sound, famed for Nashville country picking and pop chord-work, not the hard driving rock guitar of a solid-body Fender or Gibson. The result is a slightly softer mellow sound that arguably integrates better with the acoustic instruments of Rendell Carr quartet.

The main musical bond is between D’Silva and trumpeter Ian Carr, call and answer, and echoes, with Don Rendell contributing long and sympathetic solo pieces in his signature rising and descending multiple triplets (struggling to put Rendell’s solos into words, three notes in the space of two sounds about right) His serpentine flow reflects his chosen range of instruments, which in addition to the tenor, include soprano saxophone, clarinet and flute, instruments which favour the upper register and which give him his distinctive pied-piper voice. It is the main attraction of many of the tracks, alongside Ian Carr’s fat growling flugelhorn.