Fringe Magnetic: Empty Spaces

The 10-piece Fringe Magnetic is one of the most ambitious genre-bending enterprises operating under the umbrella of London's Loop Collective, which stages a five-day festival including this group at the Vortex from 17-21 February. Led by its principal composer, trumpeter Rory Simmons, the band hitches the elegant sonorities of classical strings to Fraud's James Allsopp, Outhouse's Robin Fincker, Tom Arthurs bassist Jasper Hoiby and that fine pianist Ivo Neame. Like Portico Quartet, this group makes much use of clipped phrases hinting at hidden songs, over rhythms sometimes intended to mesh into them and sometimes not. The music often operates in a cool, melody-twisting world in which the dynamics rarely shift from a kind of hip solemnity, and the odd edgy acceleration (such as the squawky, jostling Tiden) thus arrives as a real shock. Simmons's flexible trumpet-playing has connections to that of Arthurs, and he loves skimming over the jolting drumming of Ben Reynolds and angular, interlocking melody patterns from the others. The ethereal voice of Elisabeth Nygaard complements the low-key feel, but the Tom Waits- meets-Phil Minton howl of the terrifying Andrew Plummer disrupts the venture's occasional tendency to resemble a languidly clever game. Fringe Magnetic's big potential, however, will certainly be one to watch.