Theo Croker, Edinburgh review - 'a continually shifting soundscape of sampled song, hip-hop beats and instrumental effects'

“What’s up Edinburgh?” was Theo Croker’s cheerfully laconic enjoinder to a packed Spiegeltent before he blew a long, low trumpet note over Idris Frederick’s piano chimes before unleashing what sounded like rainforest twittering, introducing a near-continually shifting soundscape of sampled song, speech, hip-hop beats and instrumental effects.

As a band – completed by bassist Eric Wheeler and drummer Miguel Russell – they were rarely still, not least Croker, as he swivelled between his mics and the console with which he controlled the near-continual cavalcade of sound effects. Croker’s playing shifted between the mellow and the muscular, his characteristically rich, phrasing sometimes looped into a barrage of brazen sound and occasionally blasting notes sky high. Band members were given ample scope to exercise their own chops, Frederick delivering squalling synth breaks, while in To Be We, Wheeler’s deeply resonant bass groove underpinned floating horn and the soft yet imperious declaiming of recorded Croker collaborator Jill Scott.

Russell’s powerful drumming subsided into smoochy brush work for the mellow serenade of Dinner With Sade, before staccato trumpet worked up a portentous flourish over drum rolls to herald Hero Stomp, an at times bewildering clamjamfry of semi-audible recorded speech (there was a message about standing up for rights somewhere in there), snatches of song and impressively punchy live playing. There were, in fairness, times when I would like to have heard this superb trumpeter sounding out less encumbered by sonic mayhem.

Croker then other band members quit the stage one at a time – Russell drumming until the last, before a loudly demanded encore delivered Where Will You Go?, Croker singing softly before issuing echoing trumpet statements, then rapping as the band worked up a solid groove to round off.