CHRIS PARKER - LONDON JAZZ WEBSITE


Little has changed in the South Trio's overall approach since they made
their debut album, the appropriately named Sugar Rush, a couple of
years back. 'High-energy, punchily percussive, immediately accessible …
the South Trio simply set up a thunderous riff or a rolling motif and kick
it around for a while' was my description of that CD, and this one could
be summed up in similar fashion, although, as its title suggests, its tone
is a lot more downbeat, a 'mooch around the murky undergrowth of an
ecstasy comedown' rather than the 'speed high' of the previous album, to
quote the trio's own publicity. Keyboard player William South spent
much of the second half of the noughties playing big dance music events,
and so witnessed first hand the decline in interest in the rave scene
since its nineties heyday, a process he memorably describes as 'the edgier
end of the dance music scene going out of fashion', culminating in 'a
musical dustbowl'. Consequently, this album has an elegiac feel to it, its
many psychedelic effects and trance-inducing beats tempered by a brooding,
melancholy, occasionally even slightly weary atmosphere. To quote the
impressively eloquent South again, his music recalls the feel of
'listening to a rave from the dressing room portakabin at 4 a.m., waiting
for the minibus out, all EQ definition lost in a heady wash of psychedelic
nonsense'. If this makes the album sound uniformly depressing, however,
it's misleading; alongside South's crashingly emphatic keyboard riffs, his
rhythm section (bassist Ashley Molloy South – his son – and drummer
Eddie Hick) manage to infuse the music with infectious power and
vibrancy, and so the end result is a much more complex and nuanced set
than the one on Sugar Rush, strikingly described by the band itself
as 'a sonic ode to the bacchanal charms of a life led to the full and the
dues that you pay'.


Phil Johnson in the Independent on Sunday

Rock-leaning muso-jazz groups such as the Bad Plus like to pretend they're wild and dangerous, but the South Trio really could play a rave.
This follow-up to Sugar Rush aims to create the aural equivalent of "mooching around in the murky undergrowth of an ecstasy comedown". Though sharing the same pounding piano riffs of leader William South, Elegy... ups the ante through a denser, trippier sound. A little over half-an-hour long, it's appropriately nasty, brutish and short.


Jazzwise Review;

The boys are back in town, even bigger and bolder than their in your face debut Sugar Rush. If it embraced the energy of punk, with big chords all the subtletly of a gob in your face (although it was more fun than that!0 then Elegy staggers around in a post rave haze, from the neurotic hypnotics of California Roll to the thumping riff of Balls in the Air. You may not want to go too deeply into the ;concept’ narrative (ageing raver meditates on the lows and highs of living through the dazed dance days of the 1990s) but those of us with any synapses left will savour South’s ability to summon both the manicness and loved up vibes of that lost decade. Hick is as vibrant as ever, though slightly more reined in than on the splendid anarchy of his work on Sugar Rush while South’s son remains the rock around which his dad goes suitably crazed. Ah the older generation, whatever will become of them. Andy Robson

BBC Music Magazine Review

It had to happen one day - a coming together of jazz with ‘rave’ music, complete with squelching keyboard effects that wouldn’t be out of place in an early set by The Prodigy. This second release by William South’s London based jazz trio has an apt, perhaps autobiographical title, Elegy for a Raver. But aside from the wittily interspersed ‘rave’ style interludes, jazz fans still have plenty of accomplished trio playing to still enjoy, as South and his band, including his son on bass, create a taut style akin to EST.
The so called acid jazz scene of the late 1980s shared little with its dance genre namesake acid house. And while the former became ever more commercial the latter evolved into a the music of the illegal ‘rave’ party scene, with blips and beats aplenty. The jazz/rave concept of this disc could have been a public order offence but fortunately it amounts to something completely original - some genuine ‘acid jazz’. Neil McKim


www.17dots.com review

. Elegy… is another one of those albums that transcends the question of what is jazz and makes a musical statement of originality far more important than under which genre its filed on the shelf.