Where the Streets Lead Slowly Rolling Camera

• 1 You Are the Truth 04:39
• 2 Where the Streets Lead 05:43
• 3 Lost Orbits 04:44
• 4 The Afternoon of Human Life 07:03
• 5 Widest Possible Aperture 05:55
• 6 Illuminate 04:30
• 7 Feels Like Fiction 06:58
• 8 A Force for Good 06:38
• Total Runtime 46:10

Info for Where the Streets Lead

Where the Streets Lead is the new album from Slowly Rolling Camera, following on from their acclaimed 2018 album, Juniper. Colliding the worlds of jazz, trip-hop and cinematic soundscapes, their music blends strong melodies, big grooves and surprising turns of phrase, infused with expansive emotional gravitas. With this album, recorded throughout 2020, the music takes on a greater scale which includes an 8-piece string section and a list of world-class guests including Mark Lockheart, Jasper Høiby, Verneri Pohjola, Chris Potter and Sachal Vasandani, as well as the band’s regular guitarist Stuart McCallum.

This is an album about opportunity, about embracing unknowns and seeing what life throws at you. It’s a reflection on searching for balance, a sense of purpose and identity in everyday life. For the core group of Dave Stapleton, Deri Roberts and Elliot Bennett, it’s a unified take on the journey and the influences that have shaped them all individually and as a collective.

Where the Streets Lead is emphatic in its purpose to communicate the joy of collaboration and to communicate through an audio-sensory landscape their vision of the world. There is a boldness and simplicity in its conception balanced with the attention to detail in its production. With Juniper, their new pathway was set. Where the Streets Lead, is a natural progression and development of the bands’ exploration.

Dave Stapleton, Fender Rhodes, piano, Prophet, Moog
Elliot Bennett, drums
Deri Roberts, Sound Design & Production
Additional musicians:
Mark Lockheart, soprano and tenor saxophone
Stuart McCallum, guitar
Jasper Høiby, double bass
Verneri Pohjola, trumpet
Chris Potter, tenor saxophone (The Afternoon of Human Life)
Sachal Vasandani, vocals
Jon Visanji, violin
Jenni Curiel, violin
James Toll, violin
Victoria Stapleton, violin
Linda Kidwell, viola
Rob Tuson, viola
Phil Daish-Handy, cello
Lionel Handy, cello

String arrangements by Dave Stapleton

Slowly Rolling Camera
a new project that teams pianist-composer Dave Stapleton, producer Deri Roberts, vocalist-lyricist Dionne Bennett and drummer Elliot Bennett, is proof positive that some of the most interesting work often arises from a meeting of many minds. The result is music that has distinct echoes of the ‘invisible soundtracks’ of UK progressives Cinematic Orchestra and Portishead as well as the polychrome textures of maverick Scandinavian artists like Sigor Ros and Oddarrang.

The intricate deployment of glowing keyboard colours and shifting rhythmic patterns imbues tracks such as Temptation and Eight Days In with the kind of stark atmospheres that often define the best scores for both big and small screen. Stapleton’s keyboards and Elliot Bennett’s drums create a wide range of sharp, often crunching timbres that are augmented by Roberts’ artful electronic washes, but it is the presence of guest players, double bassist Jasper Hoiby, guitarist Chris Montague and saxophonist Mark Lockheart that significantly enriches the sound palette. These greatly respected figures in British jazz contribute a heavy, bulky low end, eerie, crackling chords and crystalline solos that make for much more than a cut ‘n’ paste studio session. Their attention to detail is great.

Furthermore, the orchestral scope of the project is epitomized by the lush, plaintive string charts that embellish tracks such as Coin. There is also Dionne Bennett’s measured, highly soulful vocal performance on 21 Nov and Rain That Falls, two gorgeously wistful songs that skillfully weave together understated but nonetheless resonant chord sequences and soaring crescendos.

Slowly Rolling Camera is not a name without meaning. The whole aesthetic of the music vividly suggests a series of frames or images that unfold at a leisurely pace, thus settling strongly into the sub-conscious to reveal layer upon layer of detail. The combination of lean but incisive production and tightly focused live playing has yielded music that has the dot-matrix finesse of the digital age without being bloodless or clinical. Slowly Rolling Camera are purveyors of mysterious audio vignettes that are moulded by a structural sophistication that is plugged straight into the vibrant emotional current of pop culture.

This album contains no booklet.