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Asaf Sirkis (pictured) is best known to many as the drummer with Gilad Atzmon's Orient Ensemble, but his more personal venture, the Inner Noise, was formed while he was still working in Israel. Bringing the musical ideas to Britain, Sirkis reformed the Inner Noise over here with Steve Lodder on church organ and Mike Outram on guitar. The resulting recordings and performances of his compositions, in which modern classical music such as Messiaen meets jazz and elements of progressive rock, has been described as "vibrant, vital, exciting and fresh".

At the Spin, the trio was at something of a disadvantage as Steve Lodder was unaccountably in Paris and his replacement, Kit Downes, had no more than a short afternoon to familiarise himself with the music. But Downes has already made his own mark on the musical scene with his own trio and, as pianist, with Empirical, and is evidently a musician with the ability to absorb and work with the material involved in the Inner Noise. He seemed entirely at ease with the electronic church organ and the alterations to colour and tone available.

The meditative aspect of the music, reflected in the titles such as The Song Within and Nothingness First, in which Outram's guitar lines manage to embrace both harmonic complexity and the more searing masculinity' of rock, was also underpinned and angled by Sirkis's highly imaginative yet often understated drumming. Nevertheless, the evening really lifted off when Sirkis allowed himself to move out and take control. He is a player of undoubted world class who can send a shiver down the spine with the force of his playing and has a flow of ideas that allows him to play an extended drum solo without minutely stretching the patience of the audience. The level of control that can shift within a beat from ear shattering forte to a sharply defined whisper is pure wizardry.

Given the absence of one of the main players, Sirkis wisely filled out the evening with a number of standards such as Bemsha Swing, allowing the trio to work in familiar territory and show the audience how dramatically they could hit a groove. Another fine evening at the Spin.

2:50pm Wednesday 7th May 2008

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