Never judge a book by its cover. The same too could be said of a record. The lime green backdrop with Ed sitting astride a stool like someone’s dad with a Father’s Day present and the luridly contrasting underpants blue title-art suggests this is not something your average music-lover is going to take to without first smiling. It’s not ‘awful’ in a cool, kitsch kind of way. It’s ‘awful’ in a truly – well ‘awful’ kind of way. In fact just out of shot, it’s not hard to imagine Ed’s dog-eared copy of Burt Weedon’s Play Guitar In A Day book sitting on the floor together with a nice mug of tea and a sandwich. That said, ‘Movimento’ is a surprisingly credible and groovy jazz guitar imagining of Bossa and Brazil – currently restored by the swooning popularity of Bebel Gilberto, Suba and latin fringe enthusiasts like Juana Molina. Just to consolidate its Latin bent, five are of the tracks are vocal pieces sung in Portugese and Spanish. Obstensibly a jazz guitarist, Ed is accompanied by brass man John Worley and percussionist Jeff Busch.who learned his calypso, samba and Cuban jazz trade in Brazil under the watchful eye of latin luminaries Edmilson Costa Teixeira, Gilo do Pandeiro, and Mestres Memeu.
The cover may take some overcoming, but providing you can hear it above the really rather loud lime green backdrop, the album should provide a crisp and exotic respite from the quixotic daftness of post-punk.