Koch Marshall Trio – Toby arrives

The Koch Marshall Trio is Greg Koch, a guitarist described by Joe Bonamassa as “scary good”, Dylan Koch on drums, and organist Toby Lee Marshall on the Hammond B3.

In terms of vocals, well, there are none – yes it’s an instrumental album. By now 90% of people reading have now given up and are looking for something else instead of this album. I must confess that in general instrumental albums are fairly dull and don’t tend to demand repeated listening. There are of course exceptions – Joe Satriani is a rare exception where the playing and songwriting are both strong enough to make things work without vocals.

The music here is very good – all three are great musicians. I love the Hammond organ sound, and the playing here really is great. It’s unusual to hear it used in a trio but it does work well even if it tends to dominate the sound a bit. The songs are well written too, and that’s a critical bit – doing instrumental covers of songs rarely works well, but when they’re written specifically as instrumentals then things can work well if done right, and I have to say in general it works well here.

This isn’t an album like so many instrumentals where after one play it goes on a shelf never to be listened to again, but equally it’s not one that I’d play regularly. A very good instrumental but not good enough that I’d rush out to buy it.

“Toby arrives” will be released on 23rd February 2018

Track listing:

1. Toby arrives
2. Funk meat
3. Heed the boogaloo
4. Let’s get sinister
5. Mysterioso
6. Enter the rats
7. Boogie yourself drade
8. Sin repent repeat