***Winners of Best Band, BBC Jazz Awards 2008!*** Reviews of Closer: \"An album of great subtlety and nuance, this is a quintessentially English type of treasure: measured, bright yet delightful and verging on the experimental.\" BBC Music \"Puts the group up with the world-class practitioners of this intricate and intimate kind of jazz.\" **** The Guardian \"Whether they\'re in rambunctious or meditative mode, Curios combine fierce interactiveness with tender sensitivity, rendering Closer continually compeliing for its dynamic variety, bristling energy and sheer musical adventurousness.\" vortexjazz.co.uk \"Closer shows off Cawley\'s improvising skills to dazzling effect; there\'s great interplay with bassist Sam Burgess and drummer Josh Blackmore too - no wonder they picked up the Best Band accolade at the 2008 BBC Jazz Awards.\" Metro \"Closer delivers on the enormous promise of last year\'s Hidden... Well-crafted compositions; neat, often intricate and sometimes spidery improvisations that occasionally delight in exploding in your face.\" Jazzwise \"As good a piano trio album as you\'re likely to hear all year.\" TheJazzMann.com The follow-up to last year’s critically acclaimed debut Hidden, Closer takes the dynamic, melodic musical world of Curios to a new level. Led by pianist and composer Tom Cawley (keyboardist with Acoustic Ladyland) and featuring bassist Sam Burgess and drummer Joshua Blackmore, Curios follow last year’s best album nomination with a richly deserved award for best band at this year’s BBC Jazz Awards and Closer is set to cement Curios’ reputation as one of the UK’s most exciting and imaginative bands. Drawing on Cawley’s eclectic passions (including iconic pianist Brad Mehldau to whom he pays tribute on ‘Bradford’, romantic classical music and, er, motorsport journalism) Curios’ musical world is self-contained and yet utterly expansive, shifting effortlessly from moments of real beauty to passages of fiery explosiveness. Underpinned by Blackmore’s edgy, dynamic drumming and Burgess rhythmic drive the group visits the outer boundaries of the jazz piano trio’s possibilities; Cawley’s passionate music and expressive playing enables them to explore an enthralling world that is in turns beautiful, fun, searching and wild, but always powerfully compelling. \"Just when you think EST, or Brad Mehldau, or the Bad Plus might have taken the piano trio as far as it can go, another keyboard talent opens another door. Tom Cawley has done just that with Curios.\" John Fordham, JAZZ UK