The Murmurists at Club Sporadic, Saturday March 25th 2006

Roger Bullen – drums & bent drums, electronics/Anthony Donovan – 6 string bass, keyboard, laptronics, contact mic, electronics/Lee Mapley – guitarsynth, bent drums, electronics - are The Murmurists and come from the Northampton area – where there is a rather good club devoted to improvised music run by the Liquidiser crew and with whom a couple of this band perform occasionally. But they are very much a band in their own right and perform totally different music to what I have previously heard down at the Northampton Labour Club. Loud, for a start... This is the embrace of the Electronic Frontier with a vengeance, leavened with a stripped down acoustic drum kit – well, snare and cymbal – whose acoustic sounds can also be processed by Roger Bullen's attached little black box. Two guitars, one a six string bass that gives Anthony Donovan the ability to play from way down deep to high up the top two strings, the other a guitar synth played by Lee who, alongside Roger Bullen also plays what they term – 'bent drums'- warped pedals/circuit bending/drum machine noise terror. Add a couple of laptops and a ritzy looking keyboard and some electronics... you have the ingredients for mighty and complex music. They reference rock, of course, and electronica areas with implicit bent drum beats that edge in and out like a pulse track and the more jazzy Bullen acoustic drum rhythms. But the music is, in the main, defiantly non-idiomatic and they create a long, ever-changing soundscape, playing for over an hour but never flagging – which is no mean feat. This is music that is cinematic in scope, with broad sonic vistas, rolling clouds of feedback and noise alongside quite delicate episodes where more conventional chords and melodies are brought in and out. The rhythms clatter and bang acoustically and electronically although the snare and cymbal get a little drowned at times – this may be the ambiance of the room as well, perhaps the kit should have been further forward – but this is a minor quibble. Given that the sophistication of their equipment was being channelled through an albeit redoubtable Carlsboro PA of the same vintage that I used to use twenty years ago, the sound stood up well. Both Anthony and Lee also process live on the fly, feeding snatches of guitar into their laptops to add another level of complexity – the live sounds then being mutated and processed back into the mix.


Anthony stands at the front to stage right, toting a six-string bass guitar, on the table next to him by the wall are his keyboard and laptop and a bank of electronics. Lee to his left and slightly behind him. Roger stage left alongside Lee – between these two is a pile of 'bent drum' equipment on the floor with Roger's snare/cymbal set-up at the far stage left. He switches between sitting at his acoustic kit and kneeling on the floor to process his rhythms. Lee stands with his guitar, manipulates his laptop, or also squats to play his selection of 'bent drums.' The movement of the band between their instruments is continual and acts as a figure to mirror the wide spaces and movements in the music. I've seen a lot of musicians eschewing the traditional stage postures over the last year or so. Vibracathedral Orchestra seemed to spend most of their time sitting on the stage attending to their intruments when I saw them the other week – well, heard them, as I couldn't see them very well at all, given the crowd. Which made listening to the music interesting because there was no visual frame of reference – similar to the Jandek concert last year at St Giles where I couldn't see what he was playing but had to rely on my guitar knowledge – which made for a more intense experience. It brings to mind some kind of work ethic, that the musicians are busy in their various stage tasks, also a subversion of conventional stagecraft, but it's a natural scenario not a studied pose – we do it in the Plexus group as we also play very long sets and switch between instruments so the music is often being held with a laptop loop/vamp while one of us wanders off for a piss while another picks up a guitar or as I did last week: disappear and leave my cohorts to continue as I went to buy a drink and ended up in a bizarre conversation in the bar and had to suddenly rush back to my laptop duties. (I don't think I was missed anyway...). Or just wander around the room to sound out the acoustics of the occasion from a different angle...

During their performance I scribbled loads of notes trying to describe the music as it progressed: they are as usual almost undecipherable. But a stripped down mix as follows:

Really, they have a very original sound. They fool you because at first glance they look more 'rocky' due to the visual line up and expectation of drums, bass and guitar (synth). But this is soon subverted in a clever blend of timbres and rhythms – where a steady pulse surfaces as a reference it will be buried quickly in dense sound. This supplies a degree of continuity but does not overly rely on repetition and the live drumming gives an organic feel to the rhythms. They go in and out of noise and feedback: an organ style chord or two emerges sporadically, to be counterpointed by raw saw-edged sounds and and an echoing deep loop – then steely bass notes (from the keyboard?) spattered briefly into the fray as the electronic tones rise in volume accompanied by pattering snare played with brushes throughout to die away again to a distanced bass throb as a higher organ patched sound line of long held notes rises and takes centre stage underscored slowly by deeper organ drones.

The Murmurists move their improvisations through time (in both sense – rhythmic and temporal – the two interlinked of course) and space with intense and dense strategies. And space is the key to understanding and playing long form improvisations (or compositions – the formal concerns are different, up to a point, but the concentration required is the same – i.e a lot). The longer you play, for example, the more harmonic space there is to resolve chromatic complexities. ( I remember a classical musician explaining once that Wagner's works became longer as they became chromatically more radical due to the length of time and space needed to resolve the harmonies. Long improvisations give the artists time to breathe – not that there is some interdict from the Noble House of Warner against shorter forms – 'by any means necessary' is my appropriated motto. But I don't see a performance such as this as muso indulgence – listening to the playback I can really hear again (albeit imperfectly as my mini-disc was just a bit too close to the action and distorts majestically at times – what the hell, keep the accidents in...) the way this piece flowed and established its own long trajectory: which requires - the length it is. Or let's get Zen and say that 'how long is a piece of string' could be the détourné koan for tonight. I loved it... and on one of those days when earlier running a club seemed a chore I could have done without (all who run spaces like ours know what I mean...), mainly due to on-going health reasons and also, to be honest, because of over-indulgence the night before at a folk gig I went to instead of going to see The Fall (see my other review – I get around...), let's just state that the music made it all worth while. Which is why we go on... I can't go on...
I'll go on... Etc... The organiser's motto - sorry, curator, we calls them now...

I figure that the point at which the performance started to arc down to conclusion was a small section where Anthony played a couple of two note motifs – fourths, B to E, A to D it sounded like but don't quote me – then repeated and elaborated on briefly. Very soon Lee left the stage to the other two – bass thrumming repeated figures as Roger manipulated his black box – Anthony then – synth noises – keyboard – fast strummed bass again into slowly changing note – into ending...

At which point I checked the time and realise in surprise that they had been playing for just over an hour non stop, with no flagging of invention of saggy bits... No mean feat...

David Teledu pointed out earlier that outside of London there is a route of improvising/experimental clusters along the M1 going North – Northampton, Market Harborough (Black Carrot), Loughborough – us – the Club Sporadic – Nottingham and then up to Leeds and Sheffield. A ley line for the diffusion of musical energies outside of the capital. There's a lot going on out here – the Murmurists are a prime example of the quality of music and the experimental adventures that can be found in the Midlands, an area which gets overlooked sometimes as attention focuses on the polarities of north and south. May they flourish. And: the Club Sporadic is putting on an all day festival in May, Saturday 27th, to be exact. Ther Murmurists are coming back to play and I look forward to hearing them again. Get the cd's out there, boys...

Out on the town... missing the Fall in Leicester but catching the Wilsons in Loughborough... review of Friday March 24th 2006 performance at the Pack

Sometimes it just is like this... I set off to go to see The Fall (or The Mighty Fall, as John Peel would probably have said) and Black Carrot supporting – and ended up at a folk club gig in Loughborough listening to The Wilsons (or The Mighty Wilsons, as Frank Marmion probably did say...). Sometimes it just falls out like that. Jumpcuts... too complicated to explain here...




I missed the first half but arrived in time for the second: opened by Frank Marmion, the Pack Horse club curator, playing with his long-time musical partner Dave Morton, on this number: 'Square Riggers' – playing squeeze box – and Tom Kitching, whose name I have managed to spell correctly this time round, on violin. Seated, they looked like a chamber folk ensemble almost, which gave the song a different edge: the understated backing from Dave and Tom who flanked Frank setting him up for a slow-burner which he sings with great passion.

Unlike many who attempt songs about the sea, Frank actually had served his time and travelled the world as an apprentice ship's engineer, oh, a few years back, shall we say. But it gives an extra dimension of feeling to this song – which is, after all, about the days of sail long gone. And prompts a question that I might worry away at later in this review: aren't too many folk songs now just some long lament for the past? And should they be, to retain any relevance for contemporary audiences... ? Something to ponder...

I missed the rest of the support acts as I was downstairs ordering drinks and talking to a couple of people I hadn't seen for a while. So: back ensconced for the arrival of The (Mighty) Wilsons. Who are four brothers from Tyneside way with an easy manner: lots of banter with each other and the audience that effectively disguises a professional take on things. Which is the way you have to go in Blighty, maybe... Folk club audiences don't like slick, they seem to want to see their favourites in what they perceive as a natural setting. Which is ok by me... Interestingly, for the powerhouse masculine singing which is their forte, I suppose, there is also a surprising delicacy: this could easily fall into brawling, bellowing beery stuff and that it doesn't is a testament to their skill. Plenty of volume when necessary, but the timbres of their voice blend in a way that reminds me of the softer rolling cadences of the Copper Family from the south of England, rather than the geographical and cultural neighbours of the Wilsons – The Watersons, who had a harsher edge to their singing. Ironically due to the females in the group, Norma and Lal, Norma having a voice like a blowtorch... Make of that what you will or won't, the rural south opposed to the harsh realities of life round Hull and the fishing industry. Although the rural had its share of harsh reality to deal with... Yet all of these singers share one thing, I suppose – the fact that the world their chosen material describes - in the main - comes from a bygone age. Rural become suburban, fishing industry decimated, mining – dead with the Thatcher stake buried in the heart of Count Scargill. (Although we may yet see some slight return to mining in coming years, it is unlikely that the workers within the industry will ever again taste the power and prestige they had formerly...)

There is an interesting narrative journey to be found in their set: a fascinating (for me, at least) trajectory through English social history and culture and the varieties of groups making up the complex spread of the British working classes. Spreading out from the local - a roaring version of 'Byker Hill' - to take in the more international battle glories of Trafalgar with a lovely version of 'Nelson's Death and Victory', which brings the ordinary sailors into the celebration in a unifying manner, beyond class almost, to much older songs like 'False Knight' (from the singing of Joseph Andrews, I believe, to more contemporary material such as Alex Glasgow's bitter 'Close the Coalhouse Door.'

'Close the coalhouse door, lad. There's blood inside,
Blood from broken hands and feet,
Blood that's dried on pit-black meat,
Blood from hearts that know no beat.'

Brutal images and the third verse reference to Aberfan: 'There's bairns inside' – a distant memory for younger people but within the time frame of most of the audience tonight, I would guess. Urban songs such as 'Sweep Chimney Sweep,' gloriously politically un-correct with its lines referring – innocently – to the dirtiness of the job : 'I look black as any Moor,' that also touch glancingly on the toughness and independence of the sweep in a way that fends off the twee – we're not talking Dick Van Dyke here, Mary Poppins... (This connects in a tangental way to songs like 'Sam Hall' and its antecedents – sweeps as violent, anarchic figures – and the mysterious aura of the sweep in folklore – a figure for good luck in the main). And the rural songs of the Copper Family's collection typified by 'Thousands or more:'

'Although I'm not rich and although I'm not poor
I'm as happy as those that's got thousands or more'

underlining the image (stress intended) of the stoic independent English yeoman. As opposed maybe to the lowly hired hand... The end of the night went out on a swinging and rolling 'Young Banker,' which has one of those choruses – you know what I mean. The rips and syncopations can be overdone but the Wilsons are experts – they pitch it just right. From the singing of the Watersons, I believe, this song was collected in the thirties in Knaresborough and has a backwards/forwards momentum in its narrative of girl and boy: 'will she, won't she' go with Young Banker. (Hopefully not rhyming slang...) Who seems at first glance to be a sailor of some kind:

'He said my pretty fair maid will you go on deck
With a chain of gold around your neck'

but apparently was a man who made stone walls – embankments, etc. One of those songs that seem to have verses missing but are made more interesting precisely because of the gaps in the narrative...

The rollout encore for the evening is the fiery 'Miner's Life.' Which is a wonderful song – but... I have a few reservations about it, which might seem carping, given the overall excellence of the night. Coming from where they do, it is inevitable that there will be some strong focus by the Wilsons on mining – even though the old days of the miners being at the commanding heights of the British working class have long gone as mentioned above with regard to the apocalyptic fallout from the Miner's Strike of 1984. 'Byker Hill' and – at a pinch – the Alex Glasgow song, which is more focused on the hardships and uncertainties of mining as was and the historical tragedy of Aberfan – fair enough. But one has to beware of presenting the 'Miner's Life' as if it has contemporary British relevance – this song was already out of date by 1948 with its references to the owners – 'keep your eyes upon the scale.' (I have a feeling that it was originally a song from the American trade union movement). As a requiem, maybe it works... Well – each to their own. I did notice that various members of the local CLP who used to be – conspicuously - up on their feet when the chorus came round: 'Union miners stand together' etc – and ostentatiously raising clenched fists, stayed put this time round. The times they have changed... Which isn't a cheap shot at the Old Left or the miners but just a recognition of the world moving onwards. Radical politics is not immune to ideological pressure for new ideas, after all.

Enough, anyway. What's this got to do with music, you may well ask? A hell of a lot, I believe. Having grown up with a love of folk music alongside my other musical interests, I'm interested to see where it will go now, what younger audiences will make of the tradition – if anything – how it will develop and evolve. We are, after all, in the middle of a relatively wide explosion of interest in folk forms both here and in America (probably more so over there), (sadly not always reflected in the more staid folk clubs with ageing audiences), where the musics are meeting with new technologies and ideas to go forwards in some interesting directions. O.K., some 'folktronica' sucks mightily, but there are some fascinating experiments going on... Yet: I hope that 'Young Banker' and its company of songs will still be sung in later years as other revivals come and go. Groups like the Wilsons at least, with their popularity and superb musicianship, should help in that process. Songs, after all, do seem to have a life of their own sometimes, coming through rather than from the performers in an almost mystical way and connecting with the long gone past in odd and unpredictable ways. Songs like 'Young Banker' can carry a wider renewable relevance – they deal with love and relationships and those maybe don't change so much down the years. But songs don't exist in vacuums – if they speak to us it is surely because we can contextualise them – or recontextualise them, anew. They offer a glimpse of a gone world and sometimes a flickering, opaque connection between the past and the present. That is their richness and what makes the best of them endure. Why 'Nelson's Victory' is perhaps more relevant than 'Miner's Prayer.' In a time of controversial war at a debatably equally pivotal moment in British history as the Napoleonic Wars – whichever side you come down on.

A coda: with regard to the miners – the left has always celebrated its defeats in song. But no one sings about the Miners Strike, oddly enough, a defining moment in recent domestic history from whichever side of the picket line you were on. 1984 too near?

Coda part two: like I said at the top, the gig that I was originally going to was The Fall at the Charlotte in Leicester. For reasons complex and obscure, I made it back to Loughborough instead and did the Wilsons. Regrets? Not really... I've heard them before so knew that the night would be good. And I'll catch up with old Mark E Smith at some point round the circuit. He's a survivor, looking a bit battered now but apparently on another roll at the moment. The Fall have ebbed and flowed in popularity and artistic relevance but Smith's ruthless permanent revolution in the ranks of his musicians has ensured that he has never become stale over the long haul. Ironically, given one of the themes of tonight – mining – Smith provided a major section of the soundtracks to the Thatcher Years with albums such as 'Hex Induction Hour' and 'This Nation's Saving Grace... a deeper and more interesting map of complicated times than some yahoo shouting 'Maggie Maggie Maggie, Out Out Out' - the yah boo school of political polemic... Arguably alongside Shane McGowan, the best writer in this country since punk – and McGowan came out of folk as much as punk and engineered his own sound that references both alongside his fellow musicians in the Pogues – and beyond. Smith is more elliptical, like some weird cross between William Burroughs and H.P.Lovecraft channelling the anonymous radical muse of the Northern British white working class. Surrealism meets Lowry, laced with amphetamines and a few pints or something... McGowan's songs you will hear in folk clubs: it's unlikely that the same could be said of Smith's oeuvre - given his idosyncratic vocal delivery that speaks and rants rather than sings in any remotely conventional manner. Yet he is firmly rooted in his culture, his American influences bent and melded into his unique musical vision. More so than many English folk or rock bands, that's for sure. The urban culture of Manchester where he came from, where he worked on the docks before the seventies music explosion – although he was always tangental to punk (wisely so: being a chief rather than an indian gave him longevity and much of British punk was about pose more than music)... Is it folk music, at a stretch? Idiomatically – no. Textually – writing about the complexities of the (post) modern world in a way that few others attempt – why not? And this is, after all, the guy who requested – successfully - that he be allowed to read the
Saturday evening football scores on the BBC. And has run probably the best band of the last thirty years. Discuss... Over and out...

But before I go – let us celebrate the diversity of musics available where you have such a choice on a Friday night in early spring 2006... The Mighty Wilsons... The Mighty Fall...

More Folk Blues Jazz...Bert Jansch/John Renbourne/Davey Graham/Joni Mitchell...

First day of spring yesterday, apparently... Cold as hell round here and I've been at home for two days and not feeling great physically – more of the same old same old. But it's my grandson's third birthday just passed so a big shout to the springtime boy – won't be able to see him this week unfortunately or his mother as I couldn't get across to the wilds of Wales... but never mind...

So today: some more Brit folk guitar with jazz influences from the sixties. First, Bert Jansch and John Renbourne playing Charles Mingus's beautiful elegy for Lester Young – 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.' I always remembered Bert as being the more aggressive and bluesy of the pair: on this track, it seems that Renbourne also engages in some percussive string-snapping occasionally There is a loose, improvisatory feel to this track, the figures bluesy and utilising bent and crushed notes – coming more out of the blues before they got translated into jazz (or re-translated given the times: fifties to sixties). Mingus's tune sings well here.

Then some Davy Graham: tackling Monk on 'Blue Monk.' Daring for a folk musician of the time? Well: the tune is almost an abstraction of an older, archaic blues tradition carried into Monk's unique universe. It is also deceptively simple: technically not posing so much of a challenge for a folk guitarist as much of his other material would, either melodically or harmonically. But it's a tune that needs to be got inside of... Graham does a good job. Note that on this track and his other selection here the similar blues figures that occur on the Jansch/Renbourne selection. Common currency among guitar players at the time (I should know...), there are a couple that come from Hard Bop piano playing (via the blues) – probably Bobby Timmons. Graham also plays this at a fair lick – Monk recorded it at various tempos but usually slower. This has elements of a party piece... there is an odd ending which displays, maybe, Graham's sense of humour – the 'Good evening friends' tag which is somewhat incongruous but Monk probably would have approved... This track is from the ground-breaking album he made with Shirley Collins whose unique traditional folk voice was counterpointed by Graham playing everything from jazz to blues to Moroccan inflected backings via his apparently self-invented DADGAD modal tuning. Of which more another time - this tuning was the bridge for many musics to travel across from the sixties onwards... east meets west...

Then another Graham stab at a jazz tune 'Buhaina Chant.' Buhaina of course, was Art Blakey and this track came from his ultra-drum fest album
'Orgy in Rhythm.' Graham's rhythm wobbles a little here and there but he gets through. There's a latin tinge to this, that reminds me of another tune but I can't dredge it up from my aged memory (something by Ray Bryant maybe...). Some nice bluesy rolling bass notes and a ferocious attack that is close to Bert Jansch's. On reflection, Graham is a more aggressive guitar than I remember him...

Mingus Monk Blakey – an interesting progression. At the back of all these jazz treatments is the blues – one of the first ports of call for British guitar players of this era, even if they became jazz buffs later (as Graham for one most definitely was - check out some of his repertoire) . The other thing that strikes is the rhythmic treatments – no double time sixteenth notes that you would hear from a jazz guitar player – slightly more difficult to play on the acoustic finger style although it can be done. Instead, the rhythmic feel is in triplets and that snapping sixteenth note triplet followed by an eighth note that one hears so much in Bop and beyond – it falls as easily under a guitarist's fingers as a horn player and can be overdone. But a small criticism – these tracks stand up pretty well over the years since I first heard them. Essentially, this sort of playing is more textural anyway, more blues than jazz...

Finally – just the way my mind works in coordination with my music collection: folk plus jazz equals – also Joni Mitchell and my favourite album of hers: what else but 'Mingus?' To put alongside the Jansch/Renbourne version, here is her take on 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.' More overtly jazz – fusion-ish in fact at the beginning. More complicated charts with a band including Jaco Pastorius and the hip lyrics taking it further away from folk. Joni sings it well, I think – and I know that this album has been slagged off in various quarters. A long way from 'Blue.' Which demonstrates her reach – Mitchell came off the folk side to create works of much depth and stylistic innovations. She seems effortless here, negotiating her lyrics on Mingus's theme from his idiom rather than bending them over to a folky version - which would have sounded ridiculous with this group anyway. Singing jazz is not easy and few can make the transition from folk, pop or rock. Take Norma Waterson, for example, a folkie who has tried to cross over into jazzier material – and should have stuck to what she does best. It's in the rhythm, stupid – and Joni demonstrates that on this forgotten classic: Mingus, ill though he was when this was recorded and in a wheel-chair, was no mug, after all...




Download

Goodbye Pork Pie Hat

Buy

Blue Monk


Buy

Buhaina Chant

Buy


Goodbye Pork Pie Hat

Buy

Gren Bartley... Tom Kitching... Frank Marmion... review of gig at the Vat and Fiddle, Nottingham, March 5, 2006

Pub gigs can be - well, unpredictable... Acoustic pub gigs even more so... The layout of the room is usually not conducive to playing, for a start. Arriving at the Vat and Fiddle (stupid name: nice pub), the space available looked a bit cramped. But it had a high ceiling, and when it was cleared out there was room for the pa. And it worked out fine – giving a close space for listeners and enough spread from the pa to cover the rest of the bar with the ambiance of the music without deafening the clientele and scaring the horses. Sunday afternoon, a bright, sharp day. So we commence...



To the mark: Frank Marmion, local stalwart, folk veteran, Liverpool supporter. The Star of the County Scouse. Accompanied by Tom Kitching on violin, he played a brief, bouncy warm up. Frank can go from raucous – 'Tailor's Britches' - to tender – 'The Dutchman' – and always looks as if he is enjoying himself. Tom Kitching's violin complements Frank's steady rhythmic guitar playing, giving his set a nice lift. Then the main act – Tom Kitching and Gren Bartley. Two young up and coming musicians, with great passion and techniques that blend superbly, Tom's violin diving in and out and soaring over the complex finger-picking patterns of Gren. Who is no mean singer either... over the last year or so his voice has strengthened to a subtle power, the lightness of its timbre disguising an essential toughness. He has a good ear for a cover song – and also writes some great material. The covers can help to bring an audience into his own stuff but here it doesn't really matter: this is a pub gig, after all, not a folk club – although they get more listening attention than I would have thought, which is encouraging and says a lot about a wider acceptance of their music. The overall sound is a kind of 'chamber folk' – by which I mean that it has quiet strengths strung on a frame of exemplary technique. Gren is not a folk 'belter' but this is all to the good for this music: he draws you into his sound world subtly. Tom Kitching is a fleet-fingered player, with the ability to switch between traditional and contemporary material that marks this duo – there is a fiery power to his playing that reaches beyond the folk ghetto to pull in a broader listening audience. People like violins... Tom is turning rapidly into a wide-ranging virtuoso – and he also composes out of the tradition. Gren is more American in sources and influence, but in turn can switch into traditional mode easily enough when called. There is no clash here between two different areas – the American and the Anglo-Irish – finger-picking and fiddle. There is space enough in the music they create to meld all these disparate strands into a fascinating continuum: they are also well on the way to transcending their influences and creating truly individual styles.

In the first half they ranged between traditional tunes like 'Peg and Awl' and 'Rusty Gulley,' David Francey's 'Red Winged Blackbird,' an outstanding song of Gren's – 'The Moral Lasts,' a solo set of tunes by Tom and an intriguing arrangement of Skip James' 'Standing at the Judgement.' Frank and Tom commenced the second set with some favourites – Frank has a knack of figuring what will go down in places like this – leading somewhat inexorably – but pleasantly -into 'The Leaving of Liverpool. Tom and Gren continued in the same eclectic vein as before: A brace of Tom's tunes: 'Autumn Wasp' and 'Boris in the Bathroom,' the traditional 'Old Molly Oxford,' a couple of Gren's songs ('Favourite Red Coat,' 'Record Lovelies'), another solo set by Tom of traditional tunes and very good covers of 'Beeswing' (Richard Thompson – actually I can't stand his singing and prefer Gren's version – heresy in some circles no doubt...), 'So Long I'll See Ya' (Tom Waits) and the final choice to end on – the jaunty 'Panama Hat' by Eric Bibb – which they do so well: Gren's voice is especially suited to this song and the bounce of the violin adds another level – clever material for this venue especially. Because only the die-hard would come to an event like this and expect the pristine-using a PA for acoustic performance will always take away something from the sound – although it adds volume and gives the chance for performers like this especially to go out into a pub environment and acquit themselves well. This is music especially suited to a Sunday afternoon. With the half time addition of a couple of guys who had travelled over from Loughborough to support them and ended up doing an impromtu set – Stev and Andy on accordion and guitar and vocals, giving a more overtly 'folky' edge to the proceedings that ended on a neat version of 'Scarborough Fair'– and the experience of Frank Marmion and his connections to a long-established performing tradition, it had broad appeal and was put across with good nature and a deceptive ease. Another point: these two are definitely going places and in a year or two you are going to be paying good money to hear them – grab the chance now to be in at the (relative) start of their careers. (I say 'relative' because they have both already acquired much experience and paid a few dues along the way).

I hear that this might become a regular monthly gig – if that happens you could find much worse ways of spending your sunday afternoons. Given the variety and quality of drinks on sale and rather good cobs (East Midlands patois for filled rolls) and space to sit outside when the weather gets better – the Vat and Fiddle is worth checking out... keep a look out for more announcements about gigs...

More info here: Gren Bartley ... Tom Kitching... Frank Marmion is the curator of Loughborough's premier folk club - The Pack Horse...

Folk... Blues... Jazz... and back...

My apologies for a late post again – busy with music and things and sporadic ill-health... but onwards... I saw a great post on Jazz pour Tous (scroll down and down until you come to it – it will be an interesting journey which is why I don't give the direct link) about the Jimmy Guiffre album 'Freefall' – one of the sessions that ironically put his career into freefall for many years with their radical movements away from his previous work. And that got me to remembering his work with the trio that famously recorded 'Train and the river' – not just a high spot of the film 'Jazz on a Summer's Day' but a track that caused ripples onward into the sixties acoustic folk underground in England – in the circle of guitarists who were combining the older folk tradition with blues and jazz inflections – and significantly started to look outside their own culture, in the case of Davey Graham and the Incredible String Band, especially, towards Middle Eastern music and beyond. I'm thinking about people like Bert Jansch who played a variant of 'Train and the River' and John Renbourne, their combined forces in Pentangle, Stefan Grossman and a horde of unsung others. Charles Mingus was also a big influence – Davey Graham's arrangement of 'Better git in in your soul' is what I'm starting off with today. A tortuous line described... but the elliptical is how this blog is created in the main...


It could be argued that when Guiffre explored the free jazz/improv territory he embraced a more european ethic in timbre and harmony and put too much distance between himself and the blues... maybe. But it's good to remember how rooted he was not just in the blues (as a white reeds player – problematic? I don't think so, actually – forward: Jack Teagarden, the great trombonist – and exemplary blues singer – who may have been part Indian but was certainly regarded as 'white'). But also his take on folk music... The Big T also came from – Texas, which was Giuffre's birthplace. More needs to be written about the sublime mixtures of musics that exist and still do in that state but for my purposes today I just want to consider a line that goes from Giuffre – here represented by 'Crawdad Suite' and 'Two Kinds of Blues' – loping, free and easy material from the 'Train and the River' sessions - back to an earlier Texan musician: the blues singer and guitar player Blind Lemon Jefferson.
So let's listen to some twenties country blues from a deep originator of the style and some fifties jazz that references those roots indirectly.

Other thoughts – Jim Hall's bluesy guitar playing help to create the folk/blues pastoral down home atmosphere evoked by these tracks. And Giuffre used to call his earlier Fifties music: 'Blues-based folk jazz.' Which wouldn't be far off some of what Davey Graham and company were attempting at times... When you put blues and folk music into the frame of the fifties and sixties I would argue that it explains a lot of the subsequent development of the avant-garde. Ornette was also from Texas and there is always somewhere in his music, not just that vocalised tone that the great sax players achieve but further, to stretch a metaphor, 'the rooster-crow' voice of the blues (also the bedrock for most -but not all – great jazz instrumentalists). Albert Ayler is probably the most obvious practitioner who seemed to take sustenance by foregrounding the folk elements of his music – the marches and deceptive simplicity of some of his themes. Note that this also uses the idea of collective improvisation – harking back to the New Orleans heritage. But beyond that there are also the global intrinsic freedoms of folk music to consider which also involve instrumental embellishment and improvisation and stretching songs to the demands of the moment beyond the purview of written scores. The freedoms of the blues singers – Lightning Hopkins and John Lee Hooker suggest themselves readily as does, say, Bukka White who declared that his songs were plucked 'out of the air' – to bend the twelve bar form to their own ends as and when desired.

These are interesting issues: much of the sixties new thing can be seen as a reconsidering of older traditions not just in jazz for the elements of freedom that they contained – and not just in European/American music but further afield... African, Indian, Arab, Asian – outwards...
Also – that jazz had a wider effect on Sixties popular music indirectly than may sometimes be realised – via the folk underground in some instances...

Download

Davey Graham

Better Git it in your soul

Buy

Blind Lemon Jefferson

Download

Shucking sugar blues

Long distance moan
Matchbox blues
Easy rider blues
Jack o' diamonds blues

Buy

Download

Jimmy Guiffre

Crawdad Suite

Two kinds of blues

Buy


This is on American Amazon – this cd is at the moment unavailable on UK Amazon – I must have got the last one! (And if it doesn't turnup again soon, I might consider posting the whole album...)

Cecil Taylor/Evan Parker/Barry Guy/Tony Oxley... the blast of 'Last'

"'To play with Cecil Taylor you need the stamina of an athlete and the imagination of a god.' (Tony Oxley)

I love this quote... a sharp return to serious stuff this week – the Teddy Charles Tentet and now - 'Last' from the album 'Nailed'... although... yes, it's heavy and fiery and wild but – I find this music exhilarating! A concert recording, Parker tussling with Taylor's lines – or the other way round at times, as Barry Guy and Tony Oxley – the Old Firm – grapple to underpin the reeling streams of notes. This is a long track - but shorter than the preceding one (there are two on the album, the other clocking at about 50 mins): I wasn't sure about posting such a large chunk, but here goes... Any red-blooded collector wants their own solid copy anyway... and once you've been bitten by Cecil and co, it's hard not to resist the lure of their brand of sonic adventuring. This is a long track – but it's full of interest all the way. Commencing with deep piano notes slowly spaced and then a couple of chords as the bass enters, the piano responding with more elaborate lines as Oxley cymbals his way into the opening spaces. A meditative opening with busy bass behind the slo-mo piano – unusual and not the usual Cecil fire and brimstone - but not for long! Taylor starts to build up the intensity as a three way dialogue rises, suddenly erupting in splashing chords and the trade-mark lightning fast runs. This is densely packed music, brutal and bouncing at the same time. This is music that almost demands an evolutionary response – to rise to a point where it can be truly appreciated on all of its levels. Oxley's customised drum kit sounds totally distinctive, his cymbals sizzle and splash like no one else's. Guy's bass a little buried at times, felt rather than heard. Ten minutes or so in – and Evan Parker joins the throng – the crowd of three expanded by his multiphonic saxophone, a man with the technique and ideas to match Taylor's speed and density of line – linear and vertical simultaneously it seems. This is heavy company but the sax player sounds undaunted. I've seen Evan Parker several times down the years, solo and in different combinations: he always impresses. I feel that he has been so consistently good for so long that he is almost taken for granted, in an odd way. A home-grown genius who vastly expanded the post-Coltrane saxophone: of how many others can we say that they achieved anything near that level of sublimity?

This sort of music throws up different challenges – how do you respond to – or lead - Taylor's cataclysmic style, for one? Go for the spaces in between? (Small and microscopic as they undoubtedly are?) Float across it – as Jimmy Lyons did, whose metalanguage of expanded bebop out of Parker melded so well with his piano playing partner, finely honed down their years of playing together? Or match it note for note - as Parker does here? Coming out of Coltrane, originally, (who only made the one record with Taylor - an interesting but flawed document as the rhythm section, good as they were, just didn't fit) with that accurate high-register work that expands the saxophone range mightily and coupled to his circular breathing techniques, Parker rises brilliantly to this challenge, equal and more to the task. This is relentless music where there is so much going on on all levels. My only criticism is that the bass, as mentioned, is just a bit too far down in the mix – but that was probably a casualty of live recording levels and Guy's presence registers sufficiently for him to share in the glory. Just under twenty minutes in and Parker drops out – the bass can be heard a little better now, fast and loose, stepping up to the challenge. They start to slow down, Taylor muting the pyrotechnics, playing his own brand of acid lyricism, mirroring the quiet beginning as Guy displays his own virtuosity. They slowly wind down - to end on a high singing bass note.

This is an astounding piece of music – but, hey, I'm a fan...

Cecil Taylor/Evan Parker/Barry Guy/Tony Oxley

Recorded at the Bechstein Concert Hall, Berlin on 26 September 1990.

Download

Last

Buy

We get requests... The Teddy Charles Tentet... encore une fois...

I have mentioned sporadically in this blog my interest in the cultural life of the USA during the late forties/fifties – that much of it still remains buried or critically undervalued as the higher, wilder profile of the Sixties still casts a long shadow. We tend to assume that everything was grey,uniform – because we were told so time and again. While some of this may well be true, there were many stirrings, spring shoots of the later lush crops to come. Especially in jazz... there seems to be an undervaluing or downright ignorance of much of the questing music of the time, as a variety of musicians across the country looked towards expanding and transcending the bebop revolution. One such man was the vibes player and composer/arranger Teddy Charles. I selected a couple of tracks from his historic recording with the Tentet a couple of weeks ago. And I have had a request from Mehdi over at Jazz pour tous (which has to be the best blog around for jazz at the moment! Check it out, mes braves...) to post the whole album. Usually, due to time considerations, I look to post only two or three mp3's a week at most, but I feel that this album is worthy of larger interest and if Teddy Charles gets some more recognition, so be it...

Charles was one of an interesting and interlocking group of musicians and some time soon I would like to pursue these connections in greater detail. His work runs alongside the launch of the 'Third Stream' and there is definite cross-fertilisation going on but I see it as centred more clearly in the jazz tradition, for all its attempts to expand the interaction between form and improvised content – to go beyond the 32 bar chorus into longer form and using a different harmonic palette while retaining the contemporary perceived virtues of jazz. Look at the names of the composers and arrangers: George Russell, Gil Evans, Jimmy Guiffre, apart from Charles and Mal Waldron, the pianist in this group. One can see immediately where these lines of dispersal will lead... And also note the obscurity that Guiffre and Russell suffered for many years, alongside Charles. He is a neglected genius, creating new timbres and forms while retaining the swing of jazz.

Perhaps the one element that was missing from the experiments of the fifties was getting the rhythms right – maybe it needed Sunny Murray and company to take the conception of jazz drumming to other levels for it to breathe more easily in the utilising of complex harmonic/melodic materials. Sometimes listening to allied experimental music from the fifties, one sees the joins a bit too easily between formal experimentation and a desire to 'swing.' If the latter is ignored, the resultant work can seem a bit arid: allied to it too self-consciously, sometimes it appears as jumping too clumsily between genres, as if the drums, say, are tacked on too ineptly.

But on these Tentet recordings, there is little of this formal unease. Just a marvellous document of a different and neglected time and space in jazz.

Enjoy...

For a good overview of Teddy Charles go here...

There is a fascinating hour-long radio program devoted to Teddy Charles and the Early Avant Garde here... Scroll down and you'll find it - also check out their other broadcasts: a lot of interesting stuff here...

... and here is a comprehensive discography of Teddy Charles...

Teddy Charles Tentet

Personnel:
Teddy Charles (vibraphone); Gigi Gryce (alto saxophone); J.R. Monterose (tenor saxophone); George Barrow, Sol Schlinger (baritone saxophone); Peter Urban/Art Farmer (trumpet); Mal Waldron (piano); Jimmy Raney (guitar); Teddy Kotick (bass); Joe Harris (drums).

Recorded January 11 and January 17 1956 at Coastal Studios, NY.

Download from here:

http://rapidshare.de/files/14541002/teddy_charles.rar.html

(If prompted for a password: freejazz)

Buy here

We get requests... The Teddy Charles Tentet... encore une fois...

I have mentioned sporadically in this blog my interest in the cultural life of the USA during the late forties/fifties – that much of it still remains buried or critically undervalued as the higher, wilder profile of the Sixties still casts a long shadow. We tend to assume that everything was grey,uniform – because we were told so time and again. While some of this may well be true, there were many stirrings, spring shoots of the later lush crops to come. Especially in jazz... there seems to be an undervaluing or downright ignorance of much of the questing music of the time, as a variety of musicians across the country looked towards expanding and transcending the bebop revolution. One such man was the vibes player and composer/arranger Teddy Charles. I selected a couple of tracks from his historic recording with the Tentet a couple of weeks ago. And have had a request from Mehdi over at Jazz pour tous (which has to be the best blog around for jazz at the moment!) to post the whole album. Usually, due to time considerations, I look to post only two or three mp3's a week at most, but I feel that this album is worthy of larger interest and if Teddy Charles gets some more recognition, so be it...

Charles was one of an interesting and interlocking group of musicians and some time soon I would like to pursue these connections in greater detail. His work runs alongside the launch of the 'Third Stream' and there is definite cross-fertilisation going on but I see it as centred more clearly in the jazz tradition, for all its attempts to expand the interaction between form and improvised content – to go beyond the 32 bar chorus into longer form and using a different harmonic palette while retaining the contemporary perceived virtues of jazz. Look at the names of the composers and arrangers: George Russell, Gil Evans, Jimmy Guiffre, apart from Charles and Mal Waldron, the pianist in this group. One can see immediately where these lines of dispersal will lead... And also note the obscurity that Guiffre and Russell suffered for many years, alongside Charles. He is a neglected genius, creating new timbres and forms while retaining the swing of jazz.

Perhaps the one element that was missing from the experiments of the fifties was getting the rhythms right – maybe it needed Sunny Murray and company to take the conception of jazz drumming to other levels for it to breathe more easily in the utilising of complex harmonic/melodic materials. Sometimes listening to allied experimental music from the fifties, one sees the joins a bit too easily between formal experimentation and a desire to 'swing.' If the latter is ignored, the resultant work can seem a bit arid: allied to it too self-consciously, sometimes it appears as jumping too clumsily between genres, as if the drums, say, are tacked on too ineptly.

But on these Tentet recordings, there is little of this formal unease. Just a marvellous document of a different and neglected time and space in jazz.

Enjoy...

Personnel:
Teddy Charles (vibraphone); Gigi Gryce (alto saxophone); J.R. Monterose (tenor saxophone); George Barrow, Sol Schlinger (baritone saxophone); Peter Urban/Art Farmer (trumpet); Mal Waldron (piano); Jimmy Raney (guitar); Teddy Kotick (bass); Joe Harris (drums).

Download from here:

http://rapidshare.de/files/14541002/teddy_charles.rar.html

(If prompted for a password: freejazz)

For a good overview of Teddy Charles go here...

There is a good hour long radio program devoted to Teddy Charles and the Early Avant Garde here...