Easing back in...

Just bought netbook for mobility and trying it out now - live blogging from the pub... well - I missed Bartley and Kitching last night - buried in wires/cables trying to get my networks up and running at the new house... And I was going to see Sonny Simmons tonight in Sheffield - alas, that's gone down as well... Never mind - looking forward to the London Jazz Festival - most of it of no interest to me but managed to book three nights in succession - Keith Tippett, Peter Brotzmann and Rudresh Mahanthappa... may try some live blogging during the sessions if I can find wifi points adjacent... Some music back up here asap... watch this space etc...

Just realised that the landlord of this establishment bears a resemblance to Thurston Moore... Increasing I've been feeling like Old Tom Moore (from the bummer's shore)... But the worst of the move is now over...

Almost there... and a birthday...

We're in the new house - but internet will not be arriving until next thursday when hopefully things will be back to normal. But I could not let the day pass without a mention that it is my daughter's 21st birthday today. Many happy returns - from your proud parents...

Moving...

We are moving house (again!) today - which is why posting has been non-existent since I got back from the Brighton festival... more to come when the dust has settled (literally).

Review; Colour out of Space Festival, Brighton, Sunday 7th September, 2008...

Sunday. Unfortunately I missed the films at midday due to a prior gig and wasn't grabbed by the afternoon talk/panel (my loss I'm sure) so just came down for the last evening. Again, I was a little selective – stayed in the main hall throughout so didn't get to everything – but that's the nature of festivals... By the way - the first image is from a boozer over the road from the festival - the jakes in Hector's House... very anarcho-punk, dudes... but the booze was cheap and it was good to hear Kraftwerk again...

Black to Comm: Quite delicate traceries building into a solid drone that developed intriguingly. Flecked with 'small instruments' and violin.

Muscletusk: Again, great programming as they were a complete contrast to the previous act. Noise rock meets freejazz drumming shot through with electronics and good use of dynamics. I thought they were great!

Graham Phillips/G Park: Another programmatic contrast. These two take a much more theatrical performative stance. The lights were taken right down, the curtains pulled over the doors. Out of the ensuing pitch blackness two lights appeared on stage – like miners' helmets – necessary for the duo to see the sound sources on their respective tables. But also: acting as minute focal points if somewhat eery. A clangour – bell sounds moving into darker noise. Creaking doors – we are in the haunted house, made more atmospheric by the darkness. Then what seemed to be a scrawling veering dizzying ride on an aeroplane, spinning out of control, accompanied by shouts, cries, screams of scared passengers. This became quite unsettling – close to the bone for many? Some people did leave, too disturbing? In my mind I would like to think the plane righted its course - but more was to come. Slaughterhouse dance macabre – sharp shocks of sound interweaving with the plaintive baas of sheep. Human and animal mortality at stake here? My private movies, anyway – a genuinely harrowing experience... even in the realisation that this was clever manipulation. Edgy brilliance...

Pigs in the Ground: 'Inspired by the work of Necrosearch Society of Colorado – forensic pathologists who bury swine corpses and study the results to discern the whereabouts of clandestine graves...' When you have read this description of their music in the program notes, it colours your perception – certainly the deep bass and scuttling rattles give an air of the subterranean, dark condensed spaces and movements of earth. Shifting into a more defined beat with a jerky one two march figure – the troll two step? Bass melody moves in and out... spartan vocal gestures. As colour.. wafts of more defined rhythms. Another great set – this weekend has given out some good music...

Lionel Marchetti/Yoko Higashi: Marchetti has been a wheel in musique concrete for some time, moving into more improvised strategies in the nineties. Hagashi came from the dance world in Tokyo before developing her vocal projects. Collectively they provided another highlight of the weekend – moving across from the more academic to the poppier ends of the spectrum with ease, in the main. A striking couple, one can see/hear the disparate worlds they inhabit mesh into the performance – not always an easy fit, perhaps, but that gives the occasional misstep that is picked up quickly an added piquancy, a lift of spontaneity, the fun of a chance taken...













To the end of the night: Corsano/Moore/Nace. The drummer – a revelation. I know his recorded work pretty well, but have missed him all over the UK these last couple of years. My loss. Live, he is just plain awesome. It's not just the flawless technique, but the FEEL... He is a striking figure, looking very young, the shaven head gives him a monk-like appearance and that re-inforces, perhaps, the purity of vision that seems to be at work here. The two guitarists, Thurston Moore, a co-founder of Sonic Youth, of course, who has developed his career into the free improv arena (and beyond) in recent years with many collaborations and solo projects, Bill Nace a new name to me, from Northampton, Mass, smash and burn across the truly mind-rattling percussive storm behind them. Hi-octave stuff... This was about smears of sound, guitars battered and pummeled to yield loud emotional ecstasies. Corsano carries the whole shebang, pausing occasionally, to give space to his cohorts – and no doubt to catch his breath. One small example of his technique – during a fast-spattering passage, he kept the rhythms going with one hand while he changed sticks with the other – and it sounded just as complex... A demonstration of how free jazz and avant-rock/noise can coexist and feed each other – which was one of the underlying theme of the festival, come to think of it...

So, a wild end to a great weekend. Salutations to the Brighton crew who put all this together with skill and good humour. Given the logistics of swapping so many diverse acts about and sound-checking etc, the musicians wheeled themselves on and off in good order, a truly collaborative effort on their part as well – no prima donnas spotted (doesn't mean there weren't any but it wasn't obvious). The relatively short sets helped, I think, concentrated bursts in the main of great, thoughtful, innovative, epiphanic wahoo... etc... Plus imaginative programming, contrasting the varieties of conception on display to good advantage. Everything I heard I liked, so I left happy. And it is rare to be able to say that... The packed crowd enjoyed it in good order throughout– even the drunks were in the main amusing – apart from the young gobshite behind me on Saturday off whose head I was tempted to whang a half-full can of Red Stripe at one point. But: that would have soured the evening, probably got me thrown out – and would have been a waste of expensive booze. I'm too old for that malarkey, anyway...

Hope to be back next year... My first time in Brighton, as well. Great town...

Posted from The Ranelagh, up on St James Street - on tap country/blues - an interesting contrast...

Sunday - Brighton...

The last night of the festival was a blast - no time yet to up review - hopefully tomorrow - and more crappy photos - too lazy to leave the back of the room...

Review: Colour out of Space Festival, Brighton, Saturday, 6th September, 2008...

Saturday

Afternoon.


Made it to the Bruce McLure show... Two pieces, introduced by the man himself – again, that American communication with the audience, this time to briefly explain his strategies. Hallucinatory mix of image and music – blips of scruffy white light flashing with the rhythms, occasional blurred images appearing and disappearing as if buried by the visual static. McLure sets loops running and blends/rams them into each other setting up cross-rhythms that collide and fall into step and separate again. The second piece introduced more syncopation in a jazzy way, moving across a strong three beat rhythm that changed to four and back, some fast ticking eighth notes giving a feel of 6/8 at one point. Usually falling back into a heavy pounding that echoed for me the Velvet Underground – a conscious New York influence? Hallucinatory flickers...

Night.

Fewer acts seen – got there a little later than planned due to apocalyptic downpour that had me pinned for shelter in the dooway of Safeways for ages! First up:

Charles Draheim. One man and his electronics table... but something different going on here. Draheim started innocently enough in the usual sonic territory but proceeded to go further and further away from the centre until he was banging mightily against the walls – and perhaps breaching them – of what an ear can tolerate. Not just the volume, particularly, but the high screeling, finger down the blackboard, dentist's drill nightmare granularities that did provoke a few to leave. Later he explored the deeper territories where bass gets very physical indeed and you feel that your heart beat is being interfered with... Transgressive stuff that posed many a question – which is what experimental music is supposed to do... This I dug...

Skullflower came straight out of the traps and held a climax for the whole of their segment. Tantric, what? Violin, guitars, blending into one roaring tangle of sound, powered on by the drums. Violin dropped out before the end – something to do with a dead lead? Or choice? Interesting, that sawed-out string sound out of the Velvets (back via John Cale to Tony Conrad/Dream Dyndicate and earlier minimalism) still rings on through the underground... A favourite band, encountered live for the first time.

Paul Hession and his two saxophonist cohorts, Biggi Vinkeloe (alto, doubling flute) and Sami Pekkola, tenor saxophone come straight out of free jazz. A purely acoustic lineup in such a predominantly electronic festival may have posed a few problems. Which were ridden over immediately. As they sound-checked and proceeded to play what turned into a taster for their main set people were drifting in and getting straight into their music. When they stopped, there were shouts for more! The hall filled up and they played a great set, coming off the polyrhythmic fire and skill of Hession, a master drummer who has been around in heavy company down the years. I hadn't heard his two bandmembers before and they were intriguing. Pekkola can go from what now has become straight ahead free playing across all the registers to the more conceptual interrogations of the the physicality of his instrument, in one sequence removing the mouthpiece, then later part of the neck to produce a variety of swooshing, farty sounds. Vinkeloe's flute was fascinating – plenty of orthodox technique again but she pushed into further territory, heavily breathing/speaking through it to produce other levels of sound – in Roland Kirk mode, certainly, but with her own spin. Overall, they gave a superb demonstration of dynamics, going from full-bore blowing to a quieter section that explored small nuances, bowed cymbals and brushes from the drummer and pointillism from the horns, bouncing ideas of each other all the way as Hession constantly varied his timbres and attack. Usually you see/hear this stuff in smaller venues, where the audience can get a bit precious, to be honest. I enjoyed the rowdier atmosphere as the saturday night fandango cranked up and the booze and whatever else flowed – many shouts and hoots of encouragement to the band that contributed to my thinking that this music benefits from being thrown out of the usual performance space into a more public arena. Hession and co looked as if they enjoyed themselves... one of my highspots of the weekend...

Vibracathedral Orchestra I have seen before and heard a lot of on cd , another favourite UK band. I remember first encountering them on a radio show ('Mixing It') about the music scene oop north and being blown away by the purity of their music and the way they build a set. No great surprises tonight perhaps – except maybe in the mellower sounds they produce compared to many other acts. Dissonance there is, cutting across the tonalities rising up from the drone base, but they tend to resolve rather than hang bleeding on the sonic wires. Not a criticism, rather the opposite in that they created their own space within the jostling sound worlds of the weekend – still widening the wide field they have fine-ploughed these last years. Rare beauty...

To the last act: Reines D'Angleterre. Ho ho... God save them... The enigmatic Frenchman Ghedalia Tazartes, flanked by Jo Tanz and él-g on electronics and 'vocals,' produced a barnstormer – something completely different. Singing in his own polyglot of fractured English, French and whatever else flits through his perception, moaning and hollering in cadences that seem to move from French chanson through minor key Jewish and Arab wail and beyond, he stands on the babel tower of his culture, producing a small accordion occasionally to blat out a fractured accompaniment and blowing and whirling a length of rubber pipe which is a secret signifier of Parisian street culture which I am sure he must be aware of. He's the same age as I am, and I remember the character who used to busk on the cinema queues on the Left bank, a clochard who blew a wild sound out of a length of garden hose looped round his neck. Whom we dubbed 'Hosepipe Feliciano,' circa 1970. Wish I could have asked him... (Wonder what happened to the Ratman? But that's for another day...).

The crowd loved him, as I did – I'd like to hear more. His accompanists gave out a sympathetic aural carpet of matching vocalisms and minimal but sufficient – and witty - background sounds from the kit on their respective tables.

There is a big article on him in this month's 'Wire' mag, worth checking out...

Apologies for the photos - I couldn't be bothered to jostle down to the front as I am just recovering from a broken toe... and no links either, as fast blogging off wifi and with duff battery...

Review: Colour out of Space Festival, Brighton, Friday 5th September, 2008

The balance had to be rectified... I don't have anything against folk music (well, not much) and have been to some great acoustic gigs recently. However – they have been the only gigs I've been to, for a variety of reasons. Just haven't made it to any jazz, improv, skronk/wahoo whatever gig away from the hey-nonny for too long. I had to travel to the south coast anyway to meet up with a friend for a project we are involved in, checked the dates and information – and found that the Brighton Colour out of Space Festival at the Sallis-Binney Theatre was on round about the same time. So: booked tickets and a cheap hotel – and here I am. Sitting writing this Saturday morning looking out across a storm-tossed sea with the wind rising – rehearsals for Armageddon again in this star-crossed country, economics and weather wise... At some point will find a wifi node to put it up...

Friday night.

Arrived a little late as needed a quick kip when I got to the hotel – not much sleep the last few days.

So: first set:

Core of the Coalman. Opening electronics hissing as an aircraft revs up... Your man proceeded to build an imposing, ever-spinning vortex of sound via his viola hooked up to a battery of loop/delay pedals. Simple long bowed notes with fragments of occasional melody overlaid to rise into mighty thunder. This cleared the acoustic cobwebs out... And a reasonable crowd (that would build to impressive proportions – these people know how to get the vote out) intent on digging the proceedings.

Red Stripe/sandwich interval then:

UK group Helhesten – a four-piece, clarinet, single drum and cymbal (floor tom), violin and vocal. Producing an almost ur-music of hollers, grunts and shattered syllables with high streaks of clarinet, low thumps of primal drum and sawed violin continuum. Clustered facing each other, it was if they were gathered round some primeval campfire, coming fresh at the world. A thought accentuated by the numbers sat in the main part of the hall, cross-legged and intensely listening. I don't do cross-legged these days (especially recovering from all my various wounds to feet and legs etc) but had a reasonable view of the ongoing eistedfordd from the sidelines where i found a seat that I managed to hold throughout various beer, sandwich and pissbreaks. Enjoyed these guys... cosmic Kumbaya...

HRT were out in a marquee in the garden area adjoining the Sallis-Binney theatre. Dressed in black cowled robes, spooky electronics – seemed like fun but I couldn't be bothered to stand in mud and needed a break anyway...

Gastric Female Refles, next up. Two fine young Canadians, providing some humour in their presentation – I noticed that the North Americans were the only ones (I saw) to address the audience direct which was an interesting point overall. A table full of electronics to wow and dazzle with ultra-fast jumpcutting across a massive range of samples and sounds in a hectic but good natured two-way call and response. Country guitar picking emerging a couple of times to be thrown down back into the slash and burn – FUN!

Rat Bastard came on resplendent in wooly black hat , big black shades and just a guitar plugged into an amp – with which he proceeded to fast strum and flat pick a gathering wild dissonance that was held together by open strings ringing throughout. Sort of drone crossed with metal replete with many of the stage gestures of that genre thrown in. Guy has a sense of humour. Joined by two young women with hand-held gizmos to throw electronic splatter across like acid, bumping and grinding in a stage mashup complete with hair-flailing which was extremely funny. Mock the rock, hey geezers?

Then: Peeeseye. Stripped down drum kit, guitar and electronics, the drummer doubling on vocals - talking in tongues jive esperanto. Led in by the electronics man producing a drone from what looked like a shoe-shine box with a flap that he manipulated to produce the sounds throughout – must have been hell on his arm muscles. An instrument seen in Indian music, I think – I was somewhat unsited by the crowd down front. An object lesson in how to build and sustain a set, rising from the drone to produce a three-way ever moving vector of powerful musics. The drummer led at first on voice , building it up and easing it down when he stepped out from the kit and went to the front stage mike to keep the vocal voodoo moving as the background settled back and the rhythm was kept just on a cowbell or some similar small metallic ringing intrument he was hitting. Back behind the kit, then the guitar rose up to spit swoosh and roar, then the electronics took front focus. Not solos as such, rather like a triangular movement where the three corners rotate in turn to hold the emphasis. Wild - and thoughtful... great attention to structure here...

To the final act – Aaron Dilloway. I'm a big fan but have never seen him live – and I suspect this really is the best way to experience his full-tilt electronic firestorm. He sat at his table of electronics, looking calm – that state which comes before the storm. Commencing on distant deep muffled dustbins kicked around some dark cellar in a ricocheting clatter. Slowly building, riff upon riff, call and response, as the lights hit him and he moved now to the cross-rhythms of the music. Chomping down on his contact miked mouth to produce howls and cries and squeals, lurching in his seated position into a desperate dance. The music enfolds and overwhelms like a thick rising tide – this is such physical music, coming from the body to hit the collective body of the audience. Truly a PERFORMANCE. As the old MGM trailer went for that compilation of Hollywood musical/movie clips some years back. 'THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT. AND BOY DO WE NEED IT NOW.'

Awesome... and again, a free-flowing structure born of experience and skill – and of course, imagination. A great end to a great night.

I missed some acts which was unfortunate – came back in late to Leslie Keffer's set as the stage was being loaded with invitees – this looked fun – but ya can't have everything? (Why not? I hear you cry – well... stamina these days, folks...). A great combo overall of youth and established musicians with nothing that I saw going by the numbers. Interesting dichotomy between the Canadians/US performers and the Europeans...

And apologies for the few photos – forgot to buy fresh batteries for my camera. So amateur...
No time to check links - will do that tomorrow as I have to grab a quick wifi window.

More to come... on the run...

Bill Evans/Lee Konitz/Warne Marsh... Matthew Shipp... Billy Bang... Cannonball Adderley...

Bill Evans and the Kings of Cool – Konitz and Marsh. 'Speak Low.' This is sparkling, frothy stuff. Evans leads off in rhapsodic mode before Konitz takes the theme and lifts it into steady rhythm. Warne Marsh joins in to weave round the alto in a high-stepping dance. Eddie Gomez springs a line across Evan's chording, firm-fingered, high up the neck. Konitz up next. Followed by Bill Evans, Warne Marsh. Listening to all of them stretch phrases across bar-lines and chorus demarcations is a fascinating master-class in modern jazz improvised melody. Evans returns then there is an almost old-school ride out by the ensemble... Not to get tangled up in racial stereotyping, but this is not the blues end of bop, out of the fountainhead, Bird, and the Afro-American vanguard , rather the oblique white line coming out of Lennie Tristano (which of course came out of the same vanguard, Bird with a large dash of Lester Young, yadda yadda)– yet there is plenty of tension and emotion, delivered on its own cultural terms. Joyous...

Matthew Shipp and 'Density and Eucharist' from his album 'Critical Mass.' Observing the late-night eucharist here in the Eagle's Nest, trying to get it back on track over Budweisers and a chocolate orange. High living... And no intentional blasphemy here – the antinomian takes his or her own way through... But it's a loaded word... Density follows... Led in again by piano, a loping line underscored by some biting harmonies before the violin enters, riding across an increasing complexity from bass and drums. Shipp solos, thick-fingered clusters and swirls, prodded by Parker especially, locking into the occasional almost groove. Manieri comes back in finger-plucking strikes, before returning to his bow. Grappelli it ain't, this is the astringency of contemporary classical whammed across into free jazz. Or the reverse, take your pick... Tension building with heavy deep piano chords bombing across the drummer's rising clatter. Dickey takes his solo before the violin comes back to utter some wrenched phases, answered by the hurly burly piano. Shipp solo – fast track moves that leap the registers before a crunching chordal phrase summons the violin. More fast-it whirligig piano. Slowing down into more reflective mood, yet suddenly criss-crossed by Parker arco, duetting with the violin. Bass switches back to a fast strum as the tempo ups again. Some percussive and also lyrical bass from Mr Parker throughout, the deep heartbeat that links it all together. Density a plenty... The violin gives it that trans-idiomatic riff, as Mr Braxton might say... And much is coming together here – in the interplay of the musicians and the resonance of the title:

'The Eucharist is generally... thought to have its antecedents in common meal practice of uncertain origin, which gradually developed into a rite central to the Roman Church in the first two to four centuries of the Common Era.' (From here...).

Meeting to participate in the easygoing practice and commonplace necessity of eating which will transcend the gathering to a higher plane and purpose... I just re-read Paul's 'First Epistle to the Corinthians,' the first biblical reference to the Eucharist, while also checking the etymology of 'εὐχαριστία' as my classical Greek is shaky after all these years and was struck (again) by the Will to Order implicit and explicit in that text – especially with regard to women and those who speak in tongues as opposed to prophesying as defined by Paul – this argument especially interesting in a jazz context, perhaps re fire musics and the neo-orthodoxies. Nietszche famously said that the Will to Order displayed a lack of integrity, if I remember correctly. But enough...

More violin... Billy Bang – whom I first heard with the String Trio of New York way back and loved instantly... This is from an album where he recorded a load of standards in a pretty straight-ahead setting. 'Sweet Georgia Brown' the title. Bang a player who can go all the way out yet here playing pretty much inside – the fire and attack reminding of earlier maestros like the great Stuff Smith – or to give him his splendid full name: Hezekiah Leroy Gordon "Stuff" Smith. Must dig some of his music out – sure I have some somewhere... Smith was always capable of enthusiastically looking forward, as a master musician from an earlier generation. Bang as a master musician from more contemporary times looks back in celebration of the lineage:

'Violinist Billy Bang is a marvelous bridge from early jazz - [a] strong influence [was] Stuff Smith - to the most cutting-edge innovations of the avant-garde.' (From here...).

As Gaston Bachelard wrote:

'True poetry is a function of awakening. It awakens us, but it must retain the memory of previous dreams. ' (Gaston Bachelard: L'eau et les rêves (Water and Dreams) 1942, quoted from here...).

Blimey. Let's move one...

The Cannon and brother Nat playing 'Soon,' from his album 'Them Dirty Blues.' Julian Adderley could, of course, get down with the best, but like his mentor, Charlie Parker, was capable of fast, complex flights while remaining drenched in the blues. I was just thinking that he was part of a great Miles Davis sextet – the one that made 'Kind of Blue' – and his position between the clenched minimalist burn of the leader who learned his trade on Bird's bandstands and the swooning swooping fire of John Coltrane, maybe gives an hint of where to place him on the rolls. Bobby Timmons opens the game lightly before hitting a heavier chordal vamp as Nat Adderley takes the theme on muted cornet and solos first – the two beat gait alternating with the four walk from the bass to give a curious lopsided dance. Cannonball takes it onwards, the band switching to straight-ahead behind him as he unreels some dazzle and flash. Louis Hayes hits rimshots on the fourth beats, ticking off the bars in Philly Joe mode. Sam Jones displays his credentials, supple melodic bass. Timmons grounds it back as the cornet picks up the theme and that heavy piano chordal figure surfaces to end the track.


Bill Evans
Lee Konitz (as) Warne Marsh (ts) Bill Evans (p) Eddie Gomez (b) Eliot Zigmund (d)
Speak Low
Download

Buy

Matthew Shipp
Matt Manieri (v) Matthew Shipp (p) William Parker (b) Whit Dickey (d)
Density and Eucharist
Download

Buy

Billy Bang
Billy Bang (v) Billy Bang (v) D.D. Jackson (p) Akira Ando (b) Ronnie Burrage (d)
Sweet Georgia Brown
Download

Buy

Cannonball Adderley
Cannonball Adderley (as) Nat Adderley (ct) Bobby Timmons (p) Sam Jones (b) Louis Hayes (d)
Soon
Download

Buy

Disappearances...

My apologies - things have been hectic as we are moving house yet again and I have also been a bit crocked up. I'm off to the Colour out of Space festival this coming weeekend in Brighton so some dispatches will no doubt trickle back from there. Hope the weather is better down south! Probably will put up some music before I go...