Loose Torque

Label Spotlight
By Ken Waxman

London’s Loose Torque label is the audio equivalent of a small press publisher which concentrates on aesthetics. Just as those firms’ limited-edition books are printed on high-quality paper with covers produced by hand-operated letterpress, Loose Torque CDRs are computer-burned in batches of 100, using specialist Taiyo Yuden discs, with professionally designed packaging.

Loose Torque is the brainchild of veteran British bassist Nick Stephens, who describes himself as “artist-producer-runner. I play on and record the music, mix and edit it, think of titles, burn, print and pack the discs and take them to the post office.” Founded in 2005, Loose Torque has already released 21 CDRs, ranging from archival sessions with such major UK players as alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana and drummer John Stevens, to contemporary dates that showcase Norwegian saxophonist Frode Gjerstad, British trumpeter Jon Corbett and South African drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo among others. The label’s literal in-house art staff is Stephens’ wife Fay, an illustrator and New Media designer, who also maintains the Web site.

Loose Torque’s genesis resulted from combination of serendipity and frustration. “I had a lot of tapes in my cupboard mostly from my 17-or-so years with John Stevens,” Stephens explains. “Similarly Dudu recorded everything he did, and not long before he died he gave me a shoebox full of tapes.” Also on hand was a studio effort recorded in 1996 by Calling Signals – Stephens’ band with Gjerstad – which didn`t interest commercial labels. But “the clincher was my Septet. I was very proud of the group, had two years worth of recordings, but couldn’t get it on record.” Meanwhile Stephens had already built a home-studio. “I was coming-up 60 and beginning to feel unsure about my immortality. I wanted some way of documenting musicians and our place in the music of the time,” he remembers.

Soon he discovered the advantages of Taiyo Yudin, a company in business since 1950 and which patented the world's first CDR. “I wanted short runs. I’ve heard independent label owners say having 1,000 CDs leaves them with a garage full of unsold discs. But ours is genuinely a cottage industry. Up until recently I burned the disks one at a time to order. I’ve now bought a seven-CD tower, but I still thermal print each disc one at a time.” Another long-time improviser who often plays with Stephens, Corbett thought up the label name. “Loose torque suggests informal dialogue, and I thought that it quite aptly described improvised music where the participants interact with each other,” he recalls.

The label’s first batch of seven releases included Fast Colour Antwerp 1988 (LT 001), by a Stevens-led septet never documented on record. Besides the drummer and bassist, personnel included trumpeter Harry Beckett, Pukwana and Evan Parker on saxophones, trombonist Annie Whitehead and vocalist Pinise Saul. Over the years, “Fast Colour has been our best seller, but anything with The Vikings – Frode and Paal [Nilssen-Love] – or Louis [Moholo-Moholo] on it also causes some interest,” Stephens notes.

“Nick and I are friends so when we do something together he’ll record it and if he and I think it’s OK, he’ll release it,” reports Gjerstad. “A CDR reflects the fact that this is a small music. But it shows that it’s possible to release stuff without having a major label contract. Limited distribution doesn’t bother me. When I tour I bring CDs along and people buy them. Loose Torque may be a kitchen operation, but at the end of the day, the artist still makes a little money. Some companies want all rights in exchange for releasing a CD. And with downloads and streaming it’s easy to lose control. But Nick will give me as many discs as I want [to sell].”

Recording new material is part of Stephens’ desire to document under-recorded players. “Recording sessions are like a social club, guys who know each other meeting in a relaxed atmosphere with no temporal or financial restrictions, apart from pub opening hours,” confirms Corbett. “You don’t get that from more commercial labels. Nick is very open to suggestions and you can get involved in the editing and mixing if you so wish, or leave it to his excellent ears.”

As for archival discs, “the decisions over which old material to release are based on sustained quality of music and sound, potential interest and my time,” Stephens explains. Dangerous Musics In ‘91(LT 017) for instance, with himself, Corbett and drummer Roger Turner was “a group that was influential at the time, but unrecorded and hardly known outside of London.” The CDR is drawn from two cassette tapes; one from a session at Turner’s flat and one “from a tape that Jon found down the back of his sofa which must have been given to him by someone after a gig.”

Stephens concedes that “the problem with CDRs “is that most shops won’t stock them.” Still Loose Torque has distribution through Improjazz in France, No Mans’ Land in Germany and New York’s Downtown Music Gallery, “I quite enjoy selling discs personally through the Web site,” Stephens confesses. “We might not sell a record for weeks, then somebody e-mails and buys half the catalogue in one purchase. We also have customers who have been with us since Day One.” As for downloads, “I have thought about making downloads available, but I'm not sure how that would work out. Then again I think a small output, hand-made label has its own appeal.”

This hand-made label’s activities have recently expanded to include Americans. Its newest disc is Attic Antics (LT 023), with Stephens and Chicago cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm. “Given the opportunity, I would love to have more overseas musicians on the label,” Stephens concedes. “I nearly did with a quartet of me, Sabir Mateen, Kevin Norton and Louis Moholo-Moholo at the Molde Jazz Festival. But 10 minutes after the concert started my travel bass collapsed. By the time I reassembled it the gig was nearly over. There’s a recording of the show, but it’s interrupted by me saying ‘fuck’ a lot.”

As for the future, Stephens wants to “dust off some more tapes from the cupboard”, including sessions with violinist Nigel Coombes and more by Stevens’ Away group, since the group’s saxophonist recently gave Stephens more band material. Almost ready for released is a trio recording with Corbett and [drummer] Tony Marsh. Plus the bassist would like to record Norwegian tuba player Børre Mølstad.

Loose Torque exists because of the satisfaction he gets from it, notes Stephens. “I've been a musician all my life, I didn’t expect to make much money out of it, but I would like to leave something behind for my efforts. Making records seems to be the only way.”

--For New York City Jazz Record October 2011

October 10, 2011

Music Outside, Contemporary Jazz in Britain

By Ian Carr
Northway Publications

Hindsight may be 20/20, but this reprint of Ian Carr’s 1973 classic Music Outside, reveals that he beats the law of averages. However, anything written 36 years ago resonates with the attitudes of the time. Some musicians who seemed significant then are more the province of nostalgia than admiration; others mentioned briefly are major figures.

Parenthetically that sense of being of one’s time makes Roger Cotterell’s contemporary postscript frustrating. While he does tie up loose ends and outlines the subsequent career of some musicians, a few are still ignored. His updates are also mostly personal anecdotes.

One can’t fault Cotterell for following the author’s lead. Opinions trump research throughout Music Outside. Flugelhornist Carr, a Miles Davis biographer, describes jazz as “… a music outside, a perpetual Cinderella of the arts in Britain”. This volume aimed to prove improvised music’s “cultural worth” by creating portraits of “those heroic few who … continue to be totally committed to the music”.

Versatility and virtuosity are cited along with commitment as considerations for making a difference. Today Mike Westbrook and Chris McGregor are still acknowledged as band leaders who redefined comfortable British jazz into something edgier. Saxophonists Evan Parker and Trevor Watts plus drummer John Stevens and guitarist Derek Bailey created distinctive free music, which continues to gain adherents. Thus Cottrell revealing that Carr once stated that “Derek and Evan – I like both of them very much but I’m not interested in their music at all,” proves Carr’s good intentions.

Carr’s treatment of Watts’ and Stevens’ Spontaneous Music Ensemble (SME) provides insight on the methodology that birthed British improvised music. He notes that the “development of the SME has been a gradual movement away from predetermined structures” and then describes how group improvisation works. Carr’s chapter on Parker deals with Incus Records, precursor of many experimental labels. “I don’t see the point of making a record for … CBS or RCA because when music like ours gets recorded only a minority audience is ready for it,” noted Parker. “But maybe when it’s been around for a year, a few more people are ready for it…but by that time a big company would have it deleted.” More than 35 years later, Parker’s actions seem foresighted and practical.

Carr’s prescient outline of experimenters’ triumphs and failings is balanced by chapters devoted to himself and drummer Jon Hiseman, who led commercially oriented fusion bands. Carr’s reminiscences about organizing the personnel of his group Nucleus, securing management and record deals plus working out crowd-drawing strategies, reads like a manual for launching a pop band. As he writes: “apart from prestige and the approval of posterity, there is also money to be made if one can establish that one is a true original.” Linkage of originality and monetary rewards clashes with his mention of pianist Stan Tracey, who because of his uncompromising talent was then “on the dole”, a situation Carr decries. Yet he doesn’t seem to notice that his game plan was the antithesis of what Tracey and others do.

Hiseman trotted out the argument that those who play “more accessible forms of the music would subsidize the more way-out forms and a natural balance would be found.” The abandonment of experimental music by mainstream outlets negates this theory. The drummer started his band Colosseum after touring with a Rock outfit because “I’d got used to …a big time way of life… where you play to large audiences. I couldn’t really face going back to playing in dreadful pubs to 40 people”. That Hiseman isn’t mentioned in the postscript, may say something about the fickleness of mass popularity.

Contrast this with Carr’s observation that “[Evan] Parker’s music is difficult but he is at pains to make people aware of it”. Then decide which interviewees’ musings and actions resonate almost four decades later.

-- Ken Waxman

-- MusicWorks Issue #104

August 8, 2009

Spontaneous Music Ensemble

Bare Essentials (1972-3)
Emanem 4218

Definitely dedicated to playing reductionist music, the sound of the Britain’s Spontaneous Music Ensemble (SME) was even more mininalist in the early 1970s, since the SME at the time was a duo: Trevor Watts on soprano saxophone and John Stevens on percussion.

Resuscitated from tracks recorded by Watts on a portable cassette player, Bare Essentials presents complete and edited performances by the duo from nine concerts in 1972 and 1973 that took place in Wolverhampton, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and London’s now legendary Little Theatre Club. With the 16 tracks running in length from slightly more than a minute to slightly less than 32½, none of the music – with possibly one exception – is absolutely indispensable. However the overall two-CD set is engrossing, letting you trace the two applying different strategies and approaches to the material.

Completely improvised, the tunes skirt the permission to fail that has always been part of the EuroImprov ethos – although the most egregious missteps have supposedly been excised. In many cases the pieces also pinpoint the difference between Free Music and Free Jazz. On several tracks for instance, Watts and Stevens manage to creatively outline singular broken octave improvisations that skirt each other’s output without ever reaching harmonic unison. Because of what one supposes was some previous discussion – or the almost decade of playing together the two had put in by that time – there are no gaping musical holes or sonic confusion anywhere.

Stripped to its essence, Watts’ expositions encompass a collection of single tongue stops and slaps, extended trills, reed bites and chirps plus guttural cries. Evidentially fastening on various parts of his kit at assorted junctures, Stevens creates singular and frequently wholly original timbres. There’s the clatter and bang of disassociated snares, the bolo-bat-like thump replicating a whirl drum, curt cymbal resonation, wood-block knocks, pitter-patter rebounds and hand-and-elbow drum top excursions. Defiantly primitivist when it comes to his cornet playing, the drummer uses it and his voice as additional sound generators usually subservient to his drumming – even if the kit isn’t in use.

Aurally “Newcastle 72B” for example resembles a metaphoric sound recreation of two miniature, nervous puppies chasing one another. The harmonic discord created by the saxophone and brass evolves from tongue-stopping and wet reed snaps to a contest among shrill peeps and squeaks. In contrast, “Open Flower 7” finds Watts clutching a single note for an extended series of permutations as Stevens pops and rattles his toms and snares. Adagio, by the conclusion, these reed chirps become flinty and muffled (perhaps against a pants leg).

“Lowering the Case” features a variation on traditional call-and-response from the two horns whose sounds almost dissolve into inaudibility after showcasing shrill continuous pitches. Braying, the single straight line they both agree upon subsequently begins to meld sfumato-like into slurs and overblowing as they conclude.

Bare Essential’s one most vital track is also the longest and one of the earliest. Its more-than-half-hour duration was the length of some jazz LPs of the time.

Entitled “For Phil” and honoring jazz drummer Phil Seamen who died earlier that day in 1972, it’s a heartfelt raging wail against the inevitable rather than a threnody. Germinated from Watts’ shrill split tones plus popping drum rebounds and skitters from Stevens, it accelerates into an echoing gritty vibrato from the saxophonist and answering cornet warbles and gurgles from the drummer. Mercurial, melancholy and guttural, the affiliated split tones soon become strident and banshee-like, followed by significant silences, as if the two are rethinking their game plan. Stevens’ blunt rim shots, cymbal shakes and wood block slaps become ceremonial and are then superseded by his own yodeling lamentations. With Watts’ broken-octave reed bites now roughed up with growls and flattement, before the rubato denouncement, Stevens squeezes in an approximation of a military bugle playing “Taps”.

A rare glimpse into the raw creative process, this set will be welcomed those who want more SME. Scholars also have another document with which to compare and contrast with the contemporary playing of BitImprov’s other sax-percussion duo of the time: Evan Parker and Paul Lytton. Academe aside, fans of Watts, Stevens or both won’t be disappointed.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: CD A: 1. In the Midlands 2. In the Middle 3. Three Extracts 4.For Phil CD B: 1. Newcastle 72A 2. Newcastle 72B 3. Open Flower 1 4. Open Flower 2 5. Open flower 3 6. Open Flower 4 7. Open Flower 5 8. Open Flower 6 9. Open Flower 7 10. Opening the Set 11. Beyond Limitation 12. Lowering the Case

Personnel: Trevor Watts (soprano saxophone, voice) and John Stevens (percussion, cornet, voice)

September 1, 2008

John Stevens-Evan Parker

Corner to Corner + The Longest Night
Ogun OGCD 022/023

Musically associated in a variety of ensembles from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s, saxophonist Evan Parker and drummer John Stevens (1940-1994) are generally credited as two of the half-dozen or so visionaries who helped create the unstructured collective sounds that characterized British Free Music.

Throughout the years, infrequent duo interactions offered both expansive opportunities to express themselves, and this important reissue combines what arguably are the two’s most accomplished duets: 1976’s The Longest Night and 1993’s Corner to Corner. Although of variable personalities – the mordant drummer loudly rubbed more people the wrong way then he did drum tops, while the saxophonist was and is more moderate in demeanor – their shared philosophy of facing every musical challenge head-on serves them well on both discs.

What’s most remarkable, though, is how the adaptable their styles – created at EuroImprov’s ground zero – were, and how they were still subtly tweaking them every time they played. Physically, the booklet sleeve photos note their changes. Heavily bearded and bushy-haired at 36, when the first CD was recorded, Stevens at 53, was balding, bespectacled and clean-shaven, though as voluble as always as his gesticulating hands demonstrate in the 1993 picture. Also thin, bushy-haired and black bearded at 32, by 49, Parker was chunkier, grey-bearded and more phlegmatic – at least when photographed in 1993 quizzically listening to one of Stevens’ verbal onslaughts.

Happily those gesticulating hands become the opposite of garrulous when Stevens sits behind a drum kit. On the eight selections that make up each disc, his playing is most notable for its low-level fragility and moderated volume, plus the minute and pin-pointed motions he uses. Volubility comes out when the percussionist plays his cornet on certain numbers. Still, the 17-year gap between the CDs demonstrates that in the interim Stevens had adapted the function of his brass instrument from that of a braying noise-maker to a sound source whose textures could be entwined with Parker’s inimitable soprano saxophone timbres.

Today, when it appears as if nearly every saxophone practices circular breathing, it’s almost hard to imagine Parker’s achievement 30 – and more – years ago when he developed the concept following an exposure to the exhibitionistic work of Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Even so his most spectacular extended solos were still in the future in 1976, with squeaks, slurs, swirls and stops more in evidence. At the same time Parker had already forged the sound which has continued to define him. His tone is as instantly identifiable – and now familiar – on The Longest Night’s first track, “19.11” as it is 4½ hours later on “23.40”.

Throughout reed triple tonguing meets percussive bell pealing and tongue-flutters make common cause with rattled chains. Additionally, agitato pitch-sliding and barely-there timbres forced through the horn’s bell from the reedist bring forth hand-stopped cymbal vibrations and wispy brush motions on drum tops from the percussionist. With tambourine rattles and harsh rolls adumbrating stop-time sections and inchoate phrasing, the two create an extended – more than 21 minute – improvisational essay on “20.23”.

Introduced with snaky and snarling flutter-tonguing from Parker plus cymbal rebounds and the odd ratamacue from Stevens, the piece soon evolves as the saxophonist outputs rubbery onomatopoeia, while in contrast the drummer burlesques a military march with his snare drum. As percussion friction becomes tougher, louder and more conspicuous, Parker turns to reed-biting, false-register snorts and pig-like altissimo squeals. Simultaneously the trapsman begins vocalizing a secondary shamanistic line in counterpoint to the instrumental sounds, while running roughshod over the cymbals and different-sized drums. For the climax, Parker’s respiration is transformed into a collection of aviary twitters and slurs that expose more than one tone at a time. Meantime Stevens works the staccato dual towards its conclusion with raps, rasps, ruffs and rumbles encompassing rattling chains and ringing bells plus an raucous third line of tremolo cornet braying.

If the capillary blasts from Stevens’ cornet were more corrosive than connective in 1976, by 1993, while he couldn’t match Parker’s hummingbird-like tones, at least the brass tones had evolved from those of a crow to an approximation of a songbird.

Unlike the extended tours-de-force of 17 years previously, the two spread their more mature styling over shorter tracks which range from a touch over 3½ minutes to a shade under 15. Livelier overall than The Longest Night — maybe it was recorded earlier in the day – Parker has expanded both extremities of his range, with corkscrew patterning in one pitch as well as whispering and whip-like flutters, at the other end. Pinched and staccato at points, he also shows off ney-like wheezes; that is when his double, triple and quadruple tongue-patterning doesn’t develop into nearly continuous overblowing.

For his part, Stevens’ percussion actions are blunter, sharper and more to the point than they were 17 years previously – without altering his characteristic approach. Flams, metallic pats, door-knocking smacks, rat-tat-tats, cymbal slaps and backbeat rolls are present. But by 1993 Stevens is also more abstractly concussive and uses even more of the auxiliary wooden and metal parts of his kit. Overall, there is very little unison harmonics, but much double counterpoint improvising between the two.

Tellingly, the final track on Corner To Corner – which like the first CD is likely presented chronologically – reveals yet another reconfiguration of Stevens’ cornet technique. Subsuming his capillary brays, the percussionist manages to complement and extend the continuously wheezing twitters which Parker creates. Sometimes the two even appear to be hitting the same note. Eventually, the horn tones intertwine – then are followed by a concluding circular-breathed riff from Parker and lightly ruffled conclusive drum beat from Stevens.

The duality exhibited on this track is memorialized by its title, “Each/Other”. It suggests that the cooperation might have expanded still further. Unfortunately Stevens’ death means that these sessions are all that remains of the mutual musical respect and understanding Parker and Stevens had for one another.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Disc 1: 1. 19.1 1 2. 19.44 3. 20.23 4. 21.25 5. 21.47 6. 22.18 7. 23.12

Personnel: Disc 1and 2: Evan Parker (soprano saxophone) and John Stevens (percussion and cornet)

Track Listing: Disc 2: 1. 23.40 2. Corner to Corner 3. Rubber 4. Angles 5. Incidence 6. Reflections [for Geoff Rigden] 7. Acute 8. Each/Other

February 24, 2008

NICK STEPHENS SEPTET

Live at the Plough Stockwell
Loose Torque LT007

FAST COLOUR
Antwerp 1988
Loose Torque LT001

Two vibrant snapshots of London Jazz in the late 1980s, early 1990s, these discs show that just before the Limey version of Young Lions appeared, musicians of many different schools had developed a rapport with one another.

By this time jazz-rockers, Free Musicians and boppers had been coexisting for a good many years, while the Brits had the added advantage of having internalized the Kwela and Township Jive rhythms expatriate South Africans players brought with them to the British jazz scene, after they fled Apartheid.

Probably the best-known of these expatriates was saxophonist Dudu Pukwana (1938-1990), featured on ANTWERP 1988 and celebrated with “Do Do That Dudu That You Do” on LIVE AT THE PLOUGH STOCKWELL. When the bands on both sessions adapt African-influenced patterns, they’re not doing it for novelty. Trumpeters John Corbett and Harry Beckett, trombonist Annie Whitehead and saxophonist Evan Parker had been part of South African pianist Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath with Pukwana, while bassist Nick Stephens and drummer John Stevens had long-time working relationships with the altoist.

Ironically with such heavy hitters as Parker, Pukwana and Stevens (1940-1994) on board, the Antwerp CD appears to be a unique all-star date, with the two CD-set merely the approximation of a typical two-set Saturday night pub gig. Not exactly... The tightness of the septet, which played at Stockwell’s The Plough every Saturday night, make this session the equal of the other, since Fast Colour rarely worked with Parker and Pinise Saul, who was also vocalist in Pukwana’s Zila band.

While Whitehead, Corbett, who also played in the London Jazz Composers' Orchestra, and saxophonist Chris Biscoe, a long-time associate of pianist Mike Westbrook, are proven qualities, and drummer Mark Sanders, featured on two tracks, would go on to record with the likes of Parker, one of the outstanding soloists is the little-known Jerry Underwood.

Underwood, who died in 2002 at 45, worked with avant-folkies like John Martyn, and in Jacqui McShee’s Pentangle as well as doing improv gigs. His solos throughout are impressive, especially on “One for Ron/Cunning Mingus”, dedicated to Ron Herman, who played alongside Stephens and Stevens in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble and (obviously) bassist Charles Mingus. Revealed is an unapologetic, feet-planted-on-the-floor hard blower in Underwood, who spins guttural sounds, phrases and lines to their logical conclusion without showboating. He’s sort of the Brit equivalent of the late John Stubblefield, another powerful, but underappreciated tenorist, who worked with Mingus and the Mingus Big Band.

While Saul’s throat-twisting glossolalia, anti-Apartheid chanting, whistling and screams are a vital part of the performance, the preponderance of vocals frequently makes it seem as the band is backing the vocalist, rather than the singer being one part of the ensemble.

Luckily there’s enough instrumental prowess on display to more-or-less make up for that. Whitehead confirms her skills with a few muted, flutter-tongued excursions that manage to be both tailgate colorful and bebop slick. With no sign of his Free Music persona in evidence, Parker is content to play second fiddle … er, saxophone … to Pukwana. When he does solo, Parker’s jagged timbres are firmly in the Free Jazz realm. Meanwhile, Stephens keeps up a steady beat, faithful to Township Jive as well as Jazz conventions.

As for Stevens, his loose-wristed, foot-pumping outings, especially on “John Dyani’s Gone”, are undertaken with locomotive style power, revealing the inner Buddy Rich that seems to have hidden inside the innovative Free Jazzer. Beckett’s double-tongued, soaring obbligato to the drum work is particularly apt, as he matches the percussionist phrase for phrase, smear for smear, no matter the tempo.

One was never exactly sure how much of Pukwana’s mature style came with him from South Africa and how much grew organically from the confluence with advanced Free Jazz stylists in the United Kingdom. Here his percussiveness in false registers is on display as well as intense, raspy irregular vibrations that at points mirror Eric Dolphy’s advances.

Recorded more than a year later, on the evidence of his compositions for his own septet, Stephens also appears to have internalized the adapted South African cross rhythms to his own end for LIVE AT THE PLOUGH STOCKWELL. While several of the tunes have punning pseudo-African titles such as “No Me Degas Nada”, the strength of the performance comes from this Anglo-African admixture, with band voicing and sudden tempo changes.

Besides the brassy enthusiasm of individual horn soloists, some of most pointed bonding material comes from British-based Peruvian guitarist Mano Ventura. Mixing stinging jazz runs with Latin-styled rhythms, his string expansions complement the soloists or the rhythm section, depending on the circumstances. The only distraction – almost understandable in a 1990 context – comes from his over-reliance on too bright George Benson-like octave runs.

Throughout the eight tracks the septet delivers the type of closely arranged bravura performance that’s polyphonically sophisticated yet rhythmically open. Who knows, with a few of the tunes replete with insistent stay-in-your-memory hooks, the audience at the Plough may have been moved enough to execute the odd dance step to the foot-tapping rhythm. Linking the performance to horn-resplendent Yank funksters like Kool and the Gang or Earth, Wind and Fire, the crowd may not have realized that some of the United Kingdom’s most accomplished jazzers were letting their hair down – if they had any – with this gig. Consciously or not, through the musicians’ unshowy use of extended techniques, the two-CD set also points out the links between improv and so-called more popular forms such as funk and kwela.

Anyone interested in a peek behind the scenes at what went on during a top-quality British jazz pub gig in the late 1980s/early 1990s would be wise to seek out LIVE AT THE PLOUGH STOCKWELL. Understanding that the emphasis on ANTWERP 1988 is directed towards a variant of South African jazz, not cerebral BritImprov for which Parker and Stevens are best known could draw you to that disc as well.

-- Ken Waxman

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Track Listing: Fast: 1. Now Time 2. Way It Goes 3. John Dyani’s Gone 4 Don’t Throw It Away 5. Mbizo 6. Way It Goes/Now Time

Personnel: Fast: Harry Beckett (trumpet); Annie Whitehead (trombone and voice); Dudu Pukwana (alto and soprano saxophones); Evan Parker (tenor saxophone); Nick Stephens (bass); John Stevens (drums); Pinise Saul (voice)

Track Listing: Plough: CD1: 1. Just One Ornetto 2. Do Do That Dudu That You Do 3. Fayzed 4. No Me Degas Nada CD2: 1. West 11# 2. One for Ron/Segue 3. Cunning Mingus# 4. In Off*

Personnel: Plough: John Corbett (trumpet); Annie Whitehead or Alf Waite# (trombone);

Chris Biscoe or Paul Mason* (alto saxophone); Jerry Underwood (tenor saxophone); Manno Ventura (guitar); Nick Stephens (bass); Brian Davison or Mark Sanders* (drums)

December 5, 2005

DEREK BAILEY/EVAN PARKER

The London Concert
psi 05.01

STEVENS/WATTS/GUY
Mining the seam - the rest of the Spotlite sessions
Hi 4 Head Records HFH CD003

Combining and splitting apart numerous times in various bands – ad hoc and not –during a period in the late 1960s and early 1970s now seen as the genesis of British Free Music, guitarist Derek Bailey and drummer John Stevens (1940–1994) are almost universally acknowledged as dual catalysts who nurtured the nascent scene.

Although over the years both improvised with just about anyone and mentored a large number of younger musicians, Stevens had, and Bailey still has, a fairly prickly personality. That meant that at the same time newer players were being initiated into freer sounds, one or both was usually carrying on a feud with older associates and sometimes with one other. Bailey has maintained from that time that every performance should be completely improvised with each creation a tabla rasa. Less rigid, Stevens didn’t disdain composition and wasn’t above playing jazz, Free Jazz and a touch of jazz-rock.

MINING THE SEAM and THE LONDON CONCERT, both recorded in the mid-1970s, are historical documents, which preserve mature manifestations of Bailey’s and Stevens’ sounds that continue to shape British improv. Each distinctively reflects the protagonist, yet the scene was then so small that the other musicians featured negotiated a path between the two.

Initially, the Spontaneous Music Ensemble (SME), Stevens’ original cooperative band, featured his army buddy, alto saxophonist Trevor Watts, and the reedman is on this CD. Bailey briefly joined the SME, but soprano and tenor saxophonist Evan Parker, who partners the guitarist on THE LONDON CONCERT, evolved his distinctive reed style though a more extended tenure with the SME, sometimes alongside Watts. Bassist Barry Guy who provides much of the rhythmic impetus on MINING THE SEAM, was associated with Bailey in the Iskra 1903 trio with trombonist Paul Rutherford. Yet more notably for the past 30 years, he and Parker have worked together in situations ranging from a duo to big bands.

Considering the trio assembled, it may be surprising to note that MINING THE SEAM is out-and-out, circa 1977 Free Jazz. Made up of alternate and unedited versions of three of the five tunes session issued as NO FEAR (Hi 4 Head Records HFHCD001), it offers another look at what long been viewed as a masterful BritJazz session. Most surprising is the soloing of Watts. At that point, before he began his ongoing flirtation with so-called world music, Watts was firmly in the Ornette Coleman school, with his jagged phrasing and interjections harsh and relentless.

Not only does he trot out pet licks that seem to enliven each track, but all three players are also committed to the song form, with nearly every tune ending with a recapitulation of the head after variations have been sounded. Matching the saxophonist’s squeaks and staccato flutter-tongued excursions, Stevens rattles each part of his kit with ruffs and flams and pays more attention to the bass drum than is the wont in BritImprov.

Ruffling passing tones, Guy too is removed from the cerebral interface he often exhibits with Parker. At different points, his shuffle bowing highlights the jagged edges of the strings, the better to sabotage the drummer’s steady beat. Alternately contrapuntal, his chiming bass lines are the perfect antidote to the speedier and staccato dog-like barks from the saxophonist. Walking, thumping or stopping, he moderates a space between the other two.

As the multiphonic reed tones, bull fiddle sweeps and percussion rebounds and strokes coalesce, taken together the five tracks provide a substitute, but equally valid version of the already released proceedings.

Equally valid too are the 30-odd minutes added to the previously released

LP version of 1975’s THE LONDON CONCERT (Incus 16), which now boosts its length to more than 69 minutes. Still in their honeymoon period, Bailey and Parker offered both solo and duo material, with the reedman playing soprano and tenor saxophones and Bailey a stereo guitar with volume pedals and a modified 19-string guitar.

Despite the hardware, there are no signs of ProgRock, electronica or – as Bailey would probably insist dogmatically – jazz. That’s open to debate, but what is noticeable in this context is how each of the eight tracks seems to be moderate and unhurried compared to the urgent staccato of the Stevens’ trio work.

There’s no mistaking Bailey, plinking, slightly flattish tone and attack, whether he’s using the so-called stereo guitar or the 19-string mutant. “Part 1”, for example, is almost 15 minutes of constant plectrum plink and plucks intersected by masticated curt note patterns and duck squawks from Parker’s soprano.

As the piece develops so do the saxophonist’s jagged snaps, slurs and smears while the guitarist’s steady rhythmic guitar fills include additional vibrations. With the pedals allowing him to output an unusual vibrating pulsation, Bailey’s contrapuntal display is matched by trills within the body tube, shrill penny whistle tones and undulating columns of colored air from Parker’s axe. Seemingly mumbling to himself and evidentially concentrating on what rhythm can be constructed by stroking strings on the guitar neck, the guitarist leaves space for Parker to buzz his reed and bubble lip forms. For the finale the reedist contorts his snarls to a legato tone, then showcases his characteristic circular breathing as Bailey plucks away.

Previously unreleased, Bailey’s strategy on “Second Half Solos” find him demarcating sharp, single-note friction on the 19 strings as the crinkling vibrations add rattling hum and tone resonation. For his part, Parker reveals a nephritic shout as repeated tongue slaps, pops and diaphragm vibrations expand to multiphonics and usher in “Part 3” from the original LP.

Spectacularly, shredded split tones and irregularly pitched vibrations then explode all over the aural space, causing Bailey to turn to harder plectrum interface, as node response swells into unique counter patterns. Soon you start to feel like a spectator at a particularly frenetic tennis game, with the ball constantly in motion, jumping, soaring and bouncing from one to another. Each man is concentrating on an individual strategy, but as polyphony emerges, so does the shape of the cooperative contest. Climatically, Bailey announces a variation change as his flat-picking suddenly clangs like an egg timer. Parker vibrates ghostly slurs beneath him, as if he was playing a chanter, with a renal squeak for a coda. Elsewhere the two intertwine harmonies that include glottal punctuation and staccatissimo overblowing from Parker and distorted finger-tapping and harsh, scraped fret actions from Bailey.

Although 30 years later what they did then may sound standardized, the duo performance is invested with the novelty and excitement of musical discovery. So too is the trio set. Both prime slabs of interactive improv, these CDs should attract anyone desirous of a deeper insight into the musical currents of those times.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: London: 1. First half solo 2. Part 1 3. Part 1A 4. Part 2 5. Part 2A 6. Second half solos 7. Part 3 8. Part 4

Personnel: London: Evan Parker (soprano and tenor saxophones) and Derek Bailey (stereo guitar and modified 19-string guitar)

Track Listing: Mining 1. No Fear (alternate take) 2. Ah! (unedited version) 3. Ah! (alternate take) 4. Speed from the light (alternate take) 5. Speed from the light (alternate take)

Personnel: Mining: Trevor Watts (alto saxophone); Barry Guy (bass) and John Stevens (drums)

October 31, 2005

TONY OXLEY/ALAN DAVIE

The Tony Oxley-Alan Davie Duo
a|l|l 005

JOHN STEVENS
Application Interaction And...
High4Head HFHCD002

Pioneering Scottish Abstract Expressionist Alan Davie had his first one-man exhibition in London in 1950, at height of the Cool Jazz era, when he was also making his name as a painter, poet and multi-instrumentalist. Keeping up with musical changes, Davie, born in 1920, eventually developed a longstanding playing partnership with percussionist Tony Oxley, born in 1938, who is one of the founders of restrained BritImprov and a painter in his own right. The improv duo sessions here were recorded in 1974 and 1975, and are reissued with two additional tracks for the first time since their appearance on LP in 1975.

Oxley’s chief rival as pioneering BritImprov percussionist, the late John Stevens (1940-1994), didn’t move in the same artistic circles. Although he studied to be a commercial artist, he was a musician first, last and always. APPLICATION, INTERACTION AND… is a reissue of a 1978 disc with longtime associate, saxophonist Trevor Watts, and a startlingly longhaired Barry Guy on bass, who had already begun his playing partnership with saxist Evan Parker and organized the London Jazz Composers Orchestra, which also featured Watts.

Davie, who become a professional jazz musician after the Second World War, has always insisted that his mature style arrived when “I really began to paint in the way I had learned to write and to play jazz and in the way I had learned to make love”. His associates in New York included Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning, and his more recent work shows a preoccupation with Zen and Oriental mysticism.

There’s not too much mysticism here, though eclecticism may be a better adjective. At least David plays trombone sopranino saxophone, bass clarinet, vibraphone, xylophone, piano, cello and ring modulator on different tracks, while Oxley plays percussion, violin, ring modulator, compressor and octave splitter.

What’s most noteworthy about the two newly issued tracks is that Davie plays piano on both of them with exerted finger pressure and high frequency tremolos. This rapid-fire, arpeggio-rich attack is somewhat like Cecil Taylor’s, the American pianist who would become a frequent Oxley playing partner a few years later. Were these tracks preliminary bouts for latter piano-percussion championship meetings perhaps?

Other tracks show the different personalities Davie adopted for each of his axes. As notable, in hindsight, is how many conceptions including World music echoes, folk root allusions, musqiue concrète and pure improv, were touched upon on these tracks. Even more conspicuous is how the two were mixing and matching the genres at that early date, more so than Oxley does now.

For instance “Song for the little dog” and “Fruit flambé”, recorded live in concert in Zürich, find Davie advancing his ideas with reed attack of repetitive, elongated high pitched squeals that makes it appears that he’s playing a Middle Eastern mussette. Primitive, hard-edged, heavy snare and cymbal bangs accompany part of this, but so do buzzing tones probably arriving from the ring modulator, with electronic impulses altering the percussion oscillation.

These same fluctuating whistles and chugs appear via the miracle of electricity in some of Davie’s cello and keyboard discharges as well. Wood-based drones and snorts enliven the proceedings as do lustrous, almost-prepared-piano-like xylophone plinks that meet with phase-shifting, shattering and clattering percussion.

It was Davie, who gave Oxley a violin, and on “‘Bird trap’ for violin and cello” the two create a non-folkloric, non-chamber suite for their strings. Electrified, but not amplified fiddle tones scratch and whistle as they meet low undertones from the cello.

More codified, the three selections from Stevens, Watts and Guy show pioneering free improvisers in a more jazz-like mode, especially on the almost 25 minute “Application” that begins the CD. Although Stevens’ name is above the title, he’s characteristically muted, letting Watts take the lead role. No hierarchical arrangement, this is a meeting of equals. After all, the drummer and saxist had played together starting in the early 1960s and almost every day in the Spontaneous Music Ensemble during the later part of that decade. Guy had been a member of bands with first one, then another and with both from about that same time.

Oldest of the three, it’s Watts with his whistling chirps and astringent, elongated reed squeals who is most attuned to the Free Jazz ethos. Beginning with smears almost reminiscent of a violin’s tone, midway through the alto player switches to blues-based Ornette Coleman-Julius Hemphill emphasized lower register lines and higher-pitched elastic tones that swell without breaking. His sax tone, mixed with Guy resonating finger-picking pulse and Stevens’ rumble and bass drum involved chromatic pressure, suggest that everyone was listening to Coleman’s Prime Time band of the time. Earlier, though, when his reed multiphonics produce Eurasian tones and overtones, there are hints of the pan-Africanism that Watts would later bring to fruition in his Moiré Music groups.

Exoticism closer to home appears at the end when the saxman -- now probably on soprano -- creates a repeated bagpipe-like pulse. His sax is the chanter, with the droning overtones portrayed by Guy’s focused bow work.

Taken andante, “Interaction” is a more experimental piece, featuring reed drones, bottle-cap percussion ejaculations and press rolls, as well as straightforward low-key plucking and bowing from Guy. Watts’ Free Jazz connection again differentiates him from younger improv saxophonists such as John Butcher and Parker. And as he heads into bird-whistle territory for a time, lower-case pitches and squeals arrive from the bass. When the percussionist drags out more rhythm, the bass line gets denser and faster, Watts then propels himself to twisting, flutter tongued lines and Texas reed cries, if those can arise from a Yorkshireman.

That’s the value of reissues; they allow you hear fine music that were ignored or overlooked in its day. Both these releases are at that level. Comparing lively arts though, it would be superb if even a small number of the art collectors throughout the world who appreciate Davie’s painting knew the names of musical fine artists like Oxley, Guy, Stevens and Watts as well as they do those of visual fine artists

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Duo: 1. Song for the little dog 2. Cavern of the snail for cello and cymbals 3. Adventures with magic ring 4. Fruit flambé 5. Song for the serpent 6. On the seashore 7. Fragment from a suite ‘Country music’ 8. Fish fascinator 10. ‘Bird trap’ for violin and cello 11. High Tide Mark

Personnel: Duo: Alan Davie (trombone sopranino saxophone, bass clarinet, vibraphone, xylophone, piano, cello, ring modulator); Tony Oxley (percussion, violin, ring modulator, compressor, octave splitter)

Track Listing: Application: 1. Application 2. Interaction 3. And...

Personnel: Application: Trevor Watts (soprano and alto saxophones); Barry Guy (bass); John Stevens (drums)

May 19, 2003

FRODE GJERSTAD/JOHN STEVENS/DEREK BAILEY

Hello, Goodbye
EMANEM 4065

During the long period in the 1970s and 1980s when he was metaphorically alone in the wilderness, as practically the only advanced improviser in Norway, alto saxophonist Frode Gjerstad developed an extended playing relationship with British drummer John Stevens. However this recently discovered almost 73½-minute document is the only time the two worked in tandem with guitarist Derek Bailey.

Bailey, who is often as theoretical as Stevens was spontaneous, was along with the drummer an early BritImprov creator and worked with Stevens many times as a sort of “fellow traveler” to the drummer’s Spontaneous Music Ensemble (SME). But this disc preserves the only meeting -- so far -- between the guitarist and the alto saxophonist. Recorded by Gjerstad on a portable DAT machine during a 1992 concert in his hometown of Stavanger, and computer-corrected in 2000, it’s an instructive example of how three originals can interact without giving up any of their individuality. Most of the tunes flow one into another, with the only real break occurring about 20 minutes after the three begin.

Throughout, Gjerstad casts out a long fishing line of tiny accented notes, while Bailey ranges up and down the strings, plinking and plucking resonating, sharply metallic phrases. At the same time, the ever-busy Stevens moves between cymbals and snare, placing accents with the accuracy of a pastry chef decorating a multi-layer cake. Sometimes, though, as in the middle of “Three Two Three One”, when Stevens lays out things get a little too weightless, with the feathery sax lines and string silences threatening to float away. Strangely enough that track ends with about two minutes of amplifier hum, which seems to be an enigmatic Bailey statement rather than a technical fault.

Perhaps to counter that, “Three by Three” -- the longest track --is much more aggressive, with Stevens occasionally spewing out a stream of off-key mini trumpet blats, Gjerstad elongating his alto lines, sometimes in counterpoint with the trumpet, and Bailey constructing some picked and strummed rhythmic backing. With the guitarist producing an improv version of power chording, Stevens is moved to ratchet up the backbeat while Gjerstad slides out some shards of pitch variations that more resemble the energy music of the 1960s than more restrained EuroImprov.

That moods seem to stay intact during “Two Three Two Three” with a saxophonist-indicated head of long-lined slurs that almost sounds South American. Immersed in his kit, Stevens keeps the rhythm jumping from snares, toms and cymbals and back again, while, as if reacting to the challenge, the guitarist matches both of them with a busy barrage of single notes. Here and elsewhere, using his amp’s and pedal’s capacity and creative feedback, Bailey proves that the booklet description of him playing an amplified guitar is no misnomer.

All in all, HELLO, GOODBYE is much more than the historical souvenir of a unprecedented one-off meeting. Although reminiscent in part of some of SME sessions with the same line-up and a few of Bailey’s saxophone face-offs, the creations are given a fresh twist from Gjerstad’s ingenuity.

Thus the disc becomes triply valuable. It’s another report on the talents of a highly inventive drummer; a supplementary CD of the underrecorded Gjerstad’s work; and as a reminder that no matter how many sessions he plays, when faced with improvisations --and improvisers -- at his level Bailey will pilot his work up to yet another level.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Hello 2. Three Two Three One 3. Three by Three 4. Two Three Two Three 5. Penultimatum 6. Goodbye

Personnel: Frode Gjerstad (alto saxophone); Derek Bailey (guitar); John Stevens (percussion, mini-trumpet)

December 17, 2001

JOHN STEVENS

Live at The Plough
Ayler Records aylCD-007

Two of the most fervent of England's first generation free jazz/improvised music experimenters, drummer John Stevens (1940-1994) and alto saxophonist Mike Osborne (b.1941) aren't as well known as they should be for a variety of reasons.

Stevens, who for 30 odd years until his death directed various versions of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble (SME), one of the seminal experiments in defining BritImprov, was a famously irascible character. A chameleon who could be playing super sensitive near soundless improv with partners like saxophonist John Butcher or trumpeter Kenny Wheeler one day and raucous jazz rock with lesser musicians the next, Stevens managed to alienate as many players as he inspired. More clearly jazzy, Osborne, who worked over the years in circumstances as varied as Mike Westbrook's big band and an all saxophone group with John Surman, was one of the U.K.'s "farthest out" freebopers in the 1970s. Unfortunately part of that "outness" resulted from a steadily worsening mental illness, which finally forced him to cease playing about a year after this live session was taped in 1979.

Third participant is bassist Paul Rogers -- possibly on his first recording -- who, happily, in the years since has gone from strength to strength, interacting with a variety of Continental and British improvisers, most notably as one-quarter of Keith Tippett's Mujician.

Folks familiar with the SME, Mujician and the players' other credentials may be surprised by some of the sounds created here. Recorded in a London pub, likely in an afternoon or early evening session, it seems like an exercise in Name That (Bop) Tune. Jumbling together heads from John Coltrane, Jackie McLean, Ornette Coleman, "Cherokee", "Suimmertime", snatches of popular tunes and jazz standards, the trio often seems to be struggling to get the attention of a crowd less than interested in the music. Pointedly Stevens asks for the jukebox to be turned off "please" at one juncture, while the burble of conversation continues unabated during Rogers bass solo on "Plough Story," which consists mostly of variation on Oscar Pettiford's "Blues In The Closet".

Resorting to dog whistle altissimo passages and repeatedly holding notes is Osborne's strategy for the gig. Then on the more than 23 minute "MO Recapulations (SIC)", the saxman seems to be quoting whatever is suggested by random phrases. "It Don't Mean A Thing", "Stranger In Paradise" and "Giant Steps" all make appearances. Meanwhile Stevens' heavy, tub thumping rhythm and fake book bop licks are as far away from the SME as The Plough was from the Barbizon Centre.

All in all, followers of any of these musicians -- most especially Osborne -- will welcome this rare "in-the-tradition" glimpse into their thought processes. But the inattentive audience and the boxy, tubby recorded sound often works at cross-purposes to what the trio was trying to achieve.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Blue Rondo 2. Plough Story 3. Carrousel 4. Cherokee 5. Summertime 6. The Restart 7. MO Recapulations Personnel: Mike Osborne (alto saxophone); Paul Rogers (bass); John Stevens (drums)

April 29, 2001