Keiji Haino & Chris Corsano, Zev, The Alan Wilkinson, John Edwards & Steve Noble Trio - London Spitz - 4/9/06
5/5
By: Charlie Potter
Free jazz is probably the most traditionally hated music in the world, but it is getting cooler, man. Though, to tell the truth, the count for beardos tonight is far higher than usual, but whether beardos are cool or not is a matter of taste and context - somehow when seen in a park or a dole office they don't seem so cool, but here in the darkness of the Spitz when all gathered together, there is a simple, winning, single conviction to this bizarre race of people.
The Alan Wilkinson, John Edwards and Steve Noble Trio (****) open the night. For those of you who want to be able to pick up just enough stuff about free jazz so you can palm it off to your friends, we offer this as a little introduction. Alan Wilkinson has been playing saxophone in various groups and ensembles since the 70's, working with everyone from Don Byron to Derek Bailey, and is a long time collaborator with drummer Paul Hession. Steve Noble studied with drummer Elken Ogunde and has also played a great deal with Derek Bailey and his company over the years. As for John Edwards, he started the group The Pointy Birds, playing bass in the eighties, and now regularly collaborates with Even Parker. Rumour has it he was also once a world record holding triple jumper.
Like most free jazz, these guys were having a lot of fun with structure, but much more than this what they really enjoyed most was exploring timbre. The play on the tentative ties between percussion and melody through it's exploration is reminiscent of some of the bigger electronica acts such as Autechre or Aphex Twin, but rather than coming from the angle of heavily utilising percussion that then reveals melody, the bass player and saxophonist are using instruments built for melody to travel from melody towards a much more percussive sound. Interestingly, drummer Noble however can occasionally pull you away from the timbres of the drums by creating a more coherent or traditional drum beat that draws your attention solely towards the sheer rewarding repetition of it. That said, there wasn't quite enough dynamic tension to keep you consistently excited all the way through the set, but overall the array of sounds coming from this trio including saxophone sounds like an old car horn and the sound of coins dropping on the floor coming from the double bass was truly fascinating.
Zev (**) starts by jittering around on a big, big drum. Now, big drums are brilliant - if Enya used big drums more, even she might be worth seeing live, and anybody who doesn't think that big drums are brilliant might as well kill themselves now in the knowledge that they're never going to truly enjoy their life to the full. If you're having problems with big drums and you're not enjoying them as much as you think you should, then my advice is to try an even bigger drum, and work down from there.
Zev has understood this much and deserves credit for that, but unfortunately what he hasn't realised is that his drum is not big enough to just pissy pissy jitter about on for forty five minutes. True, he has also brought into the equation a few small gongs (and one really big home made gong), but still his jittering is not quite good enough to make even this fantastic, oversized combination of percussive devices work. If he was a good jitterer, like Derek Bailey was for example, it would be fine. In fact, everything in this set is a fine and good idea, the simplicity of drawing people into absorption with a big drum and then slowly moving onto a gong is an interestic trick, and it's really good to see a show that is this stripped back, which is why despite it's flaws I still regard it as passable that this set happened. Worth seeing simply because it could inspire someone else to do something like this, but with a little more intensity.
Well, lets just get it out of the way shall we? Keiji Haino & Chris Corsano's set was really, really, bloody amazing. I know there'll be some of you that may not bother to read the rest of the review because now you've been told all you want to know, but I got so excited by this set I couldn't wait to even type how good it was. Everyone who was in that room knows what I am talking about, everyone to who wasn't - I'm sorry.
Legend has it that Japanese experimental multi-instrumentalist; Keiji Haino has never been photographed without his huge black glasses. This might be because he wants to have an almost mythical degree of anonymity, or it could be that he has really pretty eyes that just wouldn't go with his black clothes and chilling stage presence, although ironically, having really pretty eyes is the only way I can think of making his terrifying physical existence even scarier. I'm not surprised to be scared -after all, you know with the fantastic drum maestro Chris Corsano behind the kit that what ensues isn't going to be the lighter side of Haino's impressive back catalogue.
The set begins with both musicians drumming, creating the most incredible barrage of pummels. Chris Corsano is always an enormous pleasure to watch with his subtle yet hard hitting free jazz style, but along side Keiji the intensity is increased ten fold, the whole audience gathered around them really tightly just to witness it. One thing this set already has on so many free jazz sets is that it's not all about a simple build up and bring down of noise - free though it is, there is no messing around here.
There is some uncertainty to what exactly Haino is doing with his electronics throughout the set, although it seems like he may be using 3D chaos pads a lot. If you're someone who believes that the key to a good music performance is being able to see the relationship between the movement of the performer and the sound that comes out, then you should regard 3D chaos pads as similarly significant to Theremins. It's exciting to see the correlation between the very spatial arm movements and the sound that is coming out, the interesting difference with a chaos pad being that you don't know exactly what sample is being loaded in. One thing that is quite possible and evidently true in places is that the sounds originate from earlier parts of the performance, most clearly when Keiji uses electronics to layer up guitars or vocals. One of the highlights of the set is when he sets up a quite a pleasant, almost Godspeed-esque drone, then whilst it's left looping he slowly breaks the harmony and brings you in to off beat jazz chords, oddly sounding so right, something which can only be performed by a remarkably skilled guitarist. The set is brimming with fantastic ideas like this, so much so that it seems like Keiji has put a huge amount of planning in before its performance. Even if he hasn't, he shows that improvising isn't necessarily about making any old noise. It is a true talent to know a style of expression or aesthetic in the way that many musicians could only know something much more mathematical like a particular melody or beat.
The best parts in the set are when everything gets stripped back to reveal Keiji performing the most incredibly harrowing guttural vocal expulsions, putting everything he has into creating a terrifying sound. Yet again, it shows he an incredible ability for expression. As much as the duo shows incredible skill in innovative breakdowns, they sure know how to make a hell of a lot of noise as well.
Towards the end of the set, Keiji takes to the guitar and shows the people how it's done. It's really tempting to call it a freak out, or say they completely loose control as happens at so many noisy shows with guitars, but that just wouldn't be true. At the point where most noise outfits would be falling all over the stage, struggling to keep it in control, Keiji just stands high and proud, taking complete control of the instrument, and then, just when you think they've taken it as far as they can they keep going, totally in control but flailing about just because they're having a great time. Where a lot of noise artists sound like an attack, Keiji and Corsano are vast and create a sonic landscape the likes of which you can only hope will ever be achieved by someone else.
All I can say is that I'm sorry I didn't type this article fast enough to tell you to go to the second night. But I am not half as sorry about that as I am about the fact that I'm currently sitting here typing this piece whilst Keiji and Chris are out there tonight making another lucky audience of people live one of the much more memorable experiences they'll ever have in their lives.
Photo Credit: Joe Knowles
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