Othin Spake feat. Trevor Dunn & Shelly Burgon - London Spitz -10/7/07
4/5
By: Charlie Potter
Unless you're really, really into your free jazz, it's fair to say there will always come a point in a show where; you'll just be desperate for a bit more in the way of formal structure. Yet in terms of music made with sensitive consideration for sound, it was worth going to see Othin Spake (beefed up to a jazz quintet with the addition of harpist Shelly Burgon and one time Mr Bungle bassist Trevor Dunn, pictured above) merely for the frankly stunning first five minutes of this set.
The very way the instruments were arranged also made tonight's performance pretty special, with each of the five really pulling their weight. The drummer for the most part stuck to fairly straight forward but occasionally lightly agitated taps on various kitchen equipment, sometimes deftly and confidently flicking his arms right around the kit, playing softly but at some speed without compromising the timbre of the drums.
One of Othin Spake's guitarists was a thoughtful soul who played a lot of great little flicky, creepy little licks on a very modern instrument through a large multi effect pedal - a brave an intelligent move in this genre. It enabled him to make a plethora of sounds, bringing the kind of choice in sound that a keyboard provides but retaining the varying velocity and rasp you only get with a guitar. The other guitarist on stage held a lovely vintage Rhodes, one he was playing through more visibly old school pedals to give the whole set a background of warm, sparkling, ethereal noise.
Shelly Burgon was on harp. That's right, harp. Whilst I'm not going to pretend to know the intricacies of various harp sounds, her work certainly added an exciting element to the whole game - as if we weren't excited enough to see Trevor Dunn and his lovely double bass. The most famous of the bunch (in underground rock circles at least), Trevor took lead for a large proportion of the set, but if there was one thing you couldn't accuse anyone on this stage of it was of having an ego. The set for the majority was a very quiet affair, with each member provided enough solo time to really get stuck in to it. Trevor might have provided most in the way of really interesting ideas, but the first guitar player mentioned was right behind him in that queue, with the rest of this bunch of remarkable musicians always ready to contribute in manners just as intriguing.
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