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Live Free Improvised Music

  
 
RichT's boring old name
15:49 / 01.04.07
As to stop hijacking the Upcoming Gigs thread with what is essentially a minority interest, turning into discussion I've made this thread as the start of a guide to finding and listening to free improvised music (don't want to start putting boundaries down here- jazz, electronic, non-idiomatic, pretty much anything goes). Beards and Reeds Optional.

For a start there's a good guide to European musicians here:
http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/

Raving about how great (or maybe not?) they are can follow.

I'll make a start on nights in London which regularly feature people like this:
The Klinker: General mish-mash of outsider music with a strong free-improv angle to it, hosted by the crazed, cabbage-wearing Hugh Metcalfe. Currently every Thursday and Friday (one in the North, one in the South). Been going for over 20 years.

Boat Ting: First and 3rd Monday of the Month- On a Boat! The Yacht Club, opposite Temple tube station on the Thames.

The Bohman Brothers Present: (blog with some info here) at the amazing Battersea Arts Centre, approximately every other wednesday. I've got a bad habit of losing track of when it's on. Hosted by the Bohman Brothers, excellent manipulators of objects in their own right.

The Red Rose Club: No improv listings here but there are fairly regular improv gigs, often with big(ger) names, including the London Improvisers Orchestra

Vortex Jazz Club: Evan Parker gets a monthly gig here up in Stokey, alongside a spattering of other acts doing one offs.

Ray's Jazz: Upstairs in Foyles bookshop, seasonal, monthly night curated by Steve Beresford.

Small but Perfectly Formed: One off gigs (can be quite frequent), such as those at the flea pit mentioned on Upcoming Gigs. Usually excellent- PM me if you'd like to get on the mailing list.

Interlace: Infrequent concerts- usually in Goldsmiths college Great Hall. Hosted by Sebastian Lexer, with computers usually being used. Site also has a free recordings archive.

[no-signal]: Great Improv/noise promoter, nights mainly at the state51 warehouse at the top of Brick Lane. If a bomb went off at one of these, WIRE magazine would cease to exist.

Fear of Jazz: Monthly (ish) night who have feature the likes of Chris Corsano and Phillip Jeck- haven't actually made one yet but hope to soon.

CYRK: An irregular night, with noisy computers and electronicsy things


also, if you're in Nottingham:
kneesknees: Seem to put on some excellent lineups. You're not alone outside London.

right- this is the beginning, lets see what else we can get here
 
 
rizla mission
14:51 / 02.04.07
Excellent to have a set of links to all of those night/promoters/happenings etc. - thanks!

Having only recently moved to London, I plan on making the best of living in a place where a significant amount of this kind of music is actually, er, going on.

At home I tend to favour only occasional, limited blasts of modern improv, as opposed to my ever-growing love of 'classic-era' '50s-'70s jazz, but I'm getting to love watching it live... I guess being a more recent and open-ended form, live performances in the European-style free-improv world tend to throw out a lot more of the wild energy, feeling, surprise and sonic excitement that I appreciate in the older jazz, whereas many (tho not all by any means I'm sure!) people playing stuff explicitly based on the older jazz these days tend to come across as far less vital than their inspirations were back in the day, simply because they're sticking to a vocabulary defined 40 or more years ago, with the inherent dogma and retro-ness that entails (even if it's not intended).

Um... bit of a convoluted paragraph there, but I hope you get my point.

Even when I perhaps don't fully appreciate what a musician is doing in full-scale electro/acoustic improv mode and find an itch at the back of my brain wishing for a bit of repitition or a good riff here and there (gets a bit coooold and distant for my tastes sometimes... I'm more into the soul/free expression aspects), I've always been fascinated by watching people in any genre getting WAY OUT THERE on their instruments, and I've never left an improv gig feeling anything less than enthused and energised by what I've witnessed.

So, er, what I'm basically leading up to is that Peter Evans & Tom Blancarte were fucking great the other night... a real tour-de-force performance that kinda managed to range the whole emotional spectrum of this kind of music, from distinctly Ayler-like fiery skronk to drawn out, meditative passages that sounded almost like feedback-based drone, and surely some of the most hair-raising sounds I've ever heard blasted out of two acoustic instruments.

And it was nice to meet Rich T too, however briefly! : D

So what do people think about the up-coming 'Free Noise' event at ULU, aimed at highlighting the connections between free jazz and contemporary noise stuff? (see the Kosmiche website: http://www.kosmische.org/upcoming.html).

I'm tempted to go along for the jazz stuff (Evan Parker particularly), but I confess I'm on a BIG downer at the moment as regards noise music - purely a personal thing, but I'm starting to find a lot of it tedious, cynical, lazy and generally offensive (and not in the way it wants to be).
 
 
Locust No longer
22:00 / 02.04.07
Heh, thanks for starting this up. It does make me feel a tad jealous I can't see some of these shows but I've been waiting a long time to see some denizens of Barbelith discuss this stuff.

Rizla, I can completely understand your trepidation when it comes to noise. I, too, have been really off-put at the whole genre, as so much of seems caught up in stuff I really don't care about: fake metal pathos, violence, pseudo-art posturing/farting. And, admittedly, the noise guys on this Free Noise bill seem to be a mixed bag. John Weise is pretty cool and his stuff in Bastard noise can be really magnificent stuff. I've only heard Yellow Swans on record and haven't been too impressed with them, but I hear from some dudes that they are killer live. C Spenser Yeh put on one of the most amazing shows at the De Stijl Festival as Burning Star Core four years ago, but I'm not sure if he's really that consistent or if he could hold his own with Evan Parker or Edwards or Hession (although he just released an album with Paul Flaherty and Chris Corsano). Culver and Metalux I haven't heard at all, but I have never been struck by any of their descriptions enough to check them out. It's a bit of a puzzling line up to be sure, both within the noise roster and the "free jazz" one. I can think of a few names from the UK improv scene more in-tune with what noise is doing like Steve Beresford or Mark Wastell or Rhodri Davies or Tony Bevan. The noise people they chose are heavily leaning towards the more groove based, pysch-noise area and, oddly, are almost/entirely American. I don't know why they didn't choose people like Otomo Yoshihide or the Incapicatants or Howard Stelzer (possibly budget issues?). I really can't see Parker integrating into many combinations with the ones on the roster. Although I would love to hear him try to play with Weise. I do know Parker has been in playing situations with more "noise" based dudes like Keith Rowe and Spring Heel Jack but certainly no one like these guys who probably don't have the most vicious improv chops (which to derek bailey would be just fine).

To be honest, this show seems more likely to become a disjointed, half-formed mess than the potential Frankenstein monster they want to create. . . But they're taking chances, and it sure does look interesting. It'll be an diverse crowd, I'd imagine.

Which brings up another point... Who are they trying to aim a thing like this at? The noise scene? The ol' free jazz codgers? I don't know if the free jazzers will really appreciate it much. It's more likely to get some of the younger kids into psych-noise to see some free stuff, which is cool and a neat idea. And I always appreciate a neat idea. Either way, it could be a really glorious mess and I would go just to see if lightning might hit on one of the combinations and the creature does awake.
 
 
Locust No longer
22:04 / 02.04.07
Oh, does anyone know if the Flim Flam is still around? I went there a few times around 2003 or so. I saw Paul Hession and Alan Wilkinson and Derek Bailey there. It was rad little space underneath a pub. Not the best place for quiet improv but it was a cool atmosphere. I think it was just a few blocks away from the Vortex where I saw Evan Parker's quartet.
 
 
RichT's boring old name
23:24 / 02.04.07
Just come back from Boat Ting and it was another blinder- The 'House Band', Lol Coxhill, Steve Noble and John Edwards were incredible, swaying between out and out jazz, to noise, to pop - all with complete integrity and drive behind it.

Kay Grant (on processed vocals), Steve Beresford and Roger Turner (second time I've seen those last two in 4 days) pulled off something sounding like Stockhausen in the 60's but broken completely free from constraint. Roger looked like he was just playing a snare drum but kept pulling out massive cymbals, thunder sheets and other comedically large objects out from behind him. The set could have easily been categorised as noise.. I'll get onto that later.

Again I'm wary about this 'Free Noise' thing, almost everything I've seen CMN put on hasn't lived up to the promise of the lineup, usually as putting different genres together like that, intsead of being a 'sum of parts' ends up having the effects cancel each other out, leaving something a bit watered down and mediocre.

In a cynical way I can see either the noise guys either totally drowning out the improv guys, or the noise guys being put to the background whilst being improvised over.

I'm also not really up on the american noise scene apart from the odd bit of wolf eyes, I haven't heard anything by any of these guys (although know a few names)- it's more the Japanese and Europeans that I've at least heard live.

With noise, I think a lot of it is attitude- we've all heard the doom-y *GRAARR* type stuff made by serious people behind laptops or huge arrays of wires, and to be honest a lot of it now is quite hackneyed and dull. And anything you do will be tame in comparison to Whitehouse or Merzbow. When people start embracing noise as something fun and a bit out of control and chaotic that's when I really get something out of it.

On the other hand I caught an impromptu (?) duo between Chris Corsano and Jessica Rylan [Can't] last year and that was ace.

I think the thing is that if they were to bring in 'improv noise' type guys, e.g. Morphogenesis, Steve Beresford, Keith Rowe etc. then they wouldn't get the audiences- I'm kinda seeing parallels with London Sinfonietta's Warp collaborations, get the kids into 'intellectual' music- which I think has definitely worked, a few people I know suddenly seemed to get a lot more interested in Steve Reich , now whether they'll dig deeper is a different matter...

Also it's a bit of a breakthrough with the arts council here, I was talking about this the other night and it was being mentioned that around 10 years ago or so the arts council really didn't look favourably on free improv.

I'm thinking I'll go to this, and hope my cynicism is proved wrong... but we shall see
 
 
rizla mission
09:45 / 03.04.07
So is it assumed that the noise and improv guys will be collaborating at this event...?

Looking at the schedule / press info, I get the impression that they'll all be doing seperate sets.

But yes, upon further consideration, a very odd and hap-hazard selection of artists.

From the noise perspective, I'm thinking (and correct me if I'm wrong here) that John Weise is very much based in the industrial/electronica informed realm of purely digital skree, whilst Yellow Swans are more sort of "whack on the distortion pedals and trip out man!" psychedelic drone types.... neither of which seems to have much obvious connection to the jazz/improv world.

It would have been far more heartening to see somebody on the bill like Sunburned Hand of Man who, even though I don't rate them much, at least have an element of creative chaos and live instrument manipulation which could be traced back to improv, or even (in fact, definitely!!) Magik Markers, whose M.O. is essentially non-musicians playing freely improvised rock n' roll, and what a glorious M.O. it is.

Or, perhaps more book-able from the organisers' point of view, what about the various British avant/psyche/noise practitioners who keep a very definite link with jazz/improv alive in their work? - Richard Youngs or Neil Campbel(?) of Vibra-Cathedral Orchestra / Astral Social Club for example..? Much more appropriate than the people who are actually on the bill I would have thought, and much closer to home too.

Plus, as noted above, what of Chris Corsano (currently still UK-based I believe)??; surely if one guy can be said to bridge the gap between the current noise and improv scenes, tis he? He seems to play absolutely everywhere with everyone too, and I would have thought this event was right up his street, to the extent that he's notable by his absense...

Of course, I can imagine the organisers' reading this sort of grumbling, tearing their hair out; "well we couldn't book EVERYONE!!" etc.
 
 
RichT's boring old name
17:41 / 03.04.07
I'm just thinking, from what you've just said there Riz- that was pretty much last year's Palimpsest Festival lineup. That was a lovely day- I'm sure Seth's had a good enthuse about it somewhere here.

I got the impression they were being intermingled from here

Right, I'm now going to resist seeing Steve Beresford for the third time in 5 days as I've just he was playing at a night I've just realised is on: Rational Rec (mainly composed music there actually)
 
 
Locust No longer
02:08 / 04.04.07
huh, culver actually sounds pretty cool. I dig skullflower quite a bit.
 
 
Mon Oncle Ignatius
18:19 / 04.04.07
The bill for the ULU Free Noise show is definitely going to be one big mashup of all the artists involved, not separate sets. I'm not sure what I'll be doing there in a Kosmische capacity, but it will be something.

The Flim Flam is on hold - it used to be at Ryan's on Church Street in Stoke Newington, but hasn't appeared for a long while. I'm hoping to restart my own Drones Club, possibly there, maybe somewhere else, in the near future. We have featured many an improv/noise act in the past, including of course my own outfit the Stella Maris Drone Orchestra.

The Vortex has relocated to Dalston, but I've not been there since it reopened. The old building was occupied as a social centre for a month or so, but has now been torn down apart from the facade, so the only improv noise you'll hear from there for now is the sound of tearing bricks and beams.

The Klinker will be doing a fortnightly event at the Vortex in Dalston as well. The very silly and wonderful Bert Shaft Orchestra will be playing there on the 9th April, which should be great.
 
 
Locust No longer
02:27 / 14.04.07
Huh, well, I guess I'll write this here rather than in the gigs thread as it seems more pertinent. So I saw Peter Brotzmann last night, and as much as it pains me to write this, I found it to be a rote exercise. I'm not sure what I expected as I've seen him three times previously in various permutations and, honestly, only been really impressed once. I am still a big fan of his mostly early recorded material-- Machine Gun figures easily into my top ten records ever. And last night seemed like an excellent deal on paper, made out to be a second coming of Last Exit or something... and certainly the rhythm section was all about bash and grab and brutality like Last Exit. BUT the weak link here was Brotzmann, he just did the same ol' shtick over the top of the pummel that I've heard a million times before. Usually this is fine, cuz Brotzmann's shtick is still unmistakably his own powerful implacable brand. However, last night, it simply sounded predictable, average, and, I hate to say it, boring. He's never been considered the most technical of reeds players and this isn't really much of a concern for me with musicians if the passion and intensity transcends the limited skill. In fact, I often prefer brutal, unpolished, raw ass shitkickers to the squeaky clean, rocket scientists of the music. But there were moments at the performance where it seemed too tediously overdone and amateurish. His tenor was still really excellent, but the clarinet and alto playing were predictable and often really, um, bad. He would mostly repeat the same musical gestures and screaming lines over and over again, the volume cranked more to hide the lack of invention of the players than to signal some organically reached point of ecstatic free jazz blow out. And maybe that's the major problem-- most free jazz screaming fits need to have some sort of build up otherwise it just seems like a pose (this isn't always the case of course). This really does pain me to write this about him as he was such a big influence on me when I started listening to more "extreme" music. Oh well. It was as horrible as I make it out to be, just disappointing. The crowd dug it a lot, so what the fuck do I know?
 
 
lord nuneaton savage
10:55 / 14.04.07
Well, it probably means you are one of the rare people who can make out the difference between good free jazz and shit free jazz.

I'm not being sarcastic at all. Probably just being a bit snobby.
 
 
RichT's boring old name
13:32 / 14.04.07
I went to the new vortex last Thursday for Evan Parker's monthly night there and it had a lot nicer atmosphere than the shiny mini- pompidou centre look of the building from the outside, although the beer was far from cheap.

The sets were good, especially the second one, which was amazing, it apparently lasted about 45 mins and it felt like 10, such was the pace but also the variety of ideas. However I found the first half of the first set a bit dull as everyone was really going for it- full force for that entire time, it wasn't until they started breaking it down that there seemed to be any real interplay between the performers.

Still excellent stuff, first time I've actually seen Steve Beresford's hands whilst playing the piano, some of the movements he does are crazy, like the man's making bread. He also seemed to really go against what the others were playing a lot of the time, injecting a lot of new ideas into what the group were doing.

Maybe I'm getting a bit tired of this sort of thing too, Locust- I saw Horatio Pollard playing a noise set last night, there was pretty much no variety with the sounds or intensity he did lots of shouting and running into the audience etc, while essentially he was playing back a tape through a mixer.. felt like he was maybe trying to compensate for something.. although a couple of years ago I'm sure I would have thought that was great.

I don't think there's really any difference in being able to distinguish a good free jazz set and a good pop performance, essentially I think it's down to how much it engages you and what you get from the music. Whether you agree with the person next to you at the time's a completely different matter. There's often a less familiar musical vocabulary used in free music, which can take a bit of getting accustomed to, or just excite in itself (which may be how a lot of the audience were at the Brotzmann gig), depending on your frame of mind. Once you've got past that (as with any kind of music) it's essentially people on a stage making noises, it's then just how the noises and people relate to each other.

I also found a Derek Bailey documentary on improvisation in music, filmed around 1990 which is amazing. On ubu.
 
 
Mon Oncle Ignatius
12:24 / 18.04.07
This seems more appropriate to here than the upcoming gigs thread (which I'm putting some other stuff in too):

Cecil Taylor Quartet featuring Anthony Braxton
Sunday 8 July, Royal Festival Hall, 7.30pm, Tickets £35 £30 £25

Piano genius Cecil Taylor is acknowledged as one of the major innovators of the 'Free Jazz' movement of the late 1950s and early 60s. After nearly 50 years, this pianist, composer and poet remains one of the most controversial figures in jazz - continuing, in his 77th year, to compose, write and tour. For this concert, Cecil Taylor will be reunited with percussionist Tony Oxley on drums, William Parker on bass, and will play, for the very first time, with master saxophonist Anthony Braxton.

This could be very interesting, to say the least, though I don't really know Taylor's work very well, I'm sure it would be mind-blowing.

Ornette Coleman Quartet

Monday 9 July, Royal Festival Hall, 7.30pm, Tickets £45 £ 40 £35

The 'missing link' between bebop and the 'Free Jazz' movement, saxophonist, composer and metaphysician Ornette Coleman pioneered the idea of improvising without chord changes. As last year's release Sound Grammar (his first live album in 20 years) shows, Ornette's whooping runs, long high notes, quivering tone and spiralling descents still sound fresh and pin sharp. With Ornette Coleman on saxophone, trumpet and violin, his son Denardo Coleman on drums, and acoustic bassists Tony Falanga (acoustic) and Al McDowell (electric), this group sounds like no other on the scene or in Ornette's career.

I'm very excited about this, having been recalling just how out there Coleman can be on record - so it would be stunning to see him and his quartet do it all on stage. Oh yes.

Has anyone here heard Sound Grammar? I was musing about getting hold of it the other day, but thought I'd get some opinions on it first

Tom Jenkinson (aka Squarepusher) & Evan Parker
Monday 16 July, Queen Elizabeth Hall, 7.30pm, Tickets £15 £12.50

Tom Jenkinson, also known as Warp Record’s Squarepusher, and described as ‘the best electric bass player on the earth’ by Red Hot Chili Pepper’s Flea, plays his first solo bass show. In this special concert Jenkinson also joins forces with Evan Parker, the inimitable free-improvising saxophonist for the first time. This sax virtuoso’s experiments with digital processing, multi-layered sounds and circular breathing have put him at the forefront of contemporary free jazz. Both Jenkinson and Parker play solo performances and perform together. There will be a post-concert DJ set by Luke Vibert.

A not that surprising pairing, though I have to admit to finding Jenkinson extraordinarily overwhelming on record, and not in a good way. However, with Parker to play off rather than himself in the studio, this could turn out to be really quite something.

So, any further opinions?
 
 
rizla mission
13:19 / 18.04.07
I'm often a bit sniffy about expensive theatre / arts circuit shows, and for most aging rock stars I'd probably give it a miss on the principle that there'd probably be someone less famous rocking harder down the road for £5... and in London this is probably true of jazz/improv too!

BUT Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor are still both supposed to be extraordinary performers, and they are both very big names in the era of jazz I love, so YES, I would love to go to these shows and hopefully will.
 
 
rizla mission
13:27 / 18.04.07
Great line-up of players at the Cecil Taylor show too (although I'm still not sure what to make of Braxton).

Oh, and aside from reading about him, seeing/hearing bits and pieces in documentaries etc., my only experience of Taylor is a 2nd hand LP from the '70s which has got to be one of the intense pieces of music I own... it sounds like someone trying to recreate the feeling of a Melt Banana style prog/spazz/hardcore band on solo piano... for 25 minutes at a stretch.

I don't play it much, but my ears certainly know all about it when I do.
 
 
RichT's boring old name
22:00 / 18.04.07
hmm, again I'm really not sure about paying the best part of £50 for a gig (when I've seen some of the same guys playing here for less than £10). Ornette Coleman's early stuff's amazing but I bought a later album of his (Tone Dialling, I think) and it was really 'smooth jazz' and flaccid sounding- even had a J.S. Bach arrangement for soprano sax *retches*. [I think J.S. Bach's amazing, by the way- although outside the hands of John Butcher and Lol Coxhill, the soprano sax has caused many crimes against humanity]. Although 'Free Jazz' (the record) was a major revelation in my musical education, I'm not sure how he'd be now.

I think Cecil Taylor's someone who's been missed somewhere in my free music education somewhere between the earlier Ornette Coleman/Miles Davis/Art Ensemble stuff of the 60's and the European stuff, so I've never knowingly heard him. Similarly with Braxton- I've heard bit of his work and read about him but never really managed to engage with it properly.

As much as I like Mr. Jenkinson (was a bit of a teenage hero to me), I feel he's getting a bit out of his depth here- much like Jonny Greenwood (of Radiohead, again a massive influence on me as a teeneger) getting major performances of compositions, it feels a bit like cheating- there's musicians/composers in their field who slog their arses off trying to get gigs like this and someone from another field (but commercially successful in it) comes along with little or no experience and often produces something mediocre...
*...with their popular music, stealing our jobs, eating our babies*

I saw him about a year ago playing with a jazz band at Koko and I definitely felt a lack of communication there, it was very much a one way thing- Squarepusher plays, they follow. I feel Evan may be rather quiet for that one if Tom plays like that. I've always seen him as more of a solo performer, and actually got more excited with some of the things he does with electronics live, rather than the bass.

Still, it looks like he's getting some pretty serious experience so may surprise us all.

Right, lets smile at people nicely and try and get some press tickets for some of this lot...
*tries to stop being so cynical.. it will be good*
 
 
Locust No longer
05:54 / 19.04.07
Shit, rereading my post about Brotzmann i left out something really important on the last line, it should read: "It WASN'T as bad as I made it out to be." I would've just edited it but I figured it was a little late and no one would notice. um. yeah... Fuckin' Cecil Taylor, man. I would go. He's definitely one of the greats and still puts out some tremendous, intense music. Yeah Rizla, his stuff pretty much never lets up ever. Is the disc you have Silent Tongues?

The Taylor's Feel trio plus Anthony Braxton seems like such an obvious combination, so it's surprising it hasn't happened before. I wish I could see that one. The price seems bordering on the ridiculous, but Braxton and Taylor don't come cheap nowadays. Seems weird to think about how they could barely get work in the 60s to 80s.

Coleman's last album I heard was Sound Grammar which I found enjoyable. I didn't hear all of it, but it definitely wasn't smooth jazz this time around. "Sound Grammar" was recorded live from not long ago so it sounds like he still puts on a killer show. I wish these guys would play Chicago or something. Taylor seems to rarely play in the US anymore.
 
  
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