Off Minor

Another foursome of great music at Boat-Ting, this Monday night. Opening were Alex Ward (clarinet) backing the poety of (the beautiful) Sibyl Madrigal. Alex Ward (website) is just perfect, really… Madrigal is the MC of the evening (and, presumably, Boat-Ting curator) so she tried to claim that they were just the warm-up act. Nonsense. It’s great seeing something fall together so effortlessly, almost ad-hoc… it’s why these evenings are so hot.

Second up were what was now safely described as the Boat-Ting house band: Steve Noble (drums), Lol Coxhill (sax) and John Edwards (bass). I think this is maybe the third Boat-Ting night I’ve written about on this fledgling blog, and I mentioned before that I’ve had difficulty really getting right into Lol Coxhill… Watching this “residency” fortnight-after-fortnight, I think it’s all come together; I’ve finally fallen, completely, under Coxhill’s manifest genius… Although I still haven’t bought any of his records…

Third up: Kay Grant, with processed vocals; Steve Beresford, with his incredible table of electronic madness (toys/sirens/samplers/effects pedals/whatever), and Roger Turner, on drum + stuff. Turner is a bit like Steve Noble, slightly frantic with a minimal drum kit, but with a massive crate of metal spare parts (chains, gongs, cymbals), which he slowly tips over it, pulling out bits and pieces, hammering and scratching them with the skins to make new amazing sounds… It’s such a spectacle, really, an act that really involves you; Beresford is really engaging to watch, too, a sort of mad professor of sounds, working through his table top of electronic gadgets, pondering thoughtfully… then suddenly pulling out some crazy burst of mashed-up sound that perfectly underlines exactly where the music is going…. He’s cool because, even when he’s playing straight piano, you can see the cogs whirring as he’s trying to work out how to squeeze every last possible sound from the instrument.

The fourth and final act were probably the highlight of the evening, really… A quartet with Ricardo Tejero (sax + clarinet), Javier Carmona (drums), Ian Smith (trumpet), and Marcio Mattos (bass) (see main photo). This was brilliant ensemble free-music, like… proper; slick… Where everything falls into place just so. (Although that might mean that it was a bit of a run-through.) They played one long piece, and then effectively an encore; the first was basically a roving suite of improvisations, solos; there was a great form to the music, rather than it being just a blast-through. Javier Carmona (myspace) I had seen just a couple of weeks ago, in a large ensemble that didn’t quite work… Maybe it’s just me but he seemed more relaxed this time around and was playing some great lifting rhythms. Ricardo Tejero was completely new to me; he was playing great free sheets-of-sound tenor sax in their first piece, and then moved to clarinet for the shorter second half. Ian Smith again I don’t know but he seems to have quite a prolific recording back-catalogue… I vaguely recognise him, like I’ve seen him someplace somewhere before, but can’t place him. Great deep playing, and a good excuse to buy up some of those Emanem-discs. The bass of Marcio Mattos was probably the key element in the group. In fact, throughout it seemed like it was Mattos that was leading the structure of the piece. He was playing bass strung up with pickups/electronics and getting some great sounds out of it. Was it bass? Just a small bass… ? Cello?? (Sorry, I’m instrumentally illiterate.) He was sitting down, arched over it, and playing over the strings so fast, like a guitar or something… With the electronics it reminded me of the glitch sounds from Marc Ducret… in fact a sort of mix between Marc Ducret and Dan Berglund (!). Though Mattos is another name-I-know-I-should-know, I don’t, so I don’t know if this is his usual set-up (bass + electronics). Really excellent though… My amazon wish-list continues to grow…