Three Gigs, Two Cities, 48 Hours

An epic musical journey from downtown Bristol to fashionable Shoreditch via London’s South Bank, this could definitely be regarded as a full weekend.

Saturday November 24 saw three of Bristol’s finest live acts and numerous DJs swarm to The Attic in Stokes Croft, a new underground venue starting to attract a lot of talent. A tight set from the scorching Latin funk outfit Los Mercenarios opened proceedings. Saxophonists Craig Crofton and James Morton both caught the ear during impressive solos, with Morton in particular justifying his soaring reputation. A couple of the best tunes were a crisp rendition of The Meters’ classic ’Cissy Strut’ and a thoroughly danceable interpretation of the jazz standard ’A Night In Tunisia’.

Next on stage was Crofton’s CCQ, a seven-piece electronically-driven ensemble fusing breakbeat, funk, drum&bass, hip-hop and more into a maniacally simmering cauldron of raw musical creativity. With a drummer playing along to pre-recorded loops and a lot of tinkering effects, it was sometimes uncertain who was doing what. However, MC Derrick Hines was clear in his delivery of potent, thoughtful lyrics and the sax players threw well-placed punctuations into the group’s multi-dimensional sound. A debut album is on the way in 2008, but any CD will surely struggle to capture the sheer eclectic force of CCQ live performances.

The final group was Dr Meaker, a nine-person drum&bass band currently sending deep waves through the Bristol music scene. The Attic’s monolithic sound system was pushed to its limits as heavy sheets of bass pumped out, interspersed with sharp horn section parts and haunting vocal lines. Definitely less variety than the other two groups, but by that stage the ravers had assumed control of the venue and its atmosphere was pulsating as intensely as the bone-rattling bass vibrations.

As the final day of the London Jazz Festival, Sunday 25 November was always going to have something special on the cards. The Queen Elizabeth Hall’s showpiece event was a performance of the complete works of Thelonious Monk led by saxophonist Tony Kofi and pianist Jonathan Gee. The Monk project has been a labour of love for these two protagonists, who were joined by a fine selection of co-conspirators including Quentin Collins (trumpet), Corey Mwamba (vibraphone) and Winston Clifford (drums).

Constantly differing combinations of players interchanged on and off stage, with greatly varying track times. The three-session, 11-set performance had been rigidly planned – with 70 compositions to get through there was no other way. The first sitting featured well-known numbers such as ’Off Minor’, ’Epistrophy’ and ’Bemsha Swing’ and a few of Monk’s more obscure creations including ’Light Blue’, ’Let’s Cool One’ and ’Brake’s Sake’. The audience may have known what was going to be played, but regular rotations within the band kept the sound fresh and the people guessing.

It was then off to east London to witness a one-off concert at Cargo. Drummer Dylan Howe and his group The Subterraneans were performing a 90-minute adaptation of the music of Brian Eno and David Bowie, ambiently re-imagining the classic albums Low and Heroes. A formidable lineup included Portishead electronics wizard Adrian Utley on guitar, free-flowing Israeli saxophonist Gilad Atzmon and Stranglers vocalist Hugh Cornwell, with The Solid Strings in a supporting role.

Easy as it is to draw attention to individual members of this diverse "mini-orchestra", emphasis must be placed on its immaculate, entrancing collective performance. Tactful arrangements of tracks such as ’Warsawa’, which featured an eerie buildup of strings and guitar effects before gradually taking off into a harmonised horn section chorus, were the order of the evening. ’V2 Schneider’ began with a simple yet grooving bassline, the horns then coming in with imitations of falling bomb sounds. Howe’s trademark powerful yet delicate drumming was the motor propelling this finely-tuned engine. Every piece told its own story, with Sir Peter Blake’s background visuals presenting apt linkage to the Berlin Trilogy – the series of Bowie/Eno collaborative albums from which this project drew its inspiration.

Two days, three venues, eight hours of music, at least six different groups comprising over 40 musicians performing more than 50 separate compositions in a multitude of genres. This will not be easily forgotten.


Published at jazzwise.com - click here for original.

Tord Gustavsen Trio / Stefano Bollani & Enrico Rava

London Jazz Festival, Wednesday 21/11/07

In an evening designed to showcase the celebrated European record label ECM, listeners at the Barbican Centre were treated to a pair of highly differing acoustic performances.

The Italian duo of maverick young pianist Stefano Bollani and veteran trumpeter Enrico Rava played with a zestful understanding that openly defied their age difference of more than 30 years. Long solo passages from both men were sandwiched between frequent periods of glorious interplay and, surprisingly, several warm doses of Mediterranean comedy. Bollani's sense of humour especially shone through as he embellished his improvisation with inventive musical quotes and physical movement, such as closing the lid of the piano or gesturing to the heavens.

Tord Gustavsen and his fellow Norwegian sidemen displayed a complete contrast to this jovial mentality during their headline set, moving to the opposite extreme of the continental culture spectrum. Each musician played with a ferocious, powerful minimalism that has come to define the group's burgeoning reputation. Drummer Jarle Vespestad showed the audience original ways of cymbal manipulation to generate minutely subtle shifts in mood, barely touching the drums themselves. His single solo could be likened to the performance of a master illusionist, using sleight of hand expertise to conjure epic visions into the minds of listeners.

The stoic figure of Harald Johnsen on double bass represented a ghostly presence on stage, taking the less is more approach to its ultimate echelon. Gustavsen on piano caressed the keys with a simple yet passionately virtuosic touch, animatedly swaying back and forth during solos and coaxing the group along with fragile, enticing melodies. The performance's sole drawback was a tendency for the music to start sounding vaguely monotonous at times; undivided attention is absolutely required to appreciate the introspective magic of this captivating trio.

How very ECM of them.


Published at jazzwise.com, 27/11/07 - click here for original.

Us3: The Struggle Continues

In 1992 Geoff Wilkinson produced the groundbreaking jazz/hip-hop crossover track "Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)," gaining international recognition with his Us3 project. Fourteen years and six albums down the line he's still going strong, but it could all have been very different. Here he tells AAJ contributor Frederick Bernas about the highs and lows of his long and convoluted musical journey.

For a man whose achievements are so widely respected, Wilkinson comes across as a genuine, open person--not at all pretentious or arrogant. I met him at London's Jazz Café, where Us3 played two nights, launching a European tour through September and October 2007. We started at the very beginning, discussing how he first got into producing. "I was actually managing a studio called The Ark," Wilkinson recalls, "which was owned by Rick Buckler, drummer for The Jam, in the late '80s. It was one of the first studios to have an Apple Mac, and whenever there was any downtime I started playing around with it. I was always intrigued by sampling and programming."

That kind of situation is hard to imagine now, so how does he think technology has changed the way producers work? "The first Us3 album was made with an Atari computer running an Akai S900 [laughs]," Wilkinson responds, "but that was state of the art in 1992. It's ridiculous what you can do now with all the plug-ins available in Logic--my laptop is probably ten times as powerful as the whole studio that made the first album." Has it helped him expand creatively? "Us3 albums have always been about marrying the technology that's available with live playing. With all the modern developments, it's become one of those things where you're only limited by your own imagination."

During the 1980s Wilkinson was on a mission to "demystify jazz," and drew inspiration from working with a DJ named Baz The Jazz: "This guy was the best jazz DJ I've ever heard; he had a totally new attitude, really into breaking down barriers." The pair were heavily involved in the jazz-dance craze of the time in London, but Wilkinson was equally interested in the growing hip-hop scene--"I was discovering the two things at the same time and sooner or later I was going to put them together."

Sure enough, in 1990 he produced a 12-inch white label featuring Jessica Lauren on piano and MC Honey B, called "Where will we be in the 21st Century?" and took copies to every record shop in the West End. Wilkinson had already "been in just about every A&R man's office there was to visit in London" with previous material, but this time he attracted the attention of a new independent label called Ninja Tune. Following the invitation to record a track for them, he produced "The Band Played The Boogie," sampling Grant Green's "Sookie Sookie." It was playlisted on KISS FM and that was the start of something big.

"I got a call from EMI Records," Wilkinson explains. "They'd heard it on the radio and recognized the Blue Note sample. I went to the first meeting knowing full well the sample hadn't been cleared, so I didn't know whether they were going to sue me or whether they liked it. The A&R guy was called David Field, and when he opened the office door he was smiling, so I had a good feeling. We discussed the whole jazz and hip-hop thing and I had one of those 'seize the day' moments--I asked to have the entire Blue Note back catalogue as a sampling resource. I said it would be a radical thing to do, but very in keeping with the Blue Note spirit."

The President of Blue Note, Bruce Lundvall, had also received a copy of the white label release and cautiously gave Wilkinson the chance to record a couple of demos in March 1992. "One of the demos I recorded was 'Cantaloop,' Wilkinson continues, "the other song didn't even make it to the first album--that's how close it was! That was what got me the deal, but it was still only for three singles and one album." In October 1992 Hand on the Torch came out in Japan and parts of Europe, going on to be the first Blue Note record to sell over a million copies--"That's when the three single deal suddenly turned into an eight album deal," Wilkinson explains.

Perhaps this all seemed too good to be true. It was. Before the second album--entitled Broadway & 52nd--came out in 1997, David Field lost his job, and this left Bruce Lundvall to oversee the release: "It was great talking to him every week, but it was less than ideal having a sixty year-old working on what was really a rap record," says Wilkinson. This turned out to be the least of Wilkinson's worries. "I split with my manager and got a new one, who took one look at the recording contract and said I was actually out of contract because they'd missed the option date. The record company was supposed to take up the option for the third album by a certain date, but it hadn't been done. So I was never actually dropped from Capital/Blue Note. It was ridiculous."

Losing a lucrative and hard-earned contract on such a careless technicality was a crushing blow, but Wilkinson was rescued by David Field, who had moved to Sony Records and was working for a subsidiary label called The Work Group. "David signed me up straight away," Wilkinson explains. "Normally contracts are for one album at a time, with the options on the side of the record label, but he gave me a two album firm deal. This was very important bearing in mind what had happened at Blue Note."

Luck, however, was still refusing to work with him. "While I was mixing the third album there was an almighty blow-up within Sony and The Work Group was dismantled," Wilkinson recalls. Nineteen out of twenty-one acts on the label were dropped. But because I had a two album firm deal it became really complicated: I'd just finished an album and I wanted to take it somewhere else, but they wouldn't let me. So we ended up threatening that we'd just sit there and eventually they'd have to pay me an advance for what would be the fourth album, even if they hadn't released the third. This took eighteen months and twenty-five thousand pounds in legal fees, but eventually they let me have the album for free."

He then licensed the third album, An Ordinary Day In An Unusual Place, to Universal in Europe and Toshiba/EMI in Japan, and it was released in 2001. But, as if the story couldn't get any worse, personnel changes at Universal meant Us3 got dropped and it was back to square one for Wilkinson and his ambitious ideas. "I'd done three albums in ten years and I was fed up of the internal politics," he says with a sour note in his voice. "It wasn't my fault; it was like a merry-go-round of personnel within the companies. So I decided to use the money I'd made to just make an album and then see what to do with it afterwards."

The subsequent disc, Questions, was licensed to Toshiba/EMI in Japan and independently released in Europe in 2003. "Now I've done three albums in three years, which is more like the kind of output I need to have," emphasizes Wilkinson. "I had a burst of energy, a lot of ideas to get out. The frustration of all that time has come out in the last three years."

Musically speaking, the three albums have shown a significant evolution of Us3's sound. On Questions, Wilkinson abandoned the Blue Note samples which had become deeply embedded in An Ordinary Day, opting for Latin beats and some elements of the nu-soul movement in an adventurous fourteen-track set. Schizophonic (2006) and Say What!? (2007) bring out a lot more of the live sound Us3 had been developing in months of relentless touring--"The live bands have had various incarnations," illustrates the producer, "It's quite ironic that the last two albums have been very influenced by the gigs we've been doing; it's kind of turned everything around, which I think is part of normal development and evolution."

Another new idea Wilkinson threw into the equation with Say What!? was the recent trend of R&B becoming "a lot grittier, like Rich Harrison's productions for Beyonce and the last Christina Aguilera album." He could detect certain similarities in their production with what he was doing, so on the suggestion of rapper Akil Dasan, who performed on the last two albums, he recruited the young Parisian singer Adeline.

Adeline features on the single, "Say You Belong To Me," and Wilkinson has an unfortunate tale about the track. "I hired a radio promoter, who took the song to Radio One, KISS, 1Xtra and places like that. A producer from 1Xtra actually told him that if the song was by an established R&B artist, or even a new artist, it would have gone straight onto the playlist." So why didn't that happen? "I think they've got an inbuilt attitude problem with Us3. Because 'Cantaloop' is what I'm known for, I'm bracketed as being hip-hop jazz or acid jazz or whatever. They put you in a bag and they don't let you get out of it, which is ridiculous because it doesn't allow you any scope to develop as an artist."

This story recalls the recent case of Soweto Kinch struggling to get his latest album, A Life In The Day of B19: Tales Of The Tower Block (Dune, 2006) (which also contains strong hip-hop elements), stocked in the urban music section of record stores as well as the jazz area. "Have you read his blog?" Wilkinson asks; "When I read it I just laughed. It's exactly the same issue I had: imagine putting out a hip-hop record on Blue Note in America in 1993-94, which was absolutely unheard of. We had a major problem getting retailers to stock it in the hip-hop section rather than just the jazz section. Ultimately we won, but that was because it got a lot of radio play and they were forced to respond."

He goes on to talk about the fascinating wider point that "radio over here is becoming a bit more like radio in the USA, where it's compartmentalized, and I don't think that's healthy.

"I don't think that encourages any cross-pollination of styles, which is something the UK's always been good at. A lot of musical genres come out of this country because people are willing to experiment with other things. They've grown up with Radio One playing all sorts of different music, which I don't think can be underestimated compared to major radio in the States. There's no such thing as any station that would play a rock record next to a hip-hop record next to an R&B record next to a house record. You just wouldn't get that over there because it's all too segregated. And there's a danger of that happening here now, with more and more channels becoming available on TV and radio and everything becoming more specialized. I don't think it's healthy."

Despite this tirade, Wilkinson remains optimistic. "I'm not unhappy as to where I am now," he states thoughtfully, "but it's frustrating that I'd like to be able to take it to another level which is proving difficult with an independent label." So what would he do if a major record company came knocking again? "I'd like to think I'd say no but I've seen the other side of it now and I think there's a real glass ceiling you can reach putting things out independently. In the last three years I've learnt more about how the industry works than the previous ten before that; I've become a small businessman in many ways. However, I still don't think I would do it unless somebody put a ridiculous sum of money in front of me--which I know isn't going to happen because major labels don't do that nowadays."

Wilkinson also has bright words about the future of jazz and hip-hop, in his brand of fusion and as separate genres. "Both types of music are experimental and they are both heavily influenced by other types of music. Certain collaborations change the face of both types of music; for example, Dizzy Gillespie writing 'A Night in Tunisia' and working with Cuban musicians probably upset a lot of purists at the time, but that's the kind of thinking I like. Jazz and hip-hop aren't afraid to liberally borrow from other types of music, they're both in a constant state of change and it's only natural they would come together in different forms. I think there's a lot more to come.

"I also think the jazz scene in London is probably the healthiest it's ever been, and the same goes for British hip-hop."

Looking to round things off after a revealing thirty-minute discussion, Wilkinson pauses to think when asked if he has any personal highlight from the last few years. "The fact I'm still here," he says with a chuckle. "It would have been very easy to just stop because of the Sony thing, and I did think about it, but I refused to lie down and it's worked out well now. This is going to be the seventh Us3 album--nearly hit that magic eight!"

Selected Discography
Us3, Say What!? (Us3, 2007)
Us3, Schizophonic (Us3, 2006)
Us3, Questions (Us3, 2004)
Us3, An Ordinary Day In An Unusual Place (Universal, 2001)
Us3, Broadway & 52nd (Blue Note, 1997)
Us3, Hand On The Torch (Blue Note, 1993)

Photo Credit
Courtesy of Us3 on MySpace

Published @ allaboutjazz, 20/11/07 - click here for original.

*UPDATE: this article has been selected as one of the top 20 interviews of 2007 on AAJ!*

Blessed With Good Taste

From starting out as a loosely-organised acoustic jazz tribute act, The Blessing have moved on to develop their own unique sound which matches their exotic culinary preferences. Frederick Bernas met two members of the Bohemian Bristol-based group.

Easton is a part of Bristol with a notoriously interesting reputation, so naturally I was eager to step out of the city's student bubble and visit Jim Barr's studio there. A ten-minute train ride from the centre of town, a quiet high street and a graffiti-coated alleyway later I arrived at an old warehouse in the heart of the cultural quarter.

Barr, bass player in The Blessing, was joined by saxophonist Jake McMurchie. They'd been working on final production touches for their upcoming album, All Is Yes, due to be released in February next year on Candid Records. "It's our first studio album; we've done a couple of live recordings, but they're not as defined or unique as what we've come up with now," Barr explains. "We'd been playing together so long, but not made a proper studio album together," McMurchie continues. "We had plans for a while which never really happened, so this time we decided to get in the studio and do it."

The Blessing formed in 2000 as a tribute to Ornette Coleman. "We started off playing lots of Coleman stuff with double bass, sax, trumpet and drums – the same lineup as Ornette's groups in the 60s – and then we suddenly discovered this other sound about a year ago," Barr narrates. "It was also about playing with complete abandon, finding something where we could all let rip and freely improvise, as opposed to playing mouldy old jazz standards."

So what was the moment of realisation which transformed the sound of the band? Barr answers: "Jake wrote a tune that had quite a punky bassline; I tried to play it on the double bass and thought it wasn't really happening, so I got the electric bass out and that was it. That one tune led us into this whole other world – everything we've been writing since then has been quite aggressive and spiky, or atmospheric in a filmy sort of way. It's definitely not an acoustic jazz thing anymore."

"It's not just free jazz anymore either," McMurchie goes on, "It's structured. It has, for want of a better word, an element of the rock approach. It's still got that open sound, but a lot more riff-based. It's not written by brain, it's written by cake." OK. The food theme is a recurring topic throughout the interview, which is definitely something I can relate to – "The new album was largely inspired by Moroccan cuisine," states the saxophonist.

This burst of creativity in composition and the shifting dynamics of the group meant The Blessing turned into more than an occasional side project, according to Barr. "That sudden injection of energy made it feel more like our thing, not just a nice thing we did sometimes at the weekends. It made us think this was really something that was worth pushing," he articulates.

The other half of the band is Clive Deamer on drums and Pete Judge on trumpet, both of whom draw glowing references. "Clive is definitely the powerhouse of what goes on," McMurchie describes. "He's an amazing drummer with a ridiculous CV. He does the Portishead thing with Jim and is playing with Robert Plant at the moment; he worked with Roni Size in Reprazent and is the only drummer I've ever heard do drum & bass live the way it should sound. There are lots of drummers who do it but he makes it sound like nothing else. He's done so many different things, so he doesn't come with any preconceptions about what he's supposed to do in our music. He can also play extremely quietly and incredibly loudly: suddenly it can just go to levels you wouldn't have dreamed it could go to and it's a wonderful thing."

"The trumpet player Pete is the same," Barr continues. "He doesn't come at it from a trumpet player's perspective. He's got his own sound and he approaches it in a very creative and musical way: you never get standard trumpet-style stuff, which is always good. Jake and Pete are particularly amazing together – it's like they've got USB cables between their brains, there's stuff going on that makes you believe in telepathy."

"Again, that's because we've played together a lot over a long period of time," McMurchie puts in. "Having that sort of understanding is really key to our sound. The other thing I really like about what Pete does, going back to the point of not approaching it like a trumpet player, is when he makes sounds you think can't have come from anywhere – let alone a trumpet. We've got what could be a limiting factor of only having bass, drums, trumpet and saxophone, but Pete in particular can make it sound like something else entirely just by fiddling about." According to Barr, this repertoire of random noise includes "the sound of a central heating system draining down" – I'll definitely be listening out for that on the new album.

During the interview I was introduced to a novel term – 'jazz close'. The bassist describes this new buzzword: "It's like jazz but it's not. It's not jazz not jazz." He draws on the example of groups like Polar Bear and Acoustic Ladyland, both of which are currently at the forefront of the British creative music scene. "Even if you don't like that kind of music, you've got to recognise that they're doing something significant, they're great musicians and people are really getting into it. I love it."

The Blessing are at the Pizza Express Jazz Club (definitely an appropriate venue) on November 4 and again in the capital on December 21, in the foyer of the Royal Festival Hall. An extensive UK tour is organised for the album launch next year, but what are the plans after that? "We're on a three album deal with Candid, with the option of a fourth, so we'll be back in the studio working on the next one very soon after the tour," Barr answers. "We're aiming to raise our profile at home and move on to a few Europe dates in the spring, then hopefully we'll get over to North America at some stage."

To round things off I asked if they had any interesting stories from previous London shows. "They're always going to be food-related," McMurchie says thoughtfully. "We had a nice gig in London before Christmas and ate at a very good Ethiopian restaurant in Finsbury Park – I recommend that highly."


Published in London Tourdates magazine, 1/11/07.

www.theblessing.co.uk
www.myspace.com/thisistheblessing