SOUNDSCAPEJazz Special - Future Classics - featuring Led Bib / Portico Quartet / Polar Bear / Fraud / Basquiat Strings / Acoustic Ladyland /

plus Are we living in a ‘post jazz’ age?

music magazine Volume 1 - 2011 - £5.00

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Portico Quartet

led bib

Polar bear

fraud

acoustic ladyland

basQuiat strings

Living in East London / thE ipod gEnEration / thoughts on improvisation

punk Jazz / British Jazz scEnE / mErcury prizE

Jazz awards / F-irE coLLEctivE / BBc rising star award

growing up with Jazz & cLassicaL music / thEir sound / dEBut aLBum

Jimi hEndrix / Jazz traditions / songwriting

EarLy London gigs / radio 3 / is Jazz changing?

Jack Wylie

Duncan Bellamy

nick mulvey

milo Fitzpatrick

The group is composed of Jack Wyllie (soprano and alto saxophone), Duncan Bellamy (drums), Milo Fitzpatrick (double bass), and Nick Mulvey (hang and percussion). The juxtaposition of double bass and soprano sax works beautifully, the unfamiliar and exotic Hang bridging the world between them. Sometimes Portico sound like a steel band or a gamelan ensemble playing cyclical song melodies with a sax and jazz-bass counterpoint. It has a warmly charming signature thanks to the Hang.

This is music that defies classification and rightly so. More than classical, more than Jazz, filtered through the minds of pioneers from Reich to Ra (not to mention Roachford), they are a band for the urban jungle, experimenting with more than just the free jazz label they’ll be filed under. It’s ironic to realise that this music is far more cutting edge, far more creative than the latest in the long, long line of spiky, identikit indie guitar bands that right now are resonating through the back rooms of pubs the length and breadth of the country. You need to go back at least a century to pick up all the influences that have come into conjunction here this evening. From classical chamber music, though

trad and free jazz, to post-rock’s sonic experimentalism, this is music that’s informed rather than angry, knowing rather than smart. ‘Yes there are passages of improvisation on the records. And Shed Song on the last album was totally improvised, but we are a band who very much write music collectively too. ‘Knee-Deep was kind of developed on the streets and was the culmination of a long process of finding our sound and some tunes that worked live. Isla was much more intense, written in a studio (in a shed) at the bottom of our garden when we all lived together in East London.

Sometimes someone will come in with a melody, or a bass line or a rhythmic pattern on the hang, other times we would just jam (or improvise) and then work with bits of what came out of that process, It is probably more akin to how a rock band would write than a jazz group. There’s definitely conservatism in jazz to know your chops and do things a certain way and it’s nice to push things away from that. I think jazz, if it was down to the really conservative guys, could become quite stale through just playing old standards. But it’s a dynamic art form in my opinion and it

should keep on progressing and moving in new directions.’ Whatever Babyshambles might tell you, clever can be wise. ‘I can see why people in the media use phrases like ‘post jazz’ and ‘punk-jazz’, Bellamy ponders. ‘They sound a lot hipper for younger listeners than ‘smooth-jazz’ or ‘dinner-jazz’. Maybe they suggest skinny jeans and saxophones, and thats useful if it attracts a new audience.Its defined by the youth and they make it exciting.”

The ease with which a rising generation of British jazz musicians, unclassifiable musicians, and all-round maver-ick composers move across the soundscape of all the worlds music is often greeted as a new phenomenon by the media. In some quarters, its called the listening habit of, ‘the ipod generation.’ But many of the younger players recognise that this attitude represents nothing more or less than musical curiosity, and that all that’s changed is ease of access. ‘Yeah it’s definitely nice to be part of that scene.. All the bands are quite different and each one is playing like you say in a more band type way rather than having one soloist. Bands like Pete Ware-ham’s Final Terror, with baritone sax, that’s proper good!’

From a grassroots start in 2005, Busking on the south Bank oF lonDon’s thames, their

reputation spreaD sWiFtly. the BanD’s DeBut alBum ‘knee-Deep in the north sea’ Was nominateD

For the 2008 mercury music prize. the Week aFter the aWarDs shoW it DeButeD on the uk top 200

alBums chart at 186. it Was time out’s Best Jazz alBum oF 2007.

03 SOUNDSCAPE

sEB rochFord pEtE warEham mark LockhEart tom hErBErt

p o l a r b e a r

Polar Bear are an British experimental post-jazz band led by drummer Seb Rochford with Pete Wareham on tenor and baritone saxophone, Mark Lockheart on tenor saxophone, Tom Herbert on double bass and Leafcutter John on mandolin and electronics. Polar Bear were nominated for the 'Best band' award at the BBC Jazz Award 2004, while Rochford was nominated for the 'Rising Star' award. Their first album Dim Lit was released in the same year and was a small scale success. Their second record, Held on the Tips of Fingers merged elements of cool jazz, funk, dance music, free jazz, electronica and drum and bass and was, by comparison, a massive crossover hit, earning Polar Bear a nomination for the Mercury Music Prize in 2005. The success was all the more unusual for an almost purely instrumental album.

The album was nominated for a BBC Jazz Award 2006. It was selected as one of "100 Jazz Albums That Shook The World" by Jazzwise magazine. They are part of the F-IRE Collective. They released their self-titled third album, Polar Bear, in July 2008 with Tin Angel Records. Their fourth album, Peepers, was released in March 2010. The second album from Sebastian Rochford’s group of young London anarcho-punk-groove-electronica-free improv upsetters is an even more thrilling and momentous affair than its predecessor, last year’s highly acclaimed Dim Lit. It’s the most radical, invigorating and heartening Britjazz album to be released so far this year and, even though it is still only March, it’s certain to be close to the top of many end-of-year Best Albums lists in nine months time. It is, perhaps, the sound of the future—one of them anyway—and boy, does it work. It is jazz all right, 100% and no mistake, but with bongfuls of left-field electronica and mutant, rocked-up and pfunkified groove spicing the left-field electronica and mutant, rocked-up and pfunkified groove spicing the free-

improv centred mix. “My main aim is to make music that sounds new and has feeling.” says Rochford. Polar Bear has done both things, and shown the way to a brighter future at the same time. ‘Jazz hasn’t died, its just changing all the time, and it has been for years.’ Along with bands like Spaceways Inc. and The Thing, Polar Bear combine the fervour of free jazz with the intensity of punk. It seems its an approach whose time has come, with other groups like Hypnotoad and even The Bad Plus also ploughing the same furrow. Unburdened both by punk primitivism and by improv’s disdain for its audience, new skronk bands like Polar Bear are the most exciting development for years in post-jazz music.

Rochford has been honing his skills for a while now as a part of DIY music collective F-IRE but finally made a splash last year with the finely crafted debut Dim Lit. Despite rumoured offers to join the new band of ex-Libertine Pete Doherty, he’s stayed true to his music, picking up the BBC’s rising star award along the way. The new record Held On The Tips Of Fingers continues his momentum, with the band’s lean line up of bass, drums and two tenor saxophones used to the full. Though a twin tenor frontline may sound risky, it’s interesting to hear how the boisterous Pete Wareham alternately blends and contrasts with the more measured Mark Lockheart on tracks like “Argumentative”. Electronica artist Leafcutter John has also been newly recruited and fills out the sound throughout, fizzing like R2D2 on dexedrine during “To Touch The Red Brick”. But it’s the gutbucket grooves supplied by Rochfords drums and bassist Tom Herbert that really get you in the chest, going like the clappers on “Your Eyes The Sea” while the horns give it both barrels. Held On The Tips Of Fingers makes serious

advances on their debut. Seb Rochford clearly has a bright future ahead.

poLar BEar BLast out oF thE past, FuLL oF straight, cooL schooL skiLLs. thEy wErE nominatEd For

thE ‘BEst Band’ award at thE BBc Jazz award 2004, whiLE rochFord was nominatEd For thE ‘rising

star’ award. thEir aLBum, hELd on thE tips oF FingErs was nominatEd For thE mErcury music prizE

in 2005. thE aLBum was nominatEd For a BBc Jazz award in 2006. it was sELEctEd as onE oF “100 Jazz

aLBums that shook thE worLd” By JazzwisE magazinE.

05 SOUNDSCAPE

mark holub

pete grogan

chris williams

liran donin

toby mclaren

Mark Holub, London-resident American drummer with the fiercely son taneous and exhilarating full on improv band Led Bib, shares the view of Alsopp. “People think all these terms like punk-jazz sound cool, but these labels are mostly just silly,’ Holub says.’We’ve been put under the punk-jazz banner, so has Acoustic Ladyland, so have lots of bands that in reality are quite different from each another.’

‘I think its because some people have the idea that jazz somehow stopped after the 1960s. When Coltrane died, that was it, end of story. Well I could care less, in some ways. The people who have influenced me, particuarly John Zorn and Tim Berne, certainly use a huge amount of jazzin their muic, and nobody could claim their work isn’t developing all the time. Audiences don’t care about it half as much as these label-makers think.

We get a lot of young listeners, but we were playing in Wales the other day and a couple of old guys came up to say they’d travelled 60 miles to hear us. I don’t see why everybody can’t just keep on using the word ‘jazz’ if they need a name for it.’ Holub chuckles. “After all, when you say ‘rock’, everybody has an idea what you mean, even if the range of different styles within it is huge. But rock is big business and jazz isn’t, so maybe thats why some people are so anxious to say jazz is over. Well its a long way from over, and the musicians I hear on the British scene - from Kenny Wheeler and Evan Parker to Sen Rochford pr Mark Sanders or John Edwards or Jon Kopinski - prove it. So do the audiences we get, right across the generations.”

“I’m very happy to consider myself a jazz musician. It covers plenty enough ground for me.” It’s no good asking the band Led Bib for the secret of their new-found success. They would probably say it was the 2009 Mercury Prize. Ever since they were shortlisted as an Album of the Year for Sensible Shoes last month their previous lives as jobbing jazz musicians have become a distant memory, replaced by a world of publishing deals, rocketing sales, clothing endorsements and, somewhat unnervingly, a glowing encomium in the Sun.

But despite an international tour on the stocks, it’s probably fair to say the Mercury is only part of the story. No band has worked harder to build an audience for their music than this group of twenty-somethings who first met at Middlesex University. Of course, it helps they downplay the “j” word since most of their audience at Rough Trade East would probably jump out of the window at the mere mention of “jazz”. But whatever you want to call their music - the band helpfully describe it as experimental/crunk/jazz music on their MySpace site - it packs a powerful punch.

Opening with the first two numbers from Sensible Shoes, “Yes, again” and “Squirrel Carnage”, which manage to be both rhythmically implicit and diverse, the alto sax duo of Chris Williams and Pete Grogan set up simple melodic themes and fracture them with short, sharp, effective solos. Leader Mark Holub’s drumming is often refreshingly

non-genre specific, as if he’s rewriting the drummer’s rule book, while Liran Donin’s electric bass and Toby McLaren’s Fender Rhodes piano add to the rhythmic ferment with slash-and-burn riffs that often made their effect through distortion.This is engaging, urban, 21st-century music that has seen the band dubbed “the future of jazz”. That is only partly true. Rather, their musical concept is the future of jazz because instead of the music being defined by the past, as much in people’s minds as by ideologues like Wynton Marsalis, Led Bib show what it can become. Their attractiveness is in their openness to new lines of input. Pete Grogan is a northern soul freak while Chris Williams, who hails from Israel, adds sinewy, Middle Eastern melodic lines to his work. The whole band are into Metallica, while Holub, from New Jersey, is into Bob Dylan and the old downtown sounds of New York City jazz.

The result is music that’s teeming with references, hand-holds that audiences can grab so the music doesn’t pass them by. There’s the energy of rock, but even rock, like jazz, has become a term too small to contain the music within it. Both terms are now limiting, leaving music free to break out of the rigid formatting that narrows people’s tastes. This is Led Bib music, and there was a moment during “Zone 4” when it became clear the old nostrums of the punk and post-punk critics, who sneered at instrumental virtuosity, suddenly seemed out of date.

Relentlessly dodging definition, Led Bib are

both a maverick jazz band and an unlikely rock

quintet. Taking their name from a protective

garment used on patients during dental

treatment, this Walthamstow based five-piece

of twenty-somethings pride themselves on side

stepping convention, with incendiary results.

07 SOUNDSCAPE

acoustic ladylandpete wareham seb rochford chris sharkey tom herbet

Acoustic Ladyland are a London based jazz/punk band consisting of Pete Wareham on vocals, tenor and baritone saxophone, Seb Rochford on drums, Chris Sharkey on

Guitar and Ruth Goller on bass guitar.Tom Herbert of The Invisible played bass on their first three albums. Acoustic Ladyland formed in 2001 and released their first

album Camouflage, an acoustic album inspired by Jimi Hendrix songs, in 2004. Their second album, Last Chance Disco, an electric set of self-penned compositions, was

released in 2005, and was the Jazzwise album of the year.

‘It wasn’t like a decision to play punk music, I basically got really frustrated with Jazz and how everyone has to be so qualified and you feel that you are never quite

qualified enough, you’re never quite good enough and there’s this whole ethic and fun of punk where you just sort of go “fuck it, let’s just do it and have fun” and I felt that Jazz really needed that. I felt it really needed someone to go “just fucking whatever.”

just playing for fun... not that we weren’t doing that already, but I felt that I wasn’t personally addressing that side of things. t Having done so much study into it, I felt in this shadow of this ideal in my mind… I mean, I can only ever speak personally, I

felt that however much practice I did and however hard I worked, I was never good enough and hen I got to this point thinking that’s not what it is about, let’s just go

madness and have fun, y’know?’. ‘It was kinda like... well, the only reason why I did the Hendrix thing was to find a way to bring my love to guitar music into Jazz and to me, he was kind of... an icon of guitar music. He is a symbol of guitar music and that’s why

I kinda chose him and from that I discovered a kind of sound, we collectively found another way of bringing the guitar music into it.’

‘You want to fulfil this urge you have but then the desire to develop it and make it as good as possible and as appealing and as enjoyable as possible is a selfless one.

Otherwise, you could just sit and do something indulgently for hours on end and don’t give a shit whether people like it or not but there comes a point where you have to

rein that in so that people can digest it and so you really get your point across to people clearly and without anything distracting. You really need to think about how

people will perceive it, that’s what we have to give over. If you wouldn’t have had that, the quality of what you’ll do would be lower.’

Their ensemble sound is closer to guitar-free metal than the punky blast of yore, and though some of the band’s humour is lost in the quest for power, the opening three

tracks are as good as anything on Last Chance Disco. There are more vocal numbers than before, with leader Peter Wareham’s deadpan, Jilted John-ish pipes on Skinny Grin

and Rise; Alice Grant (of Fulborn Teversham) sounds fed up on Paris; and Anne Booty (of Coco Electrik) sounds a little like Dani Siciliano on the catchy Cuts and Lies.

Salt Water, a single with guests James Chance and Scott Walker, is very expiremental, and at their best Acoustic Ladyland sound like no other band on the planet.

acoustic LadyLand formed in 2001 and reLeased their

first aLbum camoufLage, an acoustic aLbum inspired

by Jimi hendrix songs, in 2004. their second aLbum,

Last chance disco, an eLectric set of seLf-penned

compositions, was reLeased in 2005, and was the

Jazzwise aLbum of the year. acoustic LadyLand were

winners of the bbc Jazz award for best band 2005, and

had a mercury prize nomination.

09 SOUNDSCAPE

Ben Davis Emma Smith Victoria Fifield Richard Pryce

Basquiat Strings is a British jazz quintet led by the cellist Ben Davis, who composes all the music. It features an innovative line-up which hybridises the classical string quartet (two violins, viola and cello) with the jazz rhythm section (double bass and drums). Classically trained but having grown up alongside non-classical musicians, they have developed a unique sound which has earned them many fans. In February 2007, the quintet released their first album, put together with the drummer Seb Rochford. The album, entitled Basquiat Strings with Seb Rochford, was one of the 2007 Mercury Prize nominees.

Davis formed Basquiat Strings after other jazz musicians began asking him to put together string groups for them. But Davis had a secret agenda: “To produce alternative string music.” The group really got going when Davis began jamming with violinists Emma Smith and Victoria Fifield, fellow London freelance players who shared common tastes. “We all seemed to come from the same place: a classical background,” Davis says, “but at the same time, we grew up with jazz and were passionate about it.” A violist was added to the mix, and the musicians made recordings as a jazz string quartet. But to Davis, something was missing. “It just didn’t work, because the cello had to carry all the bass work and it was tying me down too much,” he says.

That missing something turned out to be bass player Richard Pryce, and drummer Seb Roch ford. Adding percussion risked the strings being drowned out, but this possibility didn’t concern Davis. “I’d played with Seb before,” he says, “and I knew he was very conscious of sonorities and supporting textures that don’t cancel out stringed instruments.” (The band also works with drummer, Chris Vatalaro, who played the London Jazz Festival gig.) Listeners accustomed to the Turtle Island Quartet and other jazz-string groups who provide their own rhythm sections through “chopping” and other percussive techniques may find the Basquiat’s use of a drummer a little startling. But the interplay between string quintet and drummer are at the core of the Basquiat sound. How to describe that sound? A press release lists the Basquiat influences as “the traditional Hungarian string groups of Transylvania, the luxuriously rich Brahms sextets, and the wild, at times unruly compositions and arrangements of Charlie Mingus.”

A complex recipe and one that comes out most strongly on the album’s track entitled “Forceful Beast,” which also includes an impressive elephant-like screech from the cello. Davis, who does most of the arranging and composing, says that he is attracted to the “rough and… earthy rich kind of sound” of the folk tradition and the rich sonorities of the Brahms sextets, something bigger than the conventional string quartet. “Some big, blended mess, really,” he adds. That big, blended mess is further flavored by the group’s passion for the saxophone (Davis, Smith, and Fifield had all played the instrument at one time), particularly “John Coltrane and the free sounds that he made.” Davis sees this emphasis on the saxophone as one way to float free of the jazz string tradition. “We really want to make the strings a priority,” he says, “because they’re always sidelined in jazz.”

Basquiat Strings is a British jazz quintet led by the cellist

Ben Davis, who composes all the music. It features an

innovative line-up which mixes the classical string quartet

(two violins, viola and cello) with the jazz rhythm section

(double bass and drums). Classically trained but having

grown up alongside non-classical musicians, they have

developed a unique sound which has earned them many

fans. In February 2007, the quintet released their first

album, put together with the drummer Seb Rochford.

The album, entitled simply Basquiat Strings with Seb

Rochford, was one of the 2007 Mercury Prize nominees.

11 SOUNDSCAPE

tim giLEs

JamEs aLLsop

BEn rEynoLds

stian wEstErhus

phiLip hochstrattE

Giraffitti (the titles are excellent) sounds like Frank Zappa-meets-Joe Zawinul, and turns into a slashing free-rocker. Laundry Theatre is Django Batesian in its sardonically honky sax against crazily riffing big-band mockery. But for all this variety, the elements

have been spliced together with a composer’s unifying eye. It’s what the phrase cutting-edge was invented for, and a very impressive debut. ‘Tim Berne and John

Zorn have been bringing all kinds of elements together with jazz for 20 to 30 years’ observes James Alsopp, virtuoso saxophonist of the award-winning quintet Fraud.

Allsopp’s compositions combine highly complex rhythmic and harmonic structures with a use of unusual sounds and orchestrations to allow for a seemingly infinite

range of improvisational possibilities. He favors seamless transitions that blur the lines between compositional rigor and improvisational freedom juxtaposed with abrupt

changes in direction and approach. His music has an enormous dynamic range from the thunderous to the whispering, which invites us into a strange dream world whose constantly shifting boundaries defy complacency. As an improviser James has recently recorded an album of solo saxophone improvisations which explore the territory of

spontaneous composition. These pieces fuse James’s complex and highly individual har-monic and rhythmic languages with an exploration of extended techniques and effects.

Fraud is the brainchild of multi instru-mentalist james allsopp and drummer Tim Giles and features the daemonic antics of guitar antichrist Stian Westerhus, the frankly sick drumming of Ben Reynolds and the keyboard melting stylings of fraudulent german philip hochstratte. their music combines ruthlessly trimmed funk, electronic soundscapes and abbatoire improv with a cut and paste approch to structure. they have been tipped as a band to watch out for (particularly on a dark night in a back alley) by birmingham and cheltenham artistic director tony dudley-evans in jazz uk magazine and have been featured in the taking off section of jazzwise magazine. since they formed in may 2005 they have played all over london for no money and were part of the jerwood rising stars programme at the 2006 cheltenham jazz festival and have been featured on bbc radio 3’s jazz on 3 programme.

There has been a buzz on the wires about young British quintet Fraud; now, after a long wait, we find out why. The east London group has all kinds of influences, from Babel labelmates Acoustic Ladyland to cult avant-funk band Pinski Zoo, American

free-jazz, Django Bates, contemporary-classical, thrash metal and sinister, churning, punky monster-movie and cop-show themes. But if Fraud’s work can seem raucous

and rough, it’s also highly organised. Royal Academy graduate James Allsopp is a reeds player who has made himself at home in many idioms, and the rest of the lineup are

just as expertly eclectic. This long set kicks off sounding like John Coltrane soliloquis-ing passionately over chattery, free-improv percussion, then shifts into a warped jazz-

ballad feel with electronic atmospherics.

‘Musicians don’t make music to create genres, they do it to satisfy their creative instincts, and all these terms like ‘post-jazz’ or ‘punk-jazz’ that appear in the media only means that somebody has tried to put a name to a process that goes on all the time. Which is that musicians listen to anything that interests them, and then mash it into something of their own.’

James Alsopp thinks that the forms jazz use are changing, and that the splicing different idions, time-signatures and motifs into the same piece has become commonplace. ‘That traditional jazz practise of tune, solos and back depends on players being on exceptional form all the time,’ Alsopp says, ‘but if you’re not a confirmed jazz fan, you may lose interest when soloists aren’t at an inspirational peak. So perhaps what some of these younger groups are doing, including us, is building an environment for the audience in which it’s acceptable to take risks. Fraud uses a lot of improvisiation, and some of it is very free. But we’ll also use composition to help the ear make sense of things. I love straight ahead jazz, I grew up listening to Sonny Stitt and Lester Young - but I also listened to Albert Ayler, Coltrane and Evan Parker, and I had lessons with Iain Bellamy. Improvisation is about manipulating all that. I get bored easily, and I love to explore a lot of different things.’

Fraud got thEir First Big BrEak at thE 2006 chELtEnham

Jazz FEstivaL, as part oF thE JErwood rising stars

schEmE. in 2007, thEir sELF-titLEd dEBut aLBum on thE

BaBEL LaBEL was nominatEd For BBc Jazz LinE up aLBum

oF thE yEar award BEForE it had EvEn BEEn rELEasEd. in

2007, thE Band won thE ronniE scott award For BEst nEw

act, and in 2008, thE BBc Jazz award For innovation.

13 SOUNDSCAPE