Here's some live reviews which didn't make it into the latest issue (6) of the Slightly Off Kilter zine, HONEST MUSIC FOR DISHONEST TIMES...

Live On Stage..

STEVE BERESFORD & ALAN TOMLINSON & ROGER TURNER

BELA EMERSON

SAFEHOUSE WILDCARD

Safehouse at The Open House, Brighton 26 March 2008

Arrived to see the last couple of minutes of this Wildcard set (improvisors picked at random from Safehouse membership) so sorry to you guys (I think it was Monty, Alistair, Ian from Hamilton Yarns…), but what I did hear sounded very cool.  I'm always entranced by random groupings…

Bela Emerson spat out a great solo set of her trademark cello processing improv.  Her recent tour of the united states has sharpened her approach somewhat and tonight's set is enthralling, and over all too soon.

Trombonists seem to be like buses.  You don't see one for months and then you get three on three consecutive nights.  Tonight's trombonist is Alan Tomlinson.  Tomlinson, like his colleagues Beresford and Turner is of the generation that have seemingly performed nightly for the past 40 years.  Tomlinson is like a whirling dervish, spinning around unexpectedly, removing and re-fitting his slide, blowing with or without the mouthpiece by turns; sometimes fluttering his breath flautist-style across the open pipework, a bit of muttering, howling or shouting and he's back on the trombone; from time to time, a foil pie dish serves as mute; it's not clear if he brought that with him or whether it came with his dinner in it.  If Tomlinson hadn't had first dibs on the pie dish, I'm sure Roger Turner would have had it surrounding himself with saucepan lids with which to sound his kit.  Various articles were also employed but the real strength in Turner's playing is the sheer hellish speed at which he picks things up, plays and then puts them down again seconds later only to grab something else to use – and the speed with which he does it!  Frightening.  Steve Beresford, the man with a cv as long as you whole family's arms wrenches unwholesome electronic noises out of his tabletop set-up.  Near the beginning of their set Turner asks him to turn down in an unintentionally comedic angry yet polite way.  The last time I saw Beresford perform live in Brighton he had augmented his table top devices with occasional forays into the casing of the baby grand piano at The Friends Meeting House.  He didn't disappoint that time and doesn't disappoint tonight with this trio.  Overall, there are laughs, thrills and a boggling display of technique from all three.  The crowd are happy.  Another great night.  Safehouse should be proud.

BEMASS (STEN SANDELL/MAGNUS ALEXANDERSON/BELA EMERSON)

T-TOE

IN-SAND

Spirity Of Gravity at The Three And Ten, Brighton 25 march 2008

I arrive too late to catch In Sand which is frustrating.  They're packing up by the time I get to the venue and up the narrow staircase to the little theatre space above the bar of The Three And Ten which serves as tonight's performance space.

Oh well, next time.  Anyway, another day another trombonist.  T-Toe is a trombonist who plays against breaks, electronica and nu-dub provided by his laptop in a very "pop" melodic style.  The emphasis here is very much on melodic information with the trombone left unprocessed and, due to the smallness of the venue and the natural volume of brass instruments, largely sounding un-amplified.  This resulted in a curious sounding overlapping of dry live performance and T-Toes's highly produced, amplified digital backing.  The effect was certainly entertaining, but as I'm sure this format is only one of Mr Toe's performance methods (he's a session player I believe), personally I would prefer to see more emphasis put on the possibilities of the instrument itself rather than this fairly stale "one-man-band" approach.  The more abstract material in his set worked best.  The audience were very appreciative.  T-Toe packed up quickly after the end of his set and hot-footed it back for the train back to London which meant he missed BEMASS; the main attraction of the evening, which was his loss.

Sten Sandell is an experimental jazz pianist who has a regular grouping including drummer Paal Nilson-Love which has notably worked with John Butcher [see album reviews this issue].  This evening Sten utilises a bewildering tableful of electronic effects and devices which he often uses to process his own vocals in crazed and excitable ways.  Using a head mic he benefits from the use of both hands which are free to manipulate the multiple electronics piled up before him.  Sten is joined by Magnus Alexanderson on guitar and Bela Emerson ..o.  Keeping his guitar tone relatively clean, Alexanderson employs a reduced and thoughtful playing style which keeps the groups' emphasis on the minimal, but when he occasionally breaks out, it is with venom and knotted brow.  Bela Emerson prods her cello with uncharacteristic feral experimentation this evening and augments her extended techniques on her main instrument with asides on contact mic with appendages and even the control panel of her amplifier.  Overall, this trio grouping is extremely engaging; I'm really pleased they made it to Brighton after the original booking fell through some months earlier.  The rest of the audience felt the same as BEMASS were received very warmly.  High quality improvisation in an upstairs pub theatre space – fantastic.

JOHN BUTCHER & MARK WASTELL

JOHN WALL

DAVID PAPAPOSTOLOU & DANIEL JONES & PAUL KHIMASIA MORGAN

MATHIAS FORGE

Set Sail With Lanky at The Chisenhale Dance Space, East London 24 March 2008

A beautiful venue despite its ramshackle exterior appearance, this second floor dance studio in London's East End benefits from a huge performance space, exposed brick back wall, ample and varied lighting and a good, clear-sounding in-house PA.  It's also worth me mentioning that the audience throughout the evening were possibly the most focussed and attentive listeners I've come across for quite a while.  Everyone was rapt and silent during all four performances.

Kicking off the evening was Mathias Forge, a trombonist in the non-traditional mould of other brass players such as Bhob Kelley.  A highly technical performance of extended techniques, muting by unusual objects (the inside of a kitchen roll, head of a plunger?), with quite a low overall volume, un-amplified; the audience attaining rapt silence immediately Mathias began playing.

The next grouping, David Papapostolou & Daniel Jones & Paul Khimasia Morgan, huddled around a table overflowing with electronic devices and associated cabling.  Surprising for the sheer weight of equipment employed, the sounds they produced were actually very minimal and isolated.  Mainly untreated, acoustic noises amplified by means of contact mics or pure, electronic sounds sourced from the arcane apparatus, the three kept their heads down, concentrating on some kind of telepathic interplay.  The resulting music had plenty of air, space to relax into before the next unconnected sonic offering and a slightly heady sense of restraint.  I wonder what would happen if these boys really cut loose…

After a short interval, we re-enter the performance space to find all that visible evidence of electronic noisemaking gone and a new, invisible source ready to go.  John Wall is an electronic composer who initially strikes a rather surreal pose behind his laptop.  He's half standing, half leaning, nose pressed up to the screen of his laptop seemingly trying to make sense of whatever software is belching out his digital pieces at immense volume.  Wall's work sounds like its been pieced together out of military aircraft wreckage; the basses are like mountainsides and the high end information is somehow dangerous without actually damaging your hearing.  Lumps of sound fly around each other in a kind of invisible three dimensional real life game of Tetris.  Each lump seems to be hewn from a mixture of pure electronic noise and super-compressed real audio, sometimes suggesting human voices to me but moving so fast it is too hard for my ears to effectively investigate any individual sample/tone.  Wall's set evolves from demolition site power to a tonal investigation of sorts then after an indecipherable amount of time, he simply stops, apparently somewhat bemused by what he's seeing on screen.  He lets out a breath of release and thanks the audience, who respond in a most energetic way.

To succeed in music and particularly the field of electro acoustic improv (or whatever its called this month) its fair to say one has to be an entrepreneur of sorts.  This is true for both Mark Wastell and John Butcher, (if not everyone else performing tonight).  They both run labels and Wastell has his own business retailing non-mainsteam music as Sound 323.  So being businesslike and professional is the order of the day.  Tonight, Wastell brings a tam tam; a large suspended gong with an auxiliary prepared source on an I-pod or minidisk-like device.  This and the gong get amplified by way of a small mixer.  Butcher's saxophones are treated to the traditional tried and tested method of sticking a microphone on stage.  So much of their set is so quiet that a lot of times, Butcher steps back from the mic altogether and relies on the natural acoustic of the room to amplify his playing.  Their piece is quite long – I'm not sure of its exact duration as I became completely immersed in their music and lost track completely; my companion strongly asserts her belief that it was a long set.  Wastell uses his prepared field recordings sparingly, no more than a couple of brief interludes in the first third of the set as I recall.  I remember coming away immediately afterwards and wishing that there had been more use of this sound source, but as I write this now (a few weeks later) I think his minimal approach worked best.  John Butcher oiled his rag from the more experimental end of his repertoire which pleased me greatly; I'm not a big fan of be-bop it has to be said and although Butcher is seemingly a master at most if not all forms of jazz, its this slow, quiet, generative, lung-stretching approach I enjoy the most.  The saxophone melds with the dynamic waves of gong in a very physical way and the set holds out for a beautifully sustained glittering ending.

NOS PHILLIPE

DAVID PAPAPOSTOLOU & DANIEL JONES & PAUL KHIMASIA MORGAN

JAMES EDMONDS

Slightly Off Kilter at The West Hill Hall, Brighton 10 November 2007

James Edmonds starts the night off in a spectacular way: midway through his set of glitchy drone meanderings supplied by way of a cassette four track processed to within an inch of its life, a small plume of smoke slowly wends its way through the air from the direction of the right hand PA speaker accompanied by a slight acrid smell of electrical failure.  The plume hangs heavy like a slow motion cigarette haze capturing everyones attention – we're all expecting the sound to cut out at any second.  Luckily, the brazen ambient sonics james is dealing in tonight seem totally unaffected by the impromptu indoor smoke effect.  I spoke to James afterwards and he said he was aware of the smoke and was instantly racked with guilt and panic thinking it was his equipment that had somehow caused an overload and also fully expected the sound to conk out at any moment.  However panicked James may have been feeling it didn't affect his set.  Sounds possibly derived from slowed-down vinyl and other seemingly breaking electronics merged in very involving and surprising ways.

Papapostolou, Jones & Khimasia Morgan are improvisers who limit themselves mainly to electronic devices (turntable, tone generators) but with the occasional contact-mic-ed object or surface thrown in for good measure.  Fans of near silence and occasional multiple long tone interplay, they don't shy away from the addition of the occasional sample either.  Although they sum their outputs and send them unadorned to the PA, periodically they emit acoustic sounds loud enough to hear over the amplified noises; particularly effective when one brass object is sent flying during a especially quiet section.

Two man unit Nos Phillipe present a huge table-full of objects, devices, fx augmented by a single cymbal on a stand and a black electric guitar laid on its back a la Keith Rowe, as if they were another set of electro-acoustic improvisers but the music they perform tonight is unusually strictly composed.  With a process that references modern composers more than free improvisers, Nos Phillipe deliver a developed generative piece dramatically re-organising itself when bowed cymbal is employed halfway through.  Their strategy is to build up a dense cloud where small shafts of architectural sonics break through here and there.  A similar approach to their release on Mark Wastell's Confront imprint which is well worth seeking out.