HARRY BECKETT'S JOY UNLIMITED - Memories Of Bacares

 

(OG 800)

Track listing: The Dew At Dawn/Dreams Come And Go/Crystals/Can't Think About Now

Harry Beckett (trumpet and flügelhorn), Ray Russell (guitar), Brian Miller (electric piano), Daryl Runswick (bass guitar), Robin Jones (percussion). John Webb (drums).

Recorded at "a Hackney Jazz date," The Sussex, 107 Culford Road, London N1, on 25 November 1975. Released: 1976. Produced by Keith Beal and Harry Beckett. Cover design: Stephen Taylor and Liz Naylor.

Harry Beckett was, along with Kenny Wheeler, one of the most respected and long-serving trumpeters on the British and European jazz scenes. Both were expatriates who came to Britain in the fifties and made their decisive mark. Whereas Wheeler was shy and self-deprecating almost to a fault, Beckett was modest but welcoming, good-humoured, inquisitive and open-minded. His presence always lifted the spirits at a performance or recording which, along with his undoubted technical facility and one of the most recognisable tones and voices of any trumpet player (memorably likened by John Fordham to "an infectious giggle"), meant that he was in demand for well over half a century in all kinds of musical surroundings, from pop to free improvisation and from bebop to reggae and dub. He must surely have been the only musician to have worked with Charles Mingus, Donovan and Jah Wobble.

That modesty also meant that Beckett worked as a bandleader only very intermittently. Joy Unlimited arose from the title of a 1975 album which, though initially credited to Beckett alone, featured the same instrumentation, and many of the same musicians, as the first "Joy Unlimited" album proper (although Robin Jones and John Webb replaced Martin David and Nigel Morris). The aim of this band, as Beckett wrote in his liner note to Memories Of Bacares, was to play "joyful music using styles of jazz rock and Latin American rhythms and voicings."

 

The result was probably the most straight-ahead album Ogun had yet released, although the fact that it was a live recording meant that the musicians were able to stretch out a little more than they had done on the 1975 studio disc - and the fact that it came out on Ogun should have alerted listeners to remain on their toes and not get too comfortable. I am imagining (since I was too young and too far away at the time to know any better) that Hackney Jazz was one of those Jazz Centre Society-type catchall holdings for various sponsored club nights, but the Sussex (which today trades as the Scott Head) was an imposing pub in the de Beauvoir Town no-man's-land somewhere between Islington and Dalston.

 

It is a tribute to Beckett's band that at no point during this album are we led to think that we are in a pub around the corner from Kenneth Griffith's Michael Collins House gaff on Englefield Road, but rather on a beach perhaps as distant and unreachable as the one painted on the album's cover. Since Beckett hailed from Barbados, I anticipated that "Bacares" referred to a beach there, but it is geographically likelier that it had Barcarès in mind - there is a Bacares, but it is an inland village in Andalucia; still, Beckett was a very well-travelled man.

The trumpeter was already into his fifties when this music was recorded, hence the music on Bacares feels no need to "prove" anything. Instead, there are few pieces of mid-seventies jazz, or Latin jazz, or jazz-rock, or fusion, or call it what you will, as enveloping and reassuring as "The Dew At Dawn," a melody so simple but gorgeous that it was covered by one of the later editions of Soft Machine. This music is peaceful but we are not really allowed to forget that the peace has come at a price. Everyone is restrained and delicate; the central pulse is slow, mellow and appropriately oceanic, with only Daryl Runswick's bass solo seeking to probe outside that cocoon. If this had been something by Freddie Hubbard on CTI, hipsters and tastemakers would be singing its praises.

Things speed up with "Dreams Come And Go," a groove so solidly infectious that it would be fair to call Prince's "I Would Die 4 U" a distant relative. One immediately feels the ebullience and, yes, joy that the band are radiating. Brian Miller is already experimenting with his Fender Rhodes comping while Runswick rips out chunky bass chords. Beckett is then alone with just drums and percussion powering him along, before Ray Russell's guitar slowly creeps out of the background to launch his own excitable solo, with Miller immediately falling in behind him (after already having gone semi-outside with his playing). Percussion becomes looser and Runswick slowly slips out of time and melody constraints behind Russell. Robin Jones then gets a solo before Beckett returns just in time for a free coda. As the percussive tempo briefly resumes, the free mêlée continues above before reaching a final, high unison which is answered by whoops from the Sussex's patrons. Actually, the above description doesn't begin to do justice to this glorious, freewheeling performance which if anything is borne out of absolute confidence and interdependence - the band just sound palpably like they're having a fantastic time working, playing and pushing their own boundaries together.

"Chrystals," which opens side two, is the album's big setpiece. Miller begins unaccompanied and the minor key waltz theme is then stated by the band. As with "The Dew At Dawn," Beckett's solo is at times quite Milesean, but this is not the 1975 Miles of Dark Magus, and his easy grace perhaps won over some souls who found Davis' more recent (at the time) labyrinths less than penetrable. Meanwhile Miller and (more subtly) Runswick are behind Beckett all the way. The music slowly becomes more populated, and again Russell comes out of the shadows (literally; his guitar here sometimes recalls the work of Hank Marvin). The responses become more staccato and the overall music more agitated - almost Can-like at times - before returning to the basic waltz tempo (although I detect an edit to Beckett's solo). Miller takes up the reins for an inventive solo while the rest of the band steadily turn up their volume behind him, like a pregnant thunderstorm ready to break. Miller's chords and arpeggios strive higher and higher before he plunges back down to the other end of his keyboard.

Then Ray Russell gets his big solo. The nearest thing to a front-line partner to Beckett in this band - although all six players are equals, and it is a measure of the trumpeter's modesty and generosity that for a large part of this record he stands back and lets his colleagues have their say - Russell had by this point reined back slightly from the "British Sonny Sharrock" tag which some had applied to his more avant-garde playing, earlier in the seventies (e.g. Live At The I.CA., which also involved Beckett, or Bill Fay's Time Of The Last Persecution) but remained an elemental guitarist, and his ecstatic solo on "Crystals" is practically all-out rock. The band enthusiastically ascend towards a crescendo, before skilfully alternating between freeform and 3/4; a final climax also appears to have been edited prior to a final thematic statement. Miller, Runswick and Jones together take the piece out, the pianist signing off with an upstroke question mark - well, what did you think of that?

The closing "Can't Think About Now" is a relatively straightforward jazz-rock groove, in the manner of a cop show theme. Miller again plays a compelling solo - it really is a mystery why he isn't feted as a major talent; he never settles for the obvious gestures and moves the music forward in a guess-what-note-I'm-going-to-play-next fashion. There's another fierce guitar solo from Russell before the band settles down for Beckett's final say (to which Russell and, more cannily, Runswick immediately respond, Russell even echoing the trumpeter's musical flurries back at him). The whole band work the tension up again before returning to the theme, at which point the music fades out.

There is never any doubt while listening to Memories Of Bacares that it represents the work of a fully integrated band of musicians who know and are thoroughly comfortable with each other. These are, for the most part, highly respected players as opposed to "stars" as such. However, it remains one of the happiest and most approachable albums Ogun have put out, and I think would be revered as something of a classic were younger listeners made aware of it. Its joys are, indeed, unlimited.

Current availability: The album has yet to be reissued, although the original Joy Unlimited album, recorded for Ogun's sister label Cadillac, was re-released in 2022 to much acclaim, so who knows - maybe a twofer (with OG 020) might be forthcoming? In the meantime it can be listened to here on YouTube.

MIKE OSBORNE TRIO - All Night Long: The Willisau Concert

 

(OG 700)

Track listing: All Night Long-Rivers/Round Midnight/Scotch Pearl/Waltz/Ken's Tune-Country Bounce-All Night Long-Trio Trio/Scotch Pearl (second version)/Now And Then, Here And Now

Mike Osborne (alto sax), Harry Miller (bass), Louis Moholo-Moholo (drums).

Tracks 1-6 recorded in Willisau, Switzerland, on 13 April 1975. Track 7 recorded somewhere "live in Europe," precise venue and date unknown, but presumably as part of the same European tour. Original LP release: mid-1976. Producers: Mike Osborne and Keith Beal. Music recorded by Walter Troxler. Cover design: Niklaus Troxler.

Border Crossing proved to be a rather brisk seller for Ogun Records, hence the demand for this swift sequel. I should point out that the above track listing refers to the album's 2008 CD reissue; the original album was divided into two sides of continuous music, respectively subtitled All Night Long and Recapitulations, which consituted tracks 1-3 and track 5. At the time, although I enjoyed the music, I felt Border Crossing was the better record; in comparison, the Willisau performance sounded to my juvenile ears murky and indistinct.

All I can now say is that Hazel Miller and her team must have done an incredible job in remastering the reissue of All Night Long since its music now sounds as clear as an Alpine bell at dawn and is now, in my view, the superior album. The playing here makes Border Crossing sound like a dress rehearsal; indeed it is the cumulation of a barrier through which you can hear the trio breaking, about two-thirds of the way through side two of the latter, when they exult in their newly-evolved language of musical communication and comparative freedom.

The music on All Night Long is that of a freedom achieved. It commences with Osborne's titular thematic statement, supported by Miller's firm bass. At Moholo-Moholo's urging, all three players then burst out of the paddock. Initially proceeding in a fairly standard post-bop fashion, the drums, following a second thematic statement, accelerate the Trio into tumultuous liberation. There is a genial terror about the absolute confidence and absence of compromise in the band's music, which is as forward, adventurous and unapologetic as anything coming out of the Lower East Side lofts in New York at the time. This is the work of musicians who have achieved something. The performance sets up the Trio's basic template of expertly and expressly alternating between straight and free jazz. After an initial free climax, there follows another alto/bass duet, before drums (principally snare and, I think, cowbell) rustle their way back into the picture. Later, Miller switches to bowed bass and effectively becomes a second horn player, moaning like a wounded whale - there is a very useful stereo separation throughout the album, with Osborne heard on the left channel and Miller on the right, making it easier to discern who is playing what.

An improvised minor key theme, which I take to be "Rivers," leads into a free rhythm mêlée from which emerges the theme to Monk (and also, to a point, Cootie Williams)'s "Round Midnight." The rhythm abruptly ceases and is succeeded by a brief Latin tempo, which in turn leads directly into a straight 4/4. Osborne digs into his Jackie McLean bag (with a hint of Phil Woods here and there) for his solo, and is followed by a conventional bass solo from Miller. This latter segues into "Scotch Pearl," a hard bop theme (once again, it could almost be a Tubby Hayes tune) with flamenco overtones which switches effortlessly to free and back. The free interplay is intense enough to make one think of Amalgam's Prayer For Peace, though note how Miller's strummed chords signify, not just the bassist's stylistic debt to Charlie Haden, but also how much he is "comping"; he acts as the honorary piano player in this pianoless group. The vivid flamenco-jazz flourishes also put me in mind of Mingus' "New Fables"; as with the latter, "Scotch Pearl" methodically slows down.

Instead of fading, however, as it does on the original record, the music then mutates into "Waltz." Again, a thematic statement is followed by structured and free variations; there's a great moment early on when we hear a confident roaring voice, presumably belonging to Moholo-Moholo. A bass solo nudges the tempo into doubling up before settling back into 3/4. Great, tolling bells of bass chords lead into what formed All Night Long's original second side.

Recapitulations, or The Long Medley, as only I am ever remotely likely to call it, begins with some free bass/percussion fisticuffs, followed by gloomy alto/arco bass/percussion pronouncements before moving into a straight 4/4. "Ken's Tune" is obliquely referred to and improvised upon but some time, and quite a lot of turbulent free playing, elapse before the theme is openly stated.

After another brief free conference, with Miller's bowed bass now almost sounding like a guitar, there comes a lovely moment when the band have clearly paused and are scratching their heads, wondering where to go next. Osborne quotes the melody from Nat "King" Cole's "When I Fall In Love" and that sets the next improvisatory phase in motion. Today that would qualify as a slightly smug postmodernist gesture but any improvising saxophonist will tell you that, as the process of improvisation is as important as the final result, quoting standards can prove a useful foundation for building a new structure, gives the musician and their colleagues something to work upon and develop.

The Trio then seem to construct an entire new theme ("Country Bounce," I assume, since the result has a distinctly rural S.O.S.-type feel to it - this and "Rivers" are both jointly credited to all three musicians, and, with the obvious exception of "Round Midnight," all of the other tunes are credited to Osborne alone). It is remarkable listening, as the three men think up a slow, rubato motif which develops into a staccato waltz, powered by a bass riff and cowbell punctuation, and finally a rather folkish main theme. The "All Night Long" theme is then restated before a brief drum eruption links into another now straight/now free piece (which I guess is "Trio Trio"). The Trio stop, then alto and bass duet again before Moholo-Moholo's no-argument-brooking ride cymbal crash concludes the original album.  On the 2008 reissue, however, that ride cymbal crash is actually there to usher in a second, and markedly wilder, recapitulation of "Scotch Pearl," which acts as a very satisfactory bookend to the Willisau material. And to think that, as Keith Beal comments in his original liner note, "We have taken just two sections from one set. The trio played three sets equally exciting that night." One marvels at the absence of burst blood vessels.

The last and by some distance longest of the bonus tracks, "Now And Then, Here And Now," comes from "the Geoff Wall Archive" of live recordings and radio sessions. Although unfortunately no one seems to know exactly where or when this piece was recorded, it does seem to have been done as part of the Trio's European tour of early 1975 - and it is a twenty-two-and-a-half-minute masterclass in how to improvise jazz music. Commencing with a fast, yearning, boppish theme, these three players, who were evidently as tightly-knit and supernaturally coordinated as any trio of seventies musicians could have been (The Peddlers spring to my mind as an immediate comparison, and a listen to 1972's London Suite - with keyboardist Roy Phillips getting into Cecil Taylor-ish levels of free playing in places - will confirm that the comparison is not farfetched), seem to want to prove how many creative variations they can weave on a basic theme.

 

Once more we have the blend of conventional swinging and freeform blasts; at one point, Osborne's false-register alto shrieks take the band closest to anticipating what Miller and Miller-Moholo's second trio, at the other end of the seventies, with Peter Brötzmann. Writer Andrey Henkin has made a valiant attempt at comparing the two threesomes, but each is really the other's polar opposite; Osborne's group based its work on structured tunes whereas Brötzmann's no-compromise total improvisation outlook led Miller and Moholo-Moholo to adopt quite different roles, where their creative capacities had little choice but to outweigh their ability to support. Both trios proved equally powerful, but in their own very different ways.

 

The riff from Border Crossing's "Riff" briefly raises its head above the parapet, Moholo-Moholo keeping time with his rimshots before the cymbals bustle up again and immediately, and instinctively, react to Osborne's hoarse alto trills. The main theme is then restated as a lilting melody worthy of the Trio's sometime employers Brotherhood Of Breath. This Trio seem to find no limits in developing new melodies on the trot and running with them, and there is no end of those here, one startling and spontaneous act of invention after another. Finally their train slows down and the group conclude with a restatement of the original theme, before Moholo-Moholo closes proceedings with a gong-like coda on sustained cymbals. A peak of jazz trio improvisation, and a worthy addendum to an album that is enormously better than I remembered it being.

Current availability: As you've probably already gathered, the album was reissued on CD in 2008, and is now available as a download right here.

OVARY LODGE - Ovary Lodge

 

(OG 600)

 

Track listing: Gentle One Says Hello/Fragment No. 6/A Man Carrying A Drop Of Water On A Leaf Through A Thunderstorm/Communal Travel/Coda

 

Keith Tippett (piano, harmonium, recorder, voice, maracas), Julie Tippetts (voice, sopranino recorder, er-hu), Harry Miller (bass), Frank Perry (percussion, voice, hsîao, shéng).

 

Recorded live at Nettlefold Hall, London SE27, 6 August 1975. Released: Autumn 1976. Produced by Ovary Lodge and Keith Beal. Sleeve design by Liz Walton.

 

(Author's Note: The album credits explain that an "er-hu" [most commonly spelled without a hyphen as "erhu"] is a "two-stringed Chinese violin," a "hsîao" [modern spelling: "xiao"] is a "Chinese bamboo flute" and a "shéng" is a "Chinese bamboo mouth organ.")

This is the first entry on Ogun to involve Keith Tippett, beyond question the most important non-South African musician to be associated with the label. One could say that he was one of the two most important musicians in early seventies Britain - the other being his friend and sometime bandmate Robert Wyatt - insofar as both men were utterly open-minded about all the different strands of then-contemporary music and were keen on drawing them all together. I saw Tippett's enormous band Centipede at the Lyceum Theatre in London on Sunday 15 November 1970, aged six, and the experience most likely influenced the way I perceived and understood music for the rest of my life. There were, I realised, no boundaries to music. There were jazz, rock and classical musicians on stage, all striving towards a greater good. Everything was open, and to be shared.

No doubt Tippett's then record label RCA would have been delighted for him to continue on that gargantuan pathway. The double album of Septober Energy, the extended work that Centipede performed that Sunday evening at the Lyceum, followed in the summer of 1971. In hindsight it did not quite measure up to the excitement and intensity I felt coming from that stage. The band were only allotted three days' studio time and producer Robert Fripp spent so much time marshalling this awkward enterprise in the control room and ensuring that the recording went to schedule that there was no time for him to play any guitar (as he had done at the Lyceum). In addition, recording sessions commenced at ten in the morning - a time of day hitherto unknown to most of the players - so the intensity wasn't quite as focused as it might have been.

Nevertheless Septober Energy became a very important album to my teenage self, and its naivety - bear in mind that Tippett was only in his very early twenties when he put the band and piece together - is far outweighed by many electrifying and transcendental moments. Its utopian vision of a collective society, where every individual counted towards a higher goal, was, I believe, also highly influential politically.

Although the record fared less well, both critically and commercially, than might have reasonably been expected at the time, RCA remained eager for the Tippetts - they thought of Keith and Julie as the John Dankworth and Cleo Laine de leur jours - to develop even bigger and brighter extravaganzas; there was talk of them going out on the road with a travelling circus troupe and tent. They were markedly less enthusiastic about Tippett's decision to focus on a trio which he had co-formed with the drummer Frank Perry. This trio, with Roy Babbington (see OG 020 and OG 522) playing bass, recorded two albums for RCA, both meditative in nature and more or less completely improvised, entitled Blueprint and Ovary Lodge (they christened themselves after the latter), which were promoted and sold minimally. Tippett wriggled out of his RCA contract with few regrets on either side.

Actually, a good two-thirds of Blueprint set the tone for what would familiarly become known as Ovary Lodge, since Julie Tippetts also appears, in various vocal and instrumental guises, on four of its six tracks. She eventually joined the group as a full-time member, and when Roy Babbington left to become a permanent member of Soft Machine, his place was taken by Harry Miller - hence the appearance of a live Ovary Lodge album on Ogun, and the beginning of an exceptionally fruitful musical relationship. Together with Louis Moholo-Moholo, Tippett and Miller would become essentially the house rhythm section for Ogun Records, and for the three or so years in the mid-seventies that they worked, played and recorded together, they became the most dynamic and creative rhythm section in all of jazz. Indeed Tippett himself once told me that the ecstatic rush of the three men playing together was sometimes so overwhelming that he'd forget which band they were playing with - he'd have to look and see which horns were in the front line and think, oh yeah, this is Isipingo, or Ninesense, or...

Unwary listeners may initially regard Ovary Lodge as austere, forbidding and perhaps an artefact of its era, or merely baffling. Other than moments when the idiom is to the fore ("Fragment No. 6") this improvised music may not have very much to do with "jazz," but then I don't think it's meant to be. Furthermore, quite contrary to its seeming off-putting nature, Ovary Lodge is actually a highly open and welcoming record; after all, the first track is entitled "Gentle One Says Hello" - this is hardly the Sex Pistols (although I reckon John Lydon, a man far more open-minded musically than his public persona might suggest, would have liked it anyway).

The album was recorded in concert - although we hear no audience - at the Nettlefold Hall, which was a comparatively spacious theatre and cinema complex, designed by Lambeth's first Borough Architect Ted Hollamby to complement West Norwood Library, which was situated downstairs; both were formally opened by Princess Margaret on 12 April 1969.

The Hall was certainly large enough to incorporate Frank Perry's enormous and intricate percussion kit, of which standard drums were only a fraction and which on a good day could take up to three hours to assemble; it was in some ways less a "drumkit" and more a sculpture. Mr Perry really is Ovary Lodge's fulcrum, and a singular figure in British music. Born in Hampstead in 1948, he worked with blues and rock bands in the sixties - one of which included a young Paul Kossoff on guitar - before moving into free jazz and improvisation from about 1968 onward.

Though not generally considered a figure in British free improvisation as some might understand it, Perry was actually quite central; he worked regularly with Derek Bailey, for instance (and I think he appeared on at least one - unrecorded - Company Week event). But his approach was very different to a John Stevens or a Tony Oxley. He was one of the first people in Britain to collect Tibetan singing bowls and his full percussion kit - which he only used for very special occasions, including recording - included many rare instruments from Asia and the Far East. He was certainly a pioneer of what is now called New Age music and his subsequent career has seen him expand into astrology and sound-healing, as well as building his own instruments (I chuckled when the bonus disc to Psychic TV's 1982 debut album Force The Hand Of Chance - an album of tainted genius, if I may say so - which was entitled Psychick TV Themes, used, albeit a lot more naively, some of those same instruments, and thought, somebody's catching up with what Ovary Lodge did seven years previously...). If you listen to Perry's work on Balance (Incus 11), an improvised session with Ian Brighton, Philipp Wachsmann (see OGD 003/004), Colin Wood (see OG 510) and Radu Malfatti (see Ogun passim), the music is initially a lot more rumbunctious and playful than that of Ovary Lodge, but by record's end, meditative drones have taken slow precedence.

So what of Ovary Lodge, the album, other than it is quite unlike any other album of improvised music - att least, in the Western world - that has ever been released? It begins with solemn percussion, summoning the assembly to prayer (since the record does feel like an extended prayer), which is succeeded by high sustained tones, on singing bowls and flutes, reminiscent of guitar feedback (eight years before the Jesus and Mary Chain). Perry's gong signals an increase in activity; this is followed by a bowed bass drone, low piano rumbles. Julie Tippetts' voice emerges from the darkness and immediately gets a vocal response from (I assume) Keith. The call-and-response procedural continues for awhile and is joined by scrambling percussion and roving bass, both arco and pizzicato. Julie's voice goes into Yoko Ono-like ululations before initiating a climactic chant, then settling again (although I can hear her clearing her throat at 9:52!). A modal plane is agreed upon before the music rises and falls once more, provoked by a sinister and probably unattributable rattle, then chiming piano chords straight out of the McCoy Tyner book over droning strings before Miller's bass decisively concludes the piece.

"Fragment No. 6" - not sure whether anybody was thinking of The Prisoner; in fact, I'm sure they weren't, but anyway - has to be one of the most intense and exciting recorded free improvisations I've ever heard; in fact, I regularly need to correct myself that it is the work of only four musicians. Beginning with Miller's firm bass line, percussion then rattles and high-pitched flute flutters before Keith's characteristic piano cumulonimbi materialise. Julie switches from flute to ardent, full-throated vocalese and the music's violence - if that's how you'd view it; I wouldn't - incrementally increases. A unison figure rises up to a powerful scream. Keith works with some Cecil Taylor-ish note clusters followed by upper register keyboard tinkles before dramatically notching up the intensity button again. There is a momentary exultation from what might pass as a mutant Latin-American cabaret, complete with maracas, before a final and, no matter how many times I've listened to it, thoroughly unexpected and really bloody frightening and shattering climax of Julie's orgasmic screams (of COURSE that's what it's about; doesn't the album cover spell it out - losing one's self in the euphoric whole?) and Frank Perry thunderously bashing just about every Chinese gong he has, seemingly at once, all building up to an titanic tidal wave of OVERCOMING - you can even hear the mimicked pulsed calls of whales in the distance. Perry then signals that the piece can stop, although it actually fades into a minor key mode.

"A Man Carrying A Drop Of Water On A Leaf Through A Thunderstorm," which I think has to win hands-down the award for Most Zen-Like Name For A Piece Of Music Ever, is relatively brief but surprisingly catchy with its seesaw violin motif (backed by a firm pulse from Perry and Miller). Voices enter and we hear what sounds like coconut shells being clip-cloppeed together, so much so that we start to hear collective Red Indian whoops. This is probably the record's most lighthearted track.

The lengthy "Communal Travel" sees the quartet concentrating more on what sound like largely non-Western instruments, beginning with a string duet followed by percussion and Julie having a go on the er-hu (or erhu) - the seesaw motif from "Drop Of Water On A Leaf" even reappears briefly. The group improvisation becomes more active before we encounter a string ensemble resembling a somewhat distressed Alban Berg recital (Lyric Suite?). Perry blows his shéng to provide a deep harmonic underlay, and the effect is not far from an Ennio Morricone score (a fair assumption, I think, given Morricone's long involvement in the Italian free improvisation scene). Strings are succeeded by more fluttering flutes and recorders, then voices leading to communal continental drifts with stern arco bass from Miller. A brief pause for collective breath leads to what sounds like foghorns in the distance, then more pointillistic interplay between bass and flute which resolves in a tolling, slow 4/4 bassline set against gongs and drones. Julie's voice sets out a melodic top line of sorts but Keith then introduces an ominous two-note plucked piano string motif which interacts with gongs and bass. After another unison is agreed, the 4/4 bassline recommences, this time accompanied by a four-note vocal refrain. Some rubberband bass pinches lead to a panoramic coda, with, indeed, tubular bells, before quickly fading. The record ends with a 67-second three-piece vocal coda which, via some slight chuckling, soars to a higher octave before one of Perry's smaller gongs calls a calm end to proceedings.

 

 

I find Ovary Lodge a very approachable record; there is nothing on it that you don't hear at various strategic points throughout Septober Energy, although the four players here have concentrated on honing that particular musical and spiritual essence. In his liner note, Keith Tippett says that, as a matter of routine, the group went on stage with no prior discussion of the music they intended to play - they trusted each other sufficiently to know how each musician was likely to respond to the other. Tippett also remarks that when it came to mixing this album, the musicians were at times unsure who exactly was playing what, and when - and when it comes to Buddhist notions of ego death, individual contributions count for less than the sum of the whole, so that we might recognise our own sense of self all the more readily. Keith suggests that we listen to Ovary Lodge as though it were an orchestra - Centipede, perhaps, or something beyond? There is no other album of improvised music like this. It is one of the finest albums Ogun ever put out.

Current availability: Reissued on CD in 2007, and now available as a download here.

IRENE SCHWEIZER/RUDIGER CARL/PAUL LOVENS/RADU MALFATTI/HARRY MILLER - Ramifications

 

(Originally published on Facebook, 3 January 2025)

 

Happy 2025 to one and all, and it's time to press on with my Ogun Records reviews. On this occasion I look at one of the stranger and least typical entries in the label's catalogue.

 

IRENE SCHWEIZER/RUDIGER CARL/PAUL LOVENS/RADU MALFATTI/HARRY MILLER: Ramifications

(OG 500)

 

Track listing: Elephant Off The Bone/What's Yours Then?/Panacea For -/Rüdiger's Tune Is Called 0202 Which Is The New Code For Wuppertal (Parts A & B)/FMP 

 

Irène Schweizer (piano), Rüdiger Carl (tenor sax), Paul Lovens (drums), Radu Malfatti (trombone), Harry Miller (bass).

 

Recorded live at the Kunsthaus Zürich, September 1973. Produced by Keith Beal. Cover design: Paul Taylor. Released 1975.

 

Ramifications is among the least Ogun-looking releases on the label. If anything it resembles an FMP release which perhaps went astray. Three of the participants were FMP regulars and here make their only appearance on Ogun. Even the final track is entitled "FMP." How come it's on Ogun, then?

 

Irène Schweizer's name is top of the bill because she organised this improvised grouping after receiving a commission to work with a visiting Danish dance company, who were due to take up a week's residency at the Kunsthaus Zürich art gallery in September 1973. But it was Harry Miller, who was busy setting up Ogun at the time, who offered to record and release the proceedings, or at least edited highlights from them. In most interviews of the period Miller expresses his wish that Ogun become a platform for international improvisers and not just British-based ones, so Ramifications can be viewed as an initial step in that direction.

 

However, the album received some terrible reviews at the time, mostly criticising what was felt to be an out-of-date all-guns-blazing hardcore free jazz freakout. I myself bought the record later in the seventies but didn't think that much of it. When I revisited Ogun for one of my blogs in the early 2000s my mind hadn't changed. But what are my feelings about it now, more than twenty years on?

 

I have to say that my feelings remained mixed. I do think Ramifications a better record than before but continue to have problems with it. The first thing to say is that the album does not present us with a single, continuous improvisation; these are separate moments from different parts of the group's week in residence, as you can hear from the between-track edits; presumably the "best bits." Each of the five musicians is allotted a composer credit for each track, for equality's sake - Schweizer, Malfatti, Miller, Carl and Lovens respectively.

 

It is Lovens who gets the proceedings going with a tapping 6/8 cowbell motif (albeit with a degree of pitch variance). Miller then enters, striking deep, decisive notes and setting up a modal drone with the drummer. The feeling is one of a farm awakening at dawn. Malfatti's trombone blearily snorts its way into consciousness while Lovens moves to full drumkit for some busier business. Then Schweizer enters, hammering repeated low-register notes, mixed with some interior string plucking. As the trombone reluctantly becomes more active, Carl comes in with typical Evan Parker-ish jagged splinters of notes.

 

Inevitably the playing intensifies and we do indeed end up with a loud FMP free blowout before everyone agrees on one collective high note, then recedes. Miller concentrates on a fierce plucked solo and Malfatti issues odd birdsong tweets before Miller switches to arco. Stuttering figures of uncertain origin are produced by Carl and Malfatti (the latter in places not sounding like a trombone, as such). Schweizer's piano then becomes more florid, Malfatti growls quite furiously (definitely an elephant off the bone). Lovens' cowbell now sounds like something from an old school police vehicle before his crashing drums induce a collective explosion, which then settles into the next piece (which to these ears seems to follow on naturally from the first).

 

Although "What's Yours Then?" is credited to Malfatti, it seems to be mostly a feature for Schweizer, with Miller, then Lovens, proving themselves to be a fairly effective trio. Malfatti does eventually reappear, as then does Carl, before both players agree on a relatively muted coda.

 

Miller reasonably begins his piece "Panacea For -" with a plucked solo. He is then joined by Carl and Lovens. Carl blows hard and Lovens' drums behind him are very forceful. Miller takes a second solo with Lovens rumbling, before both embark on an arco bass/percussion duet which sounds like an animated conversation between two knitting needles. The horns then re-enter the picture, with Carl's tenor murmuring and Malfatti practically cackling via his Tricky Sam Nanton plunger. There follows a collective coda which Lovens decisively brings to a full stop.

 

The album's setpiece is the (yes, Steve Lake, I agree with you here) very pretentiously-titled "Rüdiger's Tune Is Called 0202 Which Is The New Code For Wuppertal" (you know, Rüdi, you could just have called it "0202." We wouldn't have minded). It commences with a fine duet between Lovens' varipitched cymbals and Malfatti's multiphonic trombone. There follow ominous rumblings from arco bass and low-register piano, with Carl hollering a field call in the middle distance. It isn't long before the group launches into some more busy free activity, with Malfatti out front and Schweizer "comping."

 

Schweizer takes over for a solo in which she carefully negotiates a parameter of set harmonics; the influence of Cecil Taylor is quite evident. Carl makes a cautious entry on a low, nagging line of tenor notes. The "rhythm section" momentarily quietens down but all soon noisily builds up again for Carl's big "solo" - which to my ears remains a rather tired variant on the Pharoah Sanders-with-Michael Mantler tenor freakout sixties template. Malfatti's increasingly aggressive commentary is actually a lot more compelling, with unearthly voicings arising seemingly from nowhere (is that a faulty early warning siren or a motorcycle taking forever to rev up?). Lovens POUNDS his drums behind all of this before it comes to a sudden stop, with a vocal whoop of approval at the end.

 

Part B begins with minimalist percussion and a strange set of thuds (which I now realise may be attributable to the Danish dancers). Miller's arco bass wearily descends into proceedings while Malfatti operates what sounds like a white noise generator. Carl re-enters and gets all worked up again. Schweizer's solo in this section is VERY Taylorish, so much so that certain phrases from Taylor's solo in Mantler's "Communications #11 (Part One)" reappear practically unaltered; Lovens keenly plays the Andrew Cyrille role but Miller's deadpan bass keeps both players rooted. Still, even Schweizer has to resort to elbow-on-keys tactics at the piece's climax just to be heard.

 

Lovens' "FMP" begins with quiet, ethereal tones, possibly involving the use of wine glasses and sounding remarkably like the introduction to "Ghosts" by Japan. Miller's bass carefully polices the improvising and Malfatti is in his low register and relatively restrained. We hear distant whoops and thuds - the dancers again? Malfatti enjoys a chuckling solo with Schweizer backing him up. Carl follows and then piano and drums drop out, leaving Carl, Malfatti and Miller collectively sighing. However, there is yet another all-out free jazz screamathon with Lovens back in the picture before a final, frantic "unison passage" ends the record.

 

So, there is a lot of creativity and interaction going on in Ramifications. Schweizer is a lot more resourceful here than I initially thought (although there are numerous moments where her piano cannot be heard at all) and I remain convinced that a Malfatti/Miller/Lovens trio should have been convened (Lovens really is such a droll drummer at times). I am also aware that this record initiated a fruitful long-term musical partnership between Schweizer and Carl. But the latter continues to bother me; he tries to be both Brötzmann and Parker but, though obviously possessed of technique, to my ears lacks the power and real radicalism of either and is all too ready to fall back on old post-Aylerian sax clichés. That having been said, in today's relatively staid jazz climate, there is something of a frisson in hearing no-holds-barred free improvisation As It Used To Be in 2025. Ramifications would cause a stir if recorded and released now by some kids in New York or Berlin.

 

Current availability: it's never been reissued in any format - although Ogun tell me they're currently working on getting it reissued, at least digitally - but happily someone has uploaded the album onto YouTube.

S.O.S.: S.O.S.

 

(Originally published on Facebook, 15 December 2024)

It's time for the fourth chapter in my survey of Ogun Records. This is the first album on the label not to involve any of the South African or Caribbean exiles directly, and is only present here by virtue of its label. Nevertheless I do think it essential that we should include all of Ogun's releases, rather than a mere fraction of them, since together they tell an emotionally remarkable tale, and in any case most of these musicians are umbilically linked to the SA diaspora thanks to their involvement with the Brotherhood of Breath and its various satellite bands. That's my excuse, anyway...

 

S.O.S.: S.O.S.

(OG 400)

 

Alan Skidmore (tenor sax, drums and percussion), Mike Osborne (alto sax and percussion), John Surman (baritone and soprano saxes, bass clarinet and synthesisers)

 

Track listing: Country Dance/Wherever I Am/Chordary/Where's Junior/Cycle Motion/Ist/Goliath/Calypso

 

Electronics pre-recorded at Griffout Studios (sorry, couldn't find out where that was) on 2-3 January 1975. Producers: Keith Beal and John Surman. Saxophones etc. recorded at Saturn Studios, Worthing, on 9-11 February 1975. Producers: Keith Beal and S.O.S. Released later the same year.

 

This was a major, and controversial, event at its time. These were perhaps the three foremost saxophonists on the British jazz scene; they were all world-class players and at least one of them was acknowledged as the greatest living exponent of his principal instrument.

 

The three men had a strong bond and were in the habit of turning out for each other's individual projects. If you were trying to put a big band together in late sixties/early seventies London and knew these players, then your luck was in because that was three-fifths of your saxophone section sorted out. But they had not previously considered forming a trio between themselves.

 

It seemed a daunting prospect; three saxophones with no harmonic or rhythmic back-up - or so it was assumed. Nothing of this nature had really been attempted in jazz before, and S.O.S.'s role as pioneers remains somewhat underestimated. The World and Rova Saxophone Quartets did not form until 1977 - although Anthony Braxton had experimented with a prototype WSQ on one track of his New York, Fall 1974 album, featuring future WSQ members Oliver Lake, Julius Hemphill and Hamiet Bluiett along with Braxton himself.

 

In any case, neither of these ensembles really strayed beyond the four-saxophones model. But S.O.S. were not like either. The opening track of the only album to be released within the trio's lifetime, "Country Dance," is an agreeable, welcoming introduction, and also the record's most conventional moment; a pibroch-type modal roundelay featuring just soprano, alto and tenor saxophones which is appropriately bucolic - a British folk variation on "The Train And The River," perhaps - and exactly what you'd expect from a trio of saxophones, with each player carefully improvising in harmonic and rhythmic accordance with the piece's main melody, weaving around the musical framework as well as each other, with the occasional euphoric high-register spring and, in places, elements of systems music.

 

The next track, however, is entirely unexpected, commencing as it does with two-and-a-quarter minutes of dark electronics, perhaps hoping to score an early seventies police or conspiracy theory film, before Surman settles on a Latin keyboard vamp, Osborne's alto comes in to solo on top of it - and Skidmore is thrashing away on a drumkit; though no John Marshall or Tony Oxley, he does a very adequate job. The overall result is something like an earthier manifestation of early Weather Report - which is not a farfetched comparison, since Surman and Skidmore, together with trombonist Eje Thelin, briefly augmented that band in early September 1971 for radio and television recording sessions in Berlin.

 

The beautiful Ellingtonian (by way of Keith Tippett's Centipede, in which Skidmore participated? - see the closing section of part three of Septober Energy) lament of "Chordary" sees the trio back on reeds. Surman, initially playing bass clarinet, snakes around the tune's harmonic foundations like an anxious bullfrog before emerging on baritone in a thoughtful solo cadenza. "Where's Junior" is a slightly mournful Brotherhood of Breath (via Canterbury?) riff which spotlights Skidmore's tenor and Osborne's alto before shuddering down to an unstable ending. "Cycle Motion" is based on an aggressive, almost rock-like hook upon which Surman's bass clarinet immediately doubles down before further thematic statements culminate in a squealing free-form scrum before, of all things, the ghost of Keith Emerson's Moog (organ setting) wanders in to conclude side one.

 

Regular readers will recall that "Ist" first appeared on Border Crossing, credited to Osborne alone. On this album, however, all compositions are jointly credited to the trio, and after a rubato opening, with alto and tenor stating the main theme over Surman's bass clarinet drone, the drone then turns into an ostinato which takes the tune in quite a different direction; again, Skidmore and Osborne - the latter a lot more restrained than on OG 300 - take the respective solos.

 

The piece fades into the album's highlight, and one of my favourite tracks recorded by anyone on Ogun, "Goliath," featuring a wholly-liberated Osborne blowing ecstatically over Surman's cathedral of synthesisers (and electric piano?) and Skidmore's punk rock drums. It reminds me of Van Der Graaf Generator or the Dean/Ratledge/Hopper/Wyatt Soft Machine at their most fervent. Towards track's end, Surman's keyboards begin to ascend into the heavens, and there is a holy poignancy which foresees the closing moments of side one, track two, of OG 520.

 

And what to say about the marathon closer "Calypso"? Plenty of cloth-eared Colonel Redfern types complained at the time about the overdubs and electronics, which somehow rendered this music "not jazz." I was eleven when I heard Derek Jewell play this on Sounds Interesting on Radio 3 and I gave not a toss about any of that. Over a Kraftwerkian loop whose repercussions would most keenly be felt in the dance music to emerge from Detroit and Chicago in the following decade, the echoing, rebarbative horns play an out-of-tempo but fundamentally adagio minor key theme, sometimes sounding like the horns of cars stuck in traffic during rush hour in Tokyo, before breaking into angry-sounding false-register howls at differing distances from Surman's loop, which floats from channel to channel in the manner of an undecided butterfly before itself vanishing into the echoes of the infinite. So many unclaimed ghosts. Had, say, Cabaret Voltaire or This Heat put this out in 1981, it would have been applauded as a pioneering masterpiece. S.O.S. is a record so far ahead of its time that nobody else knew what time it would be.

 

Current availability: Reissued on CD in 2006, now available to download here.