NICRA - Listen/Hear

 

(OG 010)

Track listing: Listen/Listen continued/Hear

Nick Evans, Radu Malfatti (trombones and ?recorders), Keith Tippett (piano and ?voice), Buschi Niebergall (bass), Makaya Ntshoko (drums and ?voice).

Recorded in the studios of Österreichischer Rundfunk, Innsbruck, Austria, on 22 October 1975. Released: April 1977. Produced by NICRA and Keith Beal (final mixdown in Hastings overseen by Beal, Evans and Malfatti). Sleeve design: Stephen Taylor.

(Author's Note: I should thank Mike Gavin, who kindly supplied me with an audio file of his original copy of this L.P. Unfortunately an extensive search of Punctum Towers has failed to unearth the copy which Hazel Miller sent to me in 1979. At that time I was a teenager living with my parents in a first floor walk-up tenement flat in Uddingston, and in the intervening forty-six years with its accompanying sixteen changes of address [in two different countries] and multiple major alterations to my lifestyle, it is sadly inevitable that the odd item is going to become lost along the way. I consider myself fortunate to have held on to what I do still have, including almost all of the other Ogun albums. All, that is, except OG 522, which has similarly gone astray, but I'll get back to that one later... - M.C.)

Why the fuck doesn't anyone make music like this any more?

That is my initial reaction to the only album recorded by NICRA. Listen/Hear was the first in a loose trilogy of Ogun albums centred around the principal horn players associated with Keith Tippett - the other two are OG 410 and OG 710, and Tippett was the only musician to play on all three. It was taken from a session recorded for the Austrian state broadcaster Österreichischer Rundfunk; in other words, this was the equivalent of BBC Radio 3's Jazz In Britain sessions.

The quintet was truly international, including as it did musicians from Wales, Austria, England, Germany and South Africa. Nick Evans and Radu Malfatti met when the latter succeeded Malcolm Griffiths in Chris McGregor's Brotherhood Of Breath, and quickly bonded. In his original Melody Maker review of this album, Richard Williams approvingly referred to them as "the boot boys of the trombone," and there is certainly something punk-ish about its cover. They also lent their covalent bonding services to Elton Dean's Ninesense and Louis Moholo-Moholo's various Spirits Rejoice! bands. Together with Tippett, they are joined by a fairly unique rhythm section - not only is this the only appearance of either musician on Ogun, but it may well represent the only occasion they worked together - of Marburg-born bassist Buschi Niebergall, who didn't record very much at all or indeed live very long (he was barely into his fifties when he died in January 1990) and - a real coup - the great Cape Town drummer Makaya Ntshoko, whom they used to call the South African Max Roach and who was happy to work with anybody from Dexter Gordon and Ben Webster to many of his fellow South African greats, including Abdullah Ibrahim and Hugh Masekela (he lived a long and fruitful life, passing on last August at the age of 83).

My presumption has always been - unfortunately the album cover does not specify - that Malfatti plays on the left channel and Evans on the right in the stereo mix. Evans is the more forthright and straightforward Roswell Rudd disciple, whereas Malfatti is more elliptical and experimental; a bit like the good cop/shy cop pairing of Griffiths and Paul Rutherford in Mike Westbrook's old Concert Band. Rutherford, incidentally, contributes a very funny liner note to Listen/Hear (in the sense of mid-seventies Hither Green humour, that is); I suspect that Des O'Connor's people never contacted Ogun requesting NICRA's televisual guest presence, but Rutherford as a musician will not appear on Ogun for some while yet (he was definitely an Emanem, and to a lesser extent an Incus, man).

So what does the actual album sound like? I always regarded Listen/Hear as one of the most explosively passionate of all Ogun releases, and listening to it again over half a lifetime later it almost seems like an admonitory record, wagging its finger at the jazz and improvised music of today and asking why it cannot be as raw and powerful as this.

It ("Listen") begins quietly with Niebergall's sitar-like rubberband bass, behind which an ominous storm cloud of minor chord modalities can be heard from Tippett's piano. The trombones blearily awaken and cymbals tick away. The build-up is slow and bearing some sense of mourning. Eventually there comes a thundering climax, though Tippett is careful to adhere to tonality before moving into the free zone. Ntshoko is a very different drummer from, and possibly a more aggressive one than, Moholo-Moholo; his floor toms are resonant enough to sink a continent.

The tone is set for the rest of this piece; immense, brewing cyclones of activity alternating with periods of meditation and consolidation. Evans and Malfatti are for a time more like commentators on the action, although they assert their personalities readily enough. Splashing pools of piano cascades are succeeded by Sunday school hymnals before the trombones grunt their way towards a temporary ending.

This is then followed by a sequence of cautious, restrained balladry, each musician seemingly waiting for the other to make their moves. Tippett takes a lyrical solo over a patient 4/4 pulse, albeit with a brassy drone hovering in the background. Evans then plays a reasonably conventional solo before the tempo doubles and Tippett sets to cut loose again. A series of staccato piano chords leads to another free explosion, out of which emerges Malfatti's horn, with Niebergall's bass behind him sounding like a machine gun. A drum solo ensues, punctuated by Tippett's top-of-the-keyboard metronomic plinks. Trombones swoop in like furious wasps, swiftly followed by bowed bass. Malfatti indulges in some chordal vocalese.

The group then undertakes what sounds like a parody of a marching band who eventually stagger and collapse into the gutter, which in turn is followed by forays of free shouting and testifying. Evans and Malfatti improvise a fanfare on which Tippett picks up straightaway. The atmosphere is now one of a tropical hurricane, Malfatti howling through his mouthpiece. Tippett plays a deranged stride/waltz piano figure, and Ntsholo picks up the tempo with his snare to fade.

Side two ("Listen continued") fades back into what resembles a bout of interplanetary boogie woogie. This comes to an abrupt and violent end, following which Ntshoko's drums erupt from a field of silence. Malfatti's trombone and Niebergall's arco bass drones patrol the proceedings. We hear a high-pitched vocal howl, which I presume comes from Tippett (see OG 600), combined with Malfatti's multiphonics. This is succeeded by a firm bass, joined by a ticking Latin rhythm with occasional earthquake drumkit thumps, possibly some tap dancing in the distance (!) and a "1-2-3-4" count-in which I presume comes from Ntshoko. The group veer expertly in and out of straight-ish jazz and tumultuous abstraction. There is another build-up again with both trombones and an unearthly lower-register piano rumble, as well as eventually, a police siren two-note bassline. Then comes the gradual but horrific flash of eruptive noise before Tippett takes the piece out with a John Cale-style 4/4 piano riff over drums and bass. The piece fades again, but where could it have really gone from there?

"Hear," however, is the album's major event, setting out as it does to demonstrate the quintet's full improvisatory range. It starts with Tippett's mordant piano, initially commented on but soon superseded by Niebergall's bass, which plays a gloomy chord sequence oddly reminiscent of Thomas Dolby's "Airwaves" - I know, it should be the other way around. Chemistry lab test tubes and woodwork squeaks turn out to be Malfatti again, as do the multiple unsuccessful attempts to start up his motorcycle. Meanwhile, Tippett contemplates matters with rhapsodic if somewhat dissolute Bill Evans-type gestures, although these are soon detoured by what sound like a pair of distressed school recorders in the background. The piano scuttles over its upper register before landing DEEPLY at the bottom. Niebergall's high-register bowed bass becomes agitated.

As both trombones re-enter the fray, Tippett unleashes a powerful piano tempest. We are in the midst of a turbulent sea storm, but amongst the chaos the group never lose sight of a tonal centre, largely down to Tippett's pretty unshakeable respect for harmony and melody. This sort of thing was of course  dismissed as bourgeois romanticism by free improvisation purists, but the tonality lends "Hear" a nearly unbearable poignancy that it would lack were it a straight-out atonal punch-up. The trombones plunge in and out of the ocean waves like helpless Titanic passengers searching for a dinghy, are tossed in the tempest, towards the piece's climax sound as though gurgling for air.

Tippett then restores the minor modality he had set up at the outset of "Listen," the trombones offer a proclamatory coda and harp-like flourishes of piano and bass bring the piece to a natural conclusion. This is spectacular and heartfelt music played with an aura of fearlessness that is almost entirely absent from today's mustn't-make-a-racket-they-might-not-give-us-any-money-be-uplifting-and-positive climate of cultural starvation. It perhaps doesn't matter what either trombonist does or doesn't play. It's the totality of the experience that counts. True, there is a heavy air of a lot of Tippett's own writing and organising about Listen/Hear, together with the pianist's uncanny ability to invent chord sequences and even songs right there and then. But more musicians need to making records of this order of power now.

Current availability: out of print, although Mike assures me that Ogun are working on remastering the record for reissue right now. In the meantime, the only online evidence of the music is in this strange YouTube clip, from someone who uploaded all of "Listen" but not "Hear." Perhaps the latter wasn't as much to that person's liking.