"Fayre Trade" video from Normandy/Brittany

Sue Cross keeps producing inspiring little films and using music from my archive — this time it's a rather wobbly saz-and-accordion jam I recorded spontaneously with Inge in some woods near where she was living when I visited her in southern France in spring 2005 (the first time we'd played those two instruments together):

Wisconsin again

I'm back in Central Wisconsin again. For my last night evening in Canterbury I decided to get into the the fact that I was going (and thereby leaving behind the oncoming wave of nightingale song, bluebells, stitchwort, speedwell, red campion...), so I invited a few friends over for an "American" themed evening: vegan hotdogs (!?) with all the extras, American beer, pickles, popcorn, etc. plus a playlist full of Otis Redding, The Ramones, Sam Cooke, Lynryd Skynryd, Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry, Dead Kennedys... Paul Clifford came over with his guitar — he's Canadian, so that added an interesting angle. Also Ben from Arlet, who sang some old-time American songs ("Tell it to Me", etc.). Paul broke the news that Levon Helm (drummer/singer from Canada's The Band was known to be on his deathbed. He sang a fragile version of "Ain't No More Cane" (a Leadbelly song they interpreted on The Basement Tapes), a kind of Canadian/American Helm tribute.

The next evening I was in Madison, WI with Peter Fee (still enthusiastically learning trumpet, also gypsy jazz guitar style and taking singing lessons). He met me at the UW Memorial Union where the bus from the airport stops, was supposed to be accompanying one of his students from the alternative Shabazz high school at an open mic there (they'd worked out a version of "Comfortably Numb"). The open mic had been cancelled, so we ended up chatting — Peter, his student and a couple of Shabazz friends, really pleasant young people — good-natured, musically aware, culturally engaged, creative and curious...that was encouraging.

Pete and I then headed over to Maggie and Ken's house. They're both in multiple bands, among them Ken's "Seven Stone Weaklings" playing British punk classics for the sheer joy of it, and Maggie's Neil Young tribute band "Shakey". But Maggie's now also singing in Madison's superbly eccentric Balkan/gypsy/klezmer mashup band Reptile Palace Orchestra, and Ed, the dombura player, turned up thinking it was a rehearsal night (they rehearse in M&K's groovy 70's style basement). So we ended up having a bit of a saz/dambura/guitar/trumpet jam... and then a discussion about Breton music, the Madison folk dance scene, and then Robert Fripp's 1952 Les Paul (which he's reverentially held, as Biff from RPO also works as Fripp's US guitar tech and was once entrusted with it for a short period).

playing saz in Maggie and Ken's front room (Ed's dombura just visible)

A couple of days later in Stevens Point I was embroiled in the weird annual vortex that is Trivia Weekend. If you haven't experienced it, you'll probably never get it — a very particular, peculiar kind of way of spending a weekend with a floating crowd of people whose company you enjoy. I dropped in and out for a few hours at a time — the between-question music selection gets me every time — the same forgotten popsongs, glamrock, doo-wop, synth pop, novelty songs, Motown classics, a whole amalgam of jewels and trash joyfully issued forth from the 90FM transmitter, the soundtrack to this most absurd quest being acted out in hundreds of Stevens Point basements, all under the gleeful watch of Jim 'Oz' Oliva. Most of them are songs I never hear any other time. During the more-urgent-than-usual one-song-per-question hour we got the Doobie Brothers' "Jesus is Just Alright By Me" back-to-back with Golden Earring's "Radar Love" and The Doors "Riders on the Storm". Creedence's "Fortunate Son" sounded particularly excellent blasting out of the stereo after a quickly answered question. And then there's always Foghat's "Fool for the City". Ah, Trivia...

JP and I trying to remember what the question was...

The following Tuesday I went down to The Square to check out the Elbow Room's weekly songswap, but the place was crowded and noisy as the result of a baseball game having just been on. It was impossible to hear anything, but I did my best to jam along with a rather rough version of The Band's "The Weight". After that, a silver haired old freak who'd come closer to listen shook each of our hands "For Levon Helm". I then ended up talking to an older ecology student, with Turkish and Bulgarian parents, who knew what my saz was, has one herself, bought in Holland, knew quite a lot about the ashq tradition, etc. (I'm used to people here just asking me "is that a sitar?".) We went outside so she could hear it properly. Then someone walked in with a full-sized harp! Not what you'd expect in the Elbow Room, but yeah, great...wrong night though. I sat right behind her, and it was lovely, but you couldn't hear it from a few feet away. A guitarist and fiddler led some old folk songs that Garcia and co. brought to wider attention: "Dark Hollow" and "Peggy-O". Could have been perfect in another time and space.

90FM's "Saturday Morning Freakshow" (Jim Oliva unashamedly playing hippie classics) and Sunday morning "Acoustic Revival" featured Levon Helm tributes, too. His death had been announced when I'd arrived in the US — I think he may have died around the time I was between continents. The Wednesday night I was out at the Northland Ballroom again...Sloppy Joe were pickin' there way through "Henry" by the New Riders of the Purple Sage (a song we all associate with our friend Chad Kelly, RIP) when I walked in.

A few songs later they came out with a very nice version of Levon Helm's "Ophelia" (I got a recording of that and emailed it to Paul Clifford back in Kent). Stef invited me up a bit later in the set to play the old favorites: "Cold Rain and Snow", "Sugar Hill", etc. but also a song Jeff sings, "Never Make it Home" (originally by Split Lip Rayfield, I've been told) with Stef really going for it on the musical saw — the equivalent of what Tim Blake's doing with his theremin these days. I'd arrived in a bus from Point, a 'party bus' full of exuberant students who make the trip each week. Their presence in the Ballroom, on top of the regular local crowd, lifted the noise floor to the point that I couldn't really hear what I was doing. But it was good to see/hear everyone. Dale's still guesting on banjo, absolutely bang-on every time, playing that's precise, but super-fluent and comfortable in its groove. His daughter Rachel was also joining in with SJ on fiddle, now part of her own "Back Alley Blossoms" with another Rachel (guitarist) and Laura (upright bass). Laura's friends Anna (she from the wiggly corner of the otherwise rectangular Kansas) and Mackenzie have also got their own thing happening, playing their first tentative, but well-recieved set of old-time standards with two other friends on the eve of Anna's birthday. Sloppy Joe have done a great thing making this weekly space where people can get started performing in public in a really cosy, welcoming, supportive environment. As they often they do, they backed up a silver haired old singer (called Coran? perhaps?) with an idiosyncratic voice, a guitar he'd been playing since he was in the Korean War and a HUGE smile, just to be up there with this lovely bunch of (relatively) young, friendly, and eminently capable musicians.

Thursday I jammed with guitarist friend Dan Miller, as I do most years. He's got set up with a nice mic, audio interface and software, so we've been recording quite a few sessions of free guitar/saz jams in his girlfriend's garage in the late evenings. He's keen to do the editing/processing/collaging, which is nice (it's always me, the compulsive archivist, who does this), and I'm happy with his approach which is to accumulate many, many hours of free playing, and then methodically distill it down to a "diamond", a solid 40 minutes of something truly worthy. So I've been enjoying those sessions, just allowing myself to get lost in the music, feeling no pressure of being recorded.

Friday, Stef came over with some pre-mixes of tracks from the album of hers that she and I started off five years ago with my saz and her guitar-bass-vocals-saw, old American murder ballads mostly, and a few obscurities. She's recently been adding tracks from various people (Gavin's guitar and harmony vocals, some accordion from the accordion player in the young local band Horseshoes and Handgrenades, Rachel R playing fiddle, etc.) What I heard was everything all happening at once, so it's hard to assess, but with the right mixing I think it could be a pretty good record. She's hoping to have it out for June, but I think that might be a bit ambitious, considering how long this thing has been in the pipeline.

The Saturday night was just brilliant — Irene's Garden opening for Reptile Palace Orchestra at a recently established venue called Kristin's Riverwalk. The space is actually really good, the sound was perfect, both bands were on top form. Irene's Garden have such a young spirit about them when they're playing — it's almost like Jenny, Sarah and Wheaty (who were part of the original Stellectrics in the early-mid 80's) haven't really aged. It's clear that they have, visually, but at some subtle level there's a ageless grace about what they're doing. Not just helping to bind together a community of like-minded people in the area, but really moving things forward with their writing and playing and energy.

RPO are now my favourite band from Wisconsin! They're a lovable crew of oddballs, looking like some time-travelling wayfarers from various times and places, fronted by Maggie dressed like what I'd imagine a 1920's Bulgarian dance orchestra vocalist might have looked like. Their accordionst also plays French horn (as I once did — always nice to see them show up in unexpected places), the clarinet/sax player is superb, as is Biff on processed violin, Bill on textural electric guitar and Ed on dombura (all in RPO fezzes). In place of a bass, they have someone skillfully plucking six-string electric cello. Maggie rose to the occasion (a big one from her, she being from this town, known to just about everyone present), filling the very big shoes of Anna Purnell who she replaced. She was singing in five or six languages, convincingly, to my ears (and often in 11/8, or whatever!)

Near the end of the set, after Maggie's highly imaginative storytelling approach to introducing the members of the band, Biff went mental on his electric fiddle during an extravagant, extended rewrite of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" where the fiddling competition involved Irish, Bulgarian, bluegrass and avant-garde styles taken to their absolute limits. Generally I found their interpretations of the Balkan and Eastern stuff works best for them, although they write some interestingly quirky material. The encore started off as an amusing throwaway song about short-term memory loss (trying to remember why you just got up and walked into this room...), and then suddenly, unexpectedly, plunged into the most epic rendition of "Comfortably Numb"! That song's 33 years old now, almost part of a kind of folk repertoire, and everyone got swept up in it, singing, swaying. At first I thought "what?", "what are they doing?" but then I was swept up too...and what a rendition! Graceful clarinet lines, blaring French horn crescendos, Biff shredding on the violin, Maggie fully throwing herself into the vocals. It was more thrilling musically than seeing the Floyd lineup reuntited and playing it for that 2005 "Live 8" thing in Hyde Park (and that was pretty spine-tingling). Everyone was left elated.

A week later, Irenes invited me out to "Mercury" Dave's studio near Rosholt. They'e almost finished their new Interplanetary Love Songs album, and wanted a bit of saz on "Fogg's Plateau", a song that goes back to Stellectrics time. So I'd worked out a part and practiced that. I did a few takes and both I and they were happy with what they got. Then they asked me to try a few takes on "Moment", a song I didn't know half as well. But that went fairly well, and there's probably some usable stuff for that one, too (there was one particularly tricky section — Wheaty really likes his unusual chord progressions).

Beltane morning I cycled down the Wisconsin River in the sunrise, great blue herons flapping through the mist, lots of other wildlife. I played some saz near the Native American mounds near the confluence with the Plover River and then carried on 'round the southern half of the 'Green Circle' bike trail.

Since then it's just been the garage jams with Dan, but that's sustaining me musically. It's nice to have an outlet for free improv playing, as it's often quite folkie or song-oriented music (and often in quite a narrow range of styles) when I'm staying here.

Valley Sessions, February—March 2012

I've just finished editing another couple of months worth of lo-fi improv pieces recorded in the Sarre Penn valley near Canterbury with Miriam, Tom and friends (including Phil and Adam from Lapis Lazuli and Paul from Groanbox):

Listen Here

The last piece (just four seconds) is called "Falling Cat". The Wikipedia Random Article link we got was "1890 in film" and it mentioned one of the first two or three films ever made, just called "Falling Cat". So we had to use that. Tom and Miriam played their interpretation of the title before I could even pick my saz up, and I've since added it to the original film as a soundtrack:

While on the subject of cats on film (I'm not going to get into the habit of posting cute cat videos on this blog, but this one is a bit special!):

Canterbury Soundwaves episode 19

Some of Dave Sinclair's finest work playing live with Caravan, Matching Mole and The Polite Force, plus Egg on the BBC, an early Gong lineup on French TV, Robert Wyatt and the Soft Machine horns playing with the Keith Tippett Group, MC Quasimoto rhyming over an unlikely Gong loop, Lol Coxhill jamming with a bagpiper and a string of Canterbury-influenced sounds from Japan, Italy, Finland and Canada. New sounds from the area too, including Syd Arthur, Zoo For You and Robert Stillman.

Canterbury Soundwaves episode 19

Another flying visit to Exeter

I got to spend three days in Exeter between the Tinariwen weekend in the Bristol area and Sam's wedding in Glastonbury. Tuesday 10th I was jamming with Henry's latest improv project, called Fractal (he on digital drums, John on MIDI guitar and an excellent bass player John recently found called Cliff). Here's my edit of the session:

Listen Here
The next evening it was a Children of the Drone session at St. Mary Arches church. Local guitar innovator Kimwei was around for the first half, and James S's cellist friend Laura played throughout — she's been to the previous couple of sessions and it's as if she's been Droning for years. James S did his usual Kaoss Pad madness, James T read some existentially challenging poetry, Keith and I made our usual Droney string sounds, Lucy added some alto sax and percussion. Not one of the most memorable of COTD sessions, but still a nice social occasion, and, as usual, when I went back through the the recordings, a considerable amount of it is pleasingly listenable.

Listen Here
James S also supplied me with his recordings of the February and March sessions which I missed, my edits of which can be found here and here.

live music back(b)log

Monday 2nd April, Lapis Lazuli at The Black Griffin, Canterbury An amazingly clean sound for a large band (with a couple of multi-instrumentalists), they had the place packed out and rocking to a 2.5 hour set (was it really that long?) of intricate twisty-turning genre-defying musical journeying. The new tango number was a treat to hear. They were set to be recording their entire repertoire (a properly 'prog' triple CD set!) shortly thereafter, perhaps that's already happened (Neil has the equipment and the knowledge to do this at their bungalow HQ on the Old Dover Road). Dan, the relatively new guitarist, has learned the set inside-out, played flawless throughout and brought some great guitar textures in the mix. But that night I found myself most enjoying the sections where they brought things right down and there were just, say, Dave's bamboo flute, Phil's accordion, guitar washes and Adam playing cymbals...they do that stuff very well indeed and hopefully will explore that quieter end of things more (as much as I love to hear them rocking out).


Wednesday 4th April, Spiro at The Magpie's Nest, the monthly "new folk/old folk/no folk" club upstairs at The Old Queen's Head in Islington. A bit of a reunion of old musial friends (Joel, Jo, Jim, Andy Bard), an extraordinary, sustained outpouring of musical joy from the band, an upward helix of energy in the space between band and audience, the sense of an almost tangible goodness being added to the Universe via four mutually attuned nervous systems interfacing with acoustic instruments. Something happened which I've only ever felt at one other concert (that was Orchestra Baobab) — the music sort of prising open my heart chakra, almost a physiological thing going on, really quite profoundly moving.

I saw Jane the other day, at Donga Sam's wedding (her partner Mike was playing bagpipes alongside his employer, Jon Swaine, when Sam made her entrance at Wells Town Hall), and apparently the Islington gig was an extraordinary one for them too, the highlight of their two week tour promoting Kaleidophonica.

Here's two-and-a-half minutes of that gig:



Thom from Zoo For You and Arlet (who acknowledge Spiro as their primary influence) was up there too. We got talking between sets and I was amazed to find out that his PhD on eco-poetics is being supervised by Jonathan Bate who wrote The Song of the Earth, a book I read with Vicky seven or eight years ago, one which made quite an impression on us both. Oh, and hurdy-gurdy hero Cliff Stapleton opened the evening with a surprisingly avant-garde solo set, mixing in weird improv sections with some recognisable tunes, including his "Dream Waltz".

Thanks to the relatively new high speed train from St. Pancras, it's now possible to go to gigs in London and get the last train back to Canterbury without missing anything or rushing. One of my last attempts at seeing a gig in London involved having to leave in the middle of the second song of a set by Matt Valentine and Erika Elder's Golden Road. Bummer. But no more.


24 February 2012, Rae and The Boot Lagoon at The Farmhouse, Canterbury Rae were magnificent, played several new songs, very much in the direction I've been hoping they'd go in since recording Era. This was the first time I'd seen them with Lorenzo (the sax player) present, the previous two times Owen from Zoo and Raven from Syd Arthur were standing in. His playing was a lot wilder and freer than Era had led me to expect, so that added to my growing enthusiasm for this crew. Leonie's singing continues to leave everyone stunned (Miriam, who's an extremely capable jazz vocalist, was standing at the front looking awestruck). The Boot then had the proactive Canterbury youth culture raving in 7's and 11's, quite something to behold, the mass movement in the audience. It's not the beard-stroking nerdy prog crowd that they attract — this kind of ambitious approach to writing and playing has a completely different meaning to their group of peers, and people come out to dance...it's as physical as it is cerebral, so quite an accomplishment on their part for bridging that gap. They even managed to slip a Rae tune into their set (not sure which one it was) and make it sound like one of their own.


9th March 2012, Leonie Evans and Nuru Kane at St. Mary's Church, Sandwich Another wondr'ous event gifted to the people of East Kent by via tireless efforts of the Smugglers collective. Nuru Kane had a four-piece band, all switching instruments a lot — a Morrocan mostly playing percussion, another African who played kora, percussion, gimbri, a French electric guitarist who also played an African stringed thing I didn't recognise and Nuru himself playing acoustic guitar and gimbri. Once the others had settled in on stage, he came out in Sun Ra/Lee Perry/George Clinton mode, huge ridiculous shades and a very long knitted orange pixie/festival hat tied up in a bundle on is head. They've got a pan-African sound, elements of Gnawa percussion, what sounded to me like Malian and Zimbabwean music, all wrapped up in Nuru K's particular groove. I'm sure a bit of that global reggae vibe (the Bob-Marley-playing-wherever-you-go-on-the-planet effect) has slipped in there too. At one point all four players were standing next to each other in a line for a minute or two, beaming out at us while effortlessly producing a super-tight, propulsive, minimal groove that made me think of a kind of African Kraftwerk (Trans-Africa Express?) — amazing! St. Mary's is an amazing old, very large, church space, hasn't even been deconsecrated, but usually used as an arts centre. The sound in there is OK, and a load of us dancing in a peaceful and ecstatic communion to this beautiful earthy-yet-spiritual music felt like exactly what should be going on in there. A lot of St. Mary's churches around Britain were built on top of sacred sites dedicated to the Great Mother Goddess, so big respect to Smugglers for their particular extension of local culture which is allowing such things to happen in an inclusive, unthreatening, unproblematic way.

Poggy and James who were once part of Cocos Lovers (now the basis of The Humble Oats) got invited up on stage to add some vocals, flute and congas as things loosened up towards the end of the night.

Here's Nuru Kane at the Astor in Deal a year earlier, same orange pixie hat, smaller band...




...and here's Leonie a couple of days later (15/03/12) at a lower-key Smugglers event in Westgate-on-Sea, backed up by the Hatton brothers (Dave who's in Cocos and James who used to be), singing a new one called "Foreign Lands" which she played with Rae at the Farmhouse (similarly getting us to sing the melodic line repeatedly throughout)...





Thursday 29th March, 2012, Spock at The Veg Box Cafe Spock are the basically the current line-up of the-quartet but with Matt Wright on laptop and turntable rather than Jack Hues on guitar. So that's Mark Holub on drums and Liran Donin on bass (the rhythm section from Led Bib (!)), and Sam Bailey on piano, plus Robert Stillman guesting on tenor sax — a formidable band. And this is another free Free Range event up at the cafe on a Thursday evening. Attendances have been pretty good, but not always to capacity, which I find hard to believe considering the current appetite for challenging and unusual music in Canterbury these days.





The week after was a Dada film and poetry evening with Andy Birtwhistle's spirited readings of nonsensical(?) tone poems by Hugo Ball and Tristan Tzara, as well as Sam and Robert Stillman improvising to films by Duchamp and others. There was one particularly discomforting post-Dada film made in the 1950s which had an equally tense, claustrophobic soundtrack, but Sam played along with that too, to tremendous effect.


Friday 30th March, 2012, Cocos Lovers at The Farmhouse, Canterbury I arrived late and so missed sets by Will Varley and Famous James and the Monsters.  Cocos were up against a pretty dreadful PA situation with feedback, vocal mics repeatedly cutting out (all vocals lost for most of one song)...and yet they stayed remarkably calm and cheerful throughout.  It was a boisterous Saturday night crowd, the most striking example yet of a dedicated local following.  A sensitive new percussionist (Hans?) has brought the lineup back to seven — this was his first or second gig with them, I think, but already very much attuned to the sound.  They tried a couple of gentler new songs which relied heavily on vocal harmonies, but these were a bit lost in the noisy, sweaty atmosphere.  The highlight was Billy swapping his bass for Will's guitar singing his song "Barcelona" like a man possessed, his glasses even flying off his face at the peak of the song.

Saturday 7th April, Tinariwen at Colston Hall, Bristol Despite what everyone expected, they took the seats up for this one so Melski and I were very happy when we arrived to see that. Tinariwen were a five-piece that night. They announced something in French at the end, the general upshot of which seemed to be that one or more band members were unable to be present because of immigration related situations. But there was no sense whatsoever that anything was missing. Two guitars (both electric in most cases, sometimes one acoustic), a bass (played with gusto!) and a djembe/calabash player, plus five voices (one singer was also dancing thoughout, presumably in traditional Tuareg style) produced a huge sound, carried on mighty grooves (some of which the Bristol crowd found easier to dance to than others), an extremely enthusiastic audience. Alice, a Sondryfolk artist-in-residence I worked with recently, spotted me from across the hall, joined us for some rather silly dancing (Melsk was in particularly silly and irreverent mood).

The night before was full moon, found me around a rather smoky fire with Mel and friends in her garden in Dursley. She was singing raunchy blues and frivolous crooney stuff — that's the mood she's in at the moment. My saz struggled to stay in tune, but after a bit too much wine it didn't matter particularly...we got into some folkdance tunes like "Ambee Dagez" on saz and chalumeau, then the old folk songs ("Lovely Joan", "The Blacksmith", "Katie Cruel", "Spancil Hill", "She Moved Through the Fayre"), with just the saz and Mel singing, until the moon finally came out from behind the clouds.


Saturday 14th April, Dragsonsfly played at aformentioned Sam and Laurie's wedding reception (on the side of beautiful, overlooked Chalice Hill) the same line-up they've had for a while, augmented by Archie, the teenage son of Duncan the hurdy-gurdy and flute player. He was playing melodion and a little bit of guitar — turns out that he and two teenage friends recently won some BBC Radio Folk award, they're all virtuosos...so an inter-generational Dragonsfly playing for an intergenerational French-and-Breton dance crowd. Afterwards, Carl the DJ played a set of gypsy-jazz-inflected electronica, gradually giving way to the tried-and-tested disco and Motown classics. Stef, Penni, Stevie, Sunny, Jim, Joel, Jonno and others got an acoustic dance set together after that, loud enough not to need a slightly innebriated saz player, so I enjoyed that from a distance, along with a number of fascinating late-night conversations with old friends and strangers. The next day a lot of us reconvened at Jonno's house near Baltonsborough for a jam and feast of wedding leftovers before I got whisked away to a train back to Kent.

Muskie Studio jam with Matt T and Paul C

Unfortunately there's no time for blogging these days, so I have a backlog of incredible live music experiences to document at some point (probably in reduced form): Nuru Kane, Rae, Spock, Spiro, Tinariwen...

For now, here's a little jam recorded out at Paul Clifford's little caravan studio near Ash while Matt was down visiting and working on the illustrations for Volume 3 of our trilogy (the main reason why blogging has been more-or-less suspended for the time being):


Listen Here

Canterbury Soundwaves episode 18

A tribute to bass legend Hugh Hopper (1945—2009), from teenage home recordings via the Daevid Allen Trio and Wilde Flowers to Soft Machine, Isotope, Gilgamesh, Soft Heap, Soft Head and beyond. Featuring Hopper classics and obscurities, as well as something from one of his favourite albums, covers of his compositions (even a hiphop beat!), numerous collaborations, an exploration of his involvement in the genesis of tape looping in the early 60's, interview clips, a rare chance to hear Hugh singing(!) and the current sounds being made with his famous Fender Jazz bass (still resident in the Canterbury area).

Canterbury Soundwaves episode 18

COTD show up in a motorcycle blog

Funny old world. David Blasco from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, writer of a blog on Royal Enfield motorcycles, had it brought to his attention that Children of the Drone's 10th anniversary session last summer featured a brief cameo from James S's Enfield. As a result he seems to have become a COTD fan, and has written a really enthusiastic piece about that session.

another worthy Random Article session

Random Article improvisations, 7th March 2012

Most of this one survived the editing process, so I've uploaded it to its own collection. This was the first time Paul brought his guitar (rather than just his array of percussion), and we instantly clicked.

Listen Here

Paul — acoustic guitar, assorted percussion, voice
Miriam — violin, voice
me — saz

several weeks of Free Range

Thursday nights remain the highlight of the week here in Canterbury, thanks to Sam Bailey's efforts with the Free Range series up in the Veg Box Cafe. I've been too busy to keep up with detailed musical blogging, but here's a roundup of what's been going on there the last few weeks:

February 16th saw a fascinating collision between the Bedford Handbell Ensemble (in matching waistcoats) and a couple of members of the Squib-Box collective improvising with Sam. The BHE is led by Philip Bedford, Sam's landlord, and a classic example of a particular kind of refined, understated English eccentric. He took us through the history of handbell ringing (church bell ringers rather being down the pub than in draughty stone bell towers, it turns out!), leading his players through several centuries of handbell music. The written musical notation, he pointed out to us, resembles knitting patterns ("we play knitting patterns", he explained, holding up an example for us to see).

In between their pieces, Tom (bass clarinet), Alan (highly unconventional electric guitar) and Sam (piano) "responded" improvisationally to the bellringing. There was a wonderful moment near the end of the evening (not captured on this recording, sadly) where, while the trio were responding to a 14th(?) century French melody the handbells had played, Mr. Bedford unexpectedly brought his ensemble back in, in half-time, beautifully. One of those moments you couldn't plan.



There was also a piano and bass clarinet set that evening:




February 23rd involved Sam plus a rhythm section (whose names I missed) improvising to some short films by Ben Rowley. These were inspired by CCTV footage, shot at night from a lamppost on a Canterbury streetcorner. The fleeting glimpses of strangers passing by (speeded up, slowed down, cut up, etc.) were strangely moving, at times very funny, at times deeply poignant. Unfortunately the music didn't get recorded, but Sam's solo piano set which started the evening did:




March 1st I missed, as Alice, the first in a Sondryfolk series of artists in residence who I'll be looking after, had arrived that evening. I wasn't sure if it would be her cup of tea, so didn't suggest going. It later transpired that she really likes Polar Bear, so she may well have at least liked this piano and laptop set (but apparently the main set didn't work so well that evening):




March 8th was a triumph! This was the second public performance of the ZONE poetry collective's piece Rote-Thru, a sort of collision of two poems and a jazz quartet (in fact The Quartet, or 'the-quartet', depending on typographical preference). I caught the first of these last year up in The Ballroom (once Orange Street Music Club) and was really disappointed, since there was so much potential in the piece, but the poets voices weren't properly miked (and the acoustics up there are pretty awful anyway). You can read about that here. This time we had a fully attentive audience, rather than the Ballroom's background chatter, everything perfectly balanced, and a brilliant performance by both poets (David Herd and Simon Smith) and jazzers. The bit where Marcie (from the Joni Mitchell song) "checks in" to the poem was particularly entertaining this time. But that's just one easily-recoverable memory of the kaleidoscopic sound/word experience that is Rote-Thru.



the-quartet also played a couple of pieces with Robert Stillman guesting on tenor sax (I had no idea he played wind instruments):




March 15th: Aidan Shephard and Frances Knight on accordions. This is Aidan who put together Arlet (and writes all their music), and Frances Knight the local jazz pianist who's recorded with Hugh and Brian Hopper, Elton Dean and others. This started off with Frances at the piano, improvising, joined a few minutes later by Sam (four hands on the keyboard), and then Aidan a few minutes later playing the strings inside the piano with one hand and bass notes on the other. They switched positions at one point and the piece was captivating from beginning to end. Sam later told me that despite knowing both of them for years (he used to teach Aidan), they'd never played togeter before. You'd never have guessed this.



Unfortunately the rest of the evening doesn't appear to have been recorded. A shame, as I was very tired that evening and would like to hear it again with fresh ears. Frances (accordion, bandonéon) and Aidan (accordion, piano) played a set of duets accompanied by an accomplished jazzy drummer called Vince. There were a few moments when Aidan was improvising alone on accordion, jamming with the drums and it had the same kind of exploratory freedom as some of the late period Coltrane just-sax-and-drums sessions — that's a big claim, I know, but it was really thrilling stuff.

I started to wonder if the drummer might be Vince Clark, who showed up on my most recent Canterbury Soundwaves podcast in a short-lived mid-70's local band called The Polite Force, a band which also involved former Wilde Flowers Graham Flight and Dave Sinclair (the former later to lead local institution The Happy Accidents, the latter having left Caravan for the second time) plus guitarist Mark Hewins and a Cameroonian maths student called Max Metto on sax. He seemed about the right age and style of drummer. Aidan later confirmed that it was indeed he. And I've gone on to discover that Frances and he recorded an album of improvisations with Hugh Hopper and Elton Dean called Mind in the Trees (1998) — I must track down a copy...

* * *

Sam also mentioned that his "Scratch Orchestra" (improvising ensemble made up of CCCU music students) were going to be playing at the opening of an exhibition down at the Sidney Cooper Gallery the next evening, so I went along to that too. The students first played a couple of ensemble pieces, then improvised to spontaneously selected artworks in pre-selected duos, and finally played a long, very free, interpretation of Nick Drake's "Black-Eyed Dog" (my favourite!) with massively processed vocals. That was a nice surprise. Then on to an evening of experimental/existential puppetry up at the Gulbenkian Theatre... Is it possible to have too much culture? It's certainly getting harder to keep up with this blogging.

Valley Sessions, January 2011

More rough recordings of weekly improv sessions from the Random Article collective (Miriam, Tom and I, plus various guests). January saw involvement from our Canadian percussionist friend Paul Clifford (Groanbox, etc.) plus Phil and Adam (Lapis Lazuli, etc.)

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Canterbury Soundwaves episode 17

Featuring an interview with guitarist Mark Hewins about his various collaborative work with Elton Dean, Pip Pyle, Hugh Hopper, John Greaves, the Miller brothers, the Sinclair cousins, Gong, Lol Coxhill, Lady June, etc., as well as his innovative guitar styles. Also, early B-sides from both Kevin Ayers and Gong, some Soft Heap, and more Canterbury-sourced hiphop (this time, Wu-Tang's Ghostface Killah spitting over a '68 Softs loop!)

Canterbury Soundwaves episode 17

More videos from Normandy

Sue Cross over in Normandy keeps making these lovely videos with soundtrack music from the Rainy Night in the Bell Tent tape:





...and this one uses a tune recorded from a session out on the terrace of the Cove Inn at Cadgwith on the Lizard Peninsula in summer '98:

second jam with Mark Hewins, 27/02/12

Mark with Elton Dean, Pip Pyle and Hugh Hopper, early-mid 90's

Four saz and guitar improvisations recorded at Mark's place in Margate after I recorded an interview with him for the next Canterbury Soundwaves podcast episode:

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ZONE at Free Range

Another Free Range session up at the Veg Box Cafe last Thursday (11/02/12). This was one of the "ZONE" nights, involving parts of said poetry collective (linked with Kent University's Centre for Modern Poetry). This is the collective which collaborated with the-quartet on that collaborative poetry/jazz piece at The Ballroom last year (I'm glad to hear they'll be doing that again, hopefully with the poets a bit more audible this time).

We got another brief but excellent set from Sam Bailey, followed by a reading by Kelvin Corcoran, one of the ZONE poets.

His first poem was based on imagery from old folk ballads, but managed to be really fresh and humorous. Sam accompanied on the piano with the melody from "Barbara Allen". This was followed by the remarkable "Words Through a Hole Where Once There Was a Chimpanzee's Face", a lengthy account of the poet's recovery from a stroke (which involved a gifted book from a second-hand shop in Harlech, wherein a picture of some chipanzees had one of the faces cut out). This involved quite a lot of music imagery — the line "John Coltrane bends time, and Bach straightens it out again" particularly struck me. He finished with a series of short poems about various trips he's undertaken since the stroke, the first being to the Arctic Circle(!) in February(!). There was a wonderful bit about Glen Gould dragging a piano to the North Pole...


The most enjoyable poetry reading I've been to in years. And someone else blogged about this before I did!

The evening ended with a brief sound collage created live by a young Christchurch sound artist called Reed (I think) based on recordings he'd made of the evenings two sets.

first jam with Mark Hewins

I'm going to be interviewing Mark Hewins for my Canterbury Soundwaves podcast soon (he lives in East Kent and has played and recorded variously with Richard and Dave Sinclair, Hugh Hopper, Phil and Steven Miller, Lol Coxhill, Elton Dean, Pip Pyle, John Greaves, Gong, Soft Heap and others of the Canterbury school. He's based down in Margate where he operates a studio, and recently invited me down for a jam (he's also a friend of Paul Clifford, the Canadian percussionist and studio engineer who's been jamming with our little Random Article collective some weeks). So I headed out there on Friday evening.

My first sight on exiting the railway station was the high-rise block that dominates Margate's skyline. During the incredible "Hawklords" concert tribute to Robert Calvert in Herne Bay a couple of years ago (on the 20th anniversary of his death), just before they played a mighty version of "High Rise", Nik Turner mentioned that Bob had lived there with his parents and that it had inspired the song. That one has been rattling around in my head these last few days (see a couple of posts down).


Mark got his twelve-string acousic out and we locked into each other's playing pretty quickly. Promising. We both hope to do this more often. I recorded most of this:

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particularly nice Random Article session

Just me and Miriam representing Random Article this last Wednesday evening, some lovely saz/violin and saz/vocal improv. She's well practiced at the moment, just back from a two week residency up at the Battersea Arts Centre, working with her friends from the Little Bulb Theatre company who are developing an experimental musical-theatre piece based on a combination of the myth of Orpheus in the Underworld and the life and music of Django Reinhardt (should be interesting!). Dom, who appeared to me in a meadow one midsummer as Puck (you just have to read the story) is playing Django!

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Hawkbinge

Having a lot of tedious typographical/editing work to deal with has somehow put me in a bit of a stupid/primal rock mood lately, so I've been carefully revisiting the Hawkwind catalogue thanks to the very helpful Grooveshark. Apart from the obvious early classics, here's some of what's been consequently rockin' my world and affecting my brainchemisty:

Canterbury Soundwaves episode 16

It's the Hendrix episode, looking at the Soft Machine/Jimi Hendrix Experience alliance of 1967—68, including studio jams involving Robert Wyatt playing drums for Hendrix and Hendrix playing bass for Wyatt, memories of Jimi from Ayers, Hopper and Wyatt, and a staggeringly wonderful (although rather hissy) live set from the Soft Machine's support tour of the USA with the Experience. A lot more Wyatt vocals elsewhere too (to make up for the relative lack last time): impersonating John Lennon (successfully), singing anagrams and palindromes for John Greaves' Kew. Rhone. project, adding to an intriguing mix of Annie Whitehead's trombone and electronics, and rabble-rousing with 80's politico-jazzband The Happy End. Also, National Health's only TV appearance, Hatfield's only New York appearance, Steve Miller's only Caravan album, Kevin Ayers back in Hyde Park making more joyful noise (summer 1974 this time) and a very squelchy, (Tim) Blakean slice of live Gong from 1973.

Canterbury Soundwaves episode 16