Wednesday, 25 May 2016
Excellent Dalston Sound review of Cynosure (HFHCD018) by Trevor Watts String Ensemble.
Here's the link: https://dalstonsound.wordpress.com/2016/03/15/trevor-watts-string-ensemble-cynosure/
Cynosure - Trevor Watts String Ensemble - review by Daniel Spicer in The Wire June 2016 issue
Many thanks to Daniel Spicer for this review:
'To anyone who knew Trevor Watts principally as a pioneer of free improvisation and co-founder, in 1965, of The Spontaneous Music Ensemble, the saxophonist's Moire Music Ensemble must have seemed like a radical stylistic leap when it first blazed forth in 1982 as a horn-heavy tentet combining dense improvisation with African rhythms and minimalist compositional strategies. Yet, for more than a decade, he'd already been demonstrating that he was free enough to break out of the non-idiomatic idiom, through his lesser known unit, Amalgam.
That trio's 1969 debut Prayer for Peace roved from sparse, Ayler-esque lament to hard-swinging be-bop powered by drummer John Stevens and bassist Jeff Clyne. By the end of the 1970s, Amalgam had moved into muscular but loosely rolling jazz rock, pushed on by the relentless energy of drummer Liam Genockey and electric bassist Colin McKenzie (both of whom went on to form the rhythmic backbone of Moire Music).
These recordings from 1976, the only existing evidence of Watts' short-lived String Ensemble, are a further link in the chain. With the core of Watts, Genockey and McKenzie augmented by violin, cello, double bass and two electric guitars, Moire Music's driving rhythmic imperative is already in full effect, providing a canvas for sprawling yet intricate group improvisation. 'Another Time' kicks off with a thumping highlife backbeat before spiralling into slippery, harmolodic free funk prefiguring Ronald Shannon Jackson's Decoding Society, with spidery twin guitars weaving around Watts' bobbing alto. 'No Waiting' piles up disconnected melodic fragments, sloppily coalescing into a stilted polyrhythmic framework over which Watts blurts soaring bursts and leaps on soprano. And 'Chip' is a furiously racing fusion jam with Steve Donachie's violin achieving Mahavishnoid levels of intensity.
Released on the Ogun label in 1978, this session's relative obscurity owes much to its rough and raw sound quality. The original tracks are from rehearsals, held in a London squat and captured by Watts on cassette tape, with three slightly better quality, previously unissued live performances included here. Watts evidently felt the music was vital enough to deserve documentation by whatever rudimentary means were available to him at the time. He was damn right, too.
'To anyone who knew Trevor Watts principally as a pioneer of free improvisation and co-founder, in 1965, of The Spontaneous Music Ensemble, the saxophonist's Moire Music Ensemble must have seemed like a radical stylistic leap when it first blazed forth in 1982 as a horn-heavy tentet combining dense improvisation with African rhythms and minimalist compositional strategies. Yet, for more than a decade, he'd already been demonstrating that he was free enough to break out of the non-idiomatic idiom, through his lesser known unit, Amalgam.
That trio's 1969 debut Prayer for Peace roved from sparse, Ayler-esque lament to hard-swinging be-bop powered by drummer John Stevens and bassist Jeff Clyne. By the end of the 1970s, Amalgam had moved into muscular but loosely rolling jazz rock, pushed on by the relentless energy of drummer Liam Genockey and electric bassist Colin McKenzie (both of whom went on to form the rhythmic backbone of Moire Music).
These recordings from 1976, the only existing evidence of Watts' short-lived String Ensemble, are a further link in the chain. With the core of Watts, Genockey and McKenzie augmented by violin, cello, double bass and two electric guitars, Moire Music's driving rhythmic imperative is already in full effect, providing a canvas for sprawling yet intricate group improvisation. 'Another Time' kicks off with a thumping highlife backbeat before spiralling into slippery, harmolodic free funk prefiguring Ronald Shannon Jackson's Decoding Society, with spidery twin guitars weaving around Watts' bobbing alto. 'No Waiting' piles up disconnected melodic fragments, sloppily coalescing into a stilted polyrhythmic framework over which Watts blurts soaring bursts and leaps on soprano. And 'Chip' is a furiously racing fusion jam with Steve Donachie's violin achieving Mahavishnoid levels of intensity.
Released on the Ogun label in 1978, this session's relative obscurity owes much to its rough and raw sound quality. The original tracks are from rehearsals, held in a London squat and captured by Watts on cassette tape, with three slightly better quality, previously unissued live performances included here. Watts evidently felt the music was vital enough to deserve documentation by whatever rudimentary means were available to him at the time. He was damn right, too.
Cynosure - Trevor Watts String Ensemble - 4 star review on R2 magazine May/June 2016 issue
Thanks to Trevor Hodgett for this excellent review: ' Cynosure? A person who is the centre of admiration. Well, alto and soprano saxophonist Trevor Watts is certainly that for he has been one of the most compelling figures in British jazz since the 1960s, when he co-founded the bracingly abstract Spontaneous Music Ensemble before, in the 1980s and beyond, leading the African music-influenced Moire Music.
Cynosure was recorded in 1976 and originally issued by Ogun in 1978. On tracks like 'Another Time' and 'Chip' the band, an octet, plays with raging power, with the musical emphasis being on the ensemble, on collective improvisation. Watts' colleagues are all technically formidable and fearless sounding improvisers (the drummer, some might be surprised to note, is long-time Steeleye Span member Liam Genockey) and after playing the album some listeners might find themselves exhausted by the unceasing intensity and ferocity of the music - but equally they are likely to find themselves strangely exhilarated by the adventurousness of the playing.
The label's motto is 'music that deserves to be out there' and the music on Cynosure, including the three live bonus tracks added to the reissue, is, I'm happy to say, out there in more ways than one.
Cynosure was recorded in 1976 and originally issued by Ogun in 1978. On tracks like 'Another Time' and 'Chip' the band, an octet, plays with raging power, with the musical emphasis being on the ensemble, on collective improvisation. Watts' colleagues are all technically formidable and fearless sounding improvisers (the drummer, some might be surprised to note, is long-time Steeleye Span member Liam Genockey) and after playing the album some listeners might find themselves exhausted by the unceasing intensity and ferocity of the music - but equally they are likely to find themselves strangely exhilarated by the adventurousness of the playing.
The label's motto is 'music that deserves to be out there' and the music on Cynosure, including the three live bonus tracks added to the reissue, is, I'm happy to say, out there in more ways than one.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)