spontaneous music ensemble c/d, s/d

Anyway, quickfire SME record analyses:

Challenge (Eyemark, 1966; recently reissued on Emanem) - Stevens, Watts, Rutherford & Wheeler. Jeff Clyne plays bass on some tracks; an Australian chap called Bruce Cale plays bass on others (some discographers jumped the gun and assumed that the latter was JOHN Cale - which would have been both logical and interesting; but no Bruce Cale is a different fellow altogether). Surprisingly straightforward; very much derived from George Russell musically, but you can tell where they're going (cf. Oxley's Baptised Traveller) (7)

Emanem also recently put out some hitherto unheard live recordings from '66-7 with the above line-up, but with Barry Guy on bass, and both Bailey & Parker involved. Interesting historically but not particularly great musically; Bailey & Guy you can hardly hear; Parker does disappointingly little; Watts is a bit hammy; Rutherford walks away with the record (4)

Karyobin you already know about - the other end of the prism to Machine Gun (even though Parker was on both). Larkin likened it to Hungarian cartoon music, which when you think about it isn't a bad assessment (7). Same line-up (Stevens, Parker, Bailey, Wheeler, Dave Holland) appears on "So, What Do You Think?" (Tangent, 1973; not yet released on CD, which is a shame 'cos I think it's better) (8)

"Summer 1967" (Emanem) - Stevens, Watts & guest bassist Peter Kowald at the 2Is coffee bar (fact!). Excellent (8)

"Double Trio" (Island, 1967; white label only) - if you see this, then GET IT - Rashied Ali & Stevens, Watts & Parker, Kowald & Holland. Or better still, petition Universal Music to release the effing thing (9).

"Oliv" (Marmalade, 1968). Another masterpiece awaiting reissue on CD (God knows when) - two side-long versions of the same basic piece; one a "Sustained Piece" with a large-ish ensemble featuring Stevens, Watts, Bailey, Peter & Pepi Lemer, Maggie & Carolann Nicols, Wheeler & Johnny Dyani. Surprisingly straightforward, though the choral drones are genuinely unsettling. Side 2 has just Maggie Nicols on vocals, Watts on soprano, Stevens on his "small kit" and Dyani on bass. This is the "Click Piece"; pointillistic and displaying faultless listening techniques from all concerned. The final two minutes are heart-stopping minimalism (9)

The Source - From And Towards (Tangent, 1970). Stevens (dr); Wheeler (tp/fl-h); Chris Pyne and Bob Norden (tmbs - Norden was a visiting American, on tour with Wild Bill Davison!!), Watts, Ray Warleigh & Brian Smith (sxs); Mick Pyne (pno); Ron Mathewson & Marcio Mattos (bs). As can be gleaned from the line-up, prob the nearest the SME ever got to "jazz" and it's a brilliant post-"Ascension" rave-up, but with an infinitely calmer flow at its centre. A concept album about childbirth; file next to Howie B's "Music for Babies." Needs reissuing! (9)

Then there was the quartet with Julie Tippetts, Watts & Ron Herman on bass - Birds Of A Feather & One, Two, Albert Ayler (both were briefly available on Affinity Records in the early '80s) - spacious and gorgeous, my favourite line-up (both 9). Also get "SME Big Band & Quartet Live" (Vinyl Records, 1980 - the orig vinyl issue) a recording of a 1971 gig which on one side has a 21-piece SME doing a tribute to the then recently-deceased Ayler ("Let's Sing For Him") - including four drummers (Stevens, John Marshall, Laurie Allan & Keith Bailey), two pianists (Lemer & Pyne) and five singers (Tippetts, Lemer, both Nicholses, Norma Winstone). The other side has the Tippetts/Watts/Herman quartet (9)

Most of the rest of the key SME stuff is available on Emanem; too much to go into here, but both Bobby Bradford records are good (7 each), and the Smith/Coombes/Wood (and later Butcher) configurations are OK if you like that sort of thing (ratings dependent on your liking for ultra-pointillistic acoustics). There are a couple of records with large workshop ensembles; "For You To Share" pitches Stevens & Watts against an unspecified 20-or-so-piece ensemble, less successfully than on, say, Eddie Prevost's "Silver Pyramid," (5) though "SME + = SMO" (8) is a marked improvement. Among the "amateur" participants on the latter is one Stephen Luscombe on violin, later to become an '80s pop star as one half of Blancmange.

Sadly, the best SME performance I ever heard/saw was never captured on tape; the 1979 gig at the Camden Jazz Festival with Stevens & Phil Collins on drums, John Martyn & Richard Thompson on guitars, Coxhill, Parker, Elton Dean, Watts, Rutherford, etc. etc.

Or there's also the "John Stevens Augmented Quintet" live at the Third Eye Centre, Glasgow, April 1980, with Watts, Dean, Harry Beckett, Kowald, and, erm, me on piano (and I still have the tape of it!) ;-) (100 out of 10, of course).

yes I was. and so was andrew L but we didn't we meet. were you there?

at the left of the stage there were spring heel jack (one was doing electronics, the other had a guitar). In the middle there was parker, smith and percussionist. to the right you had jason pierce and bass player (his strings were amplified).

the concert was in three parts: the first started with this beautiful five minute solo by Smith and then the band started w/parker on tenor at first. I'm afraid that jason pierce got lost. I was at his side of the stage, and standing pretty close and I couldn't hear what he was doing for this whole section (his fact was looking toward the amps so I couldn't even see his guitar or anything but he was using his pedal but still couldn't hear). the first part was interesting in bits only, the best of which was when parker switched to soprano and was doing circular breathing against some 'ambient' sounds from the elctronics guy.

But then there was disappointment: parker and smith dropped off (they hid behing the stage, i saw smith and parker's crouch down behind the desk (that was funny, why didn't they just leave the stage for a bit)...but that was when the guitarist from spring and the percussionist did a duo. I like the percussion but the guitarist was crap, he was just playing effects and not much else I felt.

Smith and parker came back and it was a good end to that.

The key moment was when pierce then started playing this little repeating twangy repeating solo and smith was trying to play off against that (I was on the edge of my seat at that point really). At first i thought he was stuttering...trying to figure out what to do and then he came with the goods really. Parker, saunders and edwards came in (those three had a especially good understanding and not surprising since they are part of the scene), and the guitarist from heel jack wasn't doing much (just palying noises but not many) and the electronics just adding some texture to the mass of sound.

At the end smith actually quickly told us abt that he just went to mecca (which is why his head was shaved). I think he said his playing came from some of his experiences there and that he hoped he's be back (the war?).

They all came back and they all did a 'heavy' (beautiful build up really good) number at the end (some ppl left after the second part prob bcz they thought it was over).

so overall a v good night.

and a nice walk along the strand on a lovely evening w/andrew L + his friend.

hehe...thanks for the brilliant post there. and lets hope the above is issued someday.

Pierce seemed more tentative than at the previous improv bash w/ Bennink, Parker, Shipp etc. - I kept waiting for him to tease some gd feedback out of that amp he was leaning over, but it never really happened, tho' that twangy repeating guitar motif he played was pure Spacemen 3 - I just wish he'd been a bit more 'forward' (and the other guitarist a bit more 'retiring').

Aside from admiring the power/stamina of Smith's sound, and the way he switched effortlessly between total free playing and obviously more structured melodic passages, I also thought Evan Parker was on really cracking form last night - that soprano solo in the first half was mesmerising, and totally defined for me the unique pleasures of improv performance - beauty arising out of chaos and cacophony, a master musician totally seizing the moment and making the sound/space his own. Experience - you might call it 'chops', even - counts for something!

Sorry you missed it, Marcello.

Face to Face is just amazing! Never loud or anything but incredibly intense, just drums and sax. And the parts where Stevens play horns I think really tell how tight those guys were.

Recently ordered the Quintessence 2 disc comp, really looking forward to hearing that playing in a bigger group. But is Karyobin out of print? Haven't seen it anywhere.

Reissued on CD in the early nineties but that is also now long out of print.

(n.b.: Paul Rutherford RIP, since I haven't noticed it mentioned elsewhere on ILM).

RIP Paul Rutherford from Iskra 1903

I've seen that John Stevens Away got 3 lps reissued as a 2cd set by BGO last year. I'm not seeing much online about them. So is anybody familiar with them?

The band got a brief mention in the SME primer that's in the current Wire but only in passing as the section was more about the band Amalgam who converged heavily with Away & it looks like the first Away lp was recorded at a gig where they had been advertised as Amalgam.
Do like that Innovation set by Amalgam which somebody upped to demonoid a few days ago. Pretty similar to Sun ra from later in the decade I think.

I had never even heard of this lot till recently. Frameworks, Withdrawal, Face To Face and Karyobin are all seriously good shit.