A new set is now up on the site! Duo with Johnny Hunter from BRÅK last November. Possibly our first duo set? Hopefully not the last anyway. It’s available as a name your price download, with the income split between Johnny and me as per usual. Check it out:
Johnny has also made an extract available in video form:
The lovely Vonnegut Collective have swung into action during the lockdown with their ‘Mindful Miniatures’ project, and I was very happy to be asked to contribute a track. For the project, participants take a guided audio walk and then respond with a piece of text, an image, a video etc. These are then passed on to artists for us to respond in turn with some music and sound. A nice process! I took the opportunity to experiment with multi-tracking the homemade percussion instruments I’ve been making, as well as blowing on a piece of plastic pipe from the beer shop with a sax mouthpiece (of course). I’m pretty happy with the results, and had a joyous morning creating the track. You can listen to it on the Vonneguts’ website. Hats off to VC for providing some work for artists during the pandemic and creating good vibes.
Some percussion bits (taken on a different session – no cymbals were used on the VC track).
The Sheffield artist Gillian Whiteley (aka Bricolage Kitchen) has been doing a lockdown series called ‘Isolation Improv Drawings’. She asks improvisers to send her a recording of them playing a short piece, then listeners to it and produces a charcoal drawing to the music. Gillian approached me a few weeks ago, and the finished collaboration is below. Very happy with this!
I just posted two new set on the live recordings site.
First, a group that only played once! And this is that meeting. A trio with Seth Bennett and Andrew Lisle:
And next, another duo set with Benedict Taylor. The first and only time we played on the same bill as another baritone sax and viola duo (Alan Wilkinson and Ivor Kallin)!
I’m very happy to announce that Martin Clarke will be releasing a duo recording of Alex Bonney and me on his label oem. Out on 8th July, the set was recorded by Martin at Hundred Years Gallery in February this year – not long before the suspension of live performances. Link coming soon…
The next installment of my gig recordings Bandcamp site is up: a duo with Andrew Cheetham from last year at BRÅK. I think it was the first time we’d played together! Dirk Serries recorded, mixed and mastered this one.
Corey Mwamba has just released a recording I found in my archives, of his piece New Dark Art played by a special sax quartet forwed for the occasion. We did two performances of the piece in May 2015, one in London and one in Derby. This recording is of the London date, a LUME gig at Long White Cloud on 14th May.
The quartet was all Eb saxophones. I was on baritone along with Colin Webster; Tom Ward and Chris Williams were on altos. A really nice project!
If you head over to Corey’s Bandcamp site you can download the release, and subscribe to the site for access to tons more music.
I’ve just published something new on the live recordings Bandcamp site: a duo with Rachel Musson! We’ve done a couple of gigs together and I love playing with Rachel. This was possibly our first one, in the beer shop in 2018. Hope you enjoy it…
My work on the new live recordings Bandcamp site is continuing, and there are now two more sets up there.
First up, a trio set with Corey Mwamba and Olie Brice. This is from a LUME gig at The Vortex in April 2016, when we played opposite Dave Kane’s quartet. Who recorded it is a mystery, but I *think* it was me with my Zoom recorder. Going through these old files is reminding me of the importance of proper labelling…
Also up on the site is a duo set with Benedict Taylor. This is from the Horse Improv Club in 2018, recorded at IKLECTIK by Jeff at Saint Austral Sound. A short set with an abrupt ending!
Hope you enjoy these. Everything I publish on the site is a ‘name your price’ download, and the money will be split equally between me and the other musicians on the tracks. So if you’re in a position to support artists, please consider buying a copy.
More coming soon…follow on Bandcamp or keep an eye on this blog for info.
With all live music off for a while yet, I’m working on a new project that looks back at the gigs I’ve been a part of over the past few years. My hard drives are full of audio from past concerts, and in normal times I hardly ever had time to listen to them. In lockdown, or at least in the rare moments that I’m able to focus on working at something, there’s time to have a good dig around in the files and listen back to some sets. I’ve set up a new Bandcamp site that will act as a kind of scrapbook of old and raw live recordings from my archive. This will be a slow burner, but the first two recordings are up now – a solo set and a duo set with Seth Bennett, both from 2016. All the music on this site will be ‘name your price’, so there’s the option to pay on the door for these old gigs. The money will be split equally between the musicians on the recording.
As you may be aware of from seeing a billion social media posts, Bandcamp are giving artists some extra support during the pandemic by waiving their commission on the first Friday of the month in May, June and July. We have something in the pipeline at Luminous HQ for the July one, so keep an eye out for that. And as today is May 1st, I thought I’d pull together a few recommendations of music to check out and support some artists close to my heart…
Article XI – Live In Newcastle (Discus) / Anton Hunter – LUME Kestrel Online
I’m proud to be a member of Anton’s large ensemble, and it’s great to see a second release out there. This live album was recorded on our double bill large ensemble tour in 2017, at the mighty Bridge Hotel in Newcastle for Jazz North East. Featuring two previously unrecorded Anton Hunter originals! Anton is also releasing a brand new track TODAY, made in lockdown, with lots of us playing and a kestrel drawing by me…
Bathing Trio – Stretford – Bromley-by-Bow – Peckham
The excellent trio of Sam Andreae, Otto Willberg and David Birchall are making tracks together live over the interwebs. This is one of several improvised lockdown sets they’ve published so far…
Deemer – Live at the Vortex (Luminous)
Dee and Merijn are currently working on something new for Luminous, but check out this live set from 2016 if you haven’t already.
Kodian Trio – Live In Leeds (Raw Tonk)
The latest slice of Kodian Trio goodness on Raw Tonk Records, recorded by Chris Sharkey at LS6 Cafe.
Ti/om – The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Madwort Records)
This is a pretty special release, several years in the making. Ti/om went to the Isle of Eigg in 2016, staying in a bothy together for a week and recording these pieces. It’s lovely to see them surfacing now on Madwort Records.
Johnny Hunter – Pale Blue Dot (Northern Contemporary)
A four movement sextet suite by Johnny Hunter, recorded at the Lescar in Sheffield. A gig I wished I could have attended! The fourth release on the excellent Northern Contemporary label.
Venue fundraisers
It’s a very challenging time for music venues right now for obvious reasons, and they need our support if we are able. Hundred Years Gallery and the Vortex both have fundraiser Bandcamp sites, Martin Clarke’s oem label is raising money for Arch 1, and IKLECTIK has a page of fundraising music on its website. Here are some starting points…
Off Bandcamp, you could always become a digital member of Cafe Oto and support them while treating yourself to a year of amazing downloads.
I’m finding it hard to engage with the online world, and with everything that’s going on around us in the real world I’m struggling to even think about being creative. We all have to do what we do to get through this! I hope you find some sounds you love in this post, and that we can all be back out there listening to and playing live music again soon.