MSQ and Spill Kit

I’ve just heard that we have a Madwort Sax Quartet gig booked in for June 5th: a double bill with Chris Dowding’s band Spill Kit, at Ryan’s Bar in Stoke Newington. Get it in the diary! Should be a nice gig…

Quad at The Salisbury

We had a very enjoyable evening at the Salisbury on Sunday. The jazz night there is always well attended so there was a nice crowd, and it was also the first Quadraceratops gig with an open fire. I might work on this as some kind of winter rider requirement: nothing like a fireside chat before going on stage. This gig was also probably our last one with Jason Simpson, who has been playing bass while Dave O’Brien is away travelling. Thanks Jason! And thanks to Jazz @ The Salisbury for having us.

I’m working on some new music for the band at the moment, and also getting into more gig promotion, of which there will be news soon…

‘Hooloovoo’ liner notes

Last year, I was commissioned by the brass quintet Mardi Brass to write a piece for their upcoming album ‘Something New’. The album will be the last in their ‘Something’ series (can you guess what the other records are called?), and will focus on new compositions/arrangements written especially for this project.

I sent over my offering in Autumn, and was excited to hear in February that it has been recorded! The piece is called ‘Hooloovoo’, after a creature from ‘The Hitch-Hikers’ Guide To The Galaxy’: it’s a tribute to the late HHGTTG author Douglas Adams, who would have been 60 in 2012. Mardi Brass asked me to write some liner notes/blurb about my contribution, which resulted in the following:

Hooloovoo

In 2012, when I wrote this piece, the late author Douglas Adams would have celebrated his 60th birthday. The occasion was marked with a gig at the Hammersmith Apollo, and when I was asked to write something for Mardi Brass I thought straight away of a ‘blue’ connection that would allow me to make my own tribute. Adams wrote what was probably the most important non-trilogy of books in my childhood, ‘The Hitch-Hikers’ Guide To The Galaxy’ series (there are in fact five novels in the ‘trilogy’). I spent many hours happily lost in the fantastical universe of the HHGTTG, with its array of absurd, wonderful characters and places. This is a universe where humans are the lab-rats in a giant experiment presided over by mice, where a cupcake wired to a person’s head can provide a sudden crushing vision of her own insignificance in the cosmos. It is the home of the ‘Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster’, a cocktail the effects of which are described as ‘like having your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick’.

 

One of the inhabitants of the HHGTTG universe is the Hooloovoo. Admittedly, it has a small walk-on part at the beginning of the fist book, but it’s a fascinating creature nonetheless: a super-intelligent shade of the colour blue. The Hooloovoo is part of the team responsible for building the starship ‘Heart of Gold’, and we encounter it at the launch ceremony for the ship, ‘temporarily refracted into a free-standing prism’ for the occasion. This is the scene I was attempting to evoke with the piece: the bustling atmosphere of the opening ceremony, with interjections by its attendees, hailing from various corners of the galaxy. I tried to make the music shape-shift like its namesake, and culminate in the triumphant unveiling of the ‘Heart of Gold’, a ship that becomes an important centre for the novels and, indeed, an important character in them. The Hooloovoo stands by, a splendid vision of blue, as the starship prepares to embark upon what will become, unbeknownst to the reader at this point, one hell of a voyage. All hail Douglas Adams, the architect of this universe and, as is said of one of the HHGTTG main characters Ford Prefect, ‘a frood who really knew where his towel was’.

 

More info on the release of the album when I know more…I’m looking forward to hearing the recording!

Edit: I just read that yesterday (11th March 2013) would have been DA’s 61st birthday, which makes this an accidentally timely post.

Quadraceratops and The Button Band at the Hackney Cut

On February 8th I ventured into the world of gig promoting and put on a double bill at the Hackney Cut. Quadraceratops were joined by The Button Band for a really nice evening of music, pizza, cake eating and general hanging out at a venue that boasts the address ‘Fish Island’. Sadly not open for public gigs any more (nothing to do with us!) the Hackney Cut is a great space and was also home to Dee Byrne’s ‘Jazz at the Hackney Cut’ weekly night.

We recorded and filmed the gig, and I’ll post some videos on here soon subject to the usual video-editing delay. Audio and I have a much better relationship though, so there are some recordings up on my Soundcloud page:

A big thanks to all the musicians, and also to Gideon Conn for producing the button/dinosaur flyer artwork that got so many compliments as I pushed it into people’s faces to promote the gig. The process of putting on a gig was moderately stressful but is definitely something I’d like to do more of. Plans are being hatched as you read this…

 

December 2012 gigs retrospective: MSQ on the road

I’ll continue this afternoon of cataloguing the end of 2012 with a look back to the Madwort Sax Quartet gigs in December. We left London behind and set off on a mini-tour of The Midlands and The North: not bad for the second thing the band ever did! Arguably, as it was a pair of gigs, this should be referred to as a series, but due to the travel involved I’m going to stick my neck out here and call it a mini-tour….

The first stop was Derby and Corey Mwamba‘s ‘One Note Sunday’ night at the Flowerpot. We played two sets to an extremely interested and appreciative audience. Again, it was a cool thing to have this happen at the band’s second ever gig. The idea with One Note Sunday is that people go along to hear something new…as in, not even something they’ve listened to online in advance to see if they like it, but something brand new to them. Risky tactics, you say! Yes. But, what it means from a performer’s perspective is that the people who show up are definitely going to be there to check out the music…and that feels great! We had a good gig there. The sign below was posted by the bar but was totally redundant.

Tom recorded the gig and filmed it. He’s posted a series of four videos on YouTube: the tracks are Shard, S (by Larry Ochs/Rova), Maps and Islands In The Green. Shard and Maps were new tunes that Tom wrote in time for the December gigs.

After Derby, we had a day off before travelling to Manchester to play at Efpi Records’ Freedom Principle night at Sandbar. It was nice to go back and play there again after the Quadraceratops gig for them in June, which was a lovely night. With the quartet, we shared the bill with the Anton Hunter trio. I have to say, perhaps egotistically, that my favourite part of this gig was when we combined the two bands and played some of my music! Anton had clocked that if we merged the two bands we would have a sort of hybrid almost-Quadraceratops septet and he suggested we did a couple of my tunes. With, well, basically no rehearsal. More risky tactics! I like to think of it as the Madanton Worthunter Quartrio. Four saxes, guitar, bass and drums! It was FUN, and pretty anarchic. There’s a video of it, and I’ll post it up here once I get my head around cutting the video into tracks….

November 2012 gigs retrospective

A freezing cold, snowy February day like today seems the perfect time to sift through the various photos, videos, and recordings I’ve amassed over the past three months. I’ve had a lot going on but not much time to write about it until now, so here goes.

Quadraceratops were lucky enough to play in the 2012 London Jazz Festival, which was the highlight of my Autumn. We supported Get The Blessing at the Jazz Cafe in Camden on the 17th November, playing to our biggest audience so far. It was also the biggest venue we’ve played, so the whole evening was slightly surreal and a lot of fun. Ricky Day kindly took on audience-eye-view photography duty on the night, and I’ve put up an album of his shots of the Quadraceratops FB page, plus the couple in this post. A big thanks to Dom Servini, who DJed at the gig, for booking us to come and play.

The following week we had a gig at ‘Jazz at the Waterline’ in Dalston. This is a night run by my friend Dee Byrne (although she has subsequently moved it to the Hackney Cut, due to what is hopefully the Waterline’s temporary closure). The back room of the Waterline is a cosy, intimate space and it was a nice gig for trying out some new music. I had recently finished a composition called ‘Flying South’, so it got its first outing on that night.

The Waterline gig was possibly also the first time that the band name has appeared on a blackboard (above) which I enjoyed. In addition, Dee took some photos on her phone including this one, below, and the trippy one on my ‘Gigs‘ page. Someone was clearly enjoying adding weird effects…hopefully inspired by the music!

I’d like to say a massive thanks to the ‘November lineup’, who put in a lot of work, switched around instruments a bit and played great on both gigs. They were (and indeed are):

Tom Ward – baritone sax (in role as a trombone while Magnus was away)

Andrew Woolf – tenor sax (in role as Tom Ward)

Chris Snead and Dave Orchant – trumpet (one on each gig)

Jason Simpson – bass

Kit Massey – keyboards

Luke Christie – drums

Dino Radio

Happy New Year!

More 2013 news: I’ve just confirmed that Quadraceratops will be playing live on the radio at the end of this month! It’s true. We’ll be on Dom Servini’s show on Colourful Radio, Tuesday January 29th sometime between 7 and 10pm. Hear the larks ensue as we cram the whole band into the studio for a live session…

2013 gigs…

Some write-ups of November and Decemberly activity to come soon, hopefully produced during fireside mulled-wine based blogging sessions. For now, a quick update about next year – 2013 – which it seems is just around the corner.

On February 8th Quadraceratops will be playing at the Hackney Cut, a new venue by the canal near Hackney Wick. This might be a double bill too…more info soon. Then on March 24th we’re heading to the Salisbury on Green Lanes, where the Madwort Sax Quartet had a lovely gig in September.

Should be fun!