UK Improvisation (part 1 of 4)
Original position in magazine: pages 54-56
Contents: Introduction, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Spontaneous Music Ensemble
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From the 1970s and beyond the stars
Having been collecting and listening to this music since 1981 I know this extremely brief overview can only really hope to introduce a few non-initiates to the field. For a long time I collected in isolation, knowing nobody else who bothered with it; I virtually took the music for granted, until I sensed that this music was appreciated quite seriously by young listeners in America; Byron Coley gave nothing but favourable reviews to Derek Bailey CDs in his Forced Exposure magazine, and Eugene Chadbourne cited the Incus label as an early influence on his own Parachute label and the Greensborough improv scene. I began to realise UK improvisers should by rights be considered national treasures. Next thing you know, original vinyl issues of Incus records - at one time thrown into the second-hand racks with utter contempt - start fetching respectable prices at record fairs. Improvised music is the goods. It’s virtually impossible to describe - most civilians find it a terrible racket, and even its champions and apologists admit there are problems (sometimes it’s too serious). Yet when it works, it’s a fascinating document of players enjoying freedom; it provides the most liberating experience for the listener, and I believe can even start affecting the way you think, and perceive the world. We shall focus largely on the UK this trip and sadly ignore for example the mainland Europe developments (Peter Brötzmann, Hans Reichel, Han Bennink and the FMP label).
Some Classic early 1970s recordings
I have the softest possible spot for Derek Bailey’s Domestic and Public Pieces 1975-77 (EMANEM 4001 CD) as it was the very first piece of improvised music I heard. Parts of this CD were originally issued on vinyl as Quark 9999; a copy from the Coventry record library kept me company for a few long Autumn nights in a lonely bedsit. The music seemed lonely too - one guitar, one musician. Certainly an intimate experience, but shot through with an inner desolation. I grew to love the second side of Public Pieces in particular, later appreciating that it was electric and amplified (the first side was all acoustic). It was so unfamiliar and strange that I got lost in it; seizing on the few recorded moments that it was possible to ‘remember’ and using them as map reference points in this alien domain. Many times I have sought to recapture that sense of lostness; few records have ever had such a profound effect.
This record has humour as well as sadness. Bailey makes an elaborate joke about ‘Playing The Blues’, the full significance of which eluded me for a long time. Desperate to black up and play like a minstrel, he yawps ‘Hurry up with the burnt cork!’ over a super-fast solo which slides into a parody of twelve-bar. Then there’s ‘Unity’, a straight reading of a news item about Unity Theatre being destroyed by fire, only the recitative is chopped up to fit in with the unpredictable cadences of his guitar playing. No stranger to introducing ‘foreign effects’ to this very day, Bailey rarely used his own voice again, apart from another joke also on this CD (originally on Guitar Solos 2 Caroline) - the guy who found the lost chord.
I also regret the passing of this brief electric period. Bailey used the volume pedal on the electric guitar, enabling him total control over the volume of each note, as it emerged from the strings - he could even vary that note’s volume while it was sounding. The utter eeriness of this noise is something most musicians would die for; you could be clinical and say it was something to do with making an instrument behave uncoventionally, part of the modernist deconstruction of music. But who can fail to be overcome by the sheer emotion in those volume-pedalled wails? A cliche, but he really made his guitar gently weep. By 1972 he had started using a second amplifier and a second volume pedal. But Bailey found the practicalities of carrying so much heavy equipment to gigs was too much of a strain. More importantly, other people were beginning to copy him. With a severity of focus and discipline, he concentrated on wringing what sounds he could from his faithful Gibson acoustic guitar. Get this CD for the amazing sounds of volume controlled electric guitar, with 19-string guitar, Waisvisz crackle box and other spontaneous events live at the ICA in 1975. For some 1976 recordings using the same electric devices, try and find a rare LP - Bailey playing Duo with Tristan Honsinger, INCUS 20 (1976).
I made myself a tape of Domestic and Public Pieces and without really knowing why, obsessively copied out all the copy on the back cover. Remember when records came out with messages to the retailer ‘FILE UNDER: POPULAR (Pop Groups)’ printed on the back sleeve? Quark 9999 made a joke out of it… there was a long list of categories headed FILE UNDER…including POPULAR (EVENTUALLY) and VERY GOOD. The stark typography was worrisome, as basic as a Richard Long catalogue. I had not seen an LP sleeve like this…something must have tipped off my subconcious that I might not see it again.
Saxophonist Evan Parker made his presence felt in 1982 at a Company event at Warwick University. These events were organised by Derek Bailey, and settled into regular London venues; they would be a meeting point for improvising musicians everywhere to gather and play together in combinations. Many of the Incus records are documents of these performances. The Warwick gig might have been an altruistic attempt to wean students off Culture Club and open their minds to something else; Evan played a solo piece and terrified this listener. It was like a bloody fire alarm going off, the sound of his soprano sax gradually filled up the venue and made its repetetive assault on your eardrums. Parker was turned onto improvised jazz after seeing a Cecil Taylor concert.
One aspect of his dedication to exploring the music is his hermeticism: a devotion to solitary work in his development of breathing techniques, his study of Charlie Parker records, his daily practice sessions. But when the social-sharing music call comes, Parker is at the ready, pairing his saxes with just about any possible combination of instruments. On Three other stories 1971-74 EMANEM 4002 CD, Evan here turns in a classic duo performances with Mr Meccano set himself, Paul Lytton; besides the saxophones, Parker plays a number of home-made items such as the Dopplerphone, a device made out of lengths of plastic hoses. Lytton is a lovably Heath Robinson-like artist who at this time, partly inspired by a Folkways LP Sounds of the Junkyard, played with a large and complex drum kit besides other unusual instruments, including air horns and a harmonium. He also built a frame with objects attached, wired up to a contact mike, which could be used to produce unnatural electronic sounds by plucking, striking or bowing movements. The electronic component is one that Evan would continue to explore; it’s always an inspired move when he does, his lovely long tones vibrating with electric drones. Parker and Lytton made Collective Calls and At the Unity Theatre together, while Ra, Moers Music 01016 was recorded live at the Moers festival. Another electronics/sax pairing by Evan was with Walter Prati in 1990 and the exquisite Hall of Mirrors (MM&T CD01) resulted.
A great image I treasure of Evan was sitting about 15 feet from him at a small and intimate venue (The Place Theatre London, 13 October 1991). Watching his body prepare itself for what would be a blistering 40-minute continuous soprano solo, the frame heaving as it took air into the lungs…you could see the music coursing through his veins, a physical force, welling up inside of him, waiting for its release. This was all in a few magical seconds before the instrument was even put to the lips. Parker uses circular breathing, a systematic way of inhaling through the nose while playing, thus enabling a continuous blast of air through the mouth into the instrument. I tried explaining it once to a group of friends, one of whom knew of Jaki Liebziet and thought circular drumming was the same thing, which it isn’t. Everyone else, however, just laughed…one should know better than to cast pearls before swine.
Spontaneous Music Ensemble
Withdrawal (1966-7)
EMANEM 4020 CD (1997)
Spontaneous Music Ensemble
Karyobin
CHRONOSCOPE CPE2001-2 CD (1993)
Part of the pre-history of 70s UK improv is to be found in the ranks of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble (and the Music Improvisation Company, to a certain extent). Pick up the SME’s amazing Withdrawal CD for another ear-opener, a great history lesson, and some brilliant photographs from the sessions. This was recorded in the mid 1960s for a movie directed by George Paul Solomos, about a heroin junky. A genuinely harrowing early free-screech classic, with some beautiful and unusual combinations of instruments in the pallette, such as flugelhorn, oboe, vibraphone, and glockenspiel all blending in the mournful mix. Karyobin has for a long time been a holy grail of vinyl collectors, being issued on the collectable Island label - a deal which probably came about through Parker’s friendship with Stevie Winwood. Both sessions were produced by one Eddie Kramer, big-name producer who worked with Jimi Hendrix; Karyobin in the prestigious Olympic Studios in London.
Both records feature Bailey and Parker, plus others who would become associated with hard-core improvisation - but also players with one foot in the jazz scene, such as trumpeter Kenny Wheeler and bassist Dave Holland. This is one thing that makes these documents of great interest. How did improvisation develop in this country? I’m not here to say it developed in a continuum out of free jazz, but here on these transitional records is the sound of a strange halfway house, ideas and practices in embryo which would come to fruition in the 1970s. The missing link is an LP called Challenge on the Eyemark label, excessively rare on vinyl and not yet on CD.