Spaces Unfolding is an improvising trio and The Way We Speak (BEAD 43) has been released on the Bead Records label. For some reason I thought this label – one of the innovatory labels that specialised in free improv in the 1970s and 1980s – was defunct, but in fact there has been a steady stream of CD releases for the last 25 years or so…Philipp Wachsmann, the violinist, is a personal favourite player in these four walls and I prize highly my copy of Sparks Of The Desire Magneto.
Wachsmann it be who still maintains the label, with help from Matthew Hutchinson, and more recently the “energetic fresh input” of drummer Emil Karlsen, who also drums on today’s record. Neil Metcalfe on flute completes the trio and these recordings were made in one day at Stoke Newington St Mary’s old church. On ‘The Way We Speak Pt. 1’ we instantly get a sense of the stark, near-broken feel of the playing of this trio; flute and violin phrases are almost hurled at each other across an empty room. Neil Metcalfe’s sparkling flute produces a very nice counterpoint or answer to Wachsmann’s melancholy drag, and Emil Karlsen punctuates each pregnant moment with his hesitant percussion. Indeed Karlsen rattles as if to placate this couple, and while I may make it sound as though they’re newlyweds throwing china plates, clearly something else is going on under the surface.
There follow three parts of ‘Unfolding Spaces’ which take us to much calmer zone, but still tinged with ambiguity and a cold, melancholic chill in the air which this album can’t completely shake off. But if you believe music can delineate an imaginary “space”, here’s music that will confirm that belief; sounds that pace the corners of the room as patiently as a carpenter measuring up for a new kitchen. Again, it’s the starkness of the playing – almost every sound made hangs isolated, alone, waiting for a helping hand – such that we’re already quite some way from the busy, scuttling free improvisation mode which was once unkindly regarded as the “English disease”. These measured steps continue in part two, with more adventurous forays into territories resembling, at times, an advanced form of modern chamber music. “Care and precision” are keywords I might throw into the pan at this point; Wachsmann’s technique with plucking is an area I hadn’t considered before, and the clear recording allows you to savour every moment like a pomegranate. I always enjoyed the hyper-active 1980s work from his frenetic bow, but it’s remarkable how this has now settled into a more approachable and pleasing form, where the individual notes really stand out, yet he still doesn’t abandon his genius for semi-abstract semi-noise scrabbles and scrapes. One might say this unique player has found a way to compress his methods and his modes of expression into a compacted, tight bundle of musical information.
Emil Karlsen deserves the credit for proposing and arranging this date, after he’d met the musicians in 2019 and started working with them; seems that Wachsmann and Metcalfe never actually worked together in a small group setting like this, although they had played in Evan Parker’s various ensembles, and are members of the London Improvisers Orchestra. Without any prior discussion or pre-planned ideas, into the venue they went, and here are the results – the “naked charm of music realistically documented”, as Martin Davidson always put it. From October 2022.