Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg (independent) on The Beholder’s Share by Alex Bonney, Paul Dunmall and Mark Sanders.
Ian Mann (The Jazzmann) on The Beholder’s Share by Alex Bonney, Paul Dunmall and Mark Sanders
In October 2023 the estimable Alex Bonney, trumpeter, electronic musician, photographer and much in demand sound engineer, was kind enough to forward me review copies of his two latest album releases.
The first of these was “Everything Unfolding From Emptiness”, a duo release on the Not Applicable record label featuring Bonney (trumpet, percussion, synthesiser) and the drummer / percussionist Will Glaser. This featured a series of atmospheric, and often very beautiful, improvisations recorded over the course of a single day at Dilston Gallery, a converted church in Southwark Park, London
Released at approximately the same time “The Beholder’s Share” is very different. It appears on Bead Records, a specialist improv label first established in 1974 that functions as a musicians’ collective. The label is currently managed by the musicians Philipp Wachsmann, Matthew Hutchinson and Emil Karlsen.
“The Beholder’s Share” teams Bonney with two giants of the free jazz and improv scene, saxophonist Paul Dunmall and drummer Mark Sanders, musicians whose CVs are so extensive that I don’t intend to delve into their musical histories. These guys have played with just about EVERYBODY.
The prolific Dunmall has already released several other albums in 2023 and over the course of a long and distinguished career has appeared on approximately two hundred recordings. At the age of seventy he seems to be even more creative than ever and shows no signs of slowing down. Sanders is slightly younger, but has a similarly extensive back catalogue and is a similarly creative and in demand musician.
Compared to the luminously beautiful “Everything Unfolding From Emptiness” this trio recording is
closer in spirit to the hurly burly of conventional free improv. It features three lengthy improvised pieces, with Bonney’s use of synth and laptop bringing an unusual and distinctive additional element to the music.
The thirteen minute “Resonance Refractions” commences with eerie electronic sounds, these subsequently joined by the soft rumble of Sanders’ drums and percussion. When Dunmall’s saxophone finally arrives it pierces the darkness in a manner similar to Jan Garbarek, albeit in a far more abstract soundscape than Jan is likely to explore these days. Bonney’s electronics provide a spacey backdrop to Dunmall’s sax ruminations, while Sanders’ cymbals provide additional shimmer and sparkle. Bonney switches to trumpet as the music gathers momentum and he solos above the polyrhytmic rumble of Sanders’ drums. The two horns then come together for a series of lively improvised exchanges, with Sanders providing punctuation and commentary from the drums. The exchanges become increasingly garrulous as the energy continues to build, making for thrilling and absorbing listening. After reaching a peak of intensity the temperature of the sax / trumpet exchanges begins to cool as a kind of musical reconciliation is reached. The piece eventually resolves itself with a brief return to the abstract electronica of the intro
The title of the eight minute “Arid / In Phase” was perhaps inspired by Bonney’s cover photograph, an image of the White Desert in Egypt that was captured in the summer of 2022. With regard to the music electronics again play a substantial role, again combining with the rumble of Sanders’ drums to provide a platform for Dunmall’s dramatic sax wailing and the pinched sounds of Bonney’s trumpet. But it’s not all sound and fury, the second half of the piece is a lengthy abstract passage featuring the sounds of glitchy electronics, extended sax and trumpet techniques and eerie cymbal scrapes and shimmers.
The album concludes with the near nineteen minute “Generating Worlds”, which commences with the combined sounds of sax and electronica, with Dunmall’s horn representing a human, vocalised cry in a chilly, alien, electronic soundscape. Drums and trumpet are subsequently added as the music gradually gravitates towards more conventional free / jazz improv with the electronics, and even the drums, eventually dropping out as Dunmall and Bonney deliver a short series of unaccompanied trumpet and sax exchanges. It’s only when these become increasingly animated that Sanders returns to the fold to provide a roiling rhythmic impetus in this bass-less instrumental format. Dunmall and Sanders embark on a brief duo episode that recalls John Coltrane and Rashied Ali, but the addition of Bonney on modular synth soon puts a different slant on things, providing a swirling, electronic backdrop for Dunmall’s increasingly impassioned sax blasting. Brief snatches of trumpet are briefly heard, while Sanders is a veritable human whirlwind behind the kit. The music continues to ebb and flow with Bonney’s electronics helping to create an increasingly dystopian atmosphere as Dunmall’s horn continues to wail in the wilderness.
“The Beholder’s Share” is a fascinating album, although I’m aware that it’s a recording that will only suit so many people’s ears. In many ways it’s a conventional free jazz / improv offering but there’s no denying the fact that Bonney’s electronics add a whole extra dimension to the music, while still remaining within the free jazz / improv tradition. In his case the term ‘electronic musician’ is totally justified, his synth and laptop contributions are an essential part of the fabric of this music and help to give it its own distinctive identity. Bonney also makes an excellent contribution on trumpet, while Dunmall and Sanders, two musicians who have worked frequently together and who can both be regarded as true doyens of the genre, are both superb throughout.
“The Beholder’s Share” represents absorbing and often thrilling listening, despite being somewhat challenging at times. The sound quality is excellent throughout with Emil Karlsen of Bead Records acting as producer. The album was mixed by Bonney and mastered by bassist / electronic musician Pierre Alexandre Tremblay.
“The Beholder’s Share” may not be quite as accessible as “Everything Unfolding From Emptiness” but it’s an excellent album in its own right, with much for the adventurous listener to enjoy, and with Bonney’s electronics representing a particularly distinctive component.
Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg (independent) on Especially For You by Harri Sjostrom, Erhard Hirt, Philipp Wachsmann and Paul Lytton
Here is an excellent testimony of an impromptu concert, planned for the second edition of the quartet “Xpact”, recently resurrected around the three survivors of this group from the 80s, the double bassist Hans Schneider, the “electronic” guitarist Erhard Hirt and the percussionist Paul Lytton in homage to its founder, the late Wolfgang Fuchs, an exceptional bass (and double bass) clarinetist and hyper incisive sopranino saxophonist, replaced by saxophonist Stefan Keune. Keune and Schneider had to be absent for health reasons, so it was decided that violinist Phil Wachsmann and soprano and (sopranino) saxophonist Harri Sjöström would do the trick. We were not wrong. Lytton and Wachsmann have often collaborated and recorded as a duo or quartet on several occasions over the decades and Sjöström and Wachsmann were part of the Modern Quintet (with Paul Lovens, Teppo Hauta-Aho and Paul Rutherford) and we find this little world in within the King Übü Örkestrü , also recently revisited in a splendid new album “ROI”.
A long collective improvisation in one piece of 57 minutes digitally separated into 4 sections: For You Part One, For You Part Two, For You Encore & For You Lullaby. Erhard Hirt is credited for both “guitar” and “computer processing” and Phil Wachsmann “violin” and “electronics”. There is therefore an important, subtle and very fine electronic dimension throughout the performance which can blend into near-silence and strange murmurs or burst out over the acoustic sounds of the sax or the violin, the percussionist discreetly waving his sticks, utensils, skins, cymbals and its curious sound objects, with friction, scratching, movements, multi-directional mini-strikes with sounds sense of dynamics and its ability to leave the sound space within the reach of its acolytes. Sharp British-style improvisation with Rhineland style is revealed here in all its splendor. It is in this volatile environment in perpetual metamorphosis that we will find the most radical aspect of the most astonishing convolutions of Harri Sjöström, who was a member of Cecil Taylor’s groups (supporting recordings) and a lyrical duettist with soprano saxophonist Gianni Mimmo. Just hear him converse in almost a duet with the disjointed strikes of Paul Lytton or the windy sonic extrapolations of Erhard Hirt. If you like a Thomas Lehn, you will be able to appreciate Hirt’s oblique and smoking antics. Lytton’s “active” play is reminiscent of a multitude of objects collapsing and ricocheting down the endless staircases of a haunted tower.
Always hiding his playing well, the violinist Phil Wachsmann has a crazy talent at his fingertips for strange pizzicatos in slow motion, strikes of bow hair which bounce to streak very fine high notes in a flash or suggest melodic fragments coming from an imaginary, slightly smoky Webern score. The collective balance is deliberately mishandled by shifting sound disruptions, the sax maintaining the course by jumping at distended intervals, and the percussionist scattering his playing over the most extreme corners of his kit (“drums”? but also a metal box containing chains, mini-cymbals, rattlesnakes etc.), handling objects on the surface of the skins, the most unpredictable sounds always being welcome. The listener will forget to wonder who plays what in this playful mess, because that’s the goal. The instrumental action of each interpenetrates with that of the three others in an indescribable way creating an infinite network of correspondences, connections and repulsions. The complexity is there with a camouflage trend, by turns noisy, minimalist, electro-acoustic, wild and sophisticated. In this adventure, the individual approach (individualist) and the “style” with its “virtuoso” instrumental exploits are left aside for the collective adventure, the instantaneous imagination, the delirium… There is a plethora of recordings of improvised music these days which nourish a lingua franca that is truly recognisable, logical, readable, recurring… too wise. With this minimalist, electro-acoustic, wild and sophisticated. In this adventure, the individual approach (individualist) and the “style” with its “virtuoso” instrumental exploits are left aside for the collective adventure, the instantaneous imagination, the delirium… There is a plethora of recordings of improvised music these days which nourish a lingua franca that is truly recognisable, logical, readable, recurring… too wise. . With this Especially For You, we glimpse how and how many old hands in free improvisation manage to escape commonplaces by losing our perception in an inextricable maquis which will tickle our curiosity to the point of putting the work back on the reader.
Andrzej Nowak(Spontaneous Music Tribune) on Especially For You by Harri Sjostrom, Erhard Hirt, Philipp Wachsmann and Paul Lytton.
On stage we find Sjöström’s small saxophone, Hirt’s guitar, Wachsmann’s violin (the last two instruments retrofitted electronically) and Lytton’s drum kit, as usual rich in its own electro-acoustic devices that support his light but very compulsive drumming . The first set lasts a full thirty minutes, and its opening is shrouded in a cloud of filigree acoustics doused in electroacoustic noise. The musicians react not only to each other, but also to the omnipresent silence. The saxophone seems ready to play, while the violin waits, and electronic dust and stylish flying percussion swirl around . The narrative is both gentle and feisty, reminiscent of the good, pioneering years of free improv. The story of the four masters takes on incidental dynamics from time to time, and this usually happens thanks to Lytton’s actions. Hirt and his guitar introduce a lot of ferment here, while Sjöström and Wachsmann rather guard the melodic order, willingly sing and equally willingly groan painfully. A long improvisation has many phases and subsections. Sometimes electronics from almost three sources can show their lion’s claws, sometimes everyone works in a minimalist mode and conducts improvised dialogues in the call & response convention, there are also moments when the narrative plunges into an almost dreamlike darkness. After the twentieth minute, the story takes on a surprisingly post-classical flavor. The musicians almost drown in silence, but the percussion master does not allow much and pulls the quartet to a spectacular elevation. However, the final say belongs to the saxophone and violin.
The second set, almost twenty minutes long, starts quite calmly. A slim saxophone, a hint of analog electronics and prepared guitar phrases. Underneath this sound stream, rustling drumming slips in and once again elevates the narrative to a slight peak. However, the sopranino and violin do not give up and create an impressive lullaby. Lytton does not let up and for a moment the improvisation seems exceptionally noisy. The next phase of the concert is an attempt to combine water and fire – post-baroque chants now flow on the shoulders of percussion brushes working at quite a dynamic range. In the background there lives an emotionally unstable guitar, which again and again provides small counterpoints to the exchange of pleasantries. Emotions run high here, however, and thick silence turns out to be a good comment.
The concert encores last approximately seven minutes in total. The first one is quite lively, initiated collectively. The narrative is even filled with some dancing and focuses on rhythmic games. The guitar phrasing is jazzy, the rest quickly moves into a phase of intriguing preparations. A bit of humor, acoustic grotesque and guitar mute. The second encore, according to the name of the song on the album, is a typical farewell song . Saxophone and violin are again immersed in melodious post-classicism, resonating percussion and gently fermented guitar. Against the distant background, a handful of electroacoustic micro events create an interesting dissonance. After the last sound, there was applause for several dozen seconds. Oh how!
Eyal Hareuveni (Salt Peanuts) on Especially For You by Harri Sjostrom, Erhard Hirt, Philipp Wachsmann and Paul Lytton.
Being a free improviser means that you have to exercise unpredictable situations as an existential essence of life. This is how the Especially For You quartet came to life. The original plan was to have a concert of the Quartet XPACT – German guitarist Erhard Hirt, sax player Stefan Keune and double bass player Hans Schneider with British drummer Paul Lytton – for the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Einstein Kultur in Munich, founded by the city of Munich. But Keune and Schneider were indisposed and were replaced, at the last minute by Finnish sax player Harri Sjöström and British violinist Philipp Wachsmann. This live, free-improvised performance at MUG in Munich occurred in October 2022. Lytton did the cover painting for the album documenting this concert.
It was the first time that these four gifted free improvisers played together as a quartet. Sjöström and Wachsmann played in many formats since the 1980’s, most notably in the Quintet Moderne, and Sjöström played with Lytton in the Cecil Taylor Ensemble. Hirt played before with Lytton and Wachsmann in the King Übü Örchestrü, and, obviously, all four musicians are masters of the art of the moment with distinct and highly personal palettes of sounds. Hirt extends his electric guitar with extensive computer treatments and transformations; Wachsmann also adds electronic treatments to his acoustic violin; Lytton employs an array of objects that comprise his unique sound pallet developed over the years and Sjöström has developed unique sonic inventions on the soprano and sopranino saxes.
The recording of this concert highlights the immediate and organic interplay of these experienced improvisers, before an appreciative audience. The music flows naturally and sounds fresh and urgent, and each piece has its own cryptic but poetic inner logic. Repeated listening discovers more and more nuances in the subtle interplay and the clever and endless sonic games of these pioneers of European improvised music. Wachsmann notes that the new quartet, as well as the attentive audience, brought a new thing to the concert, «a new moment ‘in the moment’». And, indeed, the final, playful applause even included a bold listener brandishing his iPhone playing back a short extract from the concert he had only just recorded.
Peter Margasak (independent) on Especially For You by Harri Sjostrom, Erhard Hirt, Philipp Wachsmann and Paul Lytton.
Hirt is a self-taught musician whose attraction to the blues in the 1970s eventually led him to jazz-rock, and eventually improvised music. Around the time the recordings mentioned above were made he formed the group XPACT with Lytton, reedist Wolfgang Fuchs, and bassist Hans Schneider, and he was an early member of the King Übü Orchestrü. He’s never stopped playing, and his work appears on more than two dozen recordings, including many with a guitar-synthesizer set-up he’s now used for many years, including Especially For You, a new recording with an ad hoc lineup of XPACT where and he Lytton were joined by saxophonist Harri Sjöström and violinist Philipp Wachsmann—the latter two were subbing for Schneider and current reedist Stefan Keune, who were unable to make the gig. The album was recorded in Munich in October of 2022, and released a few weeks ago on Wachsmann’s long-running Bead label. While Lytton and Wachsmann continue to use electronics to expand and warp their output, Hirt used a computer to reimagine his guitar sounds, creating something that churns, glides, gargles, and spasms, leaving it difficult to tell where one source ends and where another begins, and how each musician’s contribution impacts the others. The quartet proceeds in potent fits and starts, incorporating plenty of space only to unleash the occasional torrent of jarring noise. You can get a strong sense of these elusive machinations below, with “For You Part Two.”
It is not a simple problem to attribute an artistic explanation to what one wants to represent theoretically as ‘fragmentation’ or ‘segmentation’. When Deleuze and Guattari arrived in philosophy, it was clear that the finite body of the work no longer had any reason to exist, but that attention had to be paid to the vibrations or modulations of it: it is in the search for forces, polarities, empathies or illusions that value is understood.
The processes of musical fragmentation or segmentation are at the basis of Especially For You, a CD for Bead Records that accommodates a concert of pure improvisation that took place in October 2022 in Munich to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Einstein Kultur cultural centre, a concert given by the XPACT Quartet in a reworked version: originally consisting of guitarist Erhard Hirt, saxophonist Stefan Keune, double bassist Hans Schneider and percussionist Paul Lytton, that evening the audience saw a different version due to the unavailability of Keune and Schneider, with the two musicians being replaced at the last minute by Harri Sjöström on soprano and sopranino sax and Philipp Wachsmann on violin and electronics.
In a performance of about an hour, the renewed quartet presented itself to an audience prepared and eager to participate in an experience that only free improvisation can offer: going ‘against the grain’, towards acoustic constraints and devilish waves of singular and unintelligible sounds, the quartet offered a beautiful proof of how one can reconcile a lot of abstract art on a mental level, taking advantage of sounds that are not normally desired by musicians but that can tell something.
Ettore Garzia (translation Deepl) on Especially For You by Harri Sjostrom, Erhard Hirt, Philipp Wachsmann and Paul Lytton.
Some information already comes from the cover, which bears a painting by Lytton. The English percussionist, a historical signature of British and world improvisation, is also a very good painter, with his own style and his own logic of intervention, the same one that presides when he plays his percussive set: although I did not find in the internal notes the name given to the painting, I realise that it is in Lytton’s orientations, i.e. abstract thickenings that need a lot of observation and detail to impose themselves; the aim is to let the viewer derive their own image from the painting’s apparent state of confusion, for by using colouristic techniques in a certain way and begging on the details created, the painting is able at some point to give explanations that lead back to real-world attitudes. In the viscous torpor of the colours and images, we can think about the facets of our character, being cautious or impatient, provoking reflection or leaning in for a warning: it is something that is also conveyed in the music and is also the common heritage of the other three musicians, who work on the rubbing, hissing or simmering of events in a unique way, precise to the situation of the place and the interaction of the moment as in the best tradition of free improvisation.
Especially in the two long parts of For You, the ‘greatness’ of the coordination and direction of the music is evident, becoming a drive in the best Deleuzian style: destabilising the normality of the parameters is not a method for its own sake but an opportunity to offer other terms of comparison of expression; interconnection is fundamental in this task and this is immediately verified through listening as one perceives a maturity both in terms of the acoustic performance and the perfect relationship between the musicians. The extensive techniques on the instruments determine the result in Especially For You but they are not everything, there is a further sum that the musicians provide in knowing how to ‘feel’ each other, in keeping the pulse of the situation at all times and capturing the judgement of the audience present.
It is difficult to express in exact words what happens in Especially For You, just as it is difficult to give an immediate opinion on Lytton’s paintings… I challenge anyone to do so in a short time; but at the same time my ears sense that we are faced with an area of expression that has yet to be discovered. If Sjöström and Lytton produce themselves in their aesthetic inventions, with semantic combinations of which they know all the predictive value, Hirt and Wachsmann often accentuate their improvisational stance with little electronic treatments, suggesting that it is also on this point that expression is at stake.
The titling of the pieces, which indistinctly addresses a receiving entity, smacks very much of modern poetics: that non-rhetoric is often an observation of deformed zones, of thoughts that can create tension and perspiration at the same time, but it is matter that nonetheless offers itself to the interpretation of the listener. There is no doubt that on that evening in Munich, there was a need for a happy image of the free as well as a strong dose of empathy towards the audience, something that Wachsmann defined it as a new moment ‘in the moment’, referring to the attention devoted to the performance: one of those present had filmed the quartet’s concert with his mobile phone and during the final applause made partial use of it, sending a small extract back into the ether. To tell the truth, I cannot perceive this ‘referral’ of the final part of the CD, however I trust one fact, namely that that concert succeeded in satisfying a need, bringing together the ‘illusions’ of those present for an hour.
Fotis Nikolakopoulos (Freejazzblog) on The Undanced Dance, Muted Language and Here and How
The Undanced Dance – light.box + Emil Karlsen
Jazz is the point of departure for the duo of light.box. Alex Bonney is on trumpet and electronics and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay on bass guitar and electronics. The extended use of electronics creates ambient sonic atmospheres that are playful and rewarding. The addition of drummer/percussionist (and one of the artists that resurrected Bead Records) adds a jazzier feel on a first level. Karlsen’s very modern and up to date polyrhythmic drumming approach matches perfectly with the aggressive notes and plucks coming from Tremblay’s bass guitar. The droney, atmospheric trumpet is a source of diverse audio results coming from his use (as evident in other releases he participates too) of different techniques on the instrument. Bonney’s trumpet is as flexible as it can get.
The Undanced Dance (what a great choice of words to describe it, indeed) consists of three long tracks that are divided into smaller parts. I really like the way they slowly build ambient textures, reaching into a lengthened climax that certainly leaves out any fears this could be some boring ambient music, like so much material under this label nowadays. Karlsen’s playing is versatile, flexible as ever and very humble. It seems, at some of the tracks, that he deliberately stays almost silent in order to leave room for the light.box duo.
Leaving aside that it could be a matter of choice, I really would like, if I must nag a bit, to listen more to the aggressive parts of Tremblay’s bass guitar. Nothing to do with any rock gestures, thankfully…
The Undanced Dance seems, and is, an important new entry in this second volume trajectory of Bead, as it broadens the label’s catalogue, while staying true to the nature of 1970’s improvisation (in which Bead was integral too) that anything fits and can be done.
Muted Language – Mark Sanders / Emil Karlsen
Coming from rock tradition, in my pre-teens and as a teenager, I have to admit that I owe to jazz and free jazz tradition (you, can spot the irony, right?) the fact it totally changed my idea of what drumming is, how solo drumming can be perceived. The notion that there is life beyond hitting the drums as aggressively as you can, apart from tearing down the macho idea (even physique) of the drummer, opened up, and still does, so many different paths as a listener. I deeply and profoundly enjoy listening to just the drums.
Muted Language, the first drumming duo of, coming from a younger generation of improvisers Emil Karlsen, with Mark Sanders (who has worked with John Butcher, John Edwards, Veryan Weston and Tony Bevan among others) clarifies from the first moments you start listening, that it is an open and freeform affair belonging to the aforementioned trajectory. Playing the drums can definitely be a muted, non-verbal language. Here, though, we have a duo of drummers that, in the midst of the pandemic as it was recorded in May 2021, hit it off right from the beginning.
Improvisation as a practice made us all realize that the solo voice (call it an instrument too) is as important as the shared language, but the up and coming result (of the duo in this case) is much more important. Here, in Muted Language too, the interaction, the silences, the stop-and-go-again of each musician are the important factors of its success, as a true child of free improvisation.
It amazed me and really enjoyed it, that the two drummers are almost audibly indistinguishable in their playing. There is no overlapping, no easy way out to present a solo dynamic. Just a constant flow, through interaction and intensive listening, of ideas, be it polyrhythmic, energetic –but not loud- playing, or sonic environments that are created on the spot utilizing all their instruments. Sonically, Muted Language, demands your attention as its essence lies in the small gestures in a audio micro-climate that bursts from fresh material. I strongly believe that Muted Language will become very important in the fresh catalogue of Bead Records.
Here and How – John Butcher / Dominic Lash / Emil Karlsen
Chronologically the last of the three, even though they were released in just a few months away from each other, proving that the artists around Bead are on a fertile period, Here and How is the one closer to a free jazz/free improv trio from the three. The trio is consisted by one of the older generation stalwarts of free improvisation, the great John Butcher on saxophones, with two younger generation musicians-improvisers, Dominic Lash on double-bass and Emil Karlsen on drums and percussion.
It would be a misinterpretation to call this release the most “normal” sounding of the three. It certainly is the one closest to the “tradition” free jazz built through hardships and polemical situations. The three of them have built an eclectic catalogue of their own, one that is full of surprises and, certainly, not one that goes under the moniker mannerism.
The CD, clocking in around fifty absolutely enjoyable minutes, consists of eleven tracks –mainly sorter passages with only one that exceeds the ten minute mark. For all of us, free jazz and improv acolytes it is a given truth that there are numerous recordings out there of the best quality. This remark, automatically, poses the next question. Why listen, or even buy, this CD then?
Well, of course, there is no easy, objective, or one that is measured by the numbers, reply. All the Bead releases right now engulf the essence of urgency. There are artists behind this name (one of the most important of the 1970’s, lest we forget) that seem really eager and excited to put out there new music. And there’s of course a certain quality in the playing of those three. I read on Bead’s bandcamp page that this recording was the first time the three played together. A striking fact considering that the interplay is amazing. Butcher, well known for giving us the totally unexpected, provides with clear sax lines throughout the recording. He finds a balance between playing with a fierce tone and never saturating his fellow musicians with sheer volume. This way there’s enough room for Lash and Karlsen to move far and away from the bass-and-drum-being-the-backbone kind of music. Their playing is free and lucid, most of the times in unison, as a duo, other times providing their individual voices.
There are times that I felt that Butcher just blew humbly in his mouthpiece and others that he managed to be aggressive and leave room for Karlsen and Lash. His skill is evident even to those of us with limited technical knowledge. And, of course, it is a matter of sentiment. This recording is made up by three musicians who seem like impressionist painters, building, stroke by stroke, on small scale, finally creating a strong statement for the fresh catalogue of the label.
Simon Cummings (5:4) on The Undanced Dance – light.box + Emil Karlsen
On the one hand, it’s impossible not to listen to The Undanced Dance and make comparisons with Supersilent. Yet in spite of the similarities (perhaps, in part, because of them) this collaboration between Alex Bonney, Pierre Alexandre Tremblay and Emil Karlsen is seriously compelling. The album comprises three multi-part performances, ‘The Shot Must Fall’, ‘Loosing the Shot’ and ‘The Unmoved Movement’, and the consistency in the trio’s outlook is such that it’s impossible not to hear them as siblings, or even variations on a single behavioural theme. An aspect that recurs so often to be fundamental is an omnipresent question concerning the connection between sound elements. From the outset of ‘The Shot Must Fall’, Bonney’s trumpet, Karlsen’s drums and Tremblay’s electronics can be heard, depending on how you tilt your perceptions, as either playing out in parallel or integrated into a multifaceted whole. To a large degree that liminal situation doesn’t change much throughout The Undanced Dance, and it’s a highly stimulating component that keeps us on our toes, all the more so as the music evolves and changes. Part of this liminality arises from a tendency to juxtapose very slow and very fast elements simultaneously, the former often rapid-fire drumwork or convoluted granular textures, the latter roaming trumpet lines and sustained electronic tones. The high points are utterly exhilarating, most powerful in the first two parts of ‘Loosing the Shot’, where the trio throws all caution and restraint to the wind, allowing the group dynamic to soar in a whirlwind of sympathetic sound formations with us, rendered miniscule, marvelling from its core.
Atypical trio driven by a very inspired Mark Sanders surfing on the crest of pulsations evoking the Tony Williams free of our youth and Tony Oxley with Alan Skidmore or Tomas Stanko. Alex Bonney is a superb avant-garde jazz trumpeter and a very interesting electronic sound artist playing alternately or simultaneously on his mouthpiece instrument and his installation. Paul Dunmall plays the tenor sax here, adapting his approach to the curious bristling and screeching sounds of Bonney. And these are superbly diversified, evoking cosmic marimba-type percussion, hesitant bongos or struck bells. His beautiful trumpet parts join magnificently with Dunmall’s biting, fragmented and burning improvisation. He avoids infinite spirals and his sequences of detached triples by fragmenting his speech, so, no doubt, that he can listen to the sound details of the playing of his two busy companions. Three pieces carefully concocted with love by a close-knit team, Dunmall and Sanders having worked together intensively with double bassist Paul Rogers and guitarist Phil Gibbs. Resonance’s Refractions (13:09) Arid in Phase (8:22) and Generating World (18:53) , i.e. around forty minutes, each time offering three specific propositions of the music of this trio. Arid In Phase for example focuses on the beats and rolls of Sanders’ toms delimiting the space that the blower’s bites tear up, followed by a beautiful sequence of fragmented and broken electro loops. Under the pressure of the drummer’s relentless drive Dunmall flies away in Generating Worlds alternating with the trumpeter. The hi-hat pedal stamps dizzily, leading the two blowers into superb ethereal exchanges in the orbit of electrifying pulsations. Here is a beautiful archetype of hybrid contemporary jazz which wonderfully incorporates a creative electronic dimension by exacerbating the post Tony Williams – Jack De Johnette rhythmic ebullience. This album should be put into many hands, because it will meet the expectations of audiences fond of experimental electronics, sensitive to cutting-edge jazz or looking for mixtures of genres off the beaten track.
Bead Records is a British label founded in 1974 to document radical improvisation. Its new management is developing superbly produced and really interesting new projects that we shouldn’t want to label. In the recent catalog: the flautist Neil Metcalfe, the percussionist Emil Karlsen, the electronician Martin Hackett, its founder the violinist Phil Wachsmann, the saxophonist John Butcher, the double bassist Dominic Lash, the saxophonist Harri Sjöström, the percussionist Paul Lytton, the guitarist Erhard Hirt. From Mark Sanders, an excellent percussion duo with Emil Karlsen… to be continued!!
Andrzej Nowak (Spontaneous Music Tribune) on The Beholder’s Share by Alex Bonney, Paul Dunmall and Mark Sanders.
The British meeting of three musical generations, dressed in the guise of freely improvised jazz, is intriguing not only because of the class of the musicians and drama, but also the exceptionally successful combination of synthetic sounds with the acoustics of two brass players and percussion. Each of the three stories is built at the beginning by a modular synthesizer and electronics, which arrange the space with an ambient background and a sequence of small synthesizer spots. Let us add that this background usually remains with the musicians until the end of a given exhibition. Only on such a prepared ground does the trumpet enter and create interesting dialogues with the saxophone, supported by extremely competent drumming .
The beginning of the recording is at a slow tempo. Electronics create a dark background, the saxophone spins melodies, and the drums form the frame of the narrative. The post-fusion taste appears quite quickly, although the trumpet itself makes its first sounds only after a few minutes. Over time, the musicians achieve a state of stable free jazz, not overloaded with emotions. The second story opens with a drummer who initiates a gentle rhythm. There are spots of synthetics and saxophone preparations floating around it. As the minutes pass, the narrative gains momentum. Halfway through the multi-minute improvisation, the musicians seem to hit rock bottom. For a moment, all we hear is pure-sounding brass. Later in the recording, the creative drummer has a lot to say, but it should be noted that the synthetic layer is not limited to just building the background. The situation is similar in the third instalment, when Bonney’s creativity focuses on non-acoustic sounds. The narrative here has many faces, it can be twisted, oneiric, mysterious, but it can also be expressive, stimulated by Sanders’ great work. The finale belongs to Dunmall, who reaches for the soprano saxophone and gives the whole thing a post-folk style that is so characteristic of him.
Eyal Hareuveni (Salt Peanuts) on The Beholder’s Share by Alex Bonney, Paul Dunmall and Mark Sanders
The Beholder’s Share brings together an ad-hoc British free improvising trio of trumpeter-electronic musician-recording and mix engineer-producer Alex Bonney, legendary sax player Paul Dunmall (some of his recent albums were mixed by Bonney) and Dunmall’s long-term collaborator, drummer Mark Sanders. The debut album of this trio was recorded at Sansome Studios in Birmingham in November 2022 and was mixed by Bonney, who also took the cover photo, The Egyptian white desert.
The title of the album refers to a term, popularised by art historian Ernst Gombrich, for what viewers bring to pictures in order to make sense of them. Gombrich referred in particular to the need to draw upon ‘prior knowledge of possibilities ‘to separate the code from the message’. Where representational images depict what is familiar from social knowledge and employ familiar textual codes, viewers tend to be unaware of the contribution they are making to the process of representation.
In this musical meeting, Bonney, Dunmall and Sanders bring their own personal share of experience in free improvised settings. These creative musicians balance an urgent need for sonic exploration with close and democratic interaction and an organic flow of stormy music on the aptly titled, opening piece «Resonance Refractions». The trio’s sense of sense exploration intensifies in the second piece «Arid/In Phase» when Bonney plays on synth and electronics and pushes Dunmall and Sanders into abstract yet dramatic, otherworldly terrains. The last, 19-minute of the third piece «Generating Worlds» matches remarkably the British school of intense free improvisation with the eerie, alien electronic aesthetics.