jazzy_dave (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jazzy_dave) wrote2012-11-23 11:13 pm
jazzy_dave) wrote2012-11-23 11:13 pm
Spring Heel Jack Go Free Jazzing
Spring Heel Jack "Amassed" (Thirsty Ear CD 2002)
Spring Heel Jack is a project that was launched in 1994 by the duo of John Coxon, ex guitarist for Spiritualized and Ashley Wales, ex collaborator of Shock Headed Peters. The project pioneered the genre what was to be termed 'ambient jungle', a kind of melodic and atmospheric take on drum'n'bass fundamentals.
The project has thus far produced two masterpieces, Disappeared (2000) and Amassed (2002). The former brilliantly contrasts sonic expositions of Wagnerian intensity with romantic trumpet-led pieces. But its with the latter that the project really shine.
Featuring an all-star jazz line-up of Han Bennink (drums), Ed Coxon (violin), John Edwards (bass), Evan Parker (saxophone), Paul Rutherford (trombone), Matthew Shipp (piano) and Kenny Wheeler (trumpet), and adding the 'shoegazing' guitar of Jason Pierce (Spiritualized) to the proceedings, the duo composed eight mini-concertos straddling not one stylistic border but pretty much all possible borders.
The lead-off track 'Double Cross' is a hybrid of chamber music, bebop jazz and dissonant avant-garde that relegates harmony to imagination and rhythm to space. Soulful bass lines and cubistic trumpet balladry coexist to create a magical ambiance.
In 'Amassed' the jazz element of the sound is more prominent. Frantic drumming and petulant horns recall the atmosphere of a smoky mid-1960s Soho jazz club, replete with Albert Ayler's cacophonic bacchanals and liquid piano a` la Weather Report.
Funereal bells and martial chords open 'Wormwood'. A sense of tension is built by free notes that get increasingly darker and ever more distorted. The instruments join in a cacophonous symphony, which create a sound that merges the absurd cultivated by Pere Ubu with the jamming of Jimi Hendrix.
In 'Lit' a tender trumpet intones a theraputic psalm over a majestic organ melody which merges musique concrete and a moving piano. The pyschedelic sonic impulses are reminiscent of early Pink Floyd. The track constitutes the core of the album.
With 'Meroc', geometric sax overlays guitar distortion that recalls early Anthony Braxton, whilst '100 Years Before' is a lenghty fresco of abstract and lyrical chaos.
'Duel' is an exercise of surrealism in search of structure that takes a contorted route of primordial sax, minimalistic piano repetition and apocalyptic drumming.
The album closes with the mesmerizing 'Obscured' which is a culmination of the techniques, styles and ideas lavished on the previous seven tracks, with the addition of an 'earthly' soul and rock element. A steady rhythmic nine minute soul pattern overlays a jungle beat, while the instruments take shifts at howling their joyful desperation, thereby concocting one of the most exhilarating orgies in modern jazz.
Modern avant-garde improv jazz at its best.
Spring Heel Jack is a project that was launched in 1994 by the duo of John Coxon, ex guitarist for Spiritualized and Ashley Wales, ex collaborator of Shock Headed Peters. The project pioneered the genre what was to be termed 'ambient jungle', a kind of melodic and atmospheric take on drum'n'bass fundamentals.
The project has thus far produced two masterpieces, Disappeared (2000) and Amassed (2002). The former brilliantly contrasts sonic expositions of Wagnerian intensity with romantic trumpet-led pieces. But its with the latter that the project really shine.
Featuring an all-star jazz line-up of Han Bennink (drums), Ed Coxon (violin), John Edwards (bass), Evan Parker (saxophone), Paul Rutherford (trombone), Matthew Shipp (piano) and Kenny Wheeler (trumpet), and adding the 'shoegazing' guitar of Jason Pierce (Spiritualized) to the proceedings, the duo composed eight mini-concertos straddling not one stylistic border but pretty much all possible borders.
The lead-off track 'Double Cross' is a hybrid of chamber music, bebop jazz and dissonant avant-garde that relegates harmony to imagination and rhythm to space. Soulful bass lines and cubistic trumpet balladry coexist to create a magical ambiance.
In 'Amassed' the jazz element of the sound is more prominent. Frantic drumming and petulant horns recall the atmosphere of a smoky mid-1960s Soho jazz club, replete with Albert Ayler's cacophonic bacchanals and liquid piano a` la Weather Report.
Funereal bells and martial chords open 'Wormwood'. A sense of tension is built by free notes that get increasingly darker and ever more distorted. The instruments join in a cacophonous symphony, which create a sound that merges the absurd cultivated by Pere Ubu with the jamming of Jimi Hendrix.
In 'Lit' a tender trumpet intones a theraputic psalm over a majestic organ melody which merges musique concrete and a moving piano. The pyschedelic sonic impulses are reminiscent of early Pink Floyd. The track constitutes the core of the album.
With 'Meroc', geometric sax overlays guitar distortion that recalls early Anthony Braxton, whilst '100 Years Before' is a lenghty fresco of abstract and lyrical chaos.
'Duel' is an exercise of surrealism in search of structure that takes a contorted route of primordial sax, minimalistic piano repetition and apocalyptic drumming.
The album closes with the mesmerizing 'Obscured' which is a culmination of the techniques, styles and ideas lavished on the previous seven tracks, with the addition of an 'earthly' soul and rock element. A steady rhythmic nine minute soul pattern overlays a jungle beat, while the instruments take shifts at howling their joyful desperation, thereby concocting one of the most exhilarating orgies in modern jazz.
Modern avant-garde improv jazz at its best.