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Are you familiar with the jazz of the seventies? A lot of stuff, right. Practically everything up to the no-return of free jazz. Well, this no-return was interpreted in a singular way by the English school, I'm referring to improvisers like Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Tony Oxley, and many others, in the context of Incus Records and its surroundings.
But this is just a reference, a coordinate. The core of the issue is the individual musicians, iconoclasts and unshackled from everything.
Now imagine yourselves as miners. One has to dig through entire discographies, navigate through massive tomes, sift through millions of notes thrown into the world to find some lapis lazuli, jump from one cave to another in labyrinthine collaborations, and who knows, maybe sooner or later some precious stone will be encountered.
And the precious stone I favor most is born from the sedimentation between different or opposing elements, such as a simplicity of enjoyment seasoned with surprising or unusual elements or play as a creative approach with conceptual or aesthetic seriousness.
And here we are with this strange 1984 record, which, however, has nothing to do with jazz.
You’ll find; a single with a chorus that plants itself in your mind, dub and the scent of the Caribbean, sounds of things that are not instruments, a couple of solos by Lol Coxhill, sparse arrangements, minimal percussion, lounge.
The Residents inevitably come to mind. However, I never listen to them, so it's better to mention the Lounge Lizards, given David Toop’s signature (who also holds a chair in sound culture and improvisation, can you imagine!) and the final studio touch of David Cunningham. The other is Steve Beresford, known from the times of Zorn's Avant.
Forgive me, but I have nothing more to say. It’s riding the wave of enthusiasm that always marks the first listens that I found the ever-fading stimulus to talk about music.
Axé.
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