TOUCH
the weight, measure and feel of things
In pre-electric times musical instruments were likely to be made of wood, metal, skin, bone and gut. But it is, of course, the living tissue of the player - the hands, breath and ears - working with these inert materials that transforms the idea of sound-making into what we call music. Amplifiers now give musicians another dimension in which to operate. Together with the electronic and computer technologies, they take the musician into other sub-atomic worlds of materiality, in which the laws of physics are summoned, if never truly understood. Touch here is mediated. The turn of a knob controls gradations of pitch and volume which were previously the preserve of practiced fingering, positioning, breath, pressure and physical stamina.
The ensemble on this CD focuses upon some of the subtle disciplines and sensibilities I cherish most in music making. The materials are simple; soprano saxophone, a double bass, drums and cymbals. The given musical aesthetic priority is that of improvisation. The musicians know this medium. Thanks to the relative youth of my fellow players they have grown up with it as a norm in contemporary music making. But apart from the ability to make music together without a composer’s will commanding their minds and fingers, they demonstrate other, often unsung, skills that I feel are important to practice and celebrate. What drew me to ask Tom Chant and John Edwards to join me was the evident joy they already felt in playing and exploring their chosen instruments. It was the especially human quality in the use of soprano saxophone - an extension of the human voice that reminds me of early jazz trumpeters, with all the energy and fragility that keeps it so human. And John’s use of bass (even with an amplifier) produces a transparent and an un-oppressive quality which allows other sounds and voices to speak with and through. This transparency of playing is itself a particular skill but it is also, I think, a reflection of John’s generosity of musical spirit.
Music, at its most basic level, is not only the organisation of sound resources for human enjoyment and expression. It is never simply neutral or entertaining. Improvisation is not only a unique aesthetic but reveals the aspirations of players and the audience. A musician displays cultural (and thence political?) preferences when he adopts or denies specific musical practices. Collective improvisation and heurism as a mode of music making, as opposed to following the creative dictates of a composition, is such a preference. Audiences too, if only intuitively, acknowledge and applaud a successful execution of this ‘improvising’ aesthetic. Can anything important to human beings ever be neutral (or ‘just’ entertaining)? If you believe that then you believe in nothing!
Of recent years, whilst I have been changing (almost without realising) from a young enquiring musician to one who is now perceived as mature, I have noted the emergence of the ‘noise-makers’ who cultivate an aesthetic of unremitting volume. This has arisen partly out of the convergence of experimentalism in rock and other forms of music. AMM is often quoted as a precursor of this aesthetic, but this is to misunderstand the totality of AMM. For sure, there were times of early to mid period AMMmusic which used loudness as a medium. But more often the use of dynamics creates an impression of ‘loudness’ that is far in excess of its physical reality. Today’s noise-makers though, who use ‘sheer’ volume (mostly electrically induced), actually get nearer to creating a uni-dimensional sense of sound, leading to deafness (temporary and permanent). I have worked with some of its most extreme practitioners - e.g. Kevin Martin’s GOD and Sonic Boom’s EAR project (the latter is less concerned with volume per se, and perhaps uses it simply as a matter of course - part of the ethos of rock). I wanted to know what it was like to be in there amongst their particular mayhem!
I fear that the ‘art’ of loud noise-making disregards and ultimately destroys cooperation and the subtlety of human physical dexterity. Audiences are bludgeoned - admittedly many profess to like this! Maybe these musics do (and portray) other things. I enjoy watching their explorations and search for excitement. Ultimately, however the priority of their effect negates so many of my own desired sensibilities.
Of the attempts to use computers, I have to applaud George Lewis most. His interactive programmes which allow musician and machine (!) to learn and develop a musical discourse are ingenious. He is making what he calls his own ‘dream machine’ and ‘spirit catcher.’ And, when he performs with his own Voyager programme something ‘interactive’ happens. Other musicians, who have not been engaged with the development of this programme, do not fare as well. I remain sceptical too about computers being analogous to the human mind. But any reservations about George’s progress so far cannot but acknowledge that his is a bold adventure with some of the newer materials of life.
This trio, quite intuitively (because I never spelt out what I hoped would happen) works in a subtle, attentive way: examining what the music is and where it is going all within the process of playing; feeling the very weight of the sounds; measuring each contribution and placing sounds to be complementary and in contrast to other sounds; feeling the stuff of the instruments, and sensing the presence of other creative beings. This is part of the extraordinary and gloriously uncertain matrix of what making and listening to music should be about. These qualities signify what makes for positive, purposeful and creative human relationships. If they are not to be found in a music, then I reckon it is found wanting.
Eddie Prévost
c. September 1997
Track Listing:
1. Within an inch (09.33)
2. An ounce of mother's wit (06.03)
3. By your own yard (10.07)
4. Cheeks of sorry grain (13.31)
5. Set a new nap upon it (08.35)
6. The weight of evidence (11.03)
7. Grits beneaht the tread (11.51)
Recorded on 9 March 1997 at Gateway Studios, Kingston, England.
Front cover artwork (reproduced above) Childsplay by Stella Cardew.
As drummer with the pioneering English free improvisation ensemble AMM, Prévost helped formulate an approach to free improvisation that is process driven, selfless, and quite distinct from jazz. His own groups, including this trio with soprano saxophonist Tom Chant and bassist John Edwards, are similarly subtle and coherent units who listen to and accommodate one another with uncommon skill. This trio can advance and recede in carefully calibrated increments, with each player finely attuned to the other — they rise and fall together like three separate objects buoyed on the tide. The collective improvisations on Touch all have a beautiful transparency in which each band member makes his presence felt without obscuring the others. The enormously talented Chant has amazing, almost microscopic control of what he does. His short bursts of sound contain clusters of minute, rapidly tongued notes, which he shapes with fine gradations of dynamics. Edwards displays great rhythmic acuity and a nice sense of space. Prévost continues to be one of the leading lights of European free improvisation, a drummer of tireless invention, who can balance sound and silence, stillness and movement, small details and overall design. This is one of Prévost's finest albums as a leader, featuring music that's full of surprises, and human warmth and vulnerability, as well as daring and tough-mindedness.
Ed Hazell
Opprobrium (NZ) No. 5 July 1998