(Review by Steve H)
Gosforth Civic Theatre was virtually
full for the visit of the British Bahraini artist’s band Electric Dreams. As Ahmed explained,
the band produces spontaneous improvisations so it was going to be interesting to
see what sort of journey we would be taken on.
It got off to a very rocky start
- more Pink Floyd than Blue Mitchell - as guitar and drums tended to dominate
on the opening two numbers. The third piece seemed to change tack completely
and almost had a western (in the John Wayne sense) type feel to it.
At this
point I was not convinced. Luckily the final piece of the first set really did
the business. Starting off with some Indian style scat from Singh (I am sure there is a
proper name for this but sadly I don’t know what it is) the piece grew and grew
and morphed into almost Phillip Glass/Steve Reich minimalist flavoured
work. So, at the halfway point, I was now looking forward with eager
anticipation to the second set.
I was not disappointed. The music,
somehow, seemed far more coherent than in the first set. Hällkvist on guitar
and Youngs on drums interacted brilliantly. Ahmed, who
seemed rather subdued in the first set, was far more prominent in the second.
An atmospheric electronic jazz soundscape was created and I was really able to
lose myself in the music.
So, a very positive end to the evening after a
somewhat laboured start. But I guess that is the joy of improvised music neither
the band nor the audience know how things are going to turn out but the longer
everyone stays with it the better it seems to get.
Steve H
2 comments :
The singing/ scatting/ rapping style is called conical, though I never seem to be able to find the correct spelling. Anyone?
I'm tempted to say Steve T's proposed spelling is a bit "comical", but that would be cheeky :)
It's most often written "konnakol" but as it's a Tamil word by origin there is no "official" version, and you'll see it as konokol and other variants as well.
However it's written, the konnakol was one of the highlights. I also enjoyed Singh's trademark bird calls towards the end, followed by some "bear growling" (?). Never heard those at a jazz gig before!
I'd liked to have heard a bit more from Yazz overall, but as Steve H says, this was an exciting session, with a welcome whiff of the unpredictable and risky. There was some great playing and it mostly worked for me.
Chris K
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