Paul Taylor
(keyboards and bass pedals)
Some of you may have heard some of this music if you went to any of the gigs in this year’s Newcastle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music. You may also have heard part of it ringing out if you found yourself near Newcastle Civic Centre on recent early Friday afternoons. It was commissioned by Festival leading man, Wesley Stephenson, to be played as interval music before and in between performances and, arranged for the Edith Adamson Carillon at the Civic Centre, to be played across the City. The Carillon, at 22 tonnes, is probably the heaviest instrument to be included on a jazz album anywhere, ever.
I managed to catch
the last performance by the Carillon after the Alcyona Mick concert at the
L&P and I recognised a few of her audience who, along with Ms Mick herself,
had wandered up to the central space of the Civic Centre. One guy sat
cross-legged on one of the stepping stones across the moat and attempted to
attain a Zen like intimacy with the music until the constant Northern drizzle
drove him under cover.
The album itself
is difficult to classify and we humans like an easy label. It’s a single piece
of just under an hour but is it jazz? (Yes, in bits). Is it third stream?
(Again, parts are). Is it ambient music? (If there’s such a thing as intrusive
ambient). Is it prog? (Again, in part). Soundscapes
could be the word but that covers such a wide range of possibilities, and
Taylor has previous on soundscapes on his Avalon
of the Heart album. It could be dinner music if it weren’t so demanding of
attention in places BUT, of course, it was commissioned to not be that
intrusive.
Interludes opens with the piece for the Carillon,
enhanced by effects. It’s a ghostly, spectral, echoing piece that fades into
very delicate ambient swirls that reminded me of the early part of Pat Metheny
and Lyle Mays’ As Falls Wichita….before
the dramatic release that occurs part way through that track. The music ebbs and flows, much is light and
ethereal but there are passages that include lower notes that anchor it in
place for a moment. Some listeners may be relieved to hear something familiar
in a brief brisk piano section part way through and a later section features
some angular piano that nudges Interludes
back towards jazz, but most of it is more electronic ambient. (Later a
plucked, electronically treated guitar also makes a brief appearance).
There is a lovely
passage about 40 minutes in where it sounds like Taylor’s piano is playing among
the bells of the Carillon and lighter notes, possibly from tubular bells (are
we mentioning Tubular Bells?), all
mingle together in a spectrum of percussive sounds.
It’s a
fascinating, engrossing album and it’s hard to do it full justice in such a
clumsy medium like the written word. You have to fall into it and become
immersed. File it next to Floating
Points and Pharoah Sanders' Promises
Interludes is now available on CD (New Jazz and Improvised Music Recordings) or to Download HERE on Bandcamp. (The Download splits the music into two tracks whilst the CD is a single piece of music). Dave Sayer
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