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Posts tagged ‘Steve Noble’

Jul 23

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Climate change

On an unseasonably cold, rainy late-July evening in East London, the trio known as Decoy — Alexander Hawkins on Hammond organ, John Edwards on double bass and Steve Noble on drums — and their regular guest, the indefatigable 83-year-old American saxophonist Joe McPhee, provided all the warmth the audience at Cafe Oto could need, and more.

That’s hardly surprising. Almost a decade and a half since their debut, Decoy + McPhee are the ultimate 21st century iteration of the hallowed organ-and-tenor combo, which at its finest — in such meetings as those of Gene Ammons and Richard “Groove” Holmes, Stanley Turrentine and Jimmy Smith, or Sam Rivers and Larry Young — provided an entire central heating system in itself.

The set I caught last night, the last of their four nights in Dalston, began with Noble marking out a fast 6/8, moving straight ahead, encouraging Hawkins to let rip with a rousing improvisation. McPhee entered with a splintered honk before the tempo slowed to a bluesy lope. A dislocated shuffle followed, powered by Edwards’ thrumming, then a modal section (with a tune I’m sure I know but couldn’t place), a fast Latin passage with chattering percussion, and a quiet gospel-tinged fade to a most elegant closure.

That’s a swift précis of 45 minutes of music full of spontaneous creativity and contrast, in which the freedom of any individual was a given. All four were astonishingly inventive, intuitive in their responses, shaping the parts and the whole with complete assurance. I was struck by the sight of a young woman amid the throng, dancing in the semi-ecstatic way people used to dance to, say, the Third Ear Band at rock festivals 50 years ago. Not something you see at many jazz gigs these days, but a pretty good sign.

The occasional bursts of B3-powered intensity reminded me of the first edition of Tony Williams’s Lifetime, a thought that led me to muse on what the classic John Coltrane Quartet might have sounded like had McCoy Tyner suddenly gone missing and been replaced for one night only by Larry Young, Lifetime’s organist, with instructions to go for it. A bit like Decoy with Joe McPhee, maybe. Anyway, the roar and the prolonged ovation at the end of the set said it all.

Mar 7

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The N.E.W. thing

N.E.W. liveI could only stay for a single set of the trio called N.E.W. — Steve Noble (drums), John Edwards (double bass) and Alex Ward (guitar) — at Cafe Oto tonight, but it was enough to get excited about. This is an improvising group of ferocious intensity: for my taste, maybe the most effective high-volume band I’ve heard since Tony Williams’s Lifetime set the standard for such adventures more than 40 years ago.

The first piece lasted half an hour, in which everybody played without a break. They work with patterns rather than tempos, usually set by Noble’s relentlessly attacking sticks, mallets or brushes (he also has a way with cymbals that makes me think he’s the post-industrial Billy Higgins). Edwards, surely the most remarkable bassist ever produced by Britain, works off and around the drums, tugging and hammering the strings to produce huge surges of sound and in one passage bowing them above his left hand on the fingerboard while the drummer momentarily toyed  with a light Latin vamp. As for Ward, he is a constant astonishment: Bo Diddley’s “Road Runner”, Jimi Hendrix’s “Star-Spangled Banner”, Sonny Sharrock’s work with Herbie Mann and Last Exit, Robert Fripp’s solo on King Crimson’s “A Sailor’s Tale” and Derek Bailey’s amplified solo pieces — he doesn’t sound like any of them, but they might be some of the sources of inspiration behind the barrage of howling, squealing, chattering and whining but always coherent and compelling noise that he sets up.

They’ve been playing together in this configuration for half a dozen years, and the degree of empathy is phenomenal. You can hear it on their new album, Motion, a vinyl-only release on the Dancing Wayang label, limited to 300 copies (www.dancingwayang.com). The product of a studio session, it can’t possibly convey the impact of hearing them playing to an audience in a small room, but it has other, equally worthwhile qualities.

Try to imagine how a combination of Hendrix, Charles Mingus and Keith Moon might sound, stripped of ego, transported to Dalston in 2014, with modern amplification turned all the way up. If that might be your idea of a good time, don’t miss ’em.