Adventures In Sound

Adventures In Sound

21 July, 2008
by: Sherbet

Just like No Music Day on the 21st of November, the London Jazz Festival passed by with, well... silence. Devoted Jazz enthusiasts flocked to the usual haunts, while fans and tourists mingled at free jazz events around Southbank, although the festival as a whole didn't seem to have the impact the organisers hoped for.

As an Aussie in London, this was my first jazz festival. Half excited, half nervous, I set off for my first show after donning traditional jazz uniform - black. The unofficial theme of this year’s festival appeared to be a tribute to the greats with We Love Ella at the Royal Festival Hall headlining the week. Tonight's performance though was far removed from honouring the standards; instead it explored the boundaries of what can be truly considered jazz.

The first half of the concert felt as though we were privy to a warm-up improvisational jam before a main event. Following the success of an extended concert a few years ago, Adventures in Sound brought exceptionally gifted musicians together to create ad hoc collaborations.

Set within the intimate space of Queen Elizabeth Hall's Purcell Room, abandoned musical instruments were scattered throughout the stage to be embraced at various times during the night. First on stage were experimental pianist Pat Thomas and saxophonist Steve Williamson, with scat sax beats and piano strings plucked like a guitar featuring throughout. The music evolved subtly, using eye contact to move the jam forward, bouncing off one another with a stroke of a few keys to take turns monopolising the space.

With conventional jazz, not just the standards, the essential interaction with the audience is the tapping of the feet, in this however the beats were missing and as soon as you felt a rhythm they moved off on a tangent, and never settled on a fluid melody. One audience member remarked "it sounded like a cross between traffic noise and a dalek from Dr Who". A bit harsh perhaps, but at times the session drifted more into the realms of performance art than jazz.

The strangest act for the night was David Toop, a middle-aged man in a suit jamming with wind instruments over a tribal backing laid down by his Apple Mac. The connection with the musician seemed lost. He never looked up and never smiled. His laptop played beats and ambient noise and he incorporated various flutes, but the set begged the question: When does sound become music? Is it when we enjoy listening to it or does it simply consist of firm beats and additional noise?

When the headlining act, Gutbucket came on stage, I finally saw why we were here. The Brooklyn-based act fused jazz, punk and kerzoom, playing spontaneously with that upfront energy and veracity you would expect from our neighbours across the Atlantic.

With strong melodies, deep rhythms and an authentic original style, the quartet filled the intimate space with a buzzing energy. Powerful sax notes lead the music where vocals usually would. Recent album Sludge Test got a run thorough, with plugs from saxophonist Ken Thomson who jokingly describes it as a collection of "ultimate songs about American life". The whole performance had that Yankee appeal, exemplified by the track 'More, more, more, faster, better, stronger… with cheese'.

In all, Adventures in Sound was an innovative end to the festival. Moving away from what most people would consider jazz, we are able to see what music essentially is: the potential at the fingertips of the musician.

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Sherbet