hurdy-gurdy jams

I've had a couple of saz and hurdy-gurdy jams with Joel over the last few days. Always good - lots more to come. I was playing unamplified, so having to be a bit more forceful and strummy than I would normally be (just so he could hear me - that machine is LOUD). However, I've now got his Trace Acoustic amp in my trailer and will be able to use that for future sessions.


the inimitable Joel Turk and his amazing curly-wurly hurdy-gurdy (foot-on-monitors stylee)
A few recorded highlights:

Listen Here
Stef should be coming down from West Wales tomorrow with a carload of instruments, so it's quite likely that some very interesting music will emerge over the next few days.

Goin' up the Country

Wednesday the 12th was my last night in Exeter. The next morning I got up early and cycled out of the city (it was a foggy morning) and across Devon into Dorset, with my saz on my back and the rest of my life loaded up on a German bike trailer I recently acquired (first thing I've ever bought on eBay - £40, new, including delivery from Germany). I'm now WWOOFing for Heather and John out at Cannings Court (where these were recorded), and working on my book about prime numbers, etc.

Henry had mentioned that Jon Sterckx, a percussionist who works with loops, was playing at The Globe on Wednesday evening as part of Vibraphonic. It seemed interesting enough to check out, so I went along to find a few locals watching an acoustic duo called "Fruitcake" playing covers. I assumed Jon Sterkx had cancelled, and so hung around to enjoy their renditions of The Cure's "Friday I'm In Love" (much better than the original!) and Patti Smith's "Because the Night" (not bad) over half a pint of Topsham Ferryman before realising that the main gigs happen in the upstairs room at The Globe. I got up there to discover that I'd missed it, but I did see Max Crackery, the experimental trombonist, was present, as was Lewis, the Welsh djembe player I'd jammed with at the party on Saturday. He seemed to know everyone there, and it gradually dawned on me that there was a whole music scene in Exeter involving chilled-out people playing interesting instruments which I'd somehow managed to not connect with in my six years of living there! And I was leaving the next morning. Oh well - more reasons to come back. Lewis and I had an inspiring talk about travel, spontaneity and life being what you make it. He gave me his number so we can jam more (and I can connect with his wider circle of musical friends) when I'm back in town.

Joel, my hurdy-gurdy-playing friend is also living out here at Cannings Court. We had a little
jam out around a fire on the Spring Equinox (a woman who turned out to be the late Douglas
Adams' half-sister also being present, and most appreciative). The temperature difference between the night air and the fire was a bit too extreme (and my hands a bit to scratched and stung from weeding among the nettles and brambles) for it to really kick in, but so good to be playing with Joel again. There will be lots more of this we hope. He's lent me his Steve Reich retrospective box set Phases, which I've been really getting into. This is something fellow RDGD member (and bagpipe maker) Mike got him into. I've been aware of Reich since taping the Kronos Quartet's debut of Different Trains off Radio 3 in 1988, but this box set is a revelation - particularly Music for 18 Musicians and Eight Lines. I just keep listening to these over and over on the little CD player in my trailer, in complete amazement. Reading the accompanying booklet, I learned that he saw Coltrane play fifty times in the 60's, that he studied Wittgenstein at Cornell, studied West African drumming in Ghana, and was majorly inspired in his composition work after being part of a performance of Terry Riley's In C.
This all adds to my appreciation of what he's doing. I already knew about Reich's pre-GD connection with Phil Lesh in San Francisco.

I've also been getting seriously into the Incredible String Band again - Vicky's teengage son Thomas, in gratitude for my radio production assistance, compiled their entire discography for me to take away with me. So I've been getting into some of the better tracks on the lesser albums which I'd previously overlooked, as well as old favourites. Current faves are "Creation", "Cold Days of February", "Alice is a Long Time Gone", "Dear Old Battlefield", "Sailor and the Dancer", "Veshengro", "This Moment", "Dust Be Diamonds, "Three is a Green Crown", "Job's Tears", "Maya"...so many. Listening closely on headphones, separating out all the layered sounds, it's amazing how much supposedly "wrong" playing is involved (crude hand-drumming and stringy noodling), sections I would certainly cut if I were editing my own music. Years ago, before I was playing and recording like I do now, I listened to the String Band, and I never noticed this - I listened to the overall sound, and taken as a whole, it's somehow not a problem. Interesting. It's the same with all the Matt Valentine and Erika Elder stuff I've been listening to, so much of which sounds "wrong", yet somehow sounds perfectly right.

I wrote a little piece on "forest floor" music, after a discussion with Keith and Henry on the way back from a Drone session in Crediton - I shall have to dig that out and reproduce that here. I was using the comparison of the aesthetic of a "beautiful kitchen" and the aesthetic of a "beautiful forest floor". Modern processed music has an aesthetic similar to that of the former, and I was arguing in favour of creating a music with an aesthetic of the latter. If you break it down, it's messy - the parts are arranged in all sorts of asymmetrical and irregular ways. But holistically, at some intuitive level, it's completely right.

There's a certain attitude that can be cultivated allowing you to say "No, this is fine, I'm happy with this as it is." rather than fussing over it in an over-perfectionist way. And then a certain audacity required to bring it out to the public.

It's important that none of this becomes an excuse for sloppiness or indiscipline, though.

Zoe Rahman

Went to see the Zoe Rahman trio at The Phoenix's temporary "Voodoo Lounge" last night. (ZR - piano, Gene Calderazzo - drums, Oly Hayhurst - bass).

Zoe tore it down, as expected. And smiled radiantly throughout.

She was more there and at one with her music than any other player I can remember watching. Complex streams of notes and tonal clusters were springing forth from her fingers like lightning bolts, and she made its seem beyond effortless. She was smiling, almost laughing, almost continually, as if she were delighting in her inexplicable ability to channel this extraordinary music. The only musical reference point I can think of would be Thelonius Monk.

The night before I was at a housewarming party not far from the Quay - Matt (friend of Glen from Panacea who's a friend of Pok) and Eve's place. I'd been asked to come in character as Prof. Appleblossom, and bring my saz (I did both). People were taking turns on the decks, but Matt wanted an acoustic set, so the sound system got switched off, and I ended up jamming through a tinny little practice amp with Lewis, a Welsh djembe player. Lewis was the first to admit that he was profoundly intoxicated, yet he was able to play five and seven rhythms with surprising accuracy and fluidity. We got the room jumping with a jam, a version of "Levitating the Pentagon" and a very lively "And So". Lewis was rolling himself a number on his drumskin just as we were meant to start, so I signalled to the DJ to keep playing - it was a woman with blond dreadlocks full of sparkly paraphenalia (it was her birthday too, I think) playing the best selection of Jamaican dancehall and old school hiphop I can remember hearing. At this point she put on the Ultramagnetic MCs "Travelling at the Speed of Thought", which I hadn't heard for years, and I ended up jamming along, which worked surprisingly well.

"We tried the acid trombone, but it didn't work"

On Thursday night I dropped in to the Picture House bar to check out Keith's trio The Boys From Melbourne Street (a singer-songwriter friend with Keith on bass, plus a drummer). Unfortunately they started a bit late. I got to hear a set from another singer-songwriter called Jonathan Chatwin - quite good - and a couple of songs from The Boys. Then it was on to the North Bridge Inn, where Ben (who'd Droned with us the previous evening) was playing as "George Lazenbleep", surrounded by analogue synths and weird toys and devices. I got announced on the mic as I walked in! "It's Matthew from Children of the Drone!" [minor applause]. I definitely want to make more music with this person!

James S (another Droner) was there too, because the main act was Max Crackery featuring Gabe (a.k.a. "Powers of Ten"). Max Crackery is James' friend Big Bird (presumably he has a sensible name to go with the multiple daft pseudonyms) who plays laptop and trombone. Gabe does freestyle MC'ing through an array of electronic devices (pitchshifting his voice, etc.) while simultaneously scratching the resulting output using a digital pseudo-turntable scratching interface [whatever they're called]. Quite unbelievably mad. He's a decent MC too, but the scratching just took the madness to another level. Just before I left, the cryptic pronouncement "We tried the acid trombone but it didn't work" was spoken from the mic, which I woke up with in my head the next morning. A very nice walk home, too. I think I had more fun than I would have had I gone to see John Etheridge's Zappatistas at The Phoenix (no doubt masterful, but despite the man's obvious genius, I just can't really get into the Zappa thing).


Ben Goldstone a.k.a. Lazy B a.k.a George Lazenbleep
Last night (Friday), I was back down the NBI to catch a full set from George Lazenbleep, and wasn't disappointed. His efforts to start off with ten minutes of overwhelming, disturbing noise were not appreciated by everyone present (he was urged to cut that short), so he launched into his spontaneously-layered future funk pieces, which (together with his unique onstage presence) went down very well with the clientele. There was a particularly wonderful moment where he was struggling to simultaneously work his (rather ramshackle) analogue gear and put on a toy Darth Vader voice-changing mask (hotwired with some kind of feedback-loop circuit, he explained later). There was some kind of hand-held non-electronic noisemaking device also involved - I was sitting too far back to really see what was going on, but it was fabulously, chaotically entertaining.

He was supporting Minor Planet, a local lounge-dub collective - pretty good (live horns, etc., but playing along with backing tracks from a laptop, so the music couldn't properly "breathe"). I was also spotted by Ollie Hall a.k.a. "Bad Sector", a field-recording enthusiast and glitch-electronica artist who's been in touch before via the COTD website (Simon once used his recording of the wind in the Haldon Hills - streamed live from archive.org - in the middle of a Drone session). I think that's the first time I've been identified in public as the result of my web-presence. Good to meet in person, anyway.

Droning with Lou Gare (and lots of other people)

This month's Children of the Drone session at St. Stephens was quite an unusual one. Lou Gare (once part of legendary free jazz ensemble AMM) turned up (having intended to for a few months). His dissonant sax playing pushed things in interesting new directions.

James T, Keith, Simon and I appeared briefly on Vibraphonic FM's "Future Sound of Exeter Show" just over a week previously, played a couple of recordings and talked about what we do. As a result of this, Ben Goldstone, a local electronic sound artist and all-round eccentric got in touch to say he wanted to make music with us. So we invited him along too. Like Lou (and Simon), he could only stick around for the first half, but put the homemade synth he'd brought to good use during the time he was there. We also had Chris, someone Simon met in Totnes (his unamplified acoustic guitar got rather lost in the church acoustic, unfortunately) and Robin and Herewood, a couple of percussionists Henry's invited along to some recent sessions (Robin also adding some very nice accordion drones occasionally). James S only remembered that there was a session at the last minute, turned up without instruments, and ended up hanging about by the mic reading and singing bits of church literature, to great effect.

It felt quite chaotic (mainly due to the number of us playing), though enjoyable. I was pleasantly surprised that Lou Gare asked if he could get a recording before he left. The recording was also a pleasant surprise - really quite OK, a lot of it.


Not COTD! It's AMM, back in the day (c. 1968)
James S - vocals
James T - poetry, piano, pecussion, partially-submerged gong
Keith - electric guitar, electric mandolin, percussion(?)
Simon - laptop (first half)
Henry - percussion
me - saz, balalaika, percussion

Lou Gare - saxophone (first half)
Robin - percussion
Herewood - percussion, xylophone, pennywhistle
Ben - homemade analogue synth, piano (first half)
Chris - acoustic guitar, harmonica

Listen Here

Femi Kuti

Vicky and I went to see Femi Kuti (Fela's son) and his 13-piece band "The Positive Force" (appropriately named) last night at The Phoenix. Mighty!! They played about two hours I think - had it been in Africa, I expect they would have played all night (and I would certainly have stuck around).

Before going out, Vicky introduced me to a few weird and wonderful new bands she's been getting into: Psapp, Tunng, Notwist, Six Organs of Admittance (I knew about them). She and Claudia are even going to see Tunng in London next Friday.

The Femi Kuti gig was part of the local Vibraphonic Festival. On Saturday, it's Zoe Rahman, a jazz pianist who I saw guesting with her brother's Fela-inspired Afrobeat collective The Soothsayers at The Phoenix last year. That was one of the best gigs I'd ever been to, and it would have been worth the ticket price just to hear her extraordinary keyboard parts.

There's also the temporary festival station Vibraphonic FM. Have heard some excellent stuff, as in previous years - The Majestic reggae soundsystem (more dancehall than roots, but about as good as dancehall gets), Jelly Jazz (Plymouth's amazing funk/soul/jazz soundsystem who I'm glad to see have a program). I was part of a Children of the Drone contingent who appeared briefly on the first Monday "Future Sound of Exeter Show" - they played a couple of our recordings, which led to a local electronic sound artist called Ben Goldstone getting in touch...and it looks like they might be booking Dub Magnitude to support Baka Beyond on May 19th (a proper auditorium slot at The Phoenix, nice). Vicky's teenage son Tom managed to secure a slot for two 2-hour programmes (Tuesday lunchtime) - I sat in on the first, "producing" (coordinating the spoken bits and generally helping things run smoothly), as it was Tom's first time on the radio - and it went very well, we both thought, despite a bit of nervousness on the mic. His selection was impeccable (I might reproduce the playlist at some point) and I even got Digable Planets' "Pacifics" played for me, as he'd not quite got enough material worked out in advance to fill the two hours. And Simon Drone got a birthday shout-out (it being his 40th that day). Looks like I'll be playing a similar role in his program tomorrow.