Martin Longley crossed the Digbeth border, to discover the hidden back rooms of free improvisation.
Bruce Coates/John Edwards/Mark Sanders
The Lamp Tavern
March 10th
The long established fortnightly Fizzle session is dedicated to improvised music, convened in the back room of the Lamp Tavern, which lies in the back street borderland with industrial Digbeth. As this gig gathered its fierce energies, a small cluster of regulars from the front room were lurking outside the door, curious about the strange sonic practices heard within.
Unlike the old days, where a seven-strong audience would be deemed a successful door-take, this evening has lately been packing the admittedly small chamber with bodies, an unusually young crowd, folks who are just beginning their journey into the realms of free playing. Local saxophonist Bruce Coates ran his own session, Frimp, for many years, and is a key presence on the Birmingham improvising scene. For this gig, he was joined by bassist John Edwards and percussionist Mark Sanders, a pair of players who have a broader international presence.
The opening duo set was well worth arriving early for, featuring an intimate meeting between violinist Richard Scott and alto saxophonist Tapiwa Svosve. With both players unamplified, Scott’s scratchy feints were much quieter than Svosve’s still-dampened scuttling, but this created an intriguing dynamic between the two, as the latter ranged from targeted blasts to tubular-cluck fingerings. Very much in thrall to the likes of John Butcher and Evan Parker, or across the Atlantic, John Zorn and Anthony Braxton,
Svosve prompted the notion that the vocabulary of freedom has long been established, and that players can slip inside the form’s conventions. This didn’t prevent the altoman’s playing from being gripping, but Scott had more of an individual voice, almost studiously avoiding playing the violin in anything like the ‘proper’ fashion. Instead, he was lightly bowing the head or the base of the strings, or using light sticks to rattle with sensitivity.
When the main trio leapt in, their sound was noticeably operating on a higher plateau of volume, thrust, passion and panic. Which explains their position in the improvising pantheon of power. Similar traits can be discerned, but the trio operate in a blur of what seems like naked primitivist instinct. Sanders and Edwards are frequently coupled, so their rapport is particularly striking, especially when they engaged in a section together, Coates biding his time for a re-entry.
Sanders repeatedly struck a tiny cymbal atop his gong with savage swiftness, then alternated between raps on a tiny handheld drumhead and a low rumble-crump lunge to his main kit. Edwards beat his bass to raw pulp, manhandling both strings and body, grunting in shamanic release. Coates stippled on his sopranino saxophone, moved to soprano and ended up with a weightier blow-out on alto.
The extended piece moved through the expected sequences of aggressively blooded explosiveness and inwardly poking ponderment, but not in any predictable ways, the dynamic shifts often made in gradual motion, so that the audience suddenly realised that the landscape had altered.
