Phil Slater Quartet, Sound Lounge, April 8

Call me square, but isn’t this the band previously known as Burden Of Corners, which is or was Band of Five Names plus Lloyd Swanton, which brought the count up to four names? Ah, I had also thought that Burden Of Corners was perhaps the second of the five names for the band (B of Five Names being the first). Indeed, a third name may now have been revealed, namely Phil Slater Quartet. But no, it isn’t really the same band. Only Burden Of Corners and Phil Slater Quartet are the same band. Perhaps my logic is faulty.

They play differently to Band Of Five Names, with some overlap. In B of 5N Phil Slater’s trumpet would sound for long stretches like a tape loop over active piano or electric keyboard and drums (often both atmospheric and rhythmically complex and agitated). On their master album Severance, which would be a bigger hit if this idiom were as well known as the various techno, dance etc genres which have slots of their own in the better record shops – the problem being that Slater is woking in an idiom with only a handful of entrants – actual tape loops and electronic overlays are built up in the studio. Things change subtly and suddenly break into flame. An influence on all of this tiny genre is The Necks, and beyond that minimalism.

One minimalist practise was to hold a seemingly static situation, which was actually changing by tiny increments until everything was suddenly perceived to have changed quite radically almost before the casual listener had realised that anything was changing at all. Hypnosis, euphoria, and a sense of puzzlement or awe in the face of mysterious, invisible processes. In both the Necks and BandOf, climactic passages emerged with a feeling not unlike that of the accelarating passages in an Indian raga. An odd thing about the mysteries of art: even when you have had a closer look and gained some rudimentary grasp of the processes, the effect remains, perhaps even heightened by intellectual understanding. Except of course in copies that have added nothing to the original concept.

This is where Slater is to be most admired. His prime direct and obvious influence is Miles Davis – on his group concept and on his playing – but his vision of that legacy is constantly shifting, and he is able to combine and extend his influences. Admiration for these sources, particularly of Miles Davis, only grows, and you are constantly jogged by the thought that, yes, this is another area into which this might well have led if Miles had been given two lives. But no, only Phil Slater would have done it quite this way.

Corners or Phil Slater Quartet has added another dimension by reaching back and incorporating some aspects of earlier Miles-influenced jazz, while adding things that are a product of right now, and also quite different to anything else I have heard. Many of their pieces began with a minimal trumpet theme – but a little longer and more developed often than the loop-like motifs of B de Nomes Cinque – floating against drums that either raced like a fire along a ridge or seemed to dredge near-white noise along the river bottom – while Matt McMahon’s piano created a separate atmosphere of spare clusters, single notes, isolated intervals and truncated arpeggios – and Lloyd Swanton’s bass exercised a roaming commission between these elements, sometimes running with the drums, playing counter to everything or treading slowly under the floating trumpet. The near-white noise of Simon Barker’s drums was in fact filled with so many compressed rhythmic impulses that it also reminded me at times of coal sliding down a chute. There was drag, friction, retard, and tiny tumbles and overtopplings forward. I have never heard drumming quite like it.

One of the trumpet themes began with a subconsciious pinch of the first phrase of something from Porgy And Bess, which amazingly I have forgotten, although I was so confident of remembering I didn’t bother writing it down. Bess You Is My Woman Now or My Man’s Gone Now or… listen for it next time. Slater has for a while been playing on a trumpet of the largest bore. One complaint when trumpets began to get bigger barrels, so to speak, was that, against the greater ease of playing in tune in certain registers, a degree of sweetness, colour and intimacy of tone was lost. Not so for Slater. It took him a while, but this is his voice. Some of the themes were played with extraordinary softness, yet they projected out over everything and retained tone. Some passages emerged surprisingly with a full sweetness that summoned memories of Harry James but without the vibrato. Both Clark Terry and Thad Jones had this kind of sweetness at their disposal, in contrast to the sharp shrapnel or round percussive pellets of their bop approach. Like them, Slater can make something ancient sound modern. He is exploring the character of the trumpet in an inspiring way.

Swaying constantly across the beat, Slater projected intensity of purpose. Rocking faster he would finally unleash bluesy and somewhat avant attacks in the high register or project sustained notes in the middle register, louder and louder: a single note swelling and darkening to sinister effect; and over everything an occasional arabesque glissing right up into the extreme high register, bending and falling. At these points the rhythm section would rise until they were thrashing and thrumming as one man. ‘They get quite primal,’ Tim Dunn remarked. ‘They sound as if they’re drilling through a mountain.’ One piece was in a fast swing feel, perhaps a nod to the famous Miles quintet of the 1960s, and the effect was thrilling.

This was the second performance I’d heard of this band, and it was even more sensational than the first. Each of these musicians might well be called great in a local context, and if we were not so many flying hours away from everything, they would be considered very signifigant internationally. In fact Lloyd Swanton with The Necks has achieved that recognition. What a night. They brought the house down.