It’s a disc-grace to the faht game! It’s a diss-grace on the part of Flord Patterson! It’s a diss-grace on the part of Sonny Liston! Ah’m too fass, ahm too pretty for that big uglah bear! I’ll take him in seven. And if he give me any of that jive … I’ll lower the prediction to five!
Wait! Wait! This disc-continuous diary has become so discontinuous I’ve just had a flash back to the night I stepped into the ring after the Floyd Patterson/Sonny Liston fight and issued my historic challenge. Perhaps I’ve taken too many to the head. The real disc-grace here is the time it’s taken me to look at some of the new discs I’ve been sent. As it happens, some are from Rufus Records who have been around for 17 years, so we’ll concentrate on them in this first episode.
In the early 1990s Rufus began releasing discs that were remarkably in tune with the expanding colours, textures and rhythms of Australian jazz. Clarion Fracture Zone, Wanderlust, The catholics, The Mighty Reapers (one of whose discs featured American blues and gospel singer Margie Evans as well as Bernie McGann), AustraLysis and others combined electric and acoustic sounds in a fresh and vivid way, often with world music influences, while the McGann trio and quartet, Ten Part Invention, The World According To James, the Andrew Robson Trio, the Alister Spence Trio, the Tim Stevens Trio (a subtle and deeply underestimated Melbourne band) and others presented acoustic music of such vitality and invention that they represented something contemporary and exciting for young listeners who had never heard jazz like this.
Tim Dunn, Rufus’s founder, claimed no musical knowledge, but he had the ear for it. A wide range of music, including that of 20th century composers, was brought to his attention by the remarkable blues guitarist Dave Brewer, who at the time was playing in both the Reapers and The catholics. In the bands I have mentioned, outstanding composers such as Sandy Evans, Miroslav Bukovsky, Alister Spence, Roger Frampton, Bernie McGann and Lloyd Swanton were shaping a fresh musical landscape. All of this was of course echoed by events in Melbourne (which continue to this day in great bands like Way Out West), but right now it’s time to acknowledge Rufus.
Tim Dunn still has the ear. One problem Dunn had, paradoxically, was his uncanny foresight. Some of the abovementioned were not fully appreciated until some time had elapsed and musicians and fans began to realise how much they had influenced today’s music. So please, pals, look seriously at some new Rufus releases right now. One of my favourite bands is Trio Apoplectic, whose new album, Sofia (their second) has recently appeared on Rufus. If you think I’m a dill, and heaven forbid, Lloyd Swanton and Tim Stevens are also fans. This alto, bass and drums outfit is as distinctive in its way as the evergreen McGann trio. Altoist Dave Jackson shows some McGann influences and some influence of Paul Desmond (McGann’s first influence as it happens) but he is instantly recognizable and in many ways quite different to both abovementioned masters. Indeed this is the last time I will mention the Desmond influence. While his tone is limpid he has a tart bite in there at times and he can manipulate his tone, mid phrase, in a way that heats the surface of the sound so that it burns for a moment like a brick from the kiln, sometimes releasing that heat quickly so that the rest of the phrase
runs like a fresh sunlit spring.
Jackson, bassist Abel Cross and drummer Alex Masso have developed a style of unique nuance and interaction. It is essentially beautiful music, sometimes languidly so, that reaches intensity through sheer invention. Thus there is an affinity with the baroque, but little with the rococo. The name Trio Apoplectic is not to be taken literally (do the digits of Powderfinger’s guitarists and bass player disintegrate on the strings?) and the critic who was led through some strange association to compare them unfavourably with such as Albert Ayler (!) was a long way off the beam. The three swing beautifully, quirkily, interactively, but several of the Sofia album tracks are based on slow, shining melodies, not untouched by introspection, which break into rapid intense intricacies. All three are brilliant inventive players with a great feel for their instruments. For sheer beauty this disc approaches McGann’s glorious Bundeena album.
McGann can be heard in driving, muscular, exhilarating and sometimes deliriously beautiful form on the recent live double album Solar, where the quartet with trumpeter Warwick Alder are joined at the Sound Lounge by superb New Zealand tenor saxophonist Roger Mannins. The contrast between Mannins and McGann is always engaging. Each develops momentum in a different way. Mannins with his classic big tone sits upright and yes, stately (as John Shakespeare’s McBeath described it) on the beat, while McGann rides a little behind the beat and often scrapes the sky with arcing high figures; arabesques of thrilling beauty and excitement. Alder is unusually raw, and this gives his consistently brilliant playing an additional edge of excitement. Recently McGann has been using bassist Brendan Clarke and drummer Andrew Dickeson, and it would be hard to put together a better team, but this is the old firm of Lloyd Swanton and John Pochee. And the magic of decades is there instantly.
Swanton is not a bassist who seeks to complicate things, but having set up an irresistible running momentum, he can move to unusual high harmonic positions, hanging there for a bar or more as John Pochee’s unique cymbal play seems to lift him higher and McGann comes searing through. The play of contrary forces are somewhat like those of a yacht tacking against a high wind. This is a wonderful live recording. You can feel the excitement of the players and of the crowd.
In fascinating contrast is The Seed Habit by the Keijzer McGuiness Quintet. Lucian McGuiness is an Australian trombonist and Remco Keijzer is a Dutch tenor saxophonist with whom he teamed up in Europe. Matt McMahon is on Fender Rhodes, scholar, which sometimes creates a kind of pointillist haze. Mike Majkowski is on bass, James Hauptmann on drums. The ensembles have a big bottom end and the blending of trombone and tenor combine with that to create a dark homogenous sound. Track by track the deceptive themes grow on you. There is much happening within that unified aura, which itself has a cumulative and finally very powerful effect. Clever compositional devices are used. The feeling is sometimes created that a piece is being repeated, whereas there is much variety and new material, while the only repetition is the return to the beginning. Some pieces give the feeling of a subtle gradations within a monotonal dark spectrum – like a Seurat Conte crayon drawing. Here a run of bright clean electric piano lines makes a surprise contrast. Lucian is a fine trombonist with a great sound – with which we have become familiar through his performances with the Jazzgroove Mothership Orchestra, and Keijzer is a subtle, unprepossessing tenor player whose inventive lines and fine sound impress more with each hearing. This is quite a special band (definitely to be heard live if you get the chance) and this is an unusual and impressive disc.
Pianist Alister Spence’s trio has been one of several to present piano, bass and drums – a classic format from which much great jazz has issued – in a sparkling, meditative, dynamic and sometimes quite free way which caught the ears of young audiences. Of course The Necks stretched the tradition to the point where it could no longer be easily placed within that tradition (though certain elements will always be present, if for no other reason that the combination has been unique to jazz). The Necks never recorded for Rufus, though it was discussed at one time. Both trios (who share bassist Swanton) were among the Australian bands chosen to play in the Opera House Luminescence festival curated by Brian Eno.
The Spencers’, er sorry, new Rufus album Fit moves closer to the music you would expect in such a festival. In brief, it has an unhurried “ambient’ feel, and although the instruments are acoustic (except where Spence plays electric keyboard lines and effects, as he always has) it often sounds electric. Drummer Toby Hall’s glockenspiel, though also acoustic, enhances this effect, and Swanton sometimes plucks his bass up high with a very short reverberation, which sounds oddly electric too. This is a very beautiful unfolding of mutating, interlocking figures, with some dynamic interludes that echo the effect of a jazz trio in full cry. This disc is accompanied by a DVD in which you can watch Louise Curham’s ever-changing and wonderfully
apposite video supplements.
In April Rufus will release the first album under his own name by the trumpet king Warwick Alder. Here again is instance in the Rufus catalogue of a traditional idiom essayed with brilliance and individuality in close proximity to albums with a more contemporary feeling. Timeless is the way this immaculate, beautiful album sounds. I’ll write some more about it closer to release.
Look, I am stressed and very angry with myself that I have left everything too late, due to the final corrections of a book of mine that will be launched at the Melbourne Writers Festival early in February. It will be introduced by Helen Garner, which is very exciting, but from now till then I will try to forget it exists.
Forgive me, pilgrims and Rhodes scholars, but the Kinetic Jazz Festival (in which some of the people mentioned above will figure) is already under way from 7-11pm at St Luke’s Hall, 11 Stanmore Road, Enmore in Sydney. For bookings and details ring (02) 9665 6489.
There is a history and a connection with theatre to this event and I’ve blown it. Get there. Also in Melbourne, the Jazzhead Festival every day 10.30 am to 12.30 from Feb 14 31 outside Pizza Italia (let me translate: that means Italian Pizza), 1 Argyle Square, Lygon Street. That sounds so Melbourne. I wish I was there. I recommend Way Out West on Jan 31 and Browne, Anning, Hannaford on Feb 7. And lots of others. Believe me it is better to be the servant of others than to pursue personal creativity (books etc), but I must say I enjoyed doing it very much, though I imagine it will be the last.