Member Since: 9/30/2006
Band Website: ongakusound.com
Influences: Chronologically:10. Tenth and final influence: musical approaches that focus on parameters like simplicity, people, process, diversity and context always beat those driven by sound products, marketable objects, and validation by agents of government, cultural industries and educational institutions./9= Ninth equal: Eddie Prevost and John Tilbury, each in their own way subtle in terms of the depth of their engagement, commitment and wisdom.9= Ninth equal: the many fantastic musicians of all ages - whether unlauded or known to critics via product - that I've been lucky enough to meet and work with through the weekly playing opportunity that Eddie Prevost began facilitating in London in late 1999, soon after I moved here from Sheffield. Nat Catchpole, Jamie Coleman, Tim Goldie, Anthony Guerra, John Lely, Sebastian Lexer, Mattin, Matt Milton, Michael Rodgers and Tom Perchard spring to mind first, but all of these musicians (up to 300 people by now) have played a part in developing the rich, thriving, current London improvisation scene and also my own thoughts and practice on the subject./8= Eighth equal: the Japanese guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama, one of only a few musicians in the world of whom you genuinely won't know what will be played, the sonic outcomes, or what the approach to the performance situation will be on any individual occasion. The same approach that I like. This extended approach to improvisational form, as well as to tools and technique, is to me a way of avoiding the product-led approach and the narrow or reactionary path.8= Eighth equal: my good friend, the alto saxophonist, Seymour Wright, who it's been my good fortune to work with since shortly after I moved to London.8= Eighth equal: Cedric Price's unbuilt 'Potteries Thinkbelt' project./7= Seventh equal, among others: Robert Altman, Tadao Ando, Rayner Banham, Joseph Beuys, Raymond Carver, Lemmy Caution, John Edwards, Buckminster Fuller, George Grosz, Seamus Heaney, John Heartfield, Herman Hertzberger, Louis Kahn, Jan Kaplicky, Paddy Keenan, Franz Kline, Le Corbusier, Charles Mingus, Pablo Picasso, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Gary Snyder, Sonny Sharrock, Spy v. spy, John Stevens. The guitar, kora and uilleann pipes. Willie Duggan, Paul O'Connell, Brian O'Driscoll, Jean-pierre Rives and Fergus Slattery. Blackbirds and curlews. Alvar Aalto, Gunnar Asplund, Caroline Bergvall, Max Ernst, John Huston ('The Maltese Falcon' and 'The Dead': Dashiel Hammett and James Joyce), Skip James, Glen Murcott, Louis MacNeice, Don McGregor (particularly for 'Jungle Action', 'Luke Cage' and 'Killraven' - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_McGregor), John Montague, Nic Roeg, Kurt Schwitters, Walter Segal, Jaroslav Seifert, Sheffield's improvised music scene, Cecil Taylor, Ghadalia Tazartes, Cy Twombley and Aldo van Eyck.7= Seventh equal: open source, the computer industry and global digital elite (sic)./6. Sixth: the intensive playing and discussions between Dr. Matt Sansom and myself preparing our duo 'orange'. An 'orange' gig-flier from the mid-90s that I found on Matt's website [matthewsansom.info] is included somewhere else on this page./5. Fifth: James Blood Ulmer's quieter record with George Adams, 'Revealing', his first session as a leader, pre-dating the fantastic, boiling, 'Tales from Captain Black', but released ten years later./4. Fourth: my discovery of and the opportunity to play with momentous, exciting Leeds-based kit drummer Paul Hession./3. Thirdly: hearing and seeing the trio of Evan Parker and Barry Guy with Paul Lytton or Paul Lovens at the height of their powers.2. At or around the same time I attended a workshop with AMM playing Cardew's 'Treatise' at the Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield and also one with Bobby Bradford and John Carter at the Bracknell Jazz Festival. I discovered that this kind of music thrived in and had to some extent been invented in Sheffield./1. The first freely improvised music I was exposed to changed my life forever. It was Derek Bailey and Han Bennink duo live at the Grapes in Sheffield, the same tour referred to in Ben Watson's book on Bailey.
Sounds Like: Below is the text of a gig-flier from my group 'orange' with Matt Sansom in the mid-90s, which I recently rediscovered on Matt's website [ http://www.matthewsansom.info/links/performance/orngtxt.htm ]. My memory is that this gig was at the Termite Club in Leeds with a Phil Durrant/Robin Hayward band also on the bill.ORANGE : TIME & MOTION STUDY 6B:interventions in space-time (intuition, intention, architecture & response):We shall read & control your mind, foresee your actions, move objects & enforce peace through reward and punishment/We shall erect buildings with strong internal or exoskeletal structures inseparable from the choice of materials or arrangments of rooms, windows, circulation zones & environmental filters used within them/Our buildings will be neither utopian, dystopian, frozen or fossilised & in the same way that a motorcycle is simultaneously system of parts, fetish-object and speed-thrill provider, they will be like motorcycles.
Record Label: twothousandand; Matchless; discus
Type of Label: Indie