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Perles Noires Vol. 2 Eremite CD £11.99 Sunny Murray is widely credited with being the first drummer to fully liberate the kit, developing a form of omni-directional accompaniment that dissolved the distinction between supporting and leading and helped spark the free jazz revolution that took place in the early 60s. Indeed, Murray spent time with most of the new music’s major theorists, including both Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler. But in recent years he hasn’t seemed like quite the drummer he was, lacking the focus and (perhaps more inevitably) some of the power of his earlier performances. Both volumes of Perles Noires, then, come as a real slap around the head. Both discs document the core duo of Murray and saxophonist Sabir Mateen, best known as a member of NY guerrilla jazz outfit Test, alone and in the company of various guests, including pianists Dave Burrell and John Blum, saxophonist Louis Belogenis and bassist Alan Silva. Murray is on fierce, articulate form and he makes with some wild solo statements, building compulsive tattoos from associative percussive strategies, as well as moments of pure, straight-ahead thump. Mateen’s formulations are just as spontaneously charged, roaring out of the gate with a screaming, vocalised sound before dropping to moonbeams of late-night melody. A beauty. |
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Perles Noires Vol. 1 Eremite MTE-045 CD £11.99 Sunny Murray is widely credited with being the first drummer to fully liberate the kit, developing a form of omni-directional accompaniment that dissolved the distinction between supporting and leading and helped spark the free jazz revolution that took place in the early 60s. Indeed, Murray spent time with most of the new music’s major theorists, including both Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler. But in recent years he hasn’t seemed like quite the drummer he was, lacking the focus and (perhaps more inevitably) some of the power of his earlier performances. Both volumes of Perles Noires, then, come as a real slap around the head. Both discs document the core duo of Murray and saxophonist Sabir Mateen, best known as a member of NY guerrilla jazz outfit Test, alone and in the company of various guests, including pianists Dave Burrell and John Blum, saxophonist Louis Belogenis and bassist Alan Silva. Murray is on fierce, articulate form and he makes with some wild solo statements, building compulsive tattoos from associative percussive strategies, as well as moments of pure, straight-ahead thump. Mateen’s formulations are just as spontaneously charged, roaring out of the gate with a screaming, vocalised sound before dropping to moonbeams of late-night melody. A beauty. |
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I Stepped Onto A Bee Foghorn Records FGCD-014 CD £12.99 There’s not many players in the UK that you’d be comfortable to see going face-to-face with the original detonator of time, Mr Sunny Murray. His CV reads like an extended chapter of As Serious As Your Life and in that kinda light it’s maybe only Hession/Wilkinson/Fell that could hold up their side of the energy/form equation on this isle. But the applied firepower of bassist John Edwards – still the wildest and most consistently ‘out’ of four-string thinkers in the UK – and tenor saxophonist Tony Bevan blows away any trepidation. Murray has been working with these guys as his ‘UK group’ for a while and anyone who has encountered this blazing trio live can speak for the wall-destroying force they regularly bring to improvised performance. I Stepped Onto A Bee is a gloriously rendered studio performance recorded in London in August of 2010 and features six all-improvised performances. Bevan’s tone is fat and Trane-reverent, playing strong bluesy lines that crack and strain at the very limits of his breath. Murray’s style is still massively radical, taking his explosive scattershot snare and cymbal style into loose pugilistic shapes while accelerating and decelerating at will, with Edwards sliding all over the time signatures while Bevan steps out front and really lets it sing. I Stepped Onto A Bee is positioned right on the cusp of punk-primitive free improvisation and classic late-60s free jazz iconoclasm and that’s a damn fine place to be. |
