Tony Allen - "Tribute To Art Blakey"

Review - Tony Allen - "Tribute To Art Blakey". Old Fruitmatrket. Glasgow Jazz Festival, June 2017

Tony Allen  and band, at Glasgow Jazz Festival 2017

Tony Allen's recently released first record for the Blue Note label looks back at the work of Art Blakey, with a four track EP. He expands this in a live performance at the Glasgow Jazz Festival 2017 at the Old Fruitmarket. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Tony Allen's drumming style mixed West African rhythms with jazz music, from the likes of Art Blakey and Max Roach, to create his own unique style and sound that drove forwards the music of Fela Kuti and others to create "Afro-beat". Since then he has been sought out for collaborations by many different musicians. I saw him perform with Keiran Hebden (Four Tet) at the Tramway in a eye-opening collision of improvisation and electronic squeaks and squwaks. He played a couple of albums with Damon Albarn (as The Good, The Bad and the Queen) and performed drums of one of my favourite ever songs "5:55" by Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow

Tonight's performance with a jazz quartet is therefore, in some respects, a step back to his roots, to his own influences and teachers. Art Blakey was born in 1919 in Pittsburgh. He played drums with the likes of Thelonius Monk, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker before forming "Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers". In 1947 Art Blakey traveled to Africa and stayed there for 2 years. The influences he took away in his drumming, then came back to African music through Tony Allen.

The Old Fruitmarket looked pretty full as the four musicians came on stage. With a dread-locked Jean-Phillipe Dary at the grand piano and keyboards on his right, and on his left Matthias Allamane on double bass, Tony Allen sat centre stage behind his drum kit, directing proceedings. With a nod here and a raised eyebrow there from behind his sunglasses, he would set off the saxophone or bass on a solo, before bringing it all back together with a rap on the drums.

There was never any showboating or tedious noodling, but some classy playing from some classy musicians with the drums driving it all forwards. There were smiles on the faces of the musicians, clearly enjoying what they were creating, and certainly I sat with a wide grin on my face all night. The drums sounded like there was more than one percussionist on stage at times, the polyrhythms pressing onward. A lovely night of beautiful music, and a fantastic ensemble, led from behind the drum kit.

Counterflows Festival 2014, Glasgow

Review of Counterflows Festival, Glasgow, April 2014

The biennial Glasgow International festival started this weekend in the city, a festival of contemporary art. Running alongside it this weekend was Counterflows, a weekend of contemporary and experimental music performances. Lots of copies of The Wire magazine were rolled up into the shoulder bags of chin-stroking, bearded men as they headed out to this over the weekend. In fact, contrary to this stereotype, it was nice to see a good mixture of people in the audience and on stage, with the prominence of women in the forefront of the experimental music scene obvious from the start.

Space Lady at Garnethill

It kicked off on Friday night in the Garnethill Multicultural Centre with The Space Lady. Not someone I'd heard of before but this isn't surprising as she hasn't played in Europe until now, usually being found over the past 30 years busking for hours either in Boston or San Francisco with her Casio organ. I was ready to be a bit cynical by a middle aged woman at a Casio organ wearing a plastic winged helmet with a flashing red light atop it. However within one song I was won over by her gentle singing and mastery of the full range of Casio special effects. A one off, and a good opening act. 48 hours later she'd be playing a set in Queens Park. 

Ai Aso is a Japanese singer and songwriter and purveyor of floaty, folky, psychedelic pop music who I'd been looking forward to seeing after hearing her album 'Lone'. However she was so floaty and quiet at times that we were craning to hear when songs ended, whilst the bar staff risked drowning her out it they opened a beer for anyone. In one song she had men rushing into their shoulder bags for their ear plugs as she whispered alongside raucous guitar feedback. If Death Metal has a polar opposite we were witnessing it.

Maja Borg's visuals accompany Ela Orleans

Ela Orleans is someone I am more familiar with, most recently when she supported Julia Holter in Glasgow. Originally from Poland, the Glasgow based musician, describes her output as "movies for ears". Her recently re-issued album Tumult In The Clouds is worth seeking out (here). Tonight she was playing with Maja Borg, Swedish artist and filmmaker. Ela Orleans created the roundest sound of the first part of the evening, excellent as ever, with visuals provided by Maya Borg, who finished the set off with a spoken word piece over one of her films. 

Akio Onda's set up

Next we trailed across the road to the intriguing venue of the underground car park below Fleming House. This has been commandeered by Glasgow International as an exhibition space, dressed up as a swimming pool. Tonight it was a perfect venue for two Japanese musicians/ sound artists - Aki Onda and Akio Suzuki. Akio Suzuki played field recordings from a train station on a Sony Walkman and manipulated the sound whilst the older of the two (Akio Suzuki) went for a more physical approach, dropping nails into a metal bucket, hammering them into a plank of wood, then playing the percussion instrument he'd created. There were a lot of echoes of Marginal Consort's Glasgow gig from 2008 in the entertaining mix of music and performance which fitted the venue perfectly. 

Aki Onda and Akio Suzuki

Next up was a short stroll around to the CCA (Centre for Contemporary Arts) for the next course. Luke Fowler is an artist who works in Glasgow with film and sound and he has worked alongside Richard Youngs when I've seen him before. 

Mika Vainio, Lee Paterson and Luke Fowler

Tonight he was performing with Finnish industrial/ electronic musician Mika Vainio (whose album Fe₃O₄ - Magnetite I picked up once at random as I liked the title) and Lee Patterson, who has a history of amplifying sound from objects as diverse as Epsom salts and burning peanuts. The three silent men hunched over their respective electrical boxes of tricks in the darkened room were quite captivating. Ranging from violent drones to quiet electronic clicks they finished grandly with the highly amplified clicks and pops of a small conflagration Lee Patterson got going on his table. (60 second snippet below).

At a suitably late hour Joe McPhee took centre stage, one of the main attractions of the festival weekend. He was back on stage several times over the weekend, blowing the roof off in the closing concert on Sunday night. 

I didn't manage to take in all of the delights on offer on Saturday 5th April as there was the small matter of me wanting to enjoy the visit of Heart of Midlothian Football Club to Maryhill that afternoon. However I think the shockingly bad performance of Partick Thistle maybe made me less receptive than I might have been to the evening performances at the CCA. The programme was less varied than elsewhere in the festival with four duets all striking a similar tone. 

Sound poetry, sqwaking and screeching has always left me cold, so Cara Tolmie dancing about in the darkened room shouting "Ah, aaah, ooh, ooh, eeh" was never really going to be my thing, entertaining as it was for a few minutes. Paul Abbot's unaccompanied drumming was absolutely riveting. Controlled and aggressive. The latter half of the performance with him lying inside the bass drum reading gibberish whilst Cara dismantled the drum kit felt a bit of an anti-climax. The performance was impressive but the words felt meaningless.

Australian drummer Will Guthrie and Portugal's David Maranha were up next. Their first piece had Maranha playing keyboard as electric guitar complete with lots of feedback, accompanied by crescendo-ing drums. Their second piece had more interesting texture. They were met with polite, rather than uproarious applause.

Ghedalia Tazartes and Maya Dunietz received a warmer reception. Unlike the earlier shouts of Cara Tolmie, their chanting and singing had a much more evocative, captivating feel. Backed by an electronic soundtrack, drones and their own combination of prayer bells, whistles, mouth organs and chimes it brought to mind religious chants and funereal ululations. Maya Dunietz was back on the last night at the Glad Cafe introducing us to the music of Emahoy Maryam Guebrou, an Ethiopian nun, composer and pianist. 

John Butcher on saxophone with Mark Sanders were up last but their piece "Tarab Cuts" felt like a work in progress.

Roedelius and Schneider

Sunday night's finale at the Glad Cafe was a tour de force. Joachim Roedelius and Stefan Schneider performed on acoustic piano, accompanied by various electronic clicks, hisses and manipulation to great effect, the gentle piano playing contrasting sharply with the accompaniment.

Joe McPhee

Joe McPhee, the 75 year old American composer, musician, improviser and free jazz multi-instrumentalist gave a barn-storming performance to bring things to a close. I have never been a great jazz aficionado, working my way through some of the classics and enduring jazz bands in the Three Judges of an occasional Sunday afternoon. However if more jazz sounded like the Joe McPhee trio I'd have been paying it more attention. As well as the man himself out front on saxophone, Steve Noble on drums and John Edwards on double bass brought sounds out of their instruments that I've never heard before. An absolutely mesmerising performance. Next onstage was Swedish saxophonist and improviser Mats Gustaffson playing as a duet with McPhee. His was again a gripping performance, quieter and at times enjoyably odd. His saxophone, come trombone, come swanee whistle was a sight to behold, as was his masterclass in circular breathing. Next up he brought out a large bass saxophone to play against Joe McPhee in the style of a ship's foghorn, before the evening came to a close with a bigger ensemble.

It was a well put together festival of some high quality and diverse musicians. Credit is due to all those who organised it and kept things running smoothly through some busy line-ups. It was also good to see such healthy crowds coming to hear this stuff and maybe promoters should notice that there is a bigger audience out there for this music than they maybe realise.

Shabazz Palaces, Glasgow, May 2012

I've never really made the effort to find out about hip hop, finding it all a bit homgeneous. However when Public Enemy were in Glasgow last year doing their "Fear of a Black Planet " tour I did go to see them as it is one of the few hip hop albums I've ever bought. They impressed me with their whole show - their political chat between songs, their live musicians and their choroegraphy.
I ended up at the Shabazz Palaces gig in the Art School in Glasgow on a Sunday night because basically I'd go to see anyone play live, but also because of Frankie Boyle and my brother in law. If you follow @FrankieBoyle on twitter you'll know that as well as being a comic-book geek, he likes his hip hop, and has instigated "hip hop Thursdays". When he was singing the praises of Shabazz Palaces, my brother in law, who does know his way around this music, recommended them to me as one of the best albums of last year. So I bought "Black Up" with its nice velour sleeve and have really enjoyed it. Really they are quite genre-defying and a lot of their sound is closer to jazz, with a lot of African beats in there too over a throbbing bass. And lo, a couple of weeks later these mysterious Seattle musicians are playing in Glasgow.

Before they were up Hector Bizerk were on, a Glaswegian MC (Louie) with Audrey on real drums. He's also picked up a guitarist along the way for playing some summer festivals, his mate tells me, and when he and Jen - the keyboard/ percussion/ small wooden frog player join them on stage they make quite an efficient band. Let It Go was a stand-out song. They've their own Scottish twist on hip hop lyrics, such as "it'll be like the Battle of Culloden" or rhyming Robert Mugabe with smell of scampi". I struggle with the West of Scotland white guys doing all the ghetto hand gestures and posturing though. See what you think.

So Shabazz Palaces walk on to a Sudanese track, and that Afro-centric background ran through the whole show (my new best pal, they're a chatty bunch these hip hop audiences, identified the track for me as his dad is Sudanese).

Shabazz Palaces at The Art School, Glasgow

They are a Seattle duo -  Ishmael Butler, who in previous incarnations has been Palaceer Lazaro, aka Butterfly of jazz-rap group Digable Planets and Tenai 'Baba' Maraire. They perform at times tightly and with choreographed dance moves reminiscent of Public Enemy, and at other times much more freely and feeling improvised, particularly in the long encore. Rhythms are not just from electronic beatboxes and a Roland Octapad, but from gourds, djembe drums and a kalimba thumb piano thing. There is a political edge to all this to. On the song "Swerve..." he chants "Black is you, black is me, black is us, black is free" whilst they both raise a black power salute which seemed timely with John Carlos, one of the athletes that did this in the 1968 Olympics, on a speaking tour in the UK just now.



They seemed to have managed to attract a few chin-stroking nosey people like me alongside some young kids with baseball caps on backwards, and played a 90 minute show. Though serious and concentrating throughout they seemed to enjoy themselves too and left after their extended encore with big, hearty smiles. Me too.