On the Sofa #3 with Rachel Musson

On the Sofa with Rachel Musson 

 

Saxophonist RACHEL MUSSON has played with Mary Halvorson, Sebastian Rochford, Gail Brand and many others. She has released one album with her ensemble, Skein, the critically acclaimed Flight-Line, and has also recorded with NewYork based drummer Federico Ughi and Caroline Kraabel’s Mass Producers. She is currently working with Danish saxophonist and flautist Julie Kjaer. Tatterdemalion (Babel 2013) is the debut album of Musson's Trio with Liam Noble and Mark Sanders.The result is an in-your-face electrifying, completely free workout, by a deep-thinking free-improv threesome engrossed in energetic dialogue. Tatterdemalion was chosen by All About Jazz’s Mark Corroto as one of the Best Releases Of 2013 and an album of the year by New York City Jazz Record.

Listen to and buy Tatterdemalion on the Babel web site here

KATAN500: Favourite colour?
RACHEL: Green. I think. Yes.
KATAN500: Jazz is  in 150 words...

RACHEL: An inconvenient category, an attitude, and approach, probably not what most people think it is…hmmm

KATAN500: Fruit salad or black jacks?

RACHEL: Definitely fruit salad. I’m not sure what a black jack is.

KATAN500: See here...

So  where would you like to go on holiday?

RACHEL: I’m currently looking forward to a trip I’m planning to Thailand to study Thai massage. I’ve studied it before, but I’m hoping to brush up on skills and learn plenty of new ones. I suspect it's more of a lifelong task than this statement suggests. All the best things are. I’m also hoping to take a saxophone and find somewhere to play. Is that a holiday?

KATAN500: As long as extended loafing is a substantial part of it...

RACHEL:  I’d also like to make it back to New York in the not too distant future to hook up
with a few musicians who’ve suggested playing. Is that a holiday?

KATAN500: Hmm. Well how do you relax?

RACHEL: I’m not so good at this. Relatively lengthy silent mediation retreats seem to be the only thing that does the trick for me at the moment! Otherwise yoga helps a lot.

KATAN500: Last book you read?

RACHEL: Ouch! I’ve had my head in various anatomy books for what feels like forever…and yoga
and mediation books. I guess it might be ‘The Solitude of Thomas Cave’ by
Georgina Harding – a fictional story set in the 1600s of a man choosing to overwinter alone in the artic. I’m currently making a belated new years resolution to read more fiction.

KATAN500: Is 'Jazz' dead?

RACHEL: Pass! I hate this question/debate. It feels a bit irrelevant. I know you’re asking it because
it’s such a well-worn question. There are so many amazing musicians out there making amazing
 music….much of which defies genre these days. So it doesn’t really matter whether ‘jazz’ is dead.
There’s plenty of inspiring music happening. The whole financial situation that surrounds it is
another matter, though.

KATAN500: So creatively no, but financially yes ...something like that? Do you have another job...besides musician?

RACHEL: I teach part-time in various guises. I teach saxophone at the City Lit, a place I really love.
And, I also specialize in working with music with children with autism and other special needs.
But more recently I’ve trained as a yoga teacher and am currently completing a course in sports
and remedial massage. So I sense, even if it’s a distant future, a change afoot in terms of how I
support my more creative pursuits. I think I’d be particularly interested in working with musicians who might use bodywork to address the various postural problems that come from repetitive practice, or even stress and stage fright… Watch this space.

KATAN500: What was the last piece of music you listened to?

RACHEL: Well, I’m just back from a very lovely few days in Cornwall as part of the Sound and
Music Portfolio scheme, and each night we had a listening session where people brought a couple of tracks to share with the group. It was a great way of finding some new music to listen to. [Katan500: Care to comment on it...] A couple of things were particularly memorable for me – Sidsel Endresen being one, and the Arcado String Trio. Specifically an album they did with a clarinet trio called ' Green Dolphy Suite' (on Enja). So I’m really looking forward to checking out a few things over the coming weeks.

KATAN500: Where were you last seen / heard?

RACHEL: Apart from the Sound and Music thing, it was a week or so ago with Alan Tomlinson,
Dave Tucker and Jim Lebaigue at Alan Wilkinson’s wonderful Flimflam night in Stokey.
I was supposed to make it to the recent London Improvisers Orchestra gig – I so love this band, but the February malaise got the better of me.

KATAN500: No-one asks a man what's it like being a man playing jazz, but I feel somewhat compelled to put the question to you....

RACHEL: Oh no. The question. This might have to be a separate Q+A! Looking back, I think the lack of
role models early on was an issue. [katan500: I would never have heard of pianist Hazel Scott if I hadn't been doing research on black women's hairstyles in the 1940s]. I thought things would have got better than they are by now. There is some improvement out there in terms of numbers of female musicians, but not massive. I’ve had a few less than pleasant experiences in the past, but I think the greatest challenge is an
internal one – the stories held by your mind. And these are probably different for each female musician. And maybe the younger generation of musicians has less to shake off. I don’t know. And it can get a bit boring turning up for a gig and being the only woman in the room – both on stage and in the audience. It still happens now occasionally.

KATAN500: Since reviewers (almost all) are male how do you think your compositions are received. Do you think there is an attempt to be gender-neutral? What do you think when you see words like 'in-your-face' and 'hardcore', 'screams and wails like a drunken ghost'? Language as part of culture reproduces signs that evoke certain stereotypes: is the same language or nuances used to describe the work of male composers? I'm just wondering if to use terms such as 'hardcore' 'in your face' you are being accepted as one of the boys...

RACHEL: A tricky question. I do think many reviewers to try to be gender neutral. I don’t think the use of the words’ in-your-face’ has any gender reference to them except if, of course, they are used with an element of surprise or followed up with a reference to gender. The only time I’ve really felt a gender reference in a review was when a fellow female musician and I were playing in a trio with a male musician, and myself and the other female musician were very patronisingly referred to as ‘his ladies’.  Am I being accepted as one of the boys? I don’t know. But I don’t feel any need to be ‘accepted as one of the boys,’ certainly now I’m getting older and with it getting less self-conscious and in need of acceptance. Obviously I desire respect, as most people do, from fellow musicians and listeners. I understand that hardness can be seen as a masculine quality. But everyone, if you are going to think like that, has a range of masculine and feminine qualities. Maybe it’s interesting that reviewers have picked up on the harder aspects of my playing…I do think I play soft as well. It’s not a decision, though, it’s just what happens. When I’m improvising I try to switch off that conscious mind, or at least turn it down, and let things run their course. Maybe if I lived somewhere a bit less frenetic there’d be less ‘drunken ghost’ in my playing!

KATAN500: What's a wonderful, creative experience for you? And what might be the
ingredients that let that happen?

 RACHEL: Hmmmm… I quite like the unexpected. That thing where you hook up with someone for
a play and end up having a great time. It’s nice to be surprised, and to be pushed out of your
comfort zone. On this recent Sound and Music weekend, for example, I did some playing with
electronic musicians Shelley Knotts and Shaun Blezard. I’ve worked a little with electronic musicians
in the past, but not a huge amount, and it’s great to be challenged by totally new sound worlds
and tempos of working (it sort of felt slower and larger scale). And then, of course, there’s the
opposite, when you hook up with someone who you’ve been playing with for years, and all that
shared experience feeds into a feeling of great comfort and trust.
 
KATAN500: Which was your most challenging piece of work?

RACHEL: I think when I was a student a classical composer presented me with a soprano part that was
 wall to wall scored multiphonics that he’d copied out of a book and had no idea how difficult
it would actually be to produce.

KATAN500: What’s the best compliment you’ve received?

RACHEL: I have to say I’m particularly fond of Jack Chuter’s quote from his blog on experimental music that goes something like, ‘reminiscent of a cold car engine refusing to start.’ There was also the chap who got pissed at a duo gig by myself and Julie Kjaer who said that we sounded like ‘syncopated farts’. Doesn’t get much better than that really.

KATAN500: Who / what are your musical influences? I’ve seen Evan Parker mention a few times...

RACHEL: Really – who mentioned Evan? Evan is rather fantastic, of course. When I think of influences I think of people I was listening to a long time ago. Otherwise I suppose everyone and everything is an influence at the moment. There’s so much amazing stuff happening in London. Way back when Lee Konitz was a huge influence on me. His later work. As was early Coltrane. Fairly straight ahead stuff really. I hugely loved Dexter Gordon. And Art Pepper – talking about when I was a teenager now, and both the European and American Keith Jarrett quartets. Around that same time I was also listening to some great British musicians – Bobby Wellins, Julian Argüelles, Geoff Simkins, Iain Ballamy. And then much more recently I have to confess to a bit of a Mats Gustafsson phase. And Brotzmann. Oh…and the list could go on.

KATAN500: John Fordham said that you were a hot ticket for 2011 after the release of Skein's Flight Line, which was closer to idiomatic jazz and folk music, but the emphasis for Tatterdemalion  is on collective free improv suggesting that you have moved off jazz's centre ground, how would you now characterize your current musical interest? Where do you 'position' yourself?

RACHEL: My current musical interest is still definitely improvisation. I’m thoroughly enjoying the freedom it’s given me, and a sense of really beginning to find myself in the music. But I do think at some point I might venture back towards jazz (whatever that is) or composed music. There’s an art to writing compositions that promote freedom rather than writing the musicians into a corner that I haven’t cracked yet. I’d like to try crack it! [Katan500: How do you see the role of melody?] I like melody... I like melody in improv. I think/hope we’ve got past the stage of it being terribly unfashionable. I actually particularly like slightly cheesy (or heartfelt?!) melodies and simple harmonies with the odd twist and turn.

KATAN500: Tatterdemalion received a fair amount of attention – interesting title meaning a demented marvel comic villan right... what made you choose this?  How did the collaborative process work?

RACHEL: Well…I initially wanted to call it Disco Duck! [Katan: Flight Line featured some fine ducks on the album cover... got a thing about ducks then...]. But unsurprisingly that title wasn’t approved by the
others, so it somehow ended up as Tatterdemalion. There’s something slightly decrepit about the sound of the album, something reminiscent of a worn out fairground ride. And tatterdemalion was a title I found that somehow personified that. The recording was literally a get into the room and play affair.The collaborative process was (and is) what happens when we play together on gigs. Maybe that sounds obvious, but I think we thrash things out musically... [Katan500: ...a collective thrash...] rather than round a table in a discursive sort of way.

KATAN500: Is there some sort of etiquette that you follow e.g. do you decide how much time you
each get...is it about striking a balance, or is it about democracy? Do you see any politics (with small p) in the way musicians collaborate in free improv – is it egalitarian in form, a dismantling of power structures?

RACHEL: Yes – definitely a dismantling of structures. It certainly throws out the age-old structures normally associated with more ‘conventional’ jazz. That’s a major attraction for me. There is probably some kind of unwritten/unspoken etiquette, but I’m not so sure what that is. I guess a bit like how there’s etiquette when you go to the pub with some friends, but you don’t necessarily spend the first fifteen minutes establishing what that is. You allow people some space, work with them, challenge them a little, and establish a way of communicating.

KATAN500: Have you started work on a new album?

RACHEL: No, not yet! Although there’s this trip with Hannah and Julie that’s recording this week.
I have a little seed of an idea for another album that’s just starting to take a little bit of shape.

KATAN500: Who is your ideal partner (however you choose to interpret)?

RACHEL: Ha! So, as it’s just a couple of days to Valentines’ Day, I’m going to let you know
what I’ve got planned…Alto saxophonist Julie Kjaer, cellist Hannah Marshall and I are going to spend a few hours in the early evening recording. Can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing on the 14th Feb!

KATAN500: Would you be unfaithful to your sax, or flirt with another instrument?

RACHEL: Yep – I gave up saxophone for a good chunk of time when I was in my twenties – bit
of a long story, perhaps eight years, but I took up accordion as a way of keeping
myself musically engaged. I have to confess it defeated me, though – it’s so hard!

KATAN500: What made you chose sax?

RACHEL: Not really sure – probably something terribly unromantic like hearing it at school.

KATAN500:  What gigs have you got coming up?

RACHEL: I’m very much looking forward to an upcoming gig with Alex Ward’s new quintet and sextet at the Vortex on the 5th of March. He’s written this really great piece that totally cracks the composition/improvisation balance I was talking about. And I’ve a couple of gigs with the trio with Liam and Mark – in Derby on 12th March, and London (e17 jazz) on the 26th. I’m also getting to play a couple of times in what’s a regular duo with bassist Olie Brice, including at Arch 1 on the 25th Feb. And then there’s this 8-piece saxophone group that’s starting to come to life. Saxoctopus. I think we’re going to do a couple of pieces alongside Trio Riot at the Vortex on the 24th March as a way of getting the whole thing off the ground.

KATAN500: I shall look forward to seeing you at the Vortex Jazz Club. Thank you for being an excellent sofa buddy...

Other reviews for Tatterdemalion


John Fordham  (The Guardian) 13/6/13

Glen Astarita (All About Jazz) 11/9/13

Bebop Spoken Here 12/5/13

Tomajazz 2/5/13

January 2014

Babel Catch Up January 2014

Raymond MacDonald and Marilyn Crispell - PARALLEL MOMENTS (4 ****)
An excellent pairing from the avant garde pianist and alto saxophonist.
A long-time associate of Anthony Braxton, Marilyn Crispell's playing is avant garde, but with a strong romantic sensibility, making her an excellent match for Scottish saxophonist Raymond MacDonald, co-founder of Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra. Crispell was the
special guest at last year's GIO Fest, expanding on a partnership first forged in 2010. Recorded at that year's London Jazz Festival, Parallel Moments is an intimate and richly imaginative duo set.

The opening ballad, 'Longing', sees MacDonald weave melodic alto sax over Crispell's
lush chording, with his raspy tone on the chorus bringing a passionate edge. 'Town and City Halls' is altogether starker, with MacDonald's sustained tones offset by Crispell's masterfully restrained one-hand piano statements. With 'Notes in the Sky', MacDonald channels Evan Parker with soprano loops and squawks, while the title track features some inspired inside piano from Crispell, her fingers dancing around the frame and rubbing the strings to create deep resonant tones.

Source: The List
Date: 13 January 2014
Written by: Stewart Smith

Emilia Mårtensson - ANA 
Below Emilia talks about her new album. Ana is the name of her Slovenian grandmother who the album is dedicated to. The influences range form Swedish folk songs to jazz. Stylistic references include Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor. Rory Simmons makes an appearance as one of the producers of the album the other being Alex Bonney.
Lots of other familiar names from the Babel stable including Sam Lasserson (double bass), and Barry Green (piano). New addition to the band is Adriano Adewale (percussion). The Fable string Quartet add another dimension. Release date: 7/April/2014





23/Jan/2014

Alexander Hawkins Ensemble - STEP WIDE, STEP DEEP the track in the video is the first track of the album 'Space of Time Danced Thru'. This is a rather excellent track that grooves! Otto Fischer's facial movements jamming in time is quite a love affair with the camera. Just as I write this a review from The Free Jazz Collective is posted. Now I know the meaning of Dolphy-esque.
Video 5***** 6/Jan/2014

New York City Jazz Record, January 2014

Written by Ken Waxman

I'll be in New York for Jazz Connect from 9 January. Let me know if you want to meet.

Stan Tracey and improvisation

Stan Tracey's relationship with the Vortex was very close. David Mossman believes that he was the first person to call Stan "The Godfather of British Jazz", a name which has stuck throughout the recent tributes to him. David said that, if ever he introduced Stan in this way, he could see the great man wince! I also think that he was probably the first musician to play at the original Vortex, and thus it is due to Stan that the Vortex is no longer just a bookshop and gallery as it was when it first opened on Stoke Newington Church Street.

Hearing and seeing Stan Tracey over recent years at the Vortex impressed on me for several reasons. First, the mental and physical spriteliness that playing music gives. As soon as he got up on the stage and started playing the years seemed to fall away.  Somehow, he seemed at least 20 years younger. One of the special things about music. One of his regular dates, just a few days after the death of Jackie, was particularly moving as this lady was not just his wife but also the drummer's mother. That also showed his mental strength, to me.

I also listen back with regularity to some of his fully improvised albums. Those with Evan Parker and Stan, but also the duo with Clark. Stan was from a generation which clearly could not separate between composition and free improvisation. And on the gigs with Evan and Clark, he gave as good as he got. The first time the three played together, I shall always remember the thrill of Clark to be playing with two masters.

The empathy with Evan clearly extended to the awareness of language and history. One of their duo tracks is called "Skeffington's Daughter". It describes a torture instrument from Tudor times which was the opposite of the rack. (Having checked this before, it helped me when I came across this in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall.)

He seemed to take all the challenges for granted. The idea of arranging for and leading a big band, and then soloing too, at the Royal Albert Hall for a BBC Prom to 5,000 would be daunting to anyone. But when Stan did it, he was over 80!

He achieved a lot over the years and he has received, understandably, the adulation in obituaries and tributes justified for being "a national monument", as Alex Dutilh of France Musique has called him. (Thanks to Sebastian Scotney for that.) But actually his regular gigs were at places like the Vortex and Bull's Head to the end. Did he really do enough of the high profile gigs as someone of that description deserves towards the last days of his life?

Here are a couple of photos that I took of Stan in January 2011. The first with Evan and the second with himself (courtesy of the glass reflection from one of the painting behind him).

A Q and A With Pianist Liam Noble: On the Sofa Series #2

Liam Noble

The second Q and A for the Sofa Series brings  pianist Liam Noble into focus

katan500: Favourite colour?

Liam Noble: Orange; my family say I'm lying.  I say I like it because I think not many people choose it, and that it's the same reason I used to support Aston Villa at school (in Bromley) instead of Liverpool. (katan500: Hmm... a sort of underdog colour....)

Katan500: Jazz is... In 150 characters? 

Liam Noble: A way of working.  I have some characters left!  Materials can be made up of anything.

Katan500:  Cats or dogs?  As It's Christmas... artificial or real Christmas trees?

Liam Noble: Artificial dog and Xmas tree; real cats.  I like the way cats are; if there's nothing to do they just sit and peer at people.  Or sleep.  Excellent role models I think.

katan500: What do you want for Christmas?
Liam Noble: I honestly don't know.  I like to just stop everything and get drunk, joke about the company of in-laws and then quite enjoy it anyway.  I see it as a recharging thing before the trials of attempting to play the piano with cold, January hands.

katan500: How do you relax?

Liam Noble: I fail miserably at this most of the time; I should be relaxing now.  The best way is to do nothing, with no distractions.  In some ways practising is relaxing, the more mundane and technical (scales?) the better.

katan500: Who is your ideal partner (however you choose to interpret)? Did you see Alex Hawkins (that other pianist) avoided that one...
Liam Noble: Yes, he’s no fool!  *Laughs* Musically, sound is the most important thing.  I like to play with people who have a sound that then dictates how they choose their materials (notes, noises, melodies or words). The rudiments of music are important, but only as ways of applying a sound; and some people find they have a sound that resists whatever those current rudiments might be, so they have to modify them or look elsewhere.


Katan500: Tell me something about yourself (your instrument, your relationship with it...etc)

Liam Noble: That's a good way of putting the question....my early relationship with the piano was intensely private in many ways, a way of looking inward, almost more like painting. Eventually I conceded that I might have to perform in some way, but luckily the piano is a desk job of an instrument, (katan500: I guess you sit behind it like a desk...)... so I still have something comfortable between me and the audience.  Then I discovered the microphone, and never looked back; I like talking to the audience, it calms me down.

Katan500: Why did you choose the piano?

Liam Noble: I think it was the desk job element; also my Grandfather had a grand piano, which I now have at home.  So I guess, in the way people often say, "I didn't choose it, it chose me".  Which is ridiculous. Apparently I was in the car, aged 2, and some music was on.  My parents switched it off and I started crying, at which point my nan said "That boy needs music on".  It's always felt like that, like medication.

Liam Noble: Are you attracted to any other instruments... in other words, would you be unfaithful to your piano?

Liam Noble: I love the guitar; you can put your fingers on it and come up with things that would never happen on a piano, and that sound different.  A lot of jazz musicians tried to emulate other instruments, Earl Hines doubling right hand lines in octaves to emulate Armstrong's trumpet sound, Bud Powell and Parker, Paul Bley and Ornette...I think Bill Frisell found a way of playing the guitar like a piano, and yet it's so specific to the guitar too.  So, I think it's a rich vein.  I used to play the clarinet, but left it on the tube. Those cases are so small....

katan500: If you weren't a musician what would you be?
Liam Noble: I think I might have done something to do with writing.  Even more chance to hide away after the deed!

katan500: I think you'd make a great writer *gushing*. You've taken to blogging like a fish to water, the last piece I read Gaku Self Help was so beautifully written. I'm so jealous. What got you blogging?
Liam Noble: Well, that was weird...I put it on a grant application for the Arts Council, that I would blog to attract new audiences.  A tour blog, you know, charting the trials and tribulations of a band on the road.  Except we weren't really.  So what came out was just stuff that was littering up my head, thoughts on music and life really.  But the interesting thing was, I'd get these things down, and then I got fascinated about how best to articulate them.  So it was like composition, the idea comes out in 20 seconds, the composing of it takes all afternoon.   I enjoy it, like a parallel activity to music, but without the training and knowledge...

katan500: How do you describe your musical style and where do you position yourself?
Liam Noble: It always feels incredibly pompous to talk about oneself like this, especially using "oneself" as a word.  Still, I've been thinking a lot about it recently.  With the recent passing of Stan Tracey, I've been watching a lot of his stuff on YouTube.  There are some videos where you just see his hands; it's really quite remarkable how he "drums" the instrument, and I feel a real affinity with that.  Monk and Ellington did that too, and they were my earliest heroes.

Katan500:  What would you say your musical influences are?
Liam Noble: Well, they are many layered, I think, for anybody.  Ellington was my first love, just as a prescence in that band, the power of the piano to cut through, but only by reducing the amount of notes horizontally and concentrating on vertical sonorities.  (Stravinsky's music has that too, and that points to all manner of other areas of music).  There's a pressure to be "burning", to be "able to play" that means that anyone who reduces their note output is making a brave decision.  I try and aspire to that where possible. Of course, through Monk you get to Bud Powell, and into the "burning" stuff...Herbie, McCoy, Jarrett, all deeply ingrained influences.  But then there are those influences I have sought out in order to freshen things up. Through John Zorn and Naked City I discovered Frisell, and also Wayne Horvitz and Robin Holcomb, a husband and wife who's compositions have influenced me enormously but who are tucked away on the periphery of jazz.  New things come up all the time; playing withTom Rainey influenced the way I thought about rhythm as well as ways of applying those ideas to free improvisation. There's also the type of situation where you "do the gig"; going with the flow of what's around you can be immensely rewarding, and in that sense the more you've music listened (and to some degree applied to your instrument) the better armed you are.

In the end, honestly, I don't see it as my music, I see it as a compendium of "found sounds" that come out in particular ways for reasons unknown to me.

katan500:  Who do you admire (alive)?
Liam Noble: That list is shrinking all the time....

Katan500: Who do you admire (dead)
Liam Noble: I'm not sure about admiration as a concept.  I like some things, not others.  I admire the musicians that kept going in the face of far greater adversity than many of us will ever face.  As to my favourites; Ellington, Monk, Stravinsky, Miles, in many ways the usual suspects.  And I admire Brubeck, he dealt with his popularity on the best way he could.

katan500: Is jazz dead? What do you think  this means? 
Liam Noble: It means cheap, lazy journalism.  There seems to be very little writing about jazz that attempts to capture it's feeling, the sensations of what it means to be around it or in it.  Maybe it's hard to tell the difference between dead and alive with jazz.  Maybe jazz is like a cat, sometimes just sitting immobile waiting for things to settle down.

katan500:Tell me about your last tour...anything amusing happened...
Liam Noble: We are all such serious minded and intense people that nothing funny happened , we just are really into the music and that's all (*mock earnest tone*). My favourite moment was in Birmingham, in the interval before the second half of the "Brother Face" gig,  announced thus: "Take your seats for the second half of Liam Noble's Brother's Face"  (katan500: HaHa.  Well that's funny. But how did you arrive at the name Brother Face?). Ah, this was via a Robert Creeley poem called "Histoire De Florida", it's one of the lines.  I love the idea of looking into the mirror and seeing someone else who is, in fact, you.  Weird, I watched a documentary on Henry Miller yesterday where he describes exactly that feeling, via a shaving mirror. (katan500: *wonders how much time Liam spends looking in the mirror*)  

katan500: Which piece of your work do you like the best / has special meaning for you?

Liam Noble: I try to avoid having favourites, it's like having children.  Some albums are quiet and thoughtful, some are boisterous, some eat too much chocolate and then feel sick.  By the time most albums come out, you're so sick of hearing it your head is in the next one.  But I like everything I've ever recorded; you just have to put off listening to it long enough so you can't remember having done it.  In general, I regard my inevitable failures to achieve what I wanted to do with a genuine affection.

katan500: Tell me something about the new album...

Liam Noble: Well, the first thing is that I don't know what form it will take.  It's a recording of our recent gig at the Vortex, and there's a lot of music to sift through.  I am thinking of putting it out as a downloadable file which, when you put it through a 3D printer, makes life sized origami effigies of the band who then play to you personally. There’s a variety of approaches in the writing, but mostly I tried to avoid the hard bop template of “tune/solos/tune” whilst trying to preserve the idea of melodies that have some kind of air of familiarity somehow.  Everyone in the band has a very distinctive way of approaching their respective instruments; a lot of strong characters together, and so there are some pile ups that occur which are great fun…I prefer that to anything too precise.  There are some clips of our Brighton gig on YouTube

katan900: Er... Shabaka is without head (*gestures decapitation*) and Chris Batchelor looks a bit vertically challenged...
Liam Noble:  Apologies. The sound is good though... 

katan500: When is your next gig?
Liam Noble: Sunday 15th December at Cafe Oto, I'm playing solo, then Chris Biscoe, Roger Turner and John Edwards play as a trio (there's three "sound" players!), and then all four of us.

katan500: Did I ask you what you want for Christmas?

Liam Noble: Yes... but I guess in the time it took me to answer these questions I could have changed my mind.  Can I have a 3D printer?

katan500: You might get an artificial dog... Thank you for being a good sofa sport. Merry Christmas and see you in the New Year at the Vortex Jazz Club with Pigfoot 10 January 2014 

Babel releases with Liam Noble include:
Let's Call This (with Ingrid Laubrock)
Romance and Revolution (Christine Tobin)
Tatterdemalion (with Rachel Musson, Mark Sanders)

http://www.babellabel.co.uk