Stuart McCallum, The Golden Age of Steam, Trio VD: Manchester Jazz Festival Friday, 30th July.
British Jazz appears to be going through a period of rude health. A generation of young musicians has been emerging fresh from jazz courses at British conservatoires with a technical brilliance and eclectic sense of influence that was on show in the Festival tent, tonight.
Stuart McCallum’s solo guitar began the evening. McCallum used loops and echo to create a textured tapestry of warm colours. At points, he sounded a little like the late lamented John Martyn pinging and plucking his echoplex across ‘Spencer the Rover’. At other times, McCallum’s textured drive reminded me of Steve Reich’s minimalist Electric Counterpoint, written for Pat Metheny. Although McCallum told us that he wasn’t interested in melody, there is a melodic feel to these pieces and his solo lines against his delicate ostinatos are built on song-like resonances. McCallum finished with an exquisite rendering of ‘Amazing Grace’; the tune delicately placed over poignant chords.
The Golden Age of Steam featured James Allsop on tenor and bass clarinet, Kit Downes on Hammond organ and Tim Giles on drums. The Golden Age of Steam have obviously turned their backs on the golden age of organ trios; none of the Jimmie Smith ‘soul jazz’ here. There is, rather, an expressionist feel to this group’s work. The whole range of dynamics is used, often with open spaces in which the organ or the bass clarinet offer plangent noodlings. At other times, Tim Giles offers busy grooves over which Allsop’s tenor curves and weaves. Kit Downes who will surely tire of being introduced as ‘Mercury nominated’, is working on a sparse Hammond sound, to accompany driving bass ostinati.
Trio VD, who formed at Leeds College of Music, on the other hand, offer aggression in shed loads. A power trio of alto, drums, and scorching guitar, Trio VD easily drowned the police sirens and the caterwauling drunks of a busy Friday night in the centre of Manchester. They exist in that rich industrial heartland where Sonic Youth meets Ornette Coleman, and the New York Downtown of John Zorn and the Knitting Factory. Visually, they are a strident, and bald, version of the Muppets band, mixing fiendish tempos and guitar synth. At the heart of all this, though, is a finely tuned architecture and a real sense of where they are going. Actually, at the end of the day, not to be missed!!
And, as I walked back to my car, passed by Hummers tricked out as courtesy cars for the latest ‘gentleman’s lounge’, and the queues still waiting to get into the new Factory, I rather felt a kind of glow at the city’s ceaseless, rejuvenating energy.