Elton
Dean / Mark Hewins
'Bar Torque'
Although I am quite
familiar with the playing of Elton Dean (saxello, alto sax) from
Soft Machine and In Cahoots, Mark Hewins was, until earlier this
year, only familiar from his jolly entries at the Musart web site.
The 'earlier this year' discovery took place at an arts centre in
Harlow, England where Mark along with Phil Miller, Lol Coxhill,
Pete Lemer and some other chaps that I am not familiar with
performed a totally improvised set with some really beautiful
moments as K-Ostra. Mark stood to one side of the ensemble and
mainly added textures and rippling arpeggios with acoustic guitar
and an electric guitar / synth. As a guitarist myself I was
fascinated and so jumped at the chance of a review copy of this
CD from MoonJune records in New York (amazing that as with recent
National Health and Matching Mole release it takes a US company
to release this stuff).
'Bar Torque' is an improvised duo live recording from 1992 at
London's Jazz Café. Mark creates varied textures and harmonic
backgrounds with his guitar synth, samplers and acoustic guitar
over which Elton solos. If this sounds like a fairly limited
proposition I can assure you that it isn't and that the resulting
music is well worth the price of admission. The backgrounds are
varied and intriguing and although being of the 'ambient' variety,
transcend the aural wallpaper that so often characterises that
end of things. Mark employs many different sounds from bird song
to drones, orchestral strings and something that sounds like a
gamelan orchestra. Assuming that there are no overdubs, how he
does this all live is a mystery to me. Elton's playing is at its
most lyrical and makes full use of the space created by Mark and
afforded by the duo format. He seems to be enjoying himself and a
real sense of exploration comes through the playing. Overall the
music is quite difficult to describe but I found myself thinking
at times of 'In A Silent Way' (especially the 'Panthassala'
remixes) and the ambient parts of Gong (the sunrise sequence at
the beginning of 'Angels Egg').
All in all this is a lovely recording, the more I play it the
more it grows on me. Thanks to MoonJune for the review copy.
Great error in the sleeve notes by the way which state "We
discovered how well we galled as duo"!!!
www.moonjune.com
David
Weston
September 2001
Copyright Bathtub of Adventures 2001
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