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Safehouse is a experimental music collective based in Poole (since 2002) and Brighton (2004). This year they released their first CD on their own Safe label and their second festival started on Friday with the showing of the excellent film, I Am Albert Ayler.

Saturday was dedicated to live performances thorough the day in various workshops and performances including Gus Garside’s In Sand, GP Hall’s “Industrial Sound Sculptures”, Mark Holub’s Led Bib, Sonic Art and the Europa String Choir in the Ambient Room.

The evening performances started with a Mark Wastell solo piece on tam tam called ‘Vibra’. Wastell is known for initiating movements in music and leaving them behind as quickly as inventing them. Mark’s original instrument was the cello and your can hear a little of a mournful cello in his tam tam playing. He told me afterwards that he didn’t mind it being called ambient, “I’m not afraid of the word ambient in the truest sense of the word”. At 36”, this was the biggest tam tam he’d performed on and the sound is like a minimalist gamelan with some big feedback [vibra]tions. It’s a remarkable sound produced without any electronic trickery. I suggested it was like an acoustic version of Tangerine Dream but Mark wasn’t familiar with their ambient electronics — he started out on his ‘experimental’ journey after buying an Art Blakey record out of the blue. Your next chance to see him perform is in Finland next weekend at a Festival called Avanto (see links below).

By contrast, you may have come across Steve Beresford, Alan Tomlinson or Roger Turner on numerous recordings including jazz, country, classical, dub, reggae, jpop and, even, Bollywood. As a leading improv trio, they’ve been performing together for near on 30 years. If you’ve not come across them, think Art Ensemble of Chicago as a duo with Leafcutter John’s Dad. Beresford’s electronics never reached ‘noise’ levels but there’s lots of stuff on his table of gadgets. I particularly enjoyed what sounded like turntable scatchin’, a poorly tuned radio and the squeaky lid of a metal box the most. Turner and Tomlinson play standard instruments, drum and trombone respectively, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’d recognise this all of the time. Certainly using the trombone with empty meat pie cases and plastic cups produce sounds that are unrecognisable as a trombone at times. Whilst Turner’s collection of percussion ‘tools’ is very impressive, particular using plastic red tubes as drumsticks was effective. Chatting with Tomlinson about the gig, he says he didn’t mess around as much as he sometimes does, “I like to be somewhere between dancing and a showroom dummy, I hate that standing still stuff.” I was also impressed to hear the he saw Archie Shepp in concert in Manchester with two trombonists of which Grachan Moncur III was one. Wonder if that was on a Kwanza tour?

The evening finished with the stars of the Vancouver Jazz Festival with their only UK appearance this year, The Sten Sandell Trio. Sten (piano, vocals), Johan Berthling (bass) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums) are a traditional jazz experimental trio, compared to Beresford, Tomlinson & Turner anyway. Cecil Taylor is the obvious root to Sten’s piano playing. During the three pieces they played, he was often concentrating on the inside of the piano and much as the keyboard. His vocals are like a Scandinavian Keith Jarrett and I’d have like to heard more of them. Berthling has an impressive 5-string acoustic bass and it can really throb whilst Paal is less manic than Turner but no less adventurous with a variety to cymbals, sticks and wood blocks amongst other things.

It was a fitting ending the festival and the Lighthouse have already agreed to host regular Tuesday night dates starting in the New Year.

Links:
Safehouse: 2007 dates: 16.01, 20.02, 27.03, 17.04, 15.05 8pm to 10.30pm.
Sten Sandell Trio
Steve Beresford Wrote the forward to The Work Of Lol Coxhill (Blackpress); also see Lol Coxhill/Dave Green on FLY.
Blocks of Consciousness and the Unbroken Continuum Book + DVD: Editors Brian Morley and Mark Wastell www.sound323.com
www.avantofestival.com Mark Wastell & Rhodri Davies Sibelius-Akatemian kamarimusiikkisalissa lauantaina 18.11. klo 13
www.grachanmoncur.com
www.gbhall.com
www.myspace.com/davidtoop