Epitrochoidialisms

Spirograph Studies performed at Street Theatre on a very delayed tour for their post-Covid release of their pre-Covid  recorded album.  Thus is the way recently.  Also of the era, the album is available on vinyl and digital; no CD.  Ah, how things change.  I remember someone refusing to buy a record player because digital (=CDs) were coming.  Then I remember how easy were CDs: no clicks and pops; no religious cleaning routines.  But records do sound analog-good.  Like Spirograph Studies.  I was intrigued by this band.  It's a contemporary jazz style, improvised over regularly changing chord structures, although not obviously cycles, with heads that are also melded and shared and not too obviously divorced from solos that are not too obviously solos and not too obviously by one player as piano and guitar play off each other.  And all manner of rhythms and complex polyrhythms, mostly from drums, but also from bass, and also from guitar with slow upward and other strums and deliciously loose timings all around.  Nothing too obviously stated; this is not bop.  It's busy and rich, playful but serious; Tamara spoke of composed rules in Locked but they seemed to invite players to transgress.  The vibe was busy and involving and often loud and the definitions were fluid and diverse.  Sounds modern, really.  I asked Tamara about the compositions and it seems she writes them all, somewhat more recently on piano, but always a product of harmonic pursuits or trials.  If I understood correctly.  I've heard such chordal movements otherwise, still often enough in some form of repetition, perhaps ABA or whatever, or maybe just a descending pattern, but it worked a treat here with this responsive and interactive playing.  For this was not an individualistic pursuit, but a communal activity.  Whatever, I loved it.  BTW, Wikipedia says:"Spirograph is a geometric drawing device that produces mathematical roulette curves of the variety technically known as hypotrochoids and epitrochoids. The well-known toy version was developed by British engineer Denys Fisher and first sold in 1965".  I remember playing with one as a kid and this music just fits a treat.

Spirograph Studies performed at Street Theatre 2.  SS are Tamara Murphy (bass), Luke Howard (piano), Fran Swinn (guitar) and James McLean (drums).

Words and not

It’s a trivial observation and perhaps an incorrect one, but it seems to me that there’s a real string of introspective trios out of Melbourne. The trio of Fran Swinn, Tamara Murphy and Joe Talia is one. I’m in Melbourne to visit some old mates, the Musketeers. Sadly too true to fiction, Peter can’t make it this weekend – here’s best to him – but Val, John and I are out on the town and it’s not all pizza and footy.

Fran, Tamara and Joe were presenting a tribute to Bill Frisell. Perhaps it’s the water of Sydney or the brilliant sun of winter Canberra (certainly not the chill) that brings out the more extroverted camp. I listen to BF recordings with some trepidation, but I can be taken by the style in person. Fran has that clear concern with sound as pure presence rather than mere harmonic invention, the effect of the distilled, the loops and electronica. Each note seems to take on individual life in this world. I don’t so much hear this approach in Tamara’s bass, although it fits. But bass is usually just pure, uneffected in any way, just responsive harmony and rhythm that outlines feels. So it is too with Joe’s drumming, gentle and responsive and purposeful, unaffected by rhythmic contortions. It fits, and maybe it’s Melbourne way. This time, I heard the trio with singer Jacqueline (Jacq) Gawler. During the gig (it was a gig and not a concert, after all) I had a lively discussion with my mate John about words defining thought, or thought being limited by words. There’s an ongoing philosophical issue here and my understanding is that jury’s out on the issue. But when you hear words as in singing - the clarity of shared understanding versus the pure emotional contact of instrumental music - it seems to me that we make community, we share understanding, with words, and we make emotional control without. So I like plays that become films and fear the power of the visual in films. So Jacq was interesting as she sang, sharing stories and thought. Once with a poem she had written as an ode to Bill Frisell with Fran’s loops in support. Another with a pop song, Shining love by Justin Vernon on Bon Iver (I must avail myself). And lastly, with a community singing exercise on the Kinks’ Summer afternoon. Maybe I’d had a few and mates getting together do sing, but this seemed a nicely social thing to do to finish the night. It’s an eminently attractive song with dark Kinksian social comment, but we can forget that for the community singing. Words are all I have? The discussion continues, but I must say I was moved by the searching emotional soundscapes of BF by Fran and her team.

Fran Swinn (guitar), Tamara Murphy (bass) and Joe Talia (drums) played a tribute to Bill Frisell at Melbourne’s Uptown Jazz Café and Jacqueline Gawler (vocals) joined them for several songs and a poem set to music.

Finally

I have a history of missing bassist Tamara Murphy so I’m relieved to have finally caught her but it was a close thing. Tamara was here again with the Fran Swinn Trio at Hippo on a tour to launch their new CD. Even this time I only managed to get there for their final set after another engagement. I’d missed this trio with a circus act a few months before and Tamara a string of times in the past. Then when I was recently at the David Gage bass shop in NYC, I mentioned Australia and they volunteered Tamara Murphy, which impressed me. So finally I catch up.

This trio plays an impressionistic music of varied times and angular melodies and with that indefinite pitch that I hear in some modern jazz guitar. The underlying harmonies often sound of limited chords and the bass is more riffish than chordal. Fran’s guitar solos break from this with modern substitutions, a general freedom of harmony and sequences that move over symmetrical changes and into and out of dissonance using a sharp, trebly tone with echo effects and finger picking along with plectrum. I thought of Scofield and Fran mentioned Metheny and Frisell. Tamara took frequent solos which were more consonant and with a lovely sense of intervallic melody, although I did wonder at the exotic scales she was playing (this was not obvious major tonality). These were clearly double-bass solos of intellect and movement and with a fair touch of speed and with a unusual double-speed note pairs out of little two-finger fills. Tamara was playing on a borrowed gut-strung bass. I‘m not sure of her normal instrument and its stringing, but it would be interesting to see what changes this different bass has wrought in her playing. Ben’s drumming initially seemed sparse and truncated and soft (question my feminist credentials, but for the first solo I thought of a local lack of testosterone) but that was just the first solo I heard. Later, there were solos of volume and rolls and busy-ness, and these solos were frequent and surprisingly short (which I felt that suited the band) and of a modern approach that felt to me like storytelling.

The tunes were presumably originals, although I thought Fran said we’d recognise the last tune of the night (I didn’t). I counted 7s and a 5/4 ballad and had difficulty counting some others so I guessed odd counts like 13s or 15s. The melodies were jagged and unexpected to my ear, but attractive too. The form was mostly standard head-solos-head, but there was variation, and the solos were not particularly different from the head in structure or conception, so there was a consistency within and between tunes which seems to me a mark of impressionism. It all makes for an interesting palette and a desire on my part to revisit people like Metheny and Meldau and their impressionistic ilk.

Fran Swinn (guitar) led a trio with Tamara Murphy (bass) and Ben Hendry (drums).