Music / Bristol New Music
Review: Evan Parker – Trance Map, Bristol New Music, Arnolfini
Hmmm: a late starting trance/jazz gig? I’d prepared with some strong coffee just in case … But, as it went, there was little risk of nodding off during this one. Trance Map stems from a studio concept developed between electronic sound producer Matt Wright and saxophone legend Evan Parker that seems to have become a collaborative launch pad. For this performance Halftone cellist Hannah Marshall had been recruited from the thriving local improvised music scene, a nice inter-generational link by a UK free jazz pioneer with some five decades at the head of his field. Interestingly both Evan Parker and Keith Tippett – two magisterial figures in improvisation worldwide since the 70s – come from Bristol: is it something in the water? Both had been planned to feature in this Bristol New Music Festival but sadly Keith’s gig has had to be cancelled for health reasons.
Evan Parker in the shadows beside Matt Wright
With the players in place the music started ruminatively, both Evan and Hannah sitting with heads bowed while Matt slowly built a fabric of spectral whistling and electronic wind into which, eventually, the gnomic saxophonist began to coax harmonic sounds from soprano saxophone. Once a complex hanging chord was established he began the fluttering arpeggios that typify his playing in Trance Map, an endless rotating bop stream fuelled by circular breathing, the sound punctuated by gently swooping cello, with both instruments re-emerging in the electronic subtext as Matt reprocessed them. The effect was of an infinite delay giving a heartbeat to the soundscape, an organic process that came to life before our very ears, the impact magnified by the use of surround sound.
Hannah Marshall (cello)
Once established, this breathing texture evolved subtly through collaborative changes. Matt’s delivery of electronics – both generated and sampled – ran constantly but the other two players came and went, with Evan especially inclined to listening, head bowed again, often for minutes at a time. There were quiet spells, and one point of mainly acoustic sound that recalled the birdsong inspired music of Messaien, albeit with an electronic motorbike coming slowly through the forest. There were also more frantic periods as real time and sampled saxophones cascaded against each other like an unhinged outtake from early Steve Reich. At one point Hannah’s cello took a far-Asian turn, quivering and sliding, and Matt conjured the sharper electronics of 80s Japanese experimentalists.
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Throughout all these changes, however, the consistency of concept gave a flow and unity to the 50 minute piece that allowed you to work on your listening. In a process somewhat like the way you might look at a ‘magic eye’ picture it was always possible to hear through the explicit music into other implicit hidden harmonics and atmospheres, making layers that emerged almost unbidden. This Sufi-like meditative listening experience was quite enthralling at times, and it was as well that the piece ended in a slow subsidence through to a gently repetitive soprano sax phrase and a minimal electronic throb fading into silence.
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