Music / world music
Review: Tezeta, The Bell
It was always going to be a tight squeeze on The Bell’s compact stage and once the two drums, keyboards and vibraphone were all in place and the guitar and bass set up you could see the two saxes nudging ever closer to the edge like a Brexit deal heading for a vote. But this is the Bell, remember, and they’ve stretched to bigger combos before, so nobody actually fell off and, unlike that Brexit deal, a truly happy outcome ensued for all concerned.
Having taken the wonky funk of Ethiopian bandleader Mulatu Astatke for their starting point the 8-strong Tezeta now have a full set of original instrumental compositions which, while still having strong echoes of that music, increasingly have become a sound of their own. Some elements are always there – the baying sax harmonies, the looping/loping bass line, the almost-steady rhythm, the ‘one’ – but the feel of the numbers was more distinctive. Most tunes had a deceptively loose intro that could be anything from a speculative sax solo from Andrew Neil Hayes or Lorenzo Prati to a neatly woven dance between Conrad Singh’s guitar and Harriet Riley’s vibraphone or a reflectively gentle drum solo slowly coalescing into a beat. What happened next was usually a drop of some kind with assertive sax and vibes announcing the melodic hook, then leaving it to Daniel Inzani’s wonky organ or electric piano sound to elaborate before a smooth running out with maybe a more shuffling beat and a jazz solo before everything drew together for a neat coda ending.
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In Murmuration, for instance there was a nice counterpoint between the saxes, rolling to four time, and the snappier vibes and guitar emphasising the sixes. It made for a sense of busyness without confusion, the complexity hidden beneath a smooth veneer. It also provided a fine basis for a trade off between the two drummers, with Matt Jones especially letting go while Daniel Truen found just the right way to punctuate his outburst. Their collaboration, locked around Peter Gibbs’ bass, was a vital thread throughout the evening, yet despite the twin kits large presence on stage their discipline and restraint gave plenty of musical room for the other players. The more rhythmically challenging Sarakany offered sharper disjunctures between driven briskness in the verses and a contrastingly suave and understated middle eight, all held together by Harriet’s fluent vibraphone overplay which recalled the great Ruth Underwood in the Mothers of Invention.
For Bradshaw – a tune dedicated to the man who made The Bell into the bohemian home for adventurous music it has since always been – things started lyrically like a Penguin Cafe Orchestra out-take with barely a hint of the Horn of Africa as piano and vibe prettily interlaced until displaced by an untypically metallic guitar mash-up. Like all the tunes, however, the unfussiness of the lightly structured sound concealed a really tight construction that allowed fluid melody to emerge from some complex time signatures.
This is an intelligent band bringing the musicians’ variety of backgrounds to play within the clear sense of what Tezeta is supposed to sound like. The result is a beguiling lounge jazz that encourages swaying rather than moshing and always rewards the listener.
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