Continuing the theme of Stuff All Over, i’m just recovering from the If Only festival, which was a laughably intensive weekend of exhilarating and dizzying performance all over the Bluecoat Arts Centre in Liverpool. Sometimes wildy experimental, sometimes it was the mix or the context that was daring. Also worth noting that we get an audience for this stuff as well, so just because you’re trying to push boundaries doesn’t mean you’re condemned to playing to three people on a Tuesday evening. But i digress.
After it was all over, and we were grasping our hard-earned pints, it struck us how high a quality of work we’d been able to present using mainly local artists. It would definitely seem that Liverpool is having a bit of a moment, artistically: some people were born here, some have been pulled by the gravitational mass of what’s happening (trust me, it isn’t cos of the money!). A slightly odd feeling - abandoned by both the state and the private sector, yet here we are, at the centre of the universe…
Spring comes, and everything wakes up. I know this is all very 21st Century, it’s a blog and it’s all in the cloud and stuff (i used to read a comic called Century 21 when i was a kid. And now i’m here, things aren’t so very different, frankly. I digress…) but i have an allotment, and as such i’m more aware than most of the changing of the seasons, of the year turning around, which even in this digital age we can’t escape. In fact, you could argue that global warming puts us firmly in the clutches of natural processes: however - spring.
Keen readers of this blog, if such creatures exist, will have read about my breakdown and subsequent struggle with Depression. When it first happened i lost the ability to process music at all, for roughly four months. After that, i restarted my relationship with the entire artform by listening to ‘Goodbye to Love’ by the Carpenters, which was the first single i ever owned. Last Saturday, a mere 9 years later, the wheel came round again: just before the Fall Over the Cliff, i did a large-scale gig with Maggie Nicols. And last week, here i was again, doing a large-scale gig with Maggie again. I’ve completed my journey of re-treading my musical life, and anything more is purely new: it’s all mine, from hereon in.
By the way, if anyone reading this is contemplating doing a large-scale gig with Maggie, i’d thoroughly advise you to try it. This one was exceptionally good, even by her standards: we involved the dancers/performers from the Liverpool Improvisation Company, and frankly - we rocked the house. Was it improvised music, was it performance art? Who knows or cares. The important thing was that we created a minimal structure and created something vital, beautiful, funny, engaging and powerful out of the very air we were breathing.
There’s stuff happening all over!
I’ve very little idea if anyone reads this blog, and certainly 99% of the ’subscriptions’ i get are spammers (fortunately, my providers filter out the robots, so there isn’t piles of offensive ads in the comments). But, if it’s there, it ought to be looked after, so i’ve decided to post more often here.
But actually, part of why i haven’t posted as often as i could is that there’s Stuff All Over. Last year was quite busy, and suddenly 2012 is getting even busier. Currently i’m organising two big band gigs, sorting out pressing details for two CD’s, lining up editing/recording for three more, and even playing a gig or two between times (my left foot was cracking walnuts - after all, i gotta eat).
Assuming you don’t live much near me (and, as i overstand it, a lot of people don’t…), this may not bother you too much, other than the observation that Liverpool is starting to look like a bit of a centre for improvised music. Watch out for articles about the ‘Liverpool Scene Mk 2′!!
Firstly, apologies, as i seem to have neglected at least some of my online duties in 2011. I got an android tablet recently, and when i pulled up the whi music site as a test i was horrified to see it hadn’t been updated for a year. Now rectified! It’s also a while since i did this, but here i am.
One thing that keeps on coming is years - happy 2012, tho i’m expecting it’ll be more interesting than happy. But we shall see, i guess. The other thing that keeps on coming is CD’s - i’ve got a new one out. ‘Small Things’ by Graculus is an album of 34 miniatures, all improvised, which took most of 2011 to put together. We’ve taken the plunge and done a silver disk (ie it’s not a CDr), and now you can buy it direct on the site, should the fancy take you.
There’ll be a couple more CD’s this year too - i’m currently working on a CD with vocalist Steve Boyland (see my YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/PhilCHargreaves?feature=mhee for a tasty preview), and i’m hoping that 2012 will be the year that my unreleased CD with Maggie Nicols will stop being unreleased. Look out also for an amere3 CD on Bruce’s Fingers.
Lots of stuff in duos this year - i’m also working with DJ/artist Si Mack as D-fekt, and even doing some African-influenced pop with Kevin Paton (Mojo Storm). All of which, hopefully, gives you some idea of why i didn’t get round to doing the blog for 9 months (sorry! sorry!!). So - onwards…
Oh, and if you’re reading these sequentially, the lightbox seems to be working so far.
I’m not coping well with Winter these days. January and February finds me brutally depressed, which is kind of the reverse of how things used to be - Winter used to be my favourite season. But the worst part is Winter Fingers. Not cold or chilblains, Winter Fingers just don’t respond properly to the signals i send down my arms. Sluggish, recalcitrant, they’ve got a mind of their own, and it’s not a co-operative mind at all. Of course, this does nothing to lift my mood.
But here we are, it’s the middle of March. In a few days it’ll be the equinox, so there’s more light, and it’s more intense. I noticed a couple of weeks ago that the Winter Fingers had gone (hoorah! Lashings of ginger beer all round!). So - ten interesting months of playing to come. Next year, i’ll try one of those light boxes…
Happy New Year!
Like a lot of musicians, i’m not over busy at this time of year, in these latitudes the nights are long and the temperatures are low – but time for taking stock and making plans.
I’d have to say that 2010 was a good year for me, musically – I had several of those moments where you think that maybe you didn’t waste your life learning an instrument after all: the Gathering continues to be a joy, and its live offshoot, the Infinite Monkey Orchestra managed another memorable performance with Simon Fell on bass.
Meanwhile, I’ve got two finished CD’s on the launch pad: ‘Human’ with Maggie Nicols is a 50 minute collage of improvisations, found sounds and poetry that we took 18 months to assemble, while the second amere3 album is a classic bass/drums/sax recording with a classy sound and some fabulous playing. Recording-wise I’m continuing to work on Steve Boyland’s solo album as well, which, true to form, has developed into something a lot more complex.
But the best bits, as in 2010, will be the things I haven’t seen coming. Kind of like the best improvisation, really.
I’ve been curating the Liverpool Gathering for roughly 18 months now, and i have to tell you - it’s a blast. Once a month we throw open a room the Bluecoat Arts Centre, and whoever turns up makes music for two hours. Every time is different, each one is rewarding; it’s either a testament to the Liverpool scene, or the methodology (or maybe a bit of both), but it’s an unfailingly engaging experience.
Last year Simon Fell was in the city to do some work, and we dragged him along to the Bluecoat for a gig with the Gathering’s finest; when we perform, we’re the Infinite Monkey Orchestra. We had a session the night before, just to get used to the combination, but it’s an unedited, undirected 50 minute improvisation by a nine-piece band:
Rob Dainton - drums
Simon H Fell - bass
Ricardo Fernandez - piano
Richard Harding - guitar
Steve Hood - guitar
Steve Boyland - voice
Phil Lucking - trumpet
Phil Hargreaves - soprano sax
Ian Simpson - electronics
Available (for free!) for you entire delectation at http://www.archive.org/details/InfiniteMonkeyOrchestraem100
If you want my personal opinion (and it’s my blog, so you’re getting it, sorry), it’s a fine example of how improvisation lets you build something that’s so much bigger than the sum of its parts. You can hear the whole ensemble navigating its way along, working from dense and powerful to small intimate spaces. Hope you like it…
Some recordings are documents of particular gigs or moments - often the line-up is drawn together for a gig or two, someone might only be in the country for a short time, whatever. Whi 011, Graculus (name of the band and the CD, so its eponymous. Great word.) isn’t like that: me and Richard Harding have been playing together pretty much weekly for two years now. Which means that the release is basically the pick of just over a year’s worth of recordings, itemised compiled and mastered (though not edited: they’re all full-length as played).
As such, there’s a variety of different acoustics, varying from the dry home recorded ones to the Great Hall at Hope, which is cavernous, to say the least, and Richard plays electric guitar on some tracks (he’s normally a classical guitarist). The common thread through all this is our respective approaches to our instruments and our shared history, and in the event that proves stronger than the variations, in my opinion, so the package achieves cohesion where none might have been found. It’s an interesting sound that doesn’t pigeon-hole easily, sitting as it does on the fault-line between classical chamber music and jazz-based improv.
Find it here: http://philhargreaves.bandcamp.com/album/graculus
Hello! and welcome to 2010!
A bit excitable perhaps, but there’s a lot of stuff to look forward to for the forthcoming year, so i though i’d update you a touch:
Firstly, the album i’ve been working on with Maggie Nicols is now Done, and sometime this year it’ll be Out and done. Not sure on what label yet (ie probably not whi music), but it will be there for you. Promise it’ll be worth the wait - we’ve been working on this for 15 months.
Whi 011 is now all teed up and ready to go as well: that’s a duo CD with guitarist Richard Harding that is the pick of the stuff we’ve done over the last year. I play soprano sax and flute with Richard, as he plays mostly classical guitar, and the soprano seems to work best with it, somehow. That particular release is so imminent, it’s not true.
Less imminent are: ‘the Frank Sinatra Joke’, which is a collaboration with poet Dinesh Allirajah and Rob Dainton from 2002 that kind of got overlooked and shouldn’t have, that i’ll be brushing up and repackaging for public consumption, and also i’ve done some pretty fab trio recordings with Simon Fell and Rob Dainton. The sharp-eyed among you will have spotted that that is a reunion of amere3, after an interval of eight years. I think they’ll be worth the wait as well, though there’ll be a suitable interval of track selection, mastering, packaging etc before that one comes out.
Hope you enjoy them!!
Spring has very definitely sprung, and green shoots (ie the real ones, rather than politicans’ wishful thinking) are all around us. It’s a time for things to grow themselves into being, so it’s entirely appropriate that i’m in the middle of a new recording project.
Of course, the ‘Spring’ analogy is a bit spurious, as myself and Maggie Nicols (my current collaborator) started work on this last year, so it’s quite well advanced, but somehow the new growth thing seems to fit it, at this stage (and, after all, Spring doesn’t just happen - it’s all there under the ground beforehand) . Whenever i do a recording project, there’s a point where it all seems so overwhelmingly huge that i’ll never make sense of it, and that’s pretty much where we are at now, as there’s 20Gb of files on my hard drive. However, i’ve been here before, and it’s always worked out, so i’ve every confidence that this one will be no different. Plus, and this is the most important bit really, there are several moments in the raw files that make you go “Wow!”. Which is why we all got into music in the first place, i think - and it’s great to still be getting those moments 35 years later.
There’s a lot of work still to be done on this CD, but there should be something good to announce by the end of the year…