Cosmic RawXtra: the Net Widens - Jason Toynbee
The King’s Place arts centre is a plate glass outpost of gentrification as it marches north and absorbs the once industrial zone of factories and warehouses at the back of Kings Cross station. You might say (I’m saying it) that Kings Place is a metaphor for the killing off of manufacturing, and the working class jobs and communities that go with it. That said, the venue also hosts the Out Hear concert series, featuring experimental music and multi-media performances. Last Monday (26 October) the BBJ team recorded an extraordinary concert in this slot by the 12 piece Spontaneous Cosmic RawXtra, assembled and conducted by Orphy Robinson.
Clearly the project references Sun Ra’s Arkestra. There is a similar switching back and forth between ambience and frenetic expression, and from pre-composed themes to free improvised sections. But the comparison ends there. For what made this gig unique was its peculiarly British mixology: vocalist Cleveland Watkiss scatting drum’n’bass breaks, Shabaka Hutchings blatting out high speed Stravinsky-esque clarinet figures, and the remarkable Pat Thomas on piano able to move between lyricism and fierce atonality to explosively expressive effect.
In the first and longer set Robinson directed the band using a technique rather like the ‘conduction’ pioneered by Butch Morris in the 1980s. Sometimes through gesture, sometimes by holding up a sheet of paper with cues on it, Robinson shaped and directed what was nevertheless an extraordinarily democratic music making process. Quite a few of the developments came from the floor. So, at one point a saxophonist (I couldn’t see which one) began playing on the offbeat in what had previously been a loose 4/4 swing. Others players began to join in, some smiling as they recognised the new metre. Then for five minutes or so the ensemble produced an improvised acoustic dub, a groove which was interrupted by drummer Steve Noble – his inspired clatter undermining the incipient reggae beat every time it threatened to take over.
Robinson moved across to marimba to finish the second set. And now, without any direction from the band leader, the final section of the concert moved up yet another notch on the intensity scale. Hutchings together with Ntshuks Bonga and Brian Edwards on saxes generated a maestrom of free blowing towards the end.
This marvellous performance, full of uplift and positive vibration, was aided and abetted in no small way by the semi-improvised recitations of poet, HKB Finn – an almost Buddhist commentary on the one-ness of the universe and the security of our place in it. Yet there was never any sense of pomposity or sacred self-importance. For this was a wry and amusing gig as well as a passionate one, leavened with irony and musical wit. It was also (with two white musicians) a black British performance in its references to reggae, drum’n’bass and Jamaica. In Orphy Robinson’s outernational vision, cosmic jazz is filtered through red, gold and green on to a London b(l)ack cloth.I came away with this feeling: at a moment when we daily encounter the damage done by the destructive individualism of capitalism, it’s good to be reminded of the good that collective music making can do.
Clearly the project references Sun Ra’s Arkestra. There is a similar switching back and forth between ambience and frenetic expression, and from pre-composed themes to free improvised sections. But the comparison ends there. For what made this gig unique was its peculiarly British mixology: vocalist Cleveland Watkiss scatting drum’n’bass breaks, Shabaka Hutchings blatting out high speed Stravinsky-esque clarinet figures, and the remarkable Pat Thomas on piano able to move between lyricism and fierce atonality to explosively expressive effect.
In the first and longer set Robinson directed the band using a technique rather like the ‘conduction’ pioneered by Butch Morris in the 1980s. Sometimes through gesture, sometimes by holding up a sheet of paper with cues on it, Robinson shaped and directed what was nevertheless an extraordinarily democratic music making process. Quite a few of the developments came from the floor. So, at one point a saxophonist (I couldn’t see which one) began playing on the offbeat in what had previously been a loose 4/4 swing. Others players began to join in, some smiling as they recognised the new metre. Then for five minutes or so the ensemble produced an improvised acoustic dub, a groove which was interrupted by drummer Steve Noble – his inspired clatter undermining the incipient reggae beat every time it threatened to take over.
Robinson moved across to marimba to finish the second set. And now, without any direction from the band leader, the final section of the concert moved up yet another notch on the intensity scale. Hutchings together with Ntshuks Bonga and Brian Edwards on saxes generated a maestrom of free blowing towards the end.
This marvellous performance, full of uplift and positive vibration, was aided and abetted in no small way by the semi-improvised recitations of poet, HKB Finn – an almost Buddhist commentary on the one-ness of the universe and the security of our place in it. Yet there was never any sense of pomposity or sacred self-importance. For this was a wry and amusing gig as well as a passionate one, leavened with irony and musical wit. It was also (with two white musicians) a black British performance in its references to reggae, drum’n’bass and Jamaica. In Orphy Robinson’s outernational vision, cosmic jazz is filtered through red, gold and green on to a London b(l)ack cloth.I came away with this feeling: at a moment when we daily encounter the damage done by the destructive individualism of capitalism, it’s good to be reminded of the good that collective music making can do.
posted by Jason Toynbee at
3:01 AM
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