a collection of improvisations

Some afterthoughts on each track…

The Long Shadow is a very free improvisation. My idea was to try and not let anything settle for too long at any tempo or key. Usually when you improvise you are trying make ideas coalesce. But with this as soon ideas form I try to destroy them. This is quite a useful process for coming up with lots of random ideas and as a whole I find it interesting to listen to.

AI Aint Listening uses my snare drum to trigger an orchestral stab type sound. These two voices are very fast and displaced, somewhere between jazz and electronica. Against this I set up a very ethereal bass and guitar jam. But I decided to make the bass a little more of the lead instrument, soloing, but not in usual high register as many bassists do (and gets a little on my nerves).

R.I.P.M.N. starts off somewhere between stoner rock, the blues and that modal jam style that Hendrix did so well. But where do you take a jam in E? I had this idea of trying to move it to an atonal free jazz place but when I got there it went somewhere else. This is the beauty of improvisation.

Disco Troll was the first jam I did in this series of jams. It does start very tentative and you can hear me dipping my toe here and there to see where I am headed to. It’s funky but the beginning of the bar and the key never seem to quite emerge. This one has had a lot effects added to it in the mix which I find an interesting world. (Imagine if Coltrane had access to the effects we have now, would he have used them?)

Heavy Metal was a big influence on me as I grew up. And if you want to go beyond metal then King Crimson is great gateway to other realms. Angular Dissent is definitely through that gateway. King Crimson had a way of improvising that was compositional rather than free expression. This is compositional improvisation too. And I think it is one of the most successful improvs on this album.

Every album should have it’s square peg and Funky Dilemma is this albums square peg. This did start out as an improvisation. But I started to develop this into a track, looping certain sections and embellishing others. There were three other improvs that fully developed into songs and they can be heard on the ‘Three Songs’ EP. This one didn’t quite make it, possibly because it was so weird.

Creative Incompetence is a new track add May 2021. It's an improvisation on a bass riff.

Newt on Ian is a new track added May 2021. It is in 17/16

Root Up, Uneasy Street and For Playing's sake were added in August 2021. They were created jamming over pre existing tracks, the removing the pre existing track. For example Root Up is two drum kits, a bass and a guitar which is triggering synths all jamming over Root Down by The Beastie Boys. This creates an element of chaos and what Frank Zappa called xenochrony to the proceedings which I really like. This way of working often acts a musical nuclear reactor, creating new elements I may use in the future. For me these three are all about groove and chaotic improvisation.

Jurassic Afternoon started out as jam around the melodic minor scale and its various modes. It also has another bass solo at the start (two bass solos on this album!). At around 2.40 the guitar takes over and it’s interesting to listen to this section, everything starts falling apart slightly. This is the thing with improvisation, often to move forward you have to play stuff what doesn’t work to force new things to happen. A little jazz dub section emerges but then it returns to a much more freer way of improvising that we have heard before in The Long Shadow, the first track on the album. I actually overdubbed a second guitar that goes into a very free, tonal solo that brings in the blues. The blues is under and within everything I play. But eventually you hear the tonality collapse. Again, with improvisation I love when it takes you to these places and uncovers music that you could never have dreamt up. It ends, as the album started, with completely free improvisation, no time, no key.

Chaos Generator is an epic, dark, episodic tune that explores the limits of the listenable. Abstraction is a big theme of this album. how much are you really allowed to take your hands off the wheel. Imagine four different musicians in four different rooms playing with ear plugs in so they can't hear themselves. All that is left is the action of playing. this gets nowhere near that point but it is a point of reference for this tune.

Dead End is a new track added May 2021. It is a long improvisation on the
note E and has a tendency towards the phrygian dominant. Drones are nice but this explores that limit where a drone is not a drone.