Mikkel Ploug Group ft. Mark Turner - 07/10/2007@L'Archiduc, Bruxelles

Mark Turner - ts
Mikkel Ploug - g (myspace)
Jeppe Skovbakke - b
Sean Carpio - d
Joachim Badenhorst - ts

On what could very well have been the last sunny and warm days of the year, it felt unnatural, perhaps even heretical in these suddenly eco-concious times, to sit inside the gloomy and electrically-lit Archiduc. One constant pleasure of this cramped and impractical room remains, whatever the season: the passing of the trendy neighbourhood's local fauna. There are the good-looking, expensively-dressed women, the eccentrically hip, those who wander in and look appalled (when it's free jazz), who look put off (when it's non-free jazz) and those who look lost (in any circumstance). In this particular instance, there was also the woman sitting next to me. At one point, I looked downwards for a while, at nothing in particular. She had slipped off her sandals, her bare foot dangled in the air. She must have gotten the impression I was staring at it: she freaked and hurriedly put her sandals back on. Maybe she was just self-concious about them.

This to-and-fro was more entertaining than the concert itself. As when I last saw Mark Turner, the audience was musician-heavy (as it was, though in a lesser proportion, for Drew Gress). I am beginning to seriously distrust this measure as a barometer of enjoyment, but maybe I just have a problem with New York-based Scandanavian guitarists.

Sean Carpio and Jeppe Skovbakke kept up a dynamic beat, hearing Turner close up was interesting and when Joachim sat in towards the end, the two-tenor combination gave the music a sensuous heft. For me, though, the show suffered from boring writing: it took four pieces before we got to hear something that sounded like a song rather than like a series of riff transpositions. Mikkel Ploug's guitar sound - bright, dry, unadorned - isn't one I'm really attracted too, either. Listening to the tracks on his MySpace page, I kind of like them (even though the trio version of "I'll Be Seeing You" makes me wonder if it's meant as a joke), so I'm not sure if the problem was a lack of familiarity, a sub-par performance or music that sounds better at home.

Os Meus Shorts - 20/07/2007@Le comptoir des étoiles, Bruxelles

Nico Roig - g
Joachim Badenhorst - bcl (website | myspace)

Le comptoir des étoiles has become the place for young jazz musicians in Brussels to perform and hang out. With three performances a week, it's making it possible to hear what twentysomethings here make of this whole jazz thing (especially as entrance is free). I kind of feel bad about not getting down there more often.

Os Meus Shorts performs the compositions of Nico Roig, a Barcelona expat. They are wide-ranging and very short, (sometimes) sharp shocks. The basic premise is somewhat diluted, however, by their practice of bundling two or three pieces into medleys. This is unfortunate, from my point of view, because the unsettled tension consistently "too-short" performances could create is lost. For example:



That said, there was much to savour, from disassembled-clarinet-dipped-in-water wackiness to hard-driving noisy blues to effusive melody and tortuous guitar lines. I spent much of the second set outside chatting with some Italian girls, and when I came back in, I couldn't find a good location (those are in extremely short supply at this particular venue). I figure that's a good enough excuse for the brevity and tardiness of this review.

O'Leary Eilertsen Verbruggen - 21/02/2007@Hopper, Antwerpen

Mark O'Leary - g (website)
Mats Eilertsen - b (website)
Teun Verbruggen - d (website)
+
Joachim Badenhorst - ts (website)

Before the start of the concert, Teun warned me: "It's rock 'n' roll." In hindsight, he might have meant that more in a flying-by-the-seat-of-our-pants sense than as a genre description: although Mats Eilertsen and Teun had played together a few years earlier with pianist Alexi Tuomarila, the group was created specifically for this four-concert tour (the Hopper was their last stop). And, with an acoustic double bass, how rock could O'Leary/Eilertsen/Verbruggen be, anyway?

As it turns out, rock enough for it to be tempting to compare it with Teun's Othin Spake, but they're quite different. OS is characterised by a thick mesh of guitar and Fender Rhodes, its melody-out-of-noise-and-back outlook and an overall danceable ruckus. O'LEV was a little more cerebral, covered a wider stylistic ground and relied on a somewhat more traditional separation of roles, as O'Leary was often the clear soloist.

The music seemed 100% improvised and displayed some of total improv's conventions: elastic tempos and shifting rhythms, murkily indeterminate harmony and rubato, periods of rambling and others of cohesion, stuttering fill-the-gap exchanges between guitar and bass, arco groans. This was tempered with injections of Teun's characteristically rumbling grooves, that might land firmly on the one, but roll around everywhere else before doing so.



On the opening piece, Mark O'Leary used a clean, self-effacing tone over a diffuse rhythm section to create a textural feel despite his fast, linear playing. Later, he did something similar with a louder, heavier rock sound, that led to a shredding so blurred as to become almost equivalent to a noisy layer of strummed static.

While the trio regularly flared up into engaging maëlstroms and clanging energy playing, more meditative spaces were opened up by Eilertsen's intros and O'Leary's use of the volume pedal and e-bow on the last piece of the first set. From a skeletal beat and eery, distressed harmony, they progressed to a jittery kind of jazz where the bass wandered rather than walked and then, surprisingly, some easy-going, medium tempo swing.

It's during the second set that the trio really came together and found common rhythmic ground. In the middle of the first piece, O'Leary switched from his jazz tone to an obnoxiously loud rock one and the trio collapsed into its most joyously noise-rock moment. While the guitarist's runs had often been cutting yet detached, slightly above the fray, here he tore away from the centre of the music, bringing the group together as one solid bloc.



Joachim Badenhorst sat in for the very long improvisation that ended the concert. He was still visibly elated from his recent 3 week stay in New York, a highlight of which was being invited by Han Bennink to play at Tonic in shifting ensembles that included Anthony Coleman, Ellery Eskelin and Dave Douglas.

The newcomer sounded the starting note and O'Leary immediately seemed to enjoy having a foil, as he elaborately knitted intricate constructions around the saxophone's lines. Joachim brought a kind of dry, quasi-melodic poise and a way of placing the saxophone in the very middle of the group sound that was somewhere halfway between Chris Speed and Ellery, allowing the group to sound relaxed even when the sound swelled. Whereas earlier, O'Leary's forward rush, Eilertsen's rugged thrums and Teun's backbeat-oriented playing hadn't always pulled in the same direction, it all just seemed natural when the guitarist held down a little riff for Badenhorst to howl over.

When the quartet sped up, they tended to spin away from each other and have to slow down to regroup, but towards the end they struck up a fast swing for a guitar solo that precluded the kind of front-line collaboration that had been going on. Therefore, I was a little disappointed that when Joachim returned, they collectively slowed back down: as that seems to be his natural pace, I was curious to hear what he would have done at a faster one.

musician questionnaire: joachim badenhorst

[Lately, I've been harassing people to get them to answer the Do The Math Musician Questionnaire. Unlike the original, most of mine were done in person, not by email. As Joachim was the first to reply (by email!) to my query, he gets to launch the Belgian version of the DTM MQ. Hopefully, the panorama of answers in upcoming installments will offer a little insight into the scene and people over here (but not only, as there are some international guests).]

Joachim Badenhorst is a clarinetist and saxophonist. His groups (Rawfishboys, Red Rocket and Skakk Trio) illuminated 2006. You might be able to get the Rawfishboys record if you ask nicely, Red Rocket should be seeing an official release, and you can hear all of them (and one more on MySpace).

The Charlie Parker comment won't surprise anyone who's heard Joachim play.

GIVE US AN EXAMPLE OR TWO OF AN ESPECIALLY GOOD OR INTERESTING:

1. Movie score: Noi Albinoi (Dagur Kári directed this -beautiful- movie, also
made the -beautiful- music for it with his band Slowblow), Twin Peaks (Angelo Badalamenti), Vengo (Tony Gatlif).
2. TV theme: "The Simpsons" (Danny Elfman)
3. Melody: "Sunny" (Bobby Hebb), "So nice" (Magic Malik).
4. Harmonic language: Bach, Django Bates (i love his reharmonisation of "Quiet
Nights Of Quiet Stars" on his cd Quiet Nights).
5. Rhythmic feel: Vijay Iyer, Dino Saluzzi.
6. Hip-hop track: "Get it together" (Beastie Boys)
7. Classical piece: Stabat Mater (Pergolesi)
8. Smash hit: "Hope There's Someone" by Antony and the johnsons.
9. Jazz album: Eric Dolphy with Booker Little Far Cry, Mick Goodrick In
Passing (amazing band, John Surman plays soo good on this album...)
10. Non-American folkloric group. Husnu Senlendirici, Giora Feidman.
11. Book on music. Give my regards to eight street (collected writings of
Morton Feldman).

BONUS QUESTIONS:

A) Name a surprising album (or albums) you loved when you were developing
as a musician: something that really informs your sound but that we would
never guess in a million years: Charlie Parker: In A Soulful Mood. This was
the first jazz record i bought, it blew me away. funny enough my favourite
tracks were always "Loverman" and "The Gypsy" where Parker plays a bit more
fragile, later i found out he was very sick when he recorded these.

B) Name a practitioner (or a few) who play your instrument that you think is
underrated: Ned Rothenberg, Hayden Chisholm, Ben Goldberg, Gilad Atzmon, Frank
Gratkowski, Loren Stillman, Julian Arguelles, Frederik Ljunkvist.

C) Name a rock or pop album that you wish had been a smash commercial hit
(but wasn't, not really): Either/Or (Elliot Smith), Nearly God (Tricky).

D) Name a favorite drummer, and an album to hear why you love that drummer:
I love Toma Gouband (Toma Gouband Trio with Brice Soniano and Harmen
Fraanje on Cristal records (a new cd is coming up with the same trio + Magic
Malik) and Sean Carpio (Mikkel Ploug Group feat. Mark Turner on Fresh Sound New Talent).

Kaat Hellings - 19/12/2006@Arenbergschouwburg, Antwerpen

Kaat Hellings - p, voc (MySpace)
Joachim Badenhorst - cl, bcl (rawfishboys MySpace)
Yves Peeters - d

On the way to Antwerp and back, there was a fog so thick that roadside gas stations emerged like ghost ships, their fluorescent lights casting an otherworldly halo. My concert-going experience was also slightly strange: I was late and the staff didn't want to let me in, because the room was allegedly full to the brim. That wasn't too surprising, the concert being free, but at least I could stand before the door and listen. I discreetly opened it wider and wider to hear better, until a barely-able-to-stand drunk guy went right in and sat down on the other side of the door. That allowed me to see that there was some more floor space across the room, so, sober but emboldened, I did the late-arriver's hunched-over, semi-running thing across the front of the stage in between two songs. A few minutes later, the drunk guy was literally dragged out into the café area by the staff and I could just make out that they had to sort of wrestle with him on the ground to get him under control. The contrast with the music was huge.

I found out about Kaat when she sent me a MySpace friend request. I checked her page out, liked the songs and noticed that Joachim (who, with the Rawfishboys and Red Rocket records and the Skakk Trio concert, has become my favourite be.musician discovery of 2006. I have no idea if the local tastemakers follow the same things as I do, but I expect him to get some Django d'Or Nouveau Talent attention next year) and Yves Peeters (who I know mostly from the very good Jazzisfaction quartet, which released its second CD on De Werf recently) were her band, which further piqued my interest.



The MySpace tracks come from her just-released debut CD and reflect what I heard in concert rather well. Still, it was impressive to feel up close the kind of enveloping silence and stillness her slow songs carry within them and can impose around them. The smallest dynamic and tonal shifts were thus amplified. Her pieces are generally short, stately and haunting. I was regularly reminded of Jon Brion-ised Fiona Apple, in the complex lyrics and tortuous phrasing (though Kaat doesn't have Apple's facility), but also in the way one song's existential musing was regularly interrupted and enlivened by a wild two-beat and groaning bass clarinet (IKaat lists Sisel Endresen and Patricia Barber as influences on Kaat's MySpace page). A Pearl Jam cover ("Nothing Man") was very still, but her own "Improve My Day" bashed out a steady 5/4.

While Kaat's piano-playing itself didn't seem really technically demanding, it was far from mere ham-fisted repetition of a handful of chords: the progressions were long, sophisticated and elaborately arranged and distributed across the range of the keyboard, all in delicately-crafted support of each song's particular meaning.

Afterwards, I had the pleasure of talking at length with South African singer Tutu Puoane (website | MySpace) and Joachim over generously-offered and tasty CD release party appetisers and champagne. Tutu is recording an album in January to be released in May. I found out that Joachim is actually half South African, so I was the odd man out. Well, I recently rented a Samuel L. Jackson film set in Truth And Reconciliation Committee-era South Africa, does that count?

Skakk Trio@woutwalt - 27/11/2006, Brussels

Skakk Trio (website | MySpace)
Eric km Clark - vln
Joachim Badenhorst - cl, bcl, ts
Juhani Silvola - g, elec



This fantastic concert confirmed everything I suspected after immensely enjoying the Rawfishboys album (MySpace | previous post): Joachim Badenhorst has a great ability to bring together sweet and even heart-breaking melodies, linear and ambient improvisation, noise and various flavours of classical music. I get the feeling that Skakk Trio is probably equivalent to the "composers and their bands make music for the masses" and "not your grandfather's string quartet" movement that I've read about. You know, classical music that doesn't feel distant.

joachim and nico, a duo of their own

The first piece was essentially one long crescendo. It started from the silence of unpitched air and soundless bowing (Juhani Silvola bowed his guitar at least as much as he plucked it or manipulated loops and feedback by twiddling his pedal's knobs), plateaued at a kind of song by avant-garde whales and climaxed in a wall of sound. Not a loud one (the room would have been way too small for that), so all the textural details could be heard. At that time, Joachim was on tenor and his grainy, jazz-derived free-textural playing resembled what Ellery Eskelin might do in a similar situation.



The second composition started with a tender, Rawfishboys-style melody, but written with a string quartet's interweaving lines. The same melody returned after a stretch of quiet collective improvisation, but with wonky (sorry, microtonal) intonation. Maybe it's been done to death elsewhere, but I found the contrast between the two versions riveting (along with the simple clash of microtones, of course). After a harsher duet pitching the violin against noisy guitar and an expressive, slur-filled clarinet solo, the same melody, or a similar one, came back in a folksy guise, as the previously battling string instruments united for propulsive plucks on the off-beats.

If you were to guess that "a clarinetist smooching into his instrument's body after having removed its mouthpiece over blippy textures that could have been lifted from an old video game" described a micro-house track rather than classical music, you'd be right. Still, when Clark and Badenhorst intoned a more traditional melody after the "electronica" stuff, Silvola provided short, fading swells much like a string section would.

yes, the beer was free

The last composition was Silvola's "Around," which you can hear on the band's MySpace (but the songs there are far below the quality of what I heard live). It moved from unhurried floating to a lovely waltz in which violin and clarinet fluttered around the guitar comping, with a traditional, hollow sound, for once.

They're playing with Han Bennink tomorrow (they met him at Banff last year, as did the trio's members), which I have some difficulty imagining. It is safe to bet, however, that Bennink has more imagination than I do.

wout and walt, our gracious hosts

Enjoyment was enhanced by the venue (not so much by the free beer - which was Jupiler, anyway - as I was driving). woutwalt is a small, very-high-ceilinged workshop in which two young graphic designers (guess their names) work, making t-shirts and posters and things. There were maybe a dozen audience members, but that's pretty much all the room could fit, so it was good. I felt like I earned a whole bunch of hipness points by attending a concert in an "alternative" "space," in a rundown-therefore-affordable-for-artists-despite-being-in-city-centre street, no less.

Celebrity attendees: Benoist Eil, Manolo Cabras, Eve Beuvens, Anu Junnonen...

be.mp3: rawfishboys - boetie

The duet between a bass and a non-harmonic instrument: if it's not already a cottage industry, it should be. To me, an album of clarinet and bass duets is quite appealing.

WaR, an EP-length album by Rawfishboys (MySpace) a.k.a Joachim Badenhorst (clarinet) and Brice Soniano (bass). They mix delicate and touching songs with some slightly harsher improvised pieces. Sometimes they do both on the same track: "no Fridge For clusters" goes from improv to song and back, turning the old head-solo-head form inside out. Think Giuffre/Bley/Swallow meets, well, Giuffre/Hall/Brookmeyer, but without the middle men. Album-closer "maya" has much of "The Western Suite"'s rustic charm.

Rawfishboys - "boetie"

"boetie," WaR's first track, falls in the delicate and touching camp. There's a second version later in the album, in which the roles are reversed: the clarinet sighs the descending lament, while the bass provides the surrounding flutters.