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.

Pichl Engel Cobb - 06/05/2007@L'Archiduc, Bruxelles

Bernharnd Pichl - p
Rudi Engel - b
Jimmy Cobb - d

The crowd was surprisingly young, and predictably included a number of drummers like Lionel Beuvens and Toon Van Dionant there to learn a few lessons from a master. Philip Catherine dropped in on a peer. I even saw rocker and alleged Archiduc regular Arno for the first time.

For a long time, I knew Jimmy Cobb only from Kind Of Blue and thought of him as a "soft" drummer. So I was pretty shocked by his aggressive playing on a pair of live Parisian recordings with the 1960 Miles Davis Quintet, one with John Coltrane (notable for the strongly divided crowd reaction to Coltrane's breathtaking playing), the other with Sonny Stitt. I recently got a 2003 Cobb's Mob album, a pleasant straight-ahead date featuring Eric Alexander and Peter Bernstein, that showed Cobb to still be going strong.


I kind of wondered about the psychological state of the other two members of the trio. The pianist seemed to be the formal leader, as he studiously gave detailled historical background on every repertoire choice. However, it was clear that nobody in the crowd particularly cared about the non-Jimmy Cobb musicians. Instead of seizing the opportunity to surprise, they gave in to the situation, playing cocktail jazz devoid of personality.

The drummer, however, never conceded an inch to the passive mood. He manhandled Charlie Mundell's ballad "Emily" with brusque brush manners, pushed "Love For Sale"'s Afro-Cuban beat and gave a frenetic edge to an uptempo tune early in the second set, before thundering into his solo. He equally enlivened the quieter moments, restricting himself to cymbals to create a lighter-than-air feel on "For Heaven's Sake" and letting individual ride hits hang in the air on a slow blues. A far cry from hearing him at the Olympia in 1960, though.

Trevor Watts/Jamie Harris - 22/04/2007@L'Archiduc, Bruxelles

Trevor Watts - as, ss, perc
Jamie Harris - perc

Trevor Watts and Jamie Harris engaged in duo playing that seemed to tap into the oldest musical approaches: voice and percussion. Harris kept up steady, engrossing polyrhythms that weren't particularly interactive, but varied subtly. Watts, his tone the very epitome of the alto's ability to be both hard-blowing and sickly sweet at once, used minimal harmonic bases - generally little more than a single scale - to emphasise untroubled melodic improvisation.


The overall approach was something of a double-edged sword: while the regular, complex and dancing rhythms and the harmonically-limited melodies made the music user-friendly and festive, it also made monotony a very real danger, one sometimes all too present. At one point, Watts broke into a short bout of circular breathing that edged towards Evan Parker territory, which emphasised how narrowly he was otherwise constraining his playing. Also, I would rather have heard this music outside in a park and taken advantage of the sunny (French election) day, rather than inside the somber Archiduc. I'll let pictures taken in Brussels on the same day handle the rest of the review:

Van Der Werf / Veras / Dumoulin / Thys / Galland - 15/04/2007@L'Archiduc, Bruxelles

Bo Van Der Werf - bs
Nelson Veras - g
Jozef Dumoulin - Fender Rhodes
Nic Thys - b
Stéphane Galland - d
Fabian Fiorini - p

Though the members of this All-Star grouping knew each other well from other situations and draw to some extent on M-Base-related concepts, seemingly vast differences in personalities made the usual first-time grouping pitfalls inevitable.

Stéphane Galland and Nic Thys formed a generous partnership that swung and grooved in different, but compatible ways. The drummer applied a space-appopriate version of the complex yet irresistable asymetrical-layers-of-polyrhythms that are part of AKA Moon's signature style, while Thys laid down light, nimble, more straight-forward grooves. On a thoroughly mystifying "In Your Own Sweet Way," he even delved into a jazzy pulse, though without walking. I was surprised they played a standard at all, though I don't think anyone would have suspected them of playing one, had Bo Van Der Werf not announced it. What happened above the rhythm pair's implicit exuberance, though, reflected a quite different spirit, just as the dusky Archiduc interior contrasted with the bright, hot sun outside.

Baritone saxophone, guitar and Fender created a dirty grey mist of indeterminate, low-intensity melancholy whose surface subtly changed. Bo and Veras often intertwined their lines, the guitarist stepping forth for brief bursts of rapid Pat Metheny post-bop. Jozef Dumoulin shaded and suggested, playing more pianistically than I'm used to hearing him, but with as timbrally adroit as ever. An unaccompanied passage of glitchy glass-organ-sounding chords and low drones made for a lovely dream-like moment. Bo is one of the more inscrutable players I know. He is never loud, his tone always relatively neutral and his Messiaen-inspired harmonic sense ever elusive. This creates a sort of smooth, jet-black surface that's intriguing but ultimately inaccessible.

l-r: Laurent Blondiau, Nic Thys, Jozef Dumoulin

When the group came together for a riff over a tricky groove, I would mechanically be sucked in by the rhythm, but eventually I got irritated by my reaction, resentful of a superposition of timeful (i.e. Galland's kaleidoscopic rhythmic subdivisions) and timeless that never seemed to gel into a coherent whole. Fabian Fiorini sat in during the second set and his combination of dissonance and tumbling rhythm was welcome.

Yves Peeters Quartet - 31/03/2007@L'Archiduc, Bruxelles

Nicolas Kummert - ts
Frederik Leroux - g
Nic Thys - el b
Yves Peeters - d

You may have gotten to know Yves a little bit in his musician questionnaire. He's a fine drummer who plays in a chiselled, sensitive and flexible way. Since returning from a seven-year stay in New York, Nic Thys has been getting involved in a number of groups. His playing here was both laid-back and solid. His accompaniment used chords as much as single-note lines and his solos were particularly lyrical.


The quartet is a new one, and while reading furiously off the sheet paper, the played a couple of fairly mellow sets made up of material from a happy, straight-ahead Adbullah Ibrahim waltz and drifting tunes from Bill Frisell and Paul Motian elongated "Strange Meeting." The originals were a bit more dynamic.

Frederik's "Abstract" opened with a full-band unison head that fused the rhythmic sensibilities of Monk and M-Base. Nicolas's "Liberté" used an low-key asymetrical drum 'n' bass drum beat to underpin a slowly crescendoing tenor solo. The highlight, though, was Nicolas's arrangement of "Monk's Dream:" Yves's quiet second-line drumming combined with Thys's bass part for a diffuse, dreamy-soul feel, but everything came into sharp focus for the staccato parts of the melody. I was reminded of Jason Moran's treatment of "Crepuscule For Nellie."

Samo Salamon Trio - 10/12/2006@Archiduc, Brussels

the loneliness of the drummer before the Archiduc kick off

Samo Salamon - g (website)
Drew Gress - b
Tom Rainey - d

I'd never heard of Samo Salamon before, but he's been prolific: his website lists a 2005 release and three in 2006, all as leader and all of his own compositions. Looking over the tracklistings, I don't think what they played here overlapped much with his recorded repertoire. The least that can be said is that Salamon is keeping busy.

outside, i met my first estonians

I figured a concert with Tom Rainey was worth seeing. He didn't disappoint: his center-less polyrhythms were as engrossing, perplexing and paradoxally toe-tapping as ever. He might even have hinted at thinking about possibly cracking the shadow of smile, once. Of late I've been telling everyone I meet about how great the Claudia Quintet is, so going to see Drew Gress was logical. I was ill-seated to hear him properly (are there good seats at the Archiduc?), but was bowled over by a brief arco interlude during which he varied his attack between a pure, straight sound and a fiddler's roughness, while injecting the whole with a kind of East European soulfulness.

As a whole, though, the concert wasn't particularly exciting, although it picked up in the second set. The "modern" reference points were there: early MacLaughlin; the way the sound seemed somehow distant, which I associate with a Mists of Avalon moment since listening to John Surman's Way Back When; the occasional Metheny-ish sing-song melodies, chords and light sound; the liberal infusions of clattering, plingy improv. Still, the writing was in what I think of, perhaps erroneously, as a contemporary NY guitar vein and left me little to be moved or thrilled by.



The second set started with an aggressive guitar solo that set up a better mood. On "My Amusing News"'s (check the song titles on Salamon's discography page, I'll let you decide if they are funny or painful) intro, Salamon accompanied his own expressive melody with rhythmically fine-grained strumming. After a ballad semi-sarcastically called "Too Emotional For This World" came a particularly great piece that imbricated different rhythmic feels and worked itself up into a harmonically spiky quasi-funk lather before totally cutting loose into a wild, blistering whirlwind. Rainey produced a great solo that broke the beat up into unpredictable shards. By the end of the second set I was reconsidering my negative first set impressions, but the encore, a listless ballad, brought them all back.

estonia: clearly the place to be. terviseks!

Afterwards, I talked with Toine Thys (of Rackham fame - their debut album Juanita K has just come out) about the jazz/rock thing. He observed that jazz musicians all tend to have a pop (or pop-ish) band (r'n'b/funk for black musicians, rock for white ones) and cited Seamus Blake and Reid Anderson as examples, as Toine's brother Nic (whom you may also know from Bill Carrothers's trio) played bass in one of their bands (or maybe they were all in the same band, it's all jumbled in my mind). I guess Roy Hargrove is another good example. Is this a new thing? While jazz musicians have always played all kinds of music as sidemen or session musicians, I didn't get the impression that they often led more pop-leaning bands at the same time as jazz bands. Changing times, economics and formative years?

Collapse; Cortney Tidwell + Grizzly Bear - 11/11/2006

the most sincere birthday card ever

Despite seeing three bands in two locations, by far the most memorable thing to occur on my birthday (28) was a disastruous encounter with TV On The Radio.

Collapse (website)
Jean-Paul Estievenart - tp
Cédric Favresse - as
Lieven Van Pee - b
Alain Deval - d

The Archiduc is fun to go to because it mixes people who can afford to shop at the Olivier Strelli down the street (which the drink prices reflect) and those who can afford... free (as in 0 euro) jazz concerts.

Jean-Paul Estievenart recently won the New Talent Django d'Or, the best of an extraordinarily weak field, compared to previous years. Anyway, I hadn't heard him in a long time, so was curious. He's a clean-cut player, fluent but not particularly interesting. They played a few Ornette Coleman tunes (you can hear "Jayne" on their website) as straight as possible. Mingus's "Fables Of Faubus" was more fun, as was Cédric Favresse's composition "Yémen," which juxtaposed a bright, infectious rhythm with a slowed-down, Middle Eastern section. He's more expressive than Estievenart at this point, working his way through his Charlie Parker. Collapse is further proof, as if any were necessary, that even young Europeans are interested in mainstream, swinging jazz. Not all of us are avant-garde freaks, believe it or not.

We stayed for about half of the second set, then headed for a Chinese restaurant opposite our next musical stop, the Ancienne Belgique's upstairs club. It was my birthday and I was bored at home, so decided on the spur of the moment to come out for a double-bill of two bands I'd never heard of. Amusingly, the main impression I'm left with is "welcome to the blogosphere!" (at least, a different blogosphere than the one I'm used to, one where guys in the front row wear Broken Social Scene t-shirts).



Cortney Tidwell (MySpace)

A very young band from Nashville. The singer had a Joanna Newsome-ish girliness and tortuous phrasing. The sound was pretty bad, so as soon as the guitarist, cellist and keyboardist all started playing, I had no idea what she was saying. Maybe it was the sound, but the songs kind of lacked contour and detail. Still, they could drift on a couple of floor-rattling drones, bounce on a disco beat or explode into guitar noise.

Grizzly Bear (MySpace)

Four men singing together in high-pitched harmony never goes out of style, especially when they're doing it over long, sprawling multi-sectional songs that are tinged with 70s psychedelic rock and often involve whistling. Thankfully, the sound was excellent. Interesting, but I kind of got bored after a while, whereas IVN loved it all the way through. I liked how not straight-forward it all was. One song started with a brief, hard-driving explosion, then spent the next many minutes making you think it was going to get back there, but never did.

And now, the already-legendary TVotR incident:

During the intermission between the CT and GB shows, I saw the guys from TVotR over in a corner. They were opening for We Are Scientists the next day, so I wasn't surprised to see them there. Since he's the most recognisable of the bunch, I went over to Kyp Malone (surely the best afro/beard combination in the business). The following is a transcription of our conversation, with the thoughts that whizzed through my head in brackets and italics.

*Put hand on Malone's shoulder, Malone turns around*
"Excuse me. I just wanted to say that I really really really love your album (I should show him that I am aware that his band has several albums, even though I only own one of them) Return To Cookie Monster (fuck! Could I have said anything more stupid? Now I look like an insincere idiot! *image of Cookie Monster comes to mind* Should I say nothing and just hope that the music was loud enough for him not to have really heard what I just said?) Return To Cookie Mountain (just keep smiling).
*Dave Sitek chuckles. I am increasingly nervous*
"Thank you very much."
"(Quick, re-assert your fandom)I'll be coming to see you tomorrow, I'm really looking forward to it."
"Thank you." (I don't think he cares. He probably heard cookie monster)
*I walk away, head hung in shame*

Von Schlippenbach/Parker/Lovens - 18/12/2005, Brussels

The Archiduc is a trendy, expensive, venerable Art Nouveau bar, but it is also surprisingly often home to improvised music concerts. According to the presenter, the Alexander Von Schlippenbach Trio is the longest-running currently-active free music trio (however, he also said that the AEC disbanded after Malachi Favors's death, so what does he know), 33 years and ending a 12-concert tour in this cramped Brussels bar on a sunday afternoon.

Prior to that was a duo between Guy Strale on stuff (incl. piano, clarinet, a balloon, frame drum, a wind-up Santa Claus...) and English trombonist Gail Brand. It was low-key and enjoyable: they moved easily from soothing trombone drones + background sounds to rowdy dialogue.

I'd never really heard any of the three participants in the main act. I expected really forbidding improv, what I got was not-that-difficult and fantastic free jazz. The music, at its busiest, seemed a perfectly logical descendant of the latter years of John Coltrane's career (including the Quartet post-A Love Supreme), mixed a whole lot of Monk (both avant and straight-up; they even swung once or twice) coming from Von Schlippenbach. Parker was on tenor the whole time. Though I was poorly seated (directly behind him), a major moment came when he performed one of his famed circular-breathing multiphonics solos. I know many consider them old-hat, repetitive, circus acts, even, but I'd never heard one before, so I reserve the right to be amazed: for a few minutes, it was like hearing the whole of the saxophone at once, high, low and in-between. The Euro Free Improv guys are dominating my end-of-the-year concert-going: Peter Brötzmann played a fantastic duo with his son Caspar a few weeks ago that I still haven't written about, now another concert-of-the-year level performance.

The solo piano encore

Afterwards, I chatted with Parker a bit, breaking the ice by telling him that they'd been a trio longer then I'd been alive. He replied "I'll have to start getting used to the idea." True, considering that the same could be said for roughly half the crowd.

Jazzisfaction & more - 19/11/2005, Brussels

We, IVN, visiting Londoner M and I, walked into the Archiduc around 6 PM as the band was starting up the last tune of the first set. I saw an electric bass and heard a jazz-funk groove. Sure, trumpeter/leader Peer Baierleen was there, but I doubted whether this really was Jazzisfaction. I then got roped into buying a Kriek Girardin. A tip: if given the opportunity, don't. 6 euros for not much return on investment.

After the break, I listened to the concert from the U-shaped balcony. It was an odd but excellent vantage point: I was directly above pianist Ewout Pierreux's hands and could see Peer's hands and fluegelhorn/trumpet, but not the rest of his body. The Archiduc small enough that a relatively good-time band like Jazzisfaction isn't overwhelmed by the ambient conversation levels, especially from my balcony perch. Peering out over the rail, I could even make out the bass solos well enough. So the atmosphere was nice and lively, and the band ebullient. Jazzisfaction released their debut CD, Issues, a few years ago, a highly recommended mix of delicate and atmospheric jazz that bursts into surprisingly solid grooves from time to time. Pierreux masterfully juggles between piano and Fender Rhodes.

Afterwards, we went to a Japanese restaurant, a first for me. It was, iirc, Sakura in the Halles St. Géry quarter. If you're hungry, I recommend the Maki menu: 18 bite-size fish 'n' rice rolls (the menu claims 12, so maybe I benefitted from some kind of mix-up), for 15 euros. Still later, we headed out to Fol Le Goupil. That bar/restaurant's oddities are almost too numerous to list: several small, low-ceilinged rooms spread out on several floors and strewn with sofas, walls hung with innumerable paintings, statues here and there, the place must be in tourist guides, as it was full of young tourists, they only serve their own rather particular cocktails and the boss gives off a decidedly strange aura. All in all, I think we gave M a nice vista of Brussels.

Polar Bear - 04/04/2004, Brussels

Ingrid Laubrock - ts
Pete Wareham - ts
Tom Herbert - b
Sebastian Rocheford - d

They're back! This time in Brussels at the Archiduc, late on a sunday afternoon.

The repertoire was similar to that of the first concert back in October, mainly covering songs from their debut album, Dim Lit. Ingrid Laubrock is a sub and hadn't played with the group since then, so there were a lot of flubs and missed cues, but the energy level was high and nearly all solos were very, very good.

Despite working essentially in the head-solos-head format, Sebastian Rocheford's writing and arrangement for the group is very fresh-sounding and intriguing, full of memorable contrapuntal melodies, tempo-shifting grooves and the odd bit of exotica. For example, on a Russian-flavoured tune, Rocheford began by clapping a rhythm, which he later turned into a slightly martial, dynamic drum pattern. Contrary to the driving groove to which a honking Wareham contributed, Laubrock played a rather languid and nostalgic melody. Russian-sounding, of course.

This band's most interesting feature is its interplay between the tenors and between the tenors and the rhythm section. While both Wareham and Laubrock seem to come out of similar modern jazz backgrounds which takes in everything from bebop to free jazz, with a little r'n'b and even free improv thrown in for good measure, they have arrived at quite different sounds and approaches. Laubrock is a bit fuller and warmer, but Wareham can be quite haunting at times, especially in his almost flute-like upper register. And of course, there's an omnipresent irresistable groove provided by Rocheford's idiosyncratic mix of jazz and contemporary London rhythms and Tom Herbert's melodic lines. They reached back in time for the concert's only new tune, "King of Aberdeen," when bass and drums established a fun, very fast, old-timey two-beat.

Rub Recordings label owner Gea told me that Dim Lit has just been released in the UK and apparently it's doing quite well over there. UK readers (if there are any), go get this album! They're aiming for a second album by the end of the year, which I'm very much looking forward to.

The next day, they played at the Hnita-Hoeve. Due to the combination of energy and imperfection, I would have loved to have gone, but alas I caused my first car accident in 6 years of driving on saturday and lost my front fender, so the car was (and still is, at the moment) undriveable... No injuries though.

Lew Tabackin - Brussels, 28/09/2003

Lew Tabackin - tenor sax, flute
Bart De Nolf - double bass
Martin Taylor - drums

This trio played in the Archiduc, which is something of a Brussels landmark. It has an Art Déco interior design with a beige and green-blue colour-scheme, the balcony gives the room a U shape, there are two pillars about 1.5 meters (4.5 feet) apart in the middle and one of the barmaids looks frightfully like a member of the French resistance, 'Allo 'Allo style.

Before this concert, I'd only heard of Lew Tabackin. Throughout, I was struck by the happiness radiating from his horn. This happiness was also expressed in his idiosyncratic body movements: shuffling dance steps which at times approached tap dancing and lunging foot stomps to accompany percussive growls. Tabackin's flowing, melodious improvisations and open, generally vibrato-less tone on tenor recalled late 50s Sonny Rollins. However, he turned to Ben Webster on Duke Ellington's "Self-Portrait of Bean," capturing the former's gruff tenderness. Most notable, in terms of sheer power and energy, were the three tenor-drum duets. The first of these came during the concert-opening "How High the Moon," during which Tabackin erupted into 30 seconds of free wailing. One audience member quipped "The duets are so fantastic, why bother with the rest?"

Bart De Nolf, a last-minute replacement for Philippe Aerts, remained fairly discreet throughout the set, despite numerous, competent solos. Martin Taylor exhibited a light touch and good communication with the leader. During the duets, the extent of their rapport was fully revealed: the saxophone turned percussive and the drums turned melodic.

Tabackin used flute on two more exotic numbers, a middle-Eastern flavoured Duke Ellington number and what I suppose was an original called "Dancing Maja," which was inspired by Spanish music and featured Taylor tapping out the rhythm on castagnettes. "Dancing Maja" abandoned 4/4 time in favour of a whirling, dance-based 6 beat. The concert closed on a very fast bebop number, with the best of the tenor-drums duets thrown in for good measure.