Uneven Eleven: Live In Brighton

Since the dawn of this century, time seems to move faster and faster. Trends flare up and fade almost instantly—what is celebrated today becomes yesterday's news by morning. Music is no exception. Perhaps it is the digital age, meme culture or our shrinking attention spans that push us ever onward in search of the "next new thing."

Sometimes, though, it is worth hitting pause and rewinding—not to the 1920s and Louis Armstrong's Hot Five (though that is never a bad idea), but just a decade or so, to rediscover something raw and vital. One such discovery is Uneven Eleven, a power trio that blurred the line between jazz, rock and unfiltered energy.

British drummer Charles Hayward, who has always stood with one foot in jazz and the other in rock, brings his fierce rhythmic intellect to the group. Known for his work in Quiet Sun with Phil Manzanera, This Heat with Charles Bullen and Gareth Williams, and Massacre alongside Fred Frith and Bill Laswell, Hayward was part of a generation that reveled in collisions—where hard-edged rock met the freedom of jazz. Think of the sonic assaults of Last Exit (Peter Brötzmann, Laswell, Sonny Sharrock and Ronald Shannon Jackson) and you will sense the lineage.

Uneven Eleven follows that same uncompromising tradition. The trio—Hayward, Japanese guitarist Makoto Kawabata (Acid Mothers Temple, Gong) and Belgian bassist Guy Segers (X-Legged Sally, Univers Zero)—first appeared on the two-disc Live at Café Oto (Sub Rosa, 2015). This release, recorded live at Sticky Mike's Frog Bar in Brighton in May 2013, captures the same trio in peak form.

Across three sprawling tracks—ranging from eleven to over thirty minutes—the band unleashes collective improvisations that blend ferocity with precision. This is not background music; it is a full-body experience. Kawabata's guitar howls and fractures through Segers' relentless low-end surge, while Hayward drives everything forward with primal intensity. Imagine if Public Image Limited had possessed the chops of a free- jazz unit, and you will have a sense of the chaos and control at play here.

Uneven Eleven's Live In Brighton is a reminder that some music resists the clock entirely. It is timeless not because it looks back, but because it insists on being fully alive in the moment—loud, fearless and gloriously uneven.

Comments