Jazz Articles

Tony Bevan / Ashley Wales: Newton

by John Eyles
July 15, 2020

In the duo Spring Heel Jack, electronicist Ashley Wales experienced working with a range of top-flight saxophonists, including Tim Berne, John Butcher, Evan Parker, John Surman, John Tchicai and Alan Wilkinson. Saxophonist Tony Bevan and Wales first crossed paths in the quintet Bruise alongside bassist John Edwards, drummer Mark Sanders and percussionist Orphy Robinson (the group name coming from their initials, BREWS = Bruise, geddit?) which recorded a live album with Derek Bailey in August 2004, one of ...

Sunny Murray Trio with John Edwards and Tony Bevan: The Gearbox Explodes!

by Chris May
March 14, 2008

Released under the titular leadership of drummer Sunny Murray, The Gearbox Explodes! features the same line-up as Home Cooking In The UK (Foghorn Records, 2004), and is in practice another exercise in collective music making of the purest and least hierarchical kind. Murray's leadership is confined to establishing an opening tempo and beat for each of the three tracks, and, later, bringing them to a close.

Music so wholly unpremeditated and in-the-moment as this requires listening ...

Bruise: Bruise With Derek Bailey

by Chris May
April 24, 2006

A breathtaking, deep-space adventure in sonic exploration, Bruise With Derek Bailey documents the last British concert given by free improvisation auteur Derek Bailey. The performance presents the veteran guitarist with a lineup some one or two generations younger than himself, playing alongside heirs to the tradition he helped create in the 1960s and 1970s. It is magnificent music and an important historical document.

Recorded at the 291 Gallery in Hackney, London in August 2004, Bailey was 74 going on 24 ...

Tony Bevan: Bruised

by Chris May
November 8, 2005

A magical and transporting, down by law, A-list masterpiece, bass saxophonist Tony Bevan's Bruised is among the very deepest and most rewarding albums to come out of the UK this year, performed by a joined at the head, heart, and hip, genre-busting, genius lineup.

It's free improvisation, Jim, but not as we usually know it--so instinctively architectural that it's hard to believe it was collectively created wholly in the moment, and is now released entirely free of overdubs, ...

Sunny Murray/John Edwards/Tony Bevan: Home Cooking in the UK

by Germein Linares
April 20, 2005

The overall loose and disjointed rhythms of free jazz can, at least in part, be traced back to Sunny Murray's innovations of the late '50s and early '60s. Having worked with men like Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, and Albert Ayler, Murray found a cadence to match the wide, wild, and multi-dimensional aspects of these free-jazzers. Of course, imitators and copycats being who they are, Murray's techniques are often borrowed and duplicated, some better than others. As heard on Home Cooking ...