Caught like rabbits in the headlights.......that's the audience of course, not us......the Great Squarions live at Klub Kakofanney, Oxford, 6th November 2009;
Yet more of the Great Squarions nailing an appreciative audience's collective scalp to the back wall @ Klub Kakofanney, Oxford, November 2009.
Square fotografia by Bobbie Watson
Attack of the Great Squarions vol 253,000.
The Great Squarions land in Chatham, survey the area with gimet eyes and brows shielded against the glare of Kent's twin suns. They identify a venue in need of a bracing roar of Squarion alternative relaxation music on a Wednesday night in mid-November, and advance accordingly.
This is a moment of repose amidst a maelstrom of noise.
You can either summons up your imaginative powers to bathe the scene in atmospheric lighting effects, or you can make do with the Jackson Pollock print someone has artfully blu-taked to the chimney breast behind us.
Nice titles there though, doing a going up kind of a thing and telling it how it is (or should that be was?)
Moody monochrome for this second Squarion outing a la belle Chatham. Featuring a short outburst of pedal-generated feedback-looping from Jon; one of the many proven Red Square techniques for re-wiring synapses on the fly, and bringing the proletariat of the world to a state of revolutionary consciousness.
They were certainly fired-up in Chatham that evening. At the end of the Square set the audience leapt up and, clutching their newly purchased Red Square CDs to their bosoms, they stormed to the doors pointing upwards and very slightly forwards like lots of Lenins hailing a taxi. But it was raining something rotten outside, so everyone milled about irresolutely for a bit, and then went home to their mums.
Live on stage @ Klub Kakoffaney in Oxford, 2009. A review of the gig to go with the slideshow......
'Like me, Red Square are post-everything and at war with the obvious.
Actually they were post-everything when they were (free) formed in the
1970s, before “everything” had happened, so now I guess they are post-post-everything.'
'Tonight’s phenomenal set is the first time that Jon Seagroatt, on bass clarinet and soprano sax, guitarist Ian Staples, and percussionist Roger Telford have played together as Red Square since (the late ‘70s).'
'Red Square are the sonic manifestation of a Jackson Pollock painting:
the longer you listen.....the more you’re sucked into the individual virtuoso layers
coming together as a whole.'
'.......as a live, breathtaking, experience, it’s gig of the year. Genius.'
Paul Carrera, Nightshift magazine, issue 165, April 2009
The recently released album, 'Thirty Three' on FMR Records, featuring material originally recorded between 1972 and 1978, is available from the FMR site, us,
Downtown Records in NY and Amazon.
Reviews of 'Thirty Three':
WIRE MAGAZINE
'Red Square's name implies radical zeal and angularity, both of which this...group possessed in spades.'
'The trio developed a savage, muscular improvised style, drawing on the freedoms espoused by amplified Improv units like MEV, Ray Russell's Rock Workshop and John Surman's The Trio.'
'Squiggles of Seagroatt's.........electrified woodwind plummet into a morass of white-heat fuzz guitar, strafed by Telford's drum arsenal.'
'It's a focused free-for-all - heavy rock with the safety catch off - that anticipates the music of MASS, Gary Smith, Scorch Trio and Konk Pack, three decades later.'
'Seagroatt... has joined the version of (avant folk outfit Comus) which reformed at the start of 2008. A Red Square reunion wouldn't go amiss either.'
Rob Young, Wire magazine, issue 300, February 2009
NIGHTSHIFT
'Music made so long ago could easily fall flat – what once was revolutionary soon becomes humdrum – but this never sounds out of date. It is bloody hard work, though.'
'Roger’s polyrhythmic drumming provides an ever-shifting platform for Jon’s atonal (bass) clarinet and sax squalls and Ian’s sometimes thunderous guitar intrusions.'
'Over the course of an hour or so free jazz collides head-on with experimental metal and the more outré moments of psychedelia.'
'Such sounds are….far more commonplace now than they were when the band first existed, but…..there are still a majority of people out there for whom this will be the sound of hell on earth.'
Dale Kattack, Nightshift magazine, issue 163, February 2009
THE PAST IS ANOTHER COUNTRY.....
'Red Square was a free improvising band from Southend-on-Sea,
Essex, England during the 1970s.
Consisting of Ian Staples (electric guitar), Jon Seagroatt (bass clarinet)
and Roger Telford (drums and percussion). The group played extremely
loud and intense free-form jam sessions supporting other like minded
musicians, such as Henry Cow, Lol Coxhill, etc.
Red Square also played regularly on a semi-squatted basis at The Queens,
a dilapidated hotel in Westcliff-on-Sea, where, according to a local urban
myth, their set drowned out a concert by Cliff Richard, who was playing
half a mile away at another venue.
The group was also involved with the left-wing political organisation
Music For Socialism'.
Wikipedia- for creating this entry, all thanks to Graham Burnett!
A BRIEF BIOG
The groundwork for what became the Red Square sound was laid when Jon Seagroatt & Ian Staples began a musical collaboration in 1972, following encounters at a number of experimental music workshops.
Staples, fresh from the London underground scene, was working with tape multitracking, noise, psychedelia and action painting. His electric guitar playing was a revolutionary blend of Hendrix and Beefheart, with the sonic palettes of Derek Bailey and Stockhausen.
Seagroatt drew freely on free-jazz, minimalism and on groups such as Can, Faust, Weather Report and Soft Machine.
Both were heavily influenced by developments in contemporary 'straight' music.
From the beginning of their collaboration they determined to improvise all of their music. Within a year they found a kindred spirit in drummer Roger Telford, a committed exponent of the free-jazz style of kit playing being pioneered at the time by Milford Graves and Sunny Murray.
The line up of Seagroatt, Staples and Telford remained the same throughout the band's six year history, as did the original commitment to total improvisation, but, given the group's wide range of influences, their improvisations drew as heavily on avant-rock as they did on jazz or contemporary improvised music.
Staples became adept at unleashing cunningly atonal guitar riffs which referenced metal without ever becoming metal. These onslaughts were critiqued and counterposed by Telford's coruscating polyrhythms. Seagroatt moved between the two, weaving a sinuous cats-cradle of fractured melody in the liminal space where metal met jazz.
The stability of the band's personnel lead to the development of a remarkably responsive, intuitive interplay between the musicians, which mislead many into thinking that at least some of the material had been composed beforehand. The combination of electric guitar, amplified bass clarinet and drum kit gave Red Square a unique sound palette to explore, as well an instantly recognisable group sound.
As well as their now legendary 'residency' in a vast, condemned Victorian hotel in Westcliff-on-Sea, Red Square played numerous gigs (four in one day on one occasion!), benefits and student occupations, supported Henry Cow, Red Brass and Lol Coxhill, and were active in Music For Socialism.
Live, the group were often punishingly loud (one story recounts that a Red Square set drowned out Cliff Richard who was playing at a venue half a mile away!). Despite the support of luminaries such as Miles, then writing for NME, they frequently enjoyed a combative relationship with audiences. Their enthusiasm for playing inappropriate venues (including folk clubs and pub-rock dives) and their willingness to engage forcefully with hecklers led to a number of hurried back-door exits from gigs and presaged the arrival of punk a few years later.
They released two cassette-only albums, 'Paramusic' and 'Circuitry', the latter being a live recording of a gig with Henry Cow in Southend, Essex. Tracks from both of these albums are included on 'Thirty Three'.
Red Square were in many respects ahead of their time, and methods and sounds that they pioneered have since become common practice amongst experimental and avant-rock musicians.
Jon and Ian continued to work together after the eventual break-up of the group on a number of projects including the Duffs, B So glObal, Omlo Vent and Miramar. Jon formed a writing partnership with singer Bobbie Watson which led to the formation of trip-hop band Drift, and, later, to the punk-jazz inflected Colins of Paradise.
Having been approached by FMR to release their old material, the band so enjoyed trawling through the reels of tape to choose album tracks that they decided to re-form. The group are now back in spontaneous rehearsal, some thirty years after last playing together as Red Square, recording new choice cuts of elemental, genre-defying, abstract noise terror, avant-rock and outer-limit free-jazz rampaging.
As well as their commitment to Red Square, the group members are also involved in other projects. Jon is a member of legendary psych-folk weirdlings
Comus. Ian is now a successful artist, and also performs as The Visitor. Roger is active in the Oxford Improvisors Collective and plays with Pat Thomas, Tony Bevan and Pete MacPhail's Nostromo.
......and here are a few snaps. Something old, something new, something borrowed and an elephant.
THE MAMBO KISS. inspired by the feelings one can have when the heart wins it over the mind. somemoment where logic gets beaten by feeling. logic is not always getting you anywhere. so this release is about getting free from logic. to get carried away by feelings. for a free experience just click on the image below
23rd November @ 13th Note, Glasgow with D Abraham Turner 24th November @ Kraak Gallery, Manchester with A Middle Sex - £4 26th November @ Tap, The Water Works, Southend with Lost Harbours - FREE 27th November @ Cafe Oto, London with Chora - £5
Club Integral @ Whitechapel Gallery, 18th December 2009.
Featuring music from Lotus Pedals, Nobodies, MayMing, Boycott Coca-Cola Experience and Jack Shirt. + DJ Chris Cornetto and projections from Jaime Rory Lucy of Rucksack Cinema
Lotus Pedals: - "Gorgeous live music from the supremely strange Lotus Pedals, who remained on stage throughout the show...shambolic, bold and beautiful...offers truly unique rewards." Beccy Smith - British Theatre Guide.
Happy Saturday honey! Did you find my FaceBook page okay? http://www.facebook.com/pages/Clara-Barker/42906422825 Please come and say hi on there and invite your friends to be fans too if you have time. Biiiig Love, Peace and Pie! Clara :) x
Tickets SELLING FAST! £7 adv avaliable from (more on the door): wegottickets.com seetickets.com Ticketline Picadilly Records
Grouper (US) has her latest – Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill – of three albums on Type Records. She has also been involved in collaborative releases, contributing a track to Xiu Xiu’s Remixed & Covered and four tracks to a split release with Inca Ore. Her other contemporaries are Belong, Growing, Tim Hecker, Windy & Carl and Atlas Sound.
Jasper TX (Sweden), with a hefty back-catalogue of releases on labels such as Miasmah, and collaborations with buddy Machinefabriek, is an essential domestic appliance in the household of conceptual music. He is comparable to artists Fennesz, Sigur Ros, Múm and Tape.
Intricate and atmospheric songsmith, Danny Saul (UK) performs with different combinations of musicians, making each gig a unique event. His forthcoming release is "Harsh, Final", and he also performs with Greg Haines as Liondialer.
Fieldhead (UK) music delights in tape hiss, bleak landscapes and decaying analogue loops. He is also a member of The Declining Winter and Glissando. His debut album, "They Shook Hands for Hours" is released soon on Home Assembly.
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