steve harris - drums
udo dzierzanowski - guitar
cathy stevens - violectra
geoff hearn - saxophones
karen wimhurst - clarinets
j'm black - guitar
adrian newton - live and found samples
with
andrea parkins - accordion, lap top
voices on tracks
kathie prince, tina leeming,
fliss kingston, julie harris
Sounds Like
"The last thing I wanted it to sound like was the perceived notion of jazz or anything else for that matter"
"Each performance, be it a duo or the full or expanded group, starts with a clean sheet. It's a bit of a cliche, but it really is like a journey that we want to take with each other and the audience. And we're all driving the bus!"
Steve Harris
"Drummer/composer Steve Harris surfaced in the 1980s with the highly original UK jazz and free-funk band Pinski Zoo, but his ventures with Zaum are much more abstract - Harris himself has said of this album: "The last thing I wanted it to sound like was the perceived notion of jazz, or anything else for that matter." Perceived notions certainly only appear here in fleeting glimpses, and almost always on the way to becoming something else - the jazziest element comes from Geoff Hearn's Coltrane-to-Garbarek sax, which sometimes makes a late entry into abstract collective passages and wrenches both them and Harris's inspired ensemble-rooted drumming into new directions. Pattering brushwork scurries on under long electric viola sounds and doodling clarinet lines; squeezed sounds like reversed tapes, squeezebox effects like abstract folk music, or gothic vocal laments drift over edgy electric guitars or deep, wind-in-chimneys keyboard notes. But for all the absence of easy hooks of any kind, this is very superior non-idiomatic contemporary music that almost never treads water and promises a surprise around every corner." – JOHN FORDHAM, THE GUARDIAN
"It’s quite simply the best British improvised record in more than a decade..." – BRIAN MORTON, THE WIRE
“Zaum have been making a name as one of the most original and exciting free-music projects in the world. On the strength of their fourth album, it’s a richly deserved reputation.” – Jazzwise
NEXT GIG...
"Zaum have been making a name as one of the most original and exciting free-music projects in the world. On the strength of their fourth album its a richly deserved reputation" Jazzwise, 2007
Zaum is a seven piece ensemble performing improvised music at its very best. Zaum creates an imaginary space in which sound happens - sometimes with delicacy, sometimes with staggering intensity. Steve Harris's Zaum is music instantly concieved and played by great improvisers.
Initially put together by Steve Harris in the Autumn of 2002 to record their first album, the group, which was always intended to involve a shifting number of personnel working together in a variety of music settings, has continued to flourish and develop.
The recent edition of The Penguin Guide To Jazz describes Zaum's album Above Our Heads The Sky Splits Open as a masterpiece and awards it their highest accolade. It says of the group: "...the group's music does not follow a hard-line non-idiomatic course, but explores new sonorities within and against a recognisable instrumental discourse".
A Zaum performance is always in flux, always trading warmly "organic" sounds against tonalities that are not so much dissonant or alien as uncanny, in the strict and original sense. It is profoundly humane music that communicates at a very deep level.
he composed yet tarried a while at the altar of decomposition
who was he?
some called him MAZU but they were the Disloxics, the lonely ones, who could not hum, who would not name that tune after someone had already extracted suggestion of two recognisable sequential notes, for it was he, MAUZ , the destroyer of hummmmmzammumalong tunes , MUZA, the maker of noise, they called him...............
Do not approach this music with preconceptions, this body of work is not about complacency, it is about challenge. If you think you know how music should sound, are in obeisance to convention and familiarity, you could be exposing yourself to a cultural shock.
This music does not treat you gently. it is in constant turbulence seeking to resolve the conundrum it has set itself. There are no apparent pre-set musical maps to guide the participants through these sonic travels. Fragile, ephemeral unassuming passages imperceptibly metamorphose into aggressive, assaulting provocations on one’s expectations. At times you are required to re-examine the canon upon which your tastes and preferences are grounded. Zaum will probe these comfort zones.
There is an intangible aura to this work, occasionally verging on the impenetrable. Zaum without rehearsal or pre-set agenda, instigate, construct, develop and resolve all their pieces. In many ways, the dialogue, empathy and aural co-operations are the constructional ingredients embedded within the creative process. Scale, timbre, tempo, suggestion and memory are the communication tools, the unspoken instructions.
This music is not a vehicle for ego or personality. Musicians drift or crash in and out of the mix, contributing to the whole without exerting dominance, without denting the seemingly fragile structures which have been created.
Though at times starkly minimal, expression and evocation are granted space and time. Rise in Sin suggests grand-scale abstract visions in the style of Barnet Newman or Mark Rothko. Winter Everywhere feels suffused with the isolation and confusion of a Munch, He Knows How to Drive… conveys the imagery and modality of a Jackson Pollock.
Rules and conventions are disrupted; salvageable elements are retained and reconstructed. A creation of order from the disparate. It is the idea that makes the art.
Great stuff! Very organic improvs and lots of cool textures. Let us know if you ever make it over to California... we'd love to play with you sometime.
