Given Evan Parker’s career long quest for adventurous and inventive projects, why wouldn’t he have been seduced by the prospect of a collaboration with Henry Dagg, a composer and sound engineer who was once a member of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop?
The duo produce experimental music/soundscapes at the outer edges of what we might call jazz and can only appeal to those totally devoted to Parker’s output or others who have a penchant for other-worldly sounds produced by a bank of valves, switches, knobs and oscillators.
In the accompanying booklet, Dagg says that his equipment is assembled from virtually anything he could lay his hands on to produce the effects he chooses to select.
Listeners can decide for themselves whether the soprano saxophone is an appropriate bedfellow for this particular brand of electronic wizardry; it may stretch the ears even of those attracted to such a concept.
However, Dagg and Parker have chosen to set out their stall in this limited arena and should be applauded for doing so.
Discography
Chocks Away; Small Talk; Condolences; Atlantic City Revisited; The Growl Of The Bell; Dance Around The Black Hole; Revolve To Resolve; Canyon In X# Major; Galactic Jig; Chattering Up The Birds; Then-Through-Now; Booze Vs Cheers; The Past Hums A New Tune; Surfing The Waveforms (56.02)
Dagg (elec); Parker (ss). Live at Fruitworks/Fond Coffee, Jewry Lane, Canterbury, as part of the Free Range series, 2 December 2021.
False Walls fw09
