It’s taken 32 years for this music to reach an audience beyond the 1992 Ruhr Jazz Festival, which says something about the state of what some call the jazz industry. On the other hand, the fact that it’s with us now – falling as it does well outside the jazz that the marketing machine would have us believe is shifting paradigms – is testament to a kind of quiet diligence.
It’s essentially a hard-bop lineup but the music is satisfyingly transgressive. The electronic augmentation which comes courtesy of pianist and percussionist serves to undermine convention but also to colour the spontaneity of forms. Oxley’s expansive percussive palette highlights the extent of his musical odyssey – remember he might once have found a home in the Bill Evans trio.
It’s one piece of music running for over an hour so it’s perhaps inevitable that we take an episodic view, without demeaning the work. Thus the entry of the horns at around the 5½ minute mark comes as both a solemn breakdown and the trigger for a reflective passage heavy with a kind of alternative lyricism. Elsewhere, the music’s density belies the number of musicians involved and indeed the diversity of their experience.
The benefits of close listening are well known, but decades after its making this is music that asks a lot of listeners and as such is likely alienate the faint of heart. As ever, it’s the adventurous, those who try to maintain open ears and an open mind, who’ll get the rewards here.
Discography
Angular Apron (64.43)
Manfred Schoof (t, flh); Larry Stabbins (ss, ts); Pat Thomas (p, elec); Sirone (b); Tony Oxley (pc, elec). Ruhr Jazz Festival, Bochum, Germany, 2 October 1992.
Corbett vs. Dempsey CvsD CD110
