I attended their first gig last night. Located directly opposite New Cross tube station, the pub, the Amersham Arms, which appears to cater in particular for students from nearby Goldsmith's College, was buzzing and friendly from the moment I arrived at 9 pm. Another bar round the back hosts the music - or, rather, the SE Collective, an organisation completely new to me, and assumed, by the names known to me appearing, to be some offshoot of either the F-Ire or Loop Collectives, though as far as one could determine they are independent.
You pays your fiver at the entrance, and on this occasion walks round the unused bar taking up half of the right side of the room to vacate chairs near a low bandstand illuminated in an orange-pinkish glow. The lighting and atmosphere are that mixture of friendly, informal but not noisily so, and slightly ramshackle that for me, serves the music best. First on are an alto/acoustic bass/drums trio, Map Trio, who launch into a somewhat Colemanesque series of catchy riff-based tunes, in which vigorous activity of a very high level of interactivity and attentiveness is set to work within complex time signatures. All three guys looked to be in their early 20s, and for names I for one had not come across, the levels of sophistication and group coherence displayed were once more evidence of the extraordinarily high standards of jazz now being offered at a number of venues around the capital by young musicians developing their own thing, for the entry price of a Prom.
Second on was another trio of three leftfield musicians now pretty well known on a broadly defined scene in other situations: tenor saxophonist and clarinettist Shabaka Hutchings, tuba virtuoso Oren Marshall, and drummer Seb Rochford. A more anthemic, incantatory type of music was now on offer: Marshall's role here is in laying down heavy bass lines and underpinning riffs; Hutchings, I figured, in providing thematic material: there were small scores on music stands; but these seemed to be built up towards and interlinked freely - Rochford underpinning with heavy rock pacings which are then deconstructed by Hutchings probing into and prising them apart, and then, initially by insinuation, riffing into place a new rhythmic equilibrium which provides release, from which the procedure can be repeated anew.
What linked the two otherwise very different groups, and a lot of the younger jazz which eschews the stylistic reproduction-makings of the '80s and '90s, is the embedment of performance within a kind of polyrhythmic thinking, blending rock, urban, Caribbean and whatever else passes my non-existent expertise in these areas into a seamless whole; one that offers new possibilities for generating form spontaneously through attention to subrhythmic minutiae, rather than mileposting chord structures or abandoning swing altogether. As a listener one does not "swim" oceanically in this tough new music in the same way one might listening to the Tony's Oxley's or Levin's tidal waves, but tacitly there is the same invitation to relinquish the hold of the downbeat.
Each half of the evening lasted 45 minutes, with a half hour "fag break", during which I managed to speak - not to the busy organisers, but to several from the audience - some of whom had drifted in from the front bar, including regular punters of rock sessions for some time held at the place; some of whom had travelled down from the Hackney/Dalston district, seasoned attenders at the Oto. The convenient frequency and speed of travel on the resuscitated E London metro now offers propitious enough reasons to venture Sarf o ' the Wivver, Hackneyvi & non-outed others on here please note.
This could be the best thing that has happened in S London jazz since Andrea Vicari lost her regular slot in Balham, 3 years ago.
S-A
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