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Jazz

Ellery Eskelin

The Wardrobe, Leeds

James Griffiths
Saturday June 7, 2003
The Guardian, UK

American saxophonist Ellery Eskelin has been making waves in the improvised jazz scene for well over a decade. A compelling soloist and inventive composer, he transcends all known genres by perpetrating what can only be described as vicious attacks against the art of music.

He is helped along by a couple of similarly free-spirited noise merchants. The accordionist/pianist/electronic boffin Andrea Parkins uses her various instruments to imitate the sound of broken clocks, pneumatic drills and whole choruses of robotic frogs. Drummer Jim Black, meanwhile, possesses an orchestral percussionist's awareness of texture and sound, but flails at his kit in the manner of a flamboyant heavy rock drummer. With Eskelin delivering stentorian clarion calls over this backdrop, the results range from disorientating to positively frightful.

The second number of the evening is entitled For No Good Reason. It begins with madcap keyboards, progresses through a fierce barrage of bells and rattles from Black, and then hits long passages of total electronic meltdown. Parkins's stubbornly reiterated piano chord sequence tries to impose some order, but Eskelin squirts his sardonic saxophone over all her efforts.

A whole set of this kind of musical terrorism seems a daunting prospect, but you only flinch for a while; before long the sheer visceral thrill becomes irresistible, and then strangely addictive. Perhaps the key is the fact that these improvisations do contain genuine human emotion. Throughout the gig Eskelin stands stock still with his eyes closed, neck bulging, creating passages of melancholy lyricism that float up out of the murky depths. At other times, he sounds perplexed and haunted as he struggles to hold his own against the nightmare sounds oozing from Parkins's keyboards. On one occasion, he loses the battle entirely and there is nothing to be heard except a vast, oscillating hum that can only be dispelled by a sudden burst of frenetic energy from Black.

When the drummer does jump into action he is likely to be playing at a different tempo, and a different time signature, to his bandmates, yet when they hit highly syncopated passages they are all, miraculously, playing in tight unison.

A perfect example of a band that knows how to play simultaneously from the head and the heart, and for whom musical risk-taking has become a way of life.


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