ANDREW WOODHEAD - Pendulums: Music For Bellringers And Electronics
Leker: LEKCD001
Live electronics: Andrew Woodhead; Tony Daw, Jonathan Thorne, Matthew King, Alex Frye, Graham Kelly, Ros Martin, Angie Wakefield, Richard Grimmett: bellringers; Sam Wooster, Charlotte Keefe: trumpet; Sam Andreae, Lee Griffiths: alto saxophone; Helen Papaioannou, Alicia Gardener-Trejo: baritone saxophone.
Recorded 8th February and 27th October 2020 at St. Paul’s Church, Birmingham.
The CD contains two sets of tunes. The first set was recorded live as part of the ‘Ideas of Noise’ festival in January 2020, and the second set was recorded in October 2020 (having said that, both recordings were made in the same venue, St Paul’s church in Birmingham - and there will be an album launch in October in the church where this was recorded, so that is likely to be an especially exciting event). As an added bonus, the CD comes with excellent liner notes from Liam Noble, who provides a detailed commentary and consideration of the music here.
The idea of a jazz sextet playing alongside bellringers is just this side of crazy for you to imagine that it might just work. In the hands of Andrew Woodhead and the musicians on this recording, it does way more than ‘just work’. This has, with only a few listens, become the most surprising and rewarding album that I have heard this year and will easily be one that I return to many times and will no doubt feature in my list of the best of the year.
Woodhead takes recordings of bells (bicycles, church bells, ice-cream vans) and folds these into layers of electronically treated sounds garnered from the musicians, and pairs these with the bellringing in St Paul’s church. In ‘Changes’, track 3, for instance, there are multiple bell sounds that are sliced and squeezed through Woodhead’s mixing, before the brass instruments play a slow, blues-like dirge. The bellringers work from blue line diagrams which indicate where the bellringers need to exchange places in the order in which the bells are rung. From the initial ‘round’, the blue line describes the complex patterns in which the changes are to be rung. Central to this approach is the aim of keeping each bell’s sound clear and separate from the others. In contrast, the musicians are playing in unison, working chords and themes that Woodhead provides them and improvising, singly and collectively, around these. The themes sometimes complement or echo the bells, and at other times challenge of distort their sounds. On ‘Plain Hunt II’, for instance, the speeded up recordings merge into a sound that it reminiscent of a church organ before stepping aside for the brass instruments to play changes of their own, each instrument stepping forward before the next comes in, but layering their sounds in ways that bellringers seek to avoid (because such ‘firing’ is usually frowned upon).
On ‘Plain Hunt IV’ (track 4), the saxophones join in a gentle, almost plainsong, melody that Woodhead scrubs with electronics and which trumpets cajole and try to tempt into boisterousness before the trumpets succumb to the melody. This illustrates the ways in which Woodhead mixes composed melodies with encouragement for improvisation, and also the ways in which his layers of electronics run through the pieces. The opening track, ‘Ring up / Plain Hunt I’ begins with the echoing peal of bells and the gradual rumbling up of saxophones and trumpets with breathy swirls of electronics before the bells drop out and the instruments writhe around each other. This segues in ‘Sideways’ a sort of trumpet voluntary, albeit a duet which feels as if the players were enjoying the acoustics of the church, waiting for the slight echo to fade before repeating and overlapping with baritone saxophone that provided a rich reverb to the piece. I particularly like the ways that the musicians (bellringers and sextet) work from parallel traditions and musical scores, and that Woodhead finds many different ways to highlight convergence between these as well as underlining the many differences. I also enjoyed the ways in which the musicians delight in the acoustics of the space in the church, and Woodhead’s electronics shine into this space to draw out different acoustic properties and synergies within the layers of sound.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
Leker: LEKCD001
Live electronics: Andrew Woodhead; Tony Daw, Jonathan Thorne, Matthew King, Alex Frye, Graham Kelly, Ros Martin, Angie Wakefield, Richard Grimmett: bellringers; Sam Wooster, Charlotte Keefe: trumpet; Sam Andreae, Lee Griffiths: alto saxophone; Helen Papaioannou, Alicia Gardener-Trejo: baritone saxophone.
Recorded 8th February and 27th October 2020 at St. Paul’s Church, Birmingham.
The CD contains two sets of tunes. The first set was recorded live as part of the ‘Ideas of Noise’ festival in January 2020, and the second set was recorded in October 2020 (having said that, both recordings were made in the same venue, St Paul’s church in Birmingham - and there will be an album launch in October in the church where this was recorded, so that is likely to be an especially exciting event). As an added bonus, the CD comes with excellent liner notes from Liam Noble, who provides a detailed commentary and consideration of the music here.
The idea of a jazz sextet playing alongside bellringers is just this side of crazy for you to imagine that it might just work. In the hands of Andrew Woodhead and the musicians on this recording, it does way more than ‘just work’. This has, with only a few listens, become the most surprising and rewarding album that I have heard this year and will easily be one that I return to many times and will no doubt feature in my list of the best of the year.
Woodhead takes recordings of bells (bicycles, church bells, ice-cream vans) and folds these into layers of electronically treated sounds garnered from the musicians, and pairs these with the bellringing in St Paul’s church. In ‘Changes’, track 3, for instance, there are multiple bell sounds that are sliced and squeezed through Woodhead’s mixing, before the brass instruments play a slow, blues-like dirge. The bellringers work from blue line diagrams which indicate where the bellringers need to exchange places in the order in which the bells are rung. From the initial ‘round’, the blue line describes the complex patterns in which the changes are to be rung. Central to this approach is the aim of keeping each bell’s sound clear and separate from the others. In contrast, the musicians are playing in unison, working chords and themes that Woodhead provides them and improvising, singly and collectively, around these. The themes sometimes complement or echo the bells, and at other times challenge of distort their sounds. On ‘Plain Hunt II’, for instance, the speeded up recordings merge into a sound that it reminiscent of a church organ before stepping aside for the brass instruments to play changes of their own, each instrument stepping forward before the next comes in, but layering their sounds in ways that bellringers seek to avoid (because such ‘firing’ is usually frowned upon).
On ‘Plain Hunt IV’ (track 4), the saxophones join in a gentle, almost plainsong, melody that Woodhead scrubs with electronics and which trumpets cajole and try to tempt into boisterousness before the trumpets succumb to the melody. This illustrates the ways in which Woodhead mixes composed melodies with encouragement for improvisation, and also the ways in which his layers of electronics run through the pieces. The opening track, ‘Ring up / Plain Hunt I’ begins with the echoing peal of bells and the gradual rumbling up of saxophones and trumpets with breathy swirls of electronics before the bells drop out and the instruments writhe around each other. This segues in ‘Sideways’ a sort of trumpet voluntary, albeit a duet which feels as if the players were enjoying the acoustics of the church, waiting for the slight echo to fade before repeating and overlapping with baritone saxophone that provided a rich reverb to the piece. I particularly like the ways that the musicians (bellringers and sextet) work from parallel traditions and musical scores, and that Woodhead finds many different ways to highlight convergence between these as well as underlining the many differences. I also enjoyed the ways in which the musicians delight in the acoustics of the space in the church, and Woodhead’s electronics shine into this space to draw out different acoustic properties and synergies within the layers of sound.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
