Spontaneous Music Ensemble - A New Distance

Emanem 4115

It’s always a blow when an esteemed improviser leaves the planet, but John Stevens passing was especially adverse. As one of the linchpins and pioneering provocateurs of British free improv his career stretched from the genre’s origins in the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s, pulling in several generations of collaborators along the way. In the wake of his passing, the sum of his industrious activity intimated that there were still volumes left to say. Fortunately mics were common at many of his conclaves over the years. Subsequent releases have afforded renewed opportunities to address his artistry along with the sobering awareness that the cistern is now finite in depth.

The material collected on this new Emanem was recorded late in Stevens’ life. The disc combines the contents of an album originally released on the Acta imprint presenting two concert performances from ‘94, with a short snippet from a studio date recorded the previous year with flautist Neil Metcalfe as fourth member of the ensemble. These addendum pieces, further divisible into a string of brief component collages, are sandwiched by a trio of equally revealing spoken word segments. Conveyed in a measured Cockney drawl, Stevens’ musings on collective improvisation as an extension of and response to everyday mental wiring toward kinesics, are both calming and affirming in their clarity. They’re also a direct corollary to his playing, which always seemed to sustain an earthy integrity in its subversion of conventional idiomatic forms and careful cognizance of group dynamics.

Dedicated to an aged Gambian drummer of Stevens’ acquaintance, the eponymous “Stig” takes shape over twenty-five plus minutes. Saxophonist John Butcher traffics in his customary puckered reed flutters and ethereal overtones, the sounds of avian chirrups aped precisely by his ceiling-register reed whistles. Stevens’ presides over a modest kit of snares and cymbals outfitted with small piles of detritus. Roger Smith tugs and scrapes at the strings and body of his Spanish guitar, scaring up brittle needlepoint patterns that are frequently as percussive as those fashioned by the drummer. The three press forward, beating a sedulous path without the need for premeditated compass checks or reconnoitered itineraries. Stevens’ mini-trumpet makes a welcome appearance at various intersections, voicing clarion tones that braid with Butcher’s limpid soprano in a brocade that is vaguely Eastern in texture and thread count.

The middle foursome of tracks cover more truncated tracts of ground and illustrate the trio’s acumen at editing their interplay into consequently economical morsels. On “So This is Official” Stevens clatter and Smith’s scuttling combines in a porous crosshatch of widely-spaced cues for Butcher’s tenor to perforate and embroider. “Uneasy Options” starts off subdued, building speed on sustained spectral skirls from tenor and trumpet bracketed by pliant string snaps and the dull patter of key pads and brushes. Even at just over an hour in duration the disc provokes the natural inclination to entreat: “please sir, may I have some more?”

~ Derek Taylor