Mike Osborne - Force of Nature

Reel 006

It’s somewhat bittersweet that in the last year or so of English altoist Mike Osborne’s life, he finally got a bit of renaissance-due from the jazz world, following almost a quarter-century of absence from the scene. Ogun has reissued some of his finest commercially available LPs, and the Cuneiform tape archive has produced a number of appearances with trans-continental big band the Brotherhood of Breath. Now, leave it up to Reel Recordings, a young label documenting British jazz and progressive music, to make available some of Osborne’s last recordings with trumpeter Dave Holdsworth and two rhythm sections comprised of either Marcio Mattos or Paul Bridge on bass and Brian Abrahams or Tony Marsh on percussion.

The centerpiece of this hour-long set is a forty-minute performance from Koln in 1980 entitled “Ducking & Diving.” It’s a piece that’s emblematic of the fiery and continuous freebop suites that make up his small-group work. The initial theme is out of the Ornette Atlantic mode, Holdsworth and Osborne intertwined at breakneck speed, though Mattos and Abrahams are decidedly different rhythmic accompaniment than anything Coleman would’ve utilized. One can cite his vocal “cry” and sour repetition/abstraction, the absoluteness of his tone and the clarity of his expansion on simple rhythmic motifs as bridge built from early ‘60s Ornette, albeit in an entirely personal and non-derivative mode. Sure, Osborne gets lost a couple of times in his first salvo (of several), but his commitment to exploration is unwavering. Holdsworth is the erudite bebopper to Osborne’s feral youthfulness, shining cleanliness a mode of contrast even as growls and slurs enter his vocabulary. The rhythm section isn’t as frantically disassembling as Harry Miller and Louis Moholo in Osborne’s previous group, but there’s no reason for them to be – Mattos drops bombs of physicality as time is on the edge of pulling apart, and what more could be the essence of free-bop than that?

Holdsworth discusses in the liner notes how Osborne never gave any directions to the tunes, let alone spoke much, probably a result of the emotional demons he exorcised through his horn. But in some ways, his difficulty in verbal expression allowed a profound level of artistic communication to develop with his band mates. Collectiveness could be achieved apart from “normal” channels, and in artistic interaction Osborne fostered something peerless. That is a fact which comes through in all of his work, and it’s thankful that much of his oeuvre is in print for the digital age.

~ Clifford Allen