SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:32 Page 1 SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:32 Page 2 t was back in the mid independent labels. This is the 1980s that the UK had its focus of this compilation, Ilast jazz renaissance. Born which shines a light on the during the harshest years of eclectic range of UK jazz artists prime minister Margaret doing it themselves. Thatcher’s reign, the DIY movement spanned The Jazz While London has been the Warriors black arts collective focus of media attention as this in London, the jazz dance of selection shows the new Kalima and Jazz Defektors in sounds are coming from across Manchester and the post punk the UK. uproar of Rip, Rig + Panic in An ancient supercontinent that Bristol. Thirty years on, during connected Africa, South similarly divisive times, a new America, Australia, Antarctica generation are again finding and India, Gondwana is a inspiration through the fitting name for the collective spirit of jazz. exploratory orchestra of Integral to the scene is a fierce Manchester trumpeter and DIY spirit, with artists coming bandleader Matthew Halsall. together to create their own “Universal Consciousness has nights, form collectives and always been important to me release records on small 2 SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 3 YAZMIN LACEY SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 4 and although we’ve done our music of one of his greatest best as humans to put borders influences. “It was a very up and divide people we are early Keep It Unreal and better as a united force,” he Scruff played Phaorah explains. Gondwana is also Sanders’ ‘You’ve Got to Have the name of the label Halsall Freedom’ and after that I set up in 2008 to release his started digging for all his debut LP Sending My Love. It records,” Halsall recalls. “And was born both from his love of from there I discovered Alice modal jazz and his immersion Coltrane and I knew very in club culture. “I was first specifically that it was a world influenced by the elevating I connected very strongly jazz of people like McCoy with because I was also Tyner and John Coltrane but studying transcendental also sessions at Gilles meditation.” Peterson’s Dingwalls in London and Mr Scruff’s Keep While Halsall’s own spiritual it Unreal in Manchester,” he jazz is certainly indebted to says. sages like Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane there is It was through one of Mr also a pastoral tone to his Scruff’s famously eclectic sets music that evokes some of the that Halsall first heard the great British players from the 4 SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 5 sixties. “It’s funny as I didn’t Orchestra. “I came up with actually discover records like that name because I really Shades of Blue by Don Rendell wanted to make the band a & Ian Carr until I’d put out a collective project and for this couple of records,” he says. amazing group of musicians to “And when I heard that I was have an identity,” says Halsall. just blown away and it’s still The title track from his LP one of my favourite records. When the World Was One But I think where what I do is (including Cinematic Orchestra much different is that I am drummer Luke Flowers, very much into the production harpist Rachael Gladwin, of electronic music where it’s pianist Taz Modi, as well as the all about finding the perfect addition of Koto player Keiko loop, which again goes back to Kitamura who also plays with the meditation and that Jah Wobble & The Nippon Dub constant pulse or breath.” Ensemble) is a soaring piece of modal jazz. It revolves around Halsall (who also produces Halsall’s soaring trumpet and most of the LPs on his label at the saxophone of long-time Manchester’s 80 Hertz Studio) collaborator Nat Birchall, who has now recorded six LPs of Halsall performed with at jam spiritual modal jazz, the latter sessions at Matt and Phred’s two with the Gondwana Jazz Club. An important hub 5 SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 6 THE CROMAGNON BAND SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 7 for the experimental Manchester scene it was where Halsall first played alongside other future Gondwana musicians like Luke Flowers, bassist Jon Thorne, and pianist John Ellis. Halsall’s Gondwana label became a platform for these other Manchester jazz artists including Birchall whose saxophone has provided much of the spiritual uplift in many of Mathew Halsall’s own releases. Birchall’s sonic and spiritual quest began with the LP The Sixth Sense released in SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 8 1999. There followed a decade 2011. “What really surprised of being what he has called me about that was that it was ‘alone in the music’ searching getting airplay on the radio for the sound he heard in his by people like Gilles Peterson head. “It took me a long time next to soul and electronic to realise that what I was music,” says Birchall. “So that doing with my music was was great for me seeing how tapping into a spiritual my music can connect with all source,” says Birchall. He had this different type of music.” a cultural awakening when he was asked to play alongside The last of the three LPs Halsall on the trumpeter’s following Guided Spirit , first LPs for Gondwana. “I’d Sacred Dimension (also never been part of a scene as released on vinyl on Birchall’s such and had always really own Sound Soul and Spirit been playing in isolation so I’d Records), from where ‘Ancient almost given up,” says World’ comes, continued Birchall. “But then I met Matt Birchall’s personal journey of and started playing with him musical enlightenment and he asked me to make an following the spiritual path of LP.” That LP was Akhenaten the masters like Coltrane and the first of three released on Pharoah. Intrinsically tied to Gondwana between 2009- the political and social 8 SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 9 radicalism of the time their composes music collectively most important LPs of the very much in the same 1960s were recorded during communal vein as Nat similar turbulent times to Birchall. With a ritualistic today. “The power of music is approach to composition the at its most profound level members practice the material when it’s played in the through four rehearsals, then community and when it play four unique concerts, becomes part of everyday life,” before heading to the studio says Birchall. “Then it really is to record the material. Their a spiritual thing with people LP Inexpressible Infinity was playing music for a higher the second of such cycles. purpose.” When asked for inspirations, the group name Sun Ra, Alice London spiritual jazz outfit Coltrane and the catalogue of Levitation Orchestra have Strata-East. But there is also quietly built their reputation something in ‘Odyssey’ of the outside the media scramble very English modal jazz of for the next big jazz name. Michael Garrick and Norma Founded by trumpeter Axel Winston thanks in a large Kaner-Lidstrom (also of part to the vocalise of Sophie Cykada and Where Pathways Plummer and Zakia Sewell. Meet) the 13-piece band 9 SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 10 Saxophonist and flautist Chip Wickham received his jazz education in Manchester’s creative scene of the early 1990s. There he played with such luminaries as hip-hop collective Grand Central Records and Rae & Christian. In the 1990s following tours with Roy Ayers and Badly Drawn Boy he met Matthew Halsall appearing on his debut LP Sending My Love . As well as touring with Halsall he has also regularly appeared with Nat Birchall. Spanish for the ‘The Shade’, his debut LP La Sombra was released in 2017. It came out on Madrid’s Lovemonk label who had released a couple of 7”s of Wickham’s after he relocated to the city in 2017. 10 SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 11 TENDERLONIOUS SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 12 There he also worked with touching on everything from Eddie Roberts from The New ambient electronics to Mastersounds under the name contemporary jazz and The Fire Eaters. Drawing psychedelia. The LP was the heavily on the flute led jazz of second to be released on Yusef Lateef from the late Bristol’s small independent sixties ‘La Sombra’ opened his label Banoffee Pies. With their debut LP. maxim of ‘ creativity without order. A platform for music Formed around the DIY home with no signature sound’, this studio experimentation of small micro label has released saxophonist and producer everything from minimal Pete Cunningham, Bristol techno to samba soul and four-piece Ishmael Ensemble mutant disco. Supported by debuted with their Songs for people like Gilles Peterson the Knotty LP in 2017. While album continued Bristol’s rich previous Bristol jazz and eclectic independent heavyweights Rip, Rig + musical heritage while Panic drew on the punk, dub displaying the club conscious and free jazz heard in post- electronic sensibilities at the punk clubs like the Dug Out, heart of much of the new UK Ishmael Ensemble’s sound is jazz scene.