Artist: Steve Harris
Title: Zaum
Cat Number: SLAMCD253
Year released: 2003
Format: CD & all digital platforms
Barcode: 5028386025320
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Free improv quintet recording led by drummer Steve Harris from Pinski Zoo, the improvisations were recorded live in performance. His Zaum collective were described by The Penguin Guide to Jazz as “the most exciting band operating in Europe today”.
Steve Harris: drums
Cathy Stevens: viola
Geoff Hearn: saxophones
Karen Wimhurst: clarinet
Udo Dzierzanowski: guitar
“A spontaneous performance recorded for saxophonist/producer George Haslam’s unswervingly independent Slam label…The guitarist introduces a raw, abstract-contemporary dimension to which the others respond. There’s an odd, crabwise groove and a kind of faltering grace over a steady guitar riff to Lorry in the Pond. The title track opens like a Jan Garbarek piece, with Hearn’s soprano sax hauntingly wheeling and gliding – as if in a distant room – before the clarinet enters a slow dance with him and Harris’s loose, splashy drum sound. Some of the music is brooding and darkly minimalist, with Morricone guitar twangs echoing over rumbling bass-drum patterns; some is squawky and impulsive, some vivid and conversational. This is virtuosic and varied improvisation.” – John Fordham, The Guardian
Recorded at Study Gallery, Poole, England.18 Oct 2002.