Okey Boney, Ash Cooke (Ash Cooke)
Lifeline, Lifeline (Discus Music)
Ecliptic, Shifa شفاء (Discus Music)
Okey Boney is the latest solo album from improvising musician, artist and poet Ash Cooke. It features not only music but Cooke’s non-linear poetry. I was writing only recently about Derek Bailey and what he said about ‘the characteristics of freely improvised music’ being ‘established only by the sonic-musical identity of the person or persons playing it.’ Cooke’s playing is a great example of this: it clearly draws on all kinds of musical styles while, at the same time, sounding like … Ash Cooke. As for the poetry, however he puts it together, it certainly works alongside the music: you get the feeling both are the result of a similar approach, the choice of words and phrases perhaps springing from Cooke’s ‘verbal-poetic’ in much the same way as the music springs from his ‘sonic-musical’ identity. He describes the music as gwřth gitar, which I think can be translated as ‘anti-guitar’, a term he uses to mean ‘an expression of the parallel between painting and improvised guitar playing’. Like painting, it’s an ‘exploratory, moment by moment process.’ Elsewhere, he quotes Peter Armitage: ‘In order to immerse oneself in the collective bliss of stream-of-consciousness musicality, let’s remind ourselves that free improvisation exists outside the boundaries of functionality. What is it free from? It is free from hierarchy. It is untamed, unorganised, unconscious. Everyone is equal. It’s political in being apolitical. Let us collectively embrace the decoupling of music from music as a commodity.’ I’m guessing Cooke would say much the same thing about his poetry as he does about his music and art.
Everyone is equal – and there’s no better way to try and grasp free improvised music as a genre than to try to make it yourself. If you play an instrument, pick it up. If not, gather together a number of objects you can make noises with, or simply use your voice (or do both). Make sounds. As you move from one sound to the next, think, should the next be higher, lower, longer, shorter, softer, louder? Rely on your intuition – keep it ‘untamed, unorganised, unconscious’. You’re as free to use noises as you are pitched sounds. Anything goes. Keep going! When you come to the end – trust your intuition – stop. If you feel wowed by the experience and intrigued, play some more, develop what you do. Try recording yourself. Listen to the results. What would you like more of? What would you like less of? Adjust what you do accordingly. If you start feeling lonely, put on some free improv and try jamming along. The trouble is, you can only respond to what they do. If you want a real musical conversation, find other people to play with (I’ve put a few links below – if you’re reading this and know of other opportunities to get out and play, please add them in the comments).
If Okey Boney were my album, I’d probably set ‘For An Unstant’ as the featured track. It’s bleak, poignant and slightly confusing (in a good way). It stops you in your tracks (at least, it did me). And if you like Okey Boney, but aren’t familiar with Cooke’s other work, you might want to explore his back catalogue (it’s all there on his Bandcamp page). Ash Cooke by Ash Cooke is a good place to start.
Pat Thomas, Dominic Lash and Tony Orrell usually play together as an acoustic trio (piano, double bass and drums, respectively) under the name Bleyschool, but as Lifeline, they confine themselves to exclusively electronic versions of their instruments. As all creative artists know, there’s nothing like self-imposed limitations to unleash the creative juices, and this album is certainly a case in point.
The result is less rooted in tradition and (as the track-titles suggest) more abstract than their work as Bleyschool. That took its cue from the work and approach of pianist Paul Bley, which included – as they point out in the notes to their other eponymous album – a desire not to repeat himself. Bley would’ve approved.
The music occupies a formal and stylistic no-man’s-land. As the album notes put it, it ‘[balances] form and disform’. It’s fertile, enchanting territory, the music one moment verging on the ruminative and melodic, the next, angular and fragmentary; one moment busy, the next monumental. It’s a hugely imaginative album and one which got me tracing the trio’s roots back, through Bleyschool, to the work of Paul Bley himself. Fascinating to see the different levels of stylistic and formal constraint musicians set for themselves, how one can lead to another and how far the evolution of a music can take it from its starting point.
Pat Thomas pops up again in another recent Discus release, this time playing alongside sax-player Rachel Musson and percussionist Mark Sanders. I felt drawn to it even before I put it on, as the title, Ecliptic, is one of my favourite words. For anyone who doesn’t know, it’s the term for the zone in the sky through which the planets move. I get a great view of it from behind our house, if one can talk of viewing an invisible disc. There’s no explanation in the online notes as to how they came to choose it (not that there needs to be), but I imagine it’s been drafted in to describe the zone within which the musicians move, like planets, sometimes seeming to wander but, in reality, always in orbit around a central point, governed by the forces they and it exert on each other. We are told, however, how the trio came by it’s name: suggested by Pat Thomas, it’s the Arabic word for healing, used here to describe the effect of the relationship of trust between the musicians and of the music on the audience.
Of course, one should never judge an album by its blurb or its packaging. However, in this case it lived up to my expectations. A single, 46-minute track, it begins with percussion and what sounds like subdued but agitated sounds from inside the piano. Musson gradually introduces some more distinct pitches into the texture which lure Thomas back to the keyboard. The music reaches a point of stasis and the process begins again. Piano clusters mimic drums and vice versa. The sax begins what turns out to be a quieter conversation. And so it goes on: throughout, one is struck by the way these three musicians exploit all the possibilities available to them: soft passages, for example, might be haunting and sustained, dry and restless, or anything in-between. I’ve listened to it a few times now and have had the same thought each time: not only do they create great musical moments, but somehow they manage to create a feeling that something is about to happen. If this album were a book, you’d describe it as a ‘page-turner’. It’s a recording of a performance made at Café Oto back in 2023. I wish I’d been there.
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Dominic Rivron
LINKS:
Okey Boney: https://ashcookemusic.bandcamp.com/album/okey-boney
Lifeline: https://discusmusic.bandcamp.com/album/lifeline-198cd-2025
Ecliptic: https://discusmusic.bandcamp.com/album/ecliptic-194cd-2025
Peter Armitage: Five Strategies For Free Improvisation:
https://www.kissyourears.com/pages/five-strategies-for-free-improvisation
The Noise Upstairs – monthly improv sessions (Manchester, Todmorden):
https://www.thenoiseupstairs.com/about/
Oxford Improvisers – Monday evening sessions: https://www.oxfordimprovisers.com/join-us/
South Wales Improvisers (Cardiff): https://shiftcardiff.org/south-wales-improvisors/
Llift (North Wales) regular improvisation sessions: https://www.facebook.com/groups/426031446435265