Sustaining the Stream

Aurora, Sarost (Jazz in Britain)
LLIFT #10, various artists (Recordiau Dukes)
From a Broom Cupboard in Marseille, Jumble Hole Clough (Jumble Hole Clough)

Aurora is the first album by the new trio Sarost, a coming together of veteran free jazz/improv musicians Mark Sanders (drums), Larry Stabbins (saxophones) and Paul Rogers (bass). It was recorded in a single session the day after their performance at the 2025 Bath Jazz Weekend. Whoever wrote the notes quite rightly flags up Paul Rogers’ seven string bass: it’s a thing of wonder which makes it sound as if the man has seven fingers. Naming-checking Keith Tippett as an influence is helpful, too. all three members of Sarost played regularly with Tippett, back in the day. It’s a useful pointer to where their work lies on the jazz-improv spectrum. What else can one say? What these three musicians do, when they come together, is simply make endlessly imaginative jazz and, as someone once said, writing about music is like dancing about architecture.  What stands out to me, though, listening to the album, is the lyricism all three bring to the music, while at the same time sustaining the energy and sense of movement that needs to go with the genre. Sanders, while providing the necessary powerhouse to drive the music along, even makes the drums sound lyrical. And I loved Stabbins’ solo at the start of the third track, ‘North’.

Two of the outfits that regularly catch my attention are also among the most prolific. It’s not long since I was writing about  LLiFT and Jumble Hole Clough. Nevertheless, they’ve both recently put out new albums and they’re both  well worthy of attention. The great thing about LLiFT #10, the latest in the series that documents the activities of the North Wales LLiFT project, is that, ten albums in, the core group – joined at each session by newcomers and/or occasional visitors – are still making music that’s full of vitality and developing in new directions. As I’ve said in previous reviews, theirs is the kind of project which it would be great to see springing up in communities everywhere. 

The whole album’s a great listen, although I can see why they made the third, ‘Sliding Downhill’ the featured track. It includes a spoken text, although, as is almost always the case with text and music, you can’t distinguish every word. There’s something in there about applying brakes and sliding downhill, among other things. I’m curious not only because it sounds interesting, but because something like it happened to me once, in North Wales, on a C-road just outside Dolgellau, which was just too steep for the brakes to work on the car. Like listening to LliFT, it was an exhilarating experience. Unlike LLiFT, it was not one I’d wish to repeat.

What LLiFT do is right up to speed with the possibilities of technology these days: I’m sure people will continue to create and think of albums the way people have over the decades, but, with digital recording and editing and the possibilities of online streaming, you can simply put music out there more-or-less as you play it – less a potential  milestone in the work of an ensemble and more simply an opportunity for listeners to eavesdrop on what a particular musician or group is doing at a particular time. Also, the aura and iconic status of some albums in the past has to do not only with the quality of the music on them, but also with the massive – and expensive – technological and organisational effort required to produce and distribute them, not to mention with them having performed the feat of getting past the gatekeepers of the arts and entertainment industry. It’s a system that has become easier and easier to bypass over the years and, these days, if you  record what you play, rustle up some album art and upload the result, you’ve got an album! LLiFT seem to me to epitomise this approach, while at the same  time, I should add, maintaining the highest standards in recording quality and sound balance. And it’s great that, ten albums in, they’re still producing work that sounds fresh and exciting and that leaves us wondering what they’ll come up with next. Roll on LLiFT #11.

Which leads us on to Colin Robinson (aka Jumble Hole Clough)’s podcast from a broom cupboard in Marseille. Having recently put out an album of music which experimented with longer forms (JHC album tracks often tend to be short), he’s now turned his attention back to producing an instrumental album, one in his series, ‘music for imaginary puppet shows’.

The first track hits us with a barrage of relentless electronic strings reminiscent, I thought, of John Adams. And it works! It’s a classic JHC hard-hitting opening track. JHC – as I’ve written about here in the past – describes itself as a project ‘influenced by the landscape, industrial remains and experiences around Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire’ and, if there’s a Calder Valley Symphony Orchestra, someone should arrange ‘Mars the Harbinger of Diabetes’ for them.

The second track, ‘Are we not running?’ put me immediately in mind of the world of writer (and master of the ‘New Weird’) M John Harrison. Using a combination of conventional electronic resources and field recordings, Robinson creates an unsettling atmosphere, punctuated by birdsong, a passing lorry and (and this is what put me in mind of Harrison) a couple out jogging, one of whom says ‘are we not running?’ (including fragments of overheard conversation is a Harrison trademark). In the notes that go with the album, Robinson says film-makers are free to use tracks from the album so long as they credit him. I’d say anyone thinking of making a film of  Harrison’s recent(-ish) novel The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, should get in touch with Robinson. (Come to think of it, that title could almost be that of a JHC album).

There are twelve more tracks where these two came from. I’ll leave you to explore them for yourself. As with the musicians of both Sarost and LLiFT, I’m left wondering how Robinson manages to sustain his seemingly inexhaustible stream of creative energy.

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Dominic Rivron

LINKS

Aurora: https://jazzinbritain1.bandcamp.com/album/aurora

LliFT #10: https://recordiaudukes.bandcamp.com/album/llift-10

From a Broom Cupboard in Marseille – music for an imaginary puppet show volume 4:
https://jumbleholeclough.bandcamp.com/album/from-a-broom-cupboard-in-marseille-music-for-imaginary-puppet-shows-volume-4

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