The Squid's Ear Magazine


Black Top Presents: Hamid Drake / Elaine Mitchener / William Parker / Orphy Robinson / Pat Thomas: S (Otoroku)

Bringing together the rhythm section of frequent collaborators, percussionist Hamid Drake and bassist William Parker, with London's improvising duo Black Top of Orphy Robinson on marimba and electronics & Pat Thomas on piano & electronics, plus improvising vocalist Elaine Mitchener, for a passionate and often ecstatically cathartic live concert at Cafe OTO.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



William Parker-double bass, Guimbri

Orphy Robinson-Marimba, electronics

Hamid Drake-percussion

Pat Thomas-piano, electronics

Elaine Mitchener-vocals


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UPC: 5055869583008

Label: Otoroku
Catalog ID: ROKU 025CD
Squidco Product Code: 30102

Format: 2 CDs
Condition: New
Released: 2021
Country: UK
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Recorded live at Cafe OTO, in London, UK, on July 28th, 2019, by Paul Skinne.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Double CD documenting the magic meeting of one of the all-time great rhythm sections in jazz: percussionist Hamid Drake and bassist William Parker, with London's brilliant Black Top (Orphy Robinson and Pat Thomas) and Elaine Mitchener. Across two sets the quintet are infectiously energetic and inspired, striding from synchronised heavy groove to star bright solos, whilst incorporating dub effects, guimbri and sumptuous blues piano playing.

Formed by Orphy Robinson and Pat Thomas but always realised with an ever changing number of invited musicians, Black Top's blend of lo-fi samples, dub effects and experimental electronics has been daring free improvisation since 2011. Their virtuoso performances draw on their Afro-Caribbean roots with delicious spontienty and humour; the histories of Ridley Road Market, the LIO and Islamic West Africa are sounded out side by side on iPad, marimba and vibraphone. Having met in 2006, Black Top played with bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake as part of their residency at Cafe OTO in 2016; forming a quartet grounded in transatlantic kinship but which looked outward to the Carribean, calypso music and Saharan gnawa rhythms. When Parker and Drake returned to OTO in 2019 Black Top reformed again, but this time with the brilliant addition of vocalist Elaine Mitchener.

Over the last few years the clarity with which Mitchener has explored vocal expression in the global Black Avant Garde has been stunning, but here the range in her influences is manifest, moving effortlessly between phonetic and poetic experimentation and spoken word, all the while at ease with soul soaked jazz and dissonant free fall. A hand drum duet with Hamid Drake astonishes before being laced perfectly with cosmic theremin and Parker's fantastic acid shehnai."-Otoroku



"Heavyweight UK improvisers Orphy Robinson and Pat Thomas conceived Black Top in 2011 as an open-ended duo augmented by a series of guests. On these two hour-long sets recorded live at Cafe OTO, they're joined by the stellar US rhythm section of Hamid Drake and William Parker, plus British vocalist Elaine Mitchener, for a trans-Atlantic summit that vibrates with wild energy from start to finish. In the company of one of the truly great backlines in jazz, Thomas unfurls some of his most deeply lyrical musings to date, building to frenetically pounded, splay-fingered chords as bass and drums turn up the heat for a crashing free-jazz tumult. Mitchener is a hyperactive presence, channelling Jeanne Lee as ululations, hiccups, cartoonish baby talk and soulful crooning pour forth in a torrent of invention. But what really lifts this above the average is the unit's ability to switch seamlessly into diasporic pan-global grooves: a deep reggae vibe bubbles up out of nowhere; Parker picks up a Moroccan guimbri, joined by Robinson's marimba for a lilting Fourth World jam; Drake's frame drum and devotional song invite reedy shehnai calls from Parker, seeded with B-movie sci-fi electronics. This 21st century melting pot is brimming over with thrills."-Daniel Spicer, JazzWise


Get additional information at JazzWise

Artist Biographies

"William Parker is a bassist, improviser, composer, writer, and educator from New York City, heralded by The Village Voice as, "the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time."

In addition to recording over 150 albums, he has published six books and taught and mentored hundreds of young musicians and artists.

Parker's current bands include the Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, In Order to Survive, Raining on the Moon, Stan's Hat Flapping in the Wind, and the Cosmic Mountain Quartet with Hamid Drake, Kidd Jordan, and Cooper-Moore. Throughout his career he has performed with Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Milford Graves, and David S. Ware, among others."

-William Parker Website (http://www.williamparker.net/)
10/2/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Orphy Robinson (born 13 October 1960) is a British vibraphonist and multi-instrumentalist,of Jamaican descent who also plays the saxophone, trumpet, drums, piano, marimba and steel pans. He has written music for television, film, theatre, opera and contemporary classical music. Robinson is from London, UK, and works across a variety of eclectic musical forms (jazz, free jazz, free improvisation, jazz fusion, and funk music)."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphy_Robinson)
10/2/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Hamid Drake (born August 3, 1955) is an American jazz drummer and percussionist. He lives in Chicago, IL but spends a great deal of time touring worldwide. By the close of the 1990s, Hamid Drake was widely regarded as one of the best percussionists in jazz and avant improvised music. Incorporating Afro-Cuban, Indian, and African percussion instruments and influence, in addition to using the standard trap set, Drake has collaborated extensively with top free-jazz improvisers. Drake also has performed world music; by the late 70s, he was a member of Foday Musa Suso's Mandingo Griot Society and has played reggae throughout his career.

Drake has worked with trumpeter Don Cherry, pianist Herbie Hancock, saxophonists Pharoah Sanders, Fred Anderson, Archie Shepp and David Murray and bassists Reggie Workman and William Parker (in a large number of lineups)

He studied drums extensively, including eastern and Caribbean styles. He frequently plays without sticks; using his hands to develop subtle commanding undertones. His tabla playing is notable for his subtlety and flair. Drake's questing nature and his interest in Caribbean percussion led to a deep involvement with reggae."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamid_Drake)
10/2/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Born 27 July 1960; Piano, electronics. Pat Thomas started playing at the age of 8 and studied classical music and played reggae. He began playing jazz at sixteen after seeing Oscar Peterson on television then listened to snatches of jazz on the radio before, in 1979, playing his first serious improvised gigs. From 1986 he played with Ghosts which was Pete McPhail and Matt Lewis.

In addition to programming his keyboards, Pat Thomas also utilises prerecorded tapes. He told Chris Blackford (1991), 'As far as the tapes are concerned I'll probably just sit in front of the TV and tape whatever's going on and so some editing afterward to decide what might be useful. ...But I don't actually put a label on each tape saying what's on there, so when I come to use them I don't know what I'm going to be playing. That obviously prevents me from setting things up. I pick them at random and see what happens. So I'm just as surprised as anybody else at what comes out'.

In 1988 he was awarded an Arts Council Jazz Bursary to write three new electroacoustic compositions for his ten-piece ensemble, Monads: Roger Turner and Matt Lewis, percussion; Pete McPhail, WX7 wind synthesizer; Neil Palmer, turntables; Phil Minton, voice; Phil Durrant, violin; Marcio Mattos, bass; Jon Corbett, trumpet; Geoff Searle, drum machines. The intention was to feature different aspects of electronics using improvisation so, for example, one piece - Dialogue - featured Pete McPhail and Neil Palmer, another concentrated on the interaction of percussionists and drum machines, and a third piece had Phil Minton and Jon Corbett improvising with a computer. The pieces were performed at the Crawley Outside-In Festival of new music in 1989.

Pat Thomas was invited by Derek Bailey to play in Company Week in 1990 and 1991 and he also took part in the Ist International Symposium for Free Improvisation in Bremen with the guitarist. He has been a member of the Tony Oxley Quartet (documented on Incus CD 15) and played in Oxley's Angular Apron along with Larry Stabbins, Manfred Schoof and Sirone at the 8th Ruhr Jazz Meeting and in the percussionist's Celebration Orchestra. He plays with Lol Coxhill in a range of combinations from duo to being a member of 'Before my time', is a member of Mike Cooper's Continental Drift, and he has a well established duo with percussionist Mark Sanders and a trio with Steve Beresford and Francine Luce. In 1992 Pat Thomas formed the quartet Scatter with Phil Minton, Roger Turner and Dave Tucker; funded by the Arts Council they toured the UK in 1993 and again at the beginning of 1997.

On the 'Festival circuit', Pat Thomas has appeared at: the Young Improvisors Festival at the Korzo Theatre, Den Haag (with Jim O'Rourke, Mats Gustafsson and Alexander Frangenheim); Angelica 95 in Bologna, Italy; the Stuttgart 5th Festival of Improvised Music 96 (with Fred Frith, Shelly Hirsch, Carlos Zingaro and others); and the 3rd International Festival 96 in Budapest (with Evan Parker, Phil Minton, John Russell and Roger Turner).

-EFI (http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/mthomas.html)
10/2/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Elaine Mitchener is an experimental vocalist and movement artist whose work encompasses improvisation, contemporary composition, sound art, music theatre, physical theatre and performance art.

Born in East London to Jamaican parents, Elaine studied voice at Trinity College of Music, London and currently studies with Jacqueline Straubinger.

She has performed at numerous UK and European festivals, venues and galleries including Aldeburgh Music, London Contemporary Music Festival, 56th Venice Biennale, Wysing Arts, Café Oto (London), earsthetic (Brighton), Bluecoat (Liverpool), Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Muziektheater Transparant (Antwerp), ULTIMA Festival (Oslo), SPILL Festival (Ipswich), La Monnaie (Brussels), Block Universe (London), White Cube (London), Whitechapel Gallery (London), Weserburg MOMA (Bremen), Hepworth (Wakefield), Wellcome Collection (London), and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London).

She has worked and performed in a wide variety of contexts with an array of leading musicians, composers, directors and visual artists including The Otolith Group, Deborah Warner, Christian Marclay, Apartment House, Steve Beresford, Irvine Arditti, Oliver Coates, Sonia Boyce, John Butcher, Attila Csihar, Rolf Hind, Dam Van Huynh, George Lewis, Alexander Hawkins, Tansy Davies, Phil Minton, Evan Parker, Alasdair Roberts, David Toop, Matt Wright, Brodsky Quartet, Jason Yarde, Barry Lewis, Sam Belinfante and Dai Fujikura.

Her production company Elaine Mitchener Projects has researched, developed, produced and toured or staged a number of projects including Industrialising Intimacy (with choreographer Dam Van Huynh, David Toop, George Lewis) which was premiered at Brighton's earsthetic; The Nude Voice (with Dam Van Huynh) which was commissioned for the Wellcome Collection London's THIS IS A VOICE exhibition; SWEET TOOTH, which has been presented as a work in progress at Aldeburgh Music and Bloomsbury Festival (London), and premiered in Liverpool in November 2017 in collaboration with Bluecoat, Stuart Hall Foundation, International Slavery Museum and Edge Hill University; 'I back... I neck... I face... I chest' which was commissioned by Sonia Boyce for her installation We Move In Her Way at London's ICA; Of Leonardo da Vinci (with Dam Van Huynh, David Toop, Barry Lewis) which was premiered at Oslo's ULTIMA Festival; the three hour durational performance [NAMES] premiered at Ipswich's SPILL Festival; and a presentation of John Cage's SongBooks for London's Poetry In The City Festival.

Elaine has participated in residencies at Aldeburgh Music (to develop SWEET TOOTH) and Fondazione Claudio Buziol, Venice (where she developed Of Leonardo Da Vinci supported by Muziektheater Transparant). She is co-founder of experimental jazz quartet the Hawkins/Mitchener Quartet, whose debut album will be launched in November 2017. Recent performances include IRMA by Tom Phillips RA (dir. Netia Jones), a selection of songs by Julius Eastman both with Apartment House in Poland, and The Cave by Tansy Davies, with libretto by Nick Drake, and tenor Mark Padmore, commissioned by London Sinfonietta in association with the Royal Opera House (WP June 2018)."

-Elaine Mitchener Website (http://www.elainemitchener.com/biog)
10/2/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



CD1



1. Put the Brakes On (50:08)

CD2



1. Some Good News (56:43)

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Jazz
Free Improvisation
NY Downtown & Metropolitan Jazz/Improv
London & UK Improv & Related Scenes
Quintet Recordings
Parker, William
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