The Squid's Ear Magazine


Oxley, Tony / Alan Davie: Elaboration Of Particulars (Confront)

Five startlingly modern and fascinating dialogs from the duo of multi-instrumentalist and artist Alan Davie and percussionist Tony Oxley, active in the 1970s around The Alan Davie Music Workshop, is heard in Five startlingly modern and fascinating dialogs from the duo of multi-instrumentalist and artist Alan Davie and percussionist Tony Oxley, active in the 1970s around The Alan Davie Music Workshop, is heard in these never previously released recordings from 1977-78 captured at Davie's home studio, Oxley performing on percussion and electronics and Davie on piano, percussion and ring modulator.these never previously released recordings from 1977-78 captured at Davie's home studio, Oxley on percussion and electronics and Davie on piano, percussion and ring modulator.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Tony Oxley-percussion, electronics

Alan Davie-piano, percussion, ring modulator


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UPC: 5904224870096

Label: Confront
Catalog ID: core 20
Squidco Product Code: 30281

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2021
Country: UK
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Recorded at Gamels Studio, Rush Green, Hertford, United Kingdom 1977 and 1978

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Featuring never previously released recordings made by Tony Oxley and Alan Davie at Davie's home during 1977 and 1978, Elaboration of Particulars offers us a vital insight into the development of this intriguing duo and it's place within the history of Great British Improvised Music.

Formed in 1970, by the time these sessions were made, Oxley and Davie's duo music had metamorphosied into something totally unique and exclusively their own. Oxley's amplified frame conjures up oscillating currents and surging electronic shards that, together with his percussive counterpoint, play a perfect partnership with Alan Davie's enlightened piano modulations. Listen also to Davie playing keyboard and tuned percussion simultaneously.

The music presented here by Oxley and Davie echoes the electro-acoustic works of Stockhausen, Berio and Varese but it is delivered with an altogether different intent by two experienced and musically sophisticated improvisers."-Confront


Artist Biographies

"Tony Oxley (born 15 June 1938) is an English free-jazz drummer and one of the founders of Incus Records.

ony Oxley was born in Sheffield, England. A self-taught pianist by the age of eight, he first began playing the drums at seventeen. In Sheffield he was taught by well respected local drummer Haydon Cook, who had returned to the city after a long residency, in the 1950s, at Ronnie Scotts in London. While in the Black Watch military band from 1957 to 1960 he studied music theory and improved upon his drumming technique. From 1960 to 1964 he led his own quartet which performed locally in England, and in 1963 he began working with Gavin Bryars and guitarist Derek Bailey in a trio known as Joseph Holbrooke. Oxley moved to London in 1966 and became house drummer at Ronnie Scott's, where he accompanied visiting musicians such as Joe Henderson, Lee Konitz, Charlie Mariano, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins and Bill Evans until the early 1970s. He was also a member of various groups led by musicians such as Gordon Beck, Alan Skidmore and Mike Pyne.

In 1969 Oxley appeared on the recording of the later released John McLaughlin album Extrapolation and also formed his own quintet consisting of Derek Bailey, Jeff Clyne, Evan Parker and Kenny Wheeler, releasing the album The Baptised Traveller. Following this album the group was joined by Paul Rutherford on trombone and became a sextet, releasing the 1970 album 4 Compositions for Sextet. That same year Oxley helped found Incus Records along with Bailey and others and also the Musicians Cooperative. He also received a three-month "artist-in-residence" at the Sydney Conservatorium in Australia in 1970. Around this time he joined the London Jazz Composers Orchestra and also got involved with collaborations with Howard Riley. In 1973 he became a tutor at the Jazz Summer School in Barry, South Wales, and in 1974 he formed another group of his own known as Angular Apron. Through the 1980s he worked with various musicians, including Tony Coe and Didier Levallet, also forming his own Celebration Orchestra during the latter half of that decade. Oxley also did extensive touring with Anthony Braxton in 1989, and also began a long-lasting working relationship with Cecil Taylor during this period.Oxley at the Moers Festival, Germany, in 2008

In 1993 he joined an international quartet that included Tomasz Sta ko, Bobo Stenson, and Anders Jormin, and in 2000 he released the album Triangular Screen with the Tony Oxley Project 1, a trio with Ivar Grydeland and Tonny Kluften."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Oxley)
3/27/2024

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

"James Alan Davie (28 September 1920 - 5 April 2014) was a Scottish painter and musician.

Davie was born in Grangemouth in 1920. His father, James William Davie, was a painter who exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1925. Alan Davie studied at Edinburgh College of Art in the late 1930s. An early exhibition of his work came through the Society of Scottish Artists.

After the Second World War, Davie played tenor saxophone in the Tommy Sampson Orchestra, which was based in Edinburgh but broadcast and toured in Europe. He also earned a living making jewellery during the postwar period. Davie travelled widely and in Venice became influenced by other painters of the period, such as Paul Klee, Jackson Pollock and Joan Miró, as well as by a wide range of cultural symbols. In particular, his painting style owes much to his affinity with Zen. Having read Eugen Herrigel's book Zen in the Art of Archery (1953), he assimilated the spontaneity which Zen emphasises.:34 Declaring that the spiritual path is incompatible with planning ahead, he attempted to paint as automatically as possible, which was intended to bring forth elements of his unconscious. In this, he shared a vision with surrealist painters such as Miró, and he was also fascinated by the work of psychoanalyst Carl Jung.:32

Like Pollock, many of Davie's works were executed by standing above the painting, which was laid on the ground.:35 He added layers of paint until sometimes the original painting had been covered over many times. Despite the speed at which he worked (he usually had several paintings on the go at once), however, he was adamant that his images are not pure abstraction, but all have significance as symbols. Championing the primitive, he saw the role of the artist as akin to that of the shaman, and remarked upon how disparate cultures have adopted common symbols in their visual languages.

In addition to painting, whether on canvas or paper (he has stated that he prefers to work on paper), Davie produced several screenprints. He found a public for his work on the continent and in America some time before the British art public could reconcile itself to his mixture of ancient and newly invented symbols. In his lectures Davie stressed the importance of improvisation as his chosen method. His stance was that of an inspired soothsayer resisting the inroads of rational civilization.

Musically, Davie also played piano, cello and bass clarinet. In the early 1970s his interest in free improvisation led to a close association with the percussionist Tony Oxley. His paintings have also inspired music by others, notably the bassist and composer Barry Guy.

Davie designed the jacket for R.W. Feachem's book Prehistoric Scotland, published by Batsford in 1963. The design was based upon motifs found on Pictish symbol stones. He died aged 93 in Hertfordshire, England on 5 April 2014."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Davie)
3/27/2024

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


Track Listing:



1. Particular I 3:03

2. Particular II 6:07

3. Particular III 6:18

4. Particular IV 3:00

5. Particular V 5:50

6. Particular VI 5:47

7. Particular VII 4:40

8. Particular VIII 9:46

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Free Improvisation
Electro-Acoustic
Electro-Acoustic Improv
Percussion & Drums
Piano & Keyboards
Duo Recordings
London & UK Improv & Related Scenes
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Confront.


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The Squid's Ear Magazine

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