Mark De Clive-Lowe brings the beats Jazz Re:Freshed’s 21st birthday

This venue in the heart of Shoreditch, east London was busy at the recent Brick Lane Jazz Festival but it is also where the weekly Jazz Re:Freshed session happens. These two facts are not unrelated. The latter gig has been a crucial incubator for the millennials who have made an impact on mainstream audiences in the past few years, right down to Mercury Music Prize triumphs. We’re talking Boyds, Garcias and Ezras.

A 21st birthday celebration, complete with candles tucked into a champagne bottle, is thus the order of the day, and Mark De Clive-Lowe is the perfect choice for the live music. The New Zealand-born LA-based keyboardist-producer lived in London in the 2000s and worked right at the intersection of jazz, broken beat, soul and electronica, which is reflected in his choice of guests: drummer and compatriot Myele Manzanza and three Brits, vocalists Vanessa Freeman and Bembé Segué, and saxophonist Jason Yarde. The appearance of the latter is significant as he is sounding near to full strength following his stroke last year, and he draws a familiarly gritty tone and swirling phrases from his alto. As for De Clive Lowe he is orchestrator as well as leader and his method of playing and looping syncopated sub bass, polyphonic synth lines and percussive beats lays the foundation for a set of continuous shape-shifting.

He solos potently on Rhodes and acoustic piano while Manzanza thickens the low end with a bouncing kick and brightens the upper range with a fizzing hi-hat, as the singers move stealthily between scatted trickeries a la Flora Purim and ad lib declarations on self-fulfillment a preacher might well approve. But as the set unfolds it becomes clear that De Clive-Lowe’s ethos, for all his embrace of technology, stays true to the ages old jazz praxis of quotation and reference. The beauty lies in the wide cultural range he covers. For example he takes a snippet of his own breakout track ‘El Dia Perfecto’ and consolidates it with a variation on the chords of the timeless samba ‘Baia’, making the Afro-Latin dimension of the music boldly explicit.

But in quick succession we hear the searing string motif of Pepe Braddock’s ‘Deep Burnt’ and a reprise of John Coltrane’s ‘Naima’. The line is astutely drawn between 1960s jazz and 90s house, with the continuity being created by the sleek sensuality De Clive Lowe and band lend to their negotiation of the harmony of the two pieces amid all the rhythmic barrage. It loosely recalls the way a skilled hip-hop producer isolates and manipulates specific frequencies in a sample to give it maximum dramatic impact against heavy beats, and De Clive-Lowe’s ultimate artistic importance lies in the fact that he brings a producer’s touch to the table all the while being able to use a pentatonic scale or a minor third to build one bluesy-funky theme after another.

In short there is a meeting of cultures that explains why the performance moves so quickly between not just eras of black music but the references and signposts that different generations use to map their listening. A quite delicious ambiguity thus flows from a single moment as a result. The intense reaction that greets the glinting Rhodes vamp of ‘Daylight’ can mean many things to many people in the room, some of whom are filming on the latest iPhones and some of whom are old enough to remember chancers using tape recorders to bootleg gigs. On one hand we are listening to Roy Ayers and Ramp. On the other A Tribe Called Quest and Roni Size, and the stylistic gamut these artists cover, the line stretching from soul to drum & bass via hip-hop, says much about the temporal and spatial boundaries that have been dissolving since a breakdown turned into a breakbeat. And if the codes and keynotes are out of reach of those who long for a time when whole songs, rather than fragments thereof, were covered then the evening ends with a reprise of 4Hero’s ‘Hold It Down.’ One of the major anthems of the millennial mash-up of tradition and modernity in black music, the track triggers a wave of nostalgia that threatens to have the crowd swimming to the ceiling. Given that this is a birthday party to mark a significant age De Clive-Lowe’s decision to dip into this rich back catalogue makes perfect sense, and as Jazz Re:freshed, which once took as little as £60 on quiet nights, looks forward to 21 more years, the evening’s music sounds anything but valueless.