Led Bib - The Outsiders
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Led Bib were one of the few bands to spawn the recently revived notion of punk jazz with their incendiary concoction of maverick avant garde jazz and rock sounds cooked up by spiky drummer Mark Holub.
were one of the few bands to spawn the recently revived notion of punk jazz with their incendiary concoction of maverick avant garde jazz and rock sounds cooked up by spiky drummer Mark Holub. Newly signed to American indie Cuneiform, the band unleashes its latest album Sensible Shoes this month. Selwyn Harris talks to Holub about the roots of the Led Bib sound and how the band just doesn’t fit in
It’s clear from speaking to the New Jersey-born, London-based drummer Mark Holub that he’s feeling out on a limb. Yet it’s not simply a case of feeling apart from the conservative jazz mainstream. That wouldn’t be the least surprising and hardly an unusual position to be in. No, most of our conversation seems to be revolving around the distance between Led Bib and the entire jazz community in all its various shades and guises. Holub is the drumming mastermind behind the band and as anyone who’s seen them play live will agree, they’re not the kind of band that can be so easily contained. They make highly inflammable music that fizzes with an underlying tension, even in its most gentle moments. The five-piece is a musical timebomb. Yet the point about Led Bib is not to take them too seriously; their music has an impish, almost vaudevillian quality to it as well. Bundling together elements from gestural free jazz, cranked-up rock, downtown thrash and electronics among others, Led Bib, over its five-year existence, has had a hard job making new friends. In some ways they can’t win: perceived as too musically convoluted for the rock music sub-culture yet too unschooled for the jazz underground.
“I think as time has gone by we’ve become far more isolated from the jazz community as a group,” says the band’s amicable drummer/leader, in conversation with me at his home in Walthamstow E17. “But isolated in a good way in that people probably aren’t that bothered about what we’re doing. Saying that, the scene is much more open now than it was five years ago when we started. When we first started we were really separate at that time because none of us went to the Academy or the Guildhall.” He laughs, “we were the losers from Middlesex.”
This is an extract from Jazzwise Issue #130 – to read the full article click here to subscribe and receive a limited edition jazz photograph... Get The Blessing - Bristol Fashion
It’s clear from speaking to the New Jersey-born, London-based drummer Mark Holub that he’s feeling out on a limb. Yet it’s not simply a case of feeling apart from the conservative jazz mainstream. That wouldn’t be the least surprising and hardly an unusual position to be in. No, most of our conversation seems to be revolving around the distance between Led Bib and the entire jazz community in all its various shades and guises. Holub is the drumming mastermind behind the band and as anyone who’s seen them play live will agree, they’re not the kind of band that can be so easily contained. They make highly inflammable music that fizzes with an underlying tension, even in its most gentle moments. The five-piece is a musical timebomb. Yet the point about Led Bib is not to take them too seriously; their music has an impish, almost vaudevillian quality to it as well. Bundling together elements from gestural free jazz, cranked-up rock, downtown thrash and electronics among others, Led Bib, over its five-year existence, has had a hard job making new friends. In some ways they can’t win: perceived as too musically convoluted for the rock music sub-culture yet too unschooled for the jazz underground.
“I think as time has gone by we’ve become far more isolated from the jazz community as a group,” says the band’s amicable drummer/leader, in conversation with me at his home in Walthamstow E17. “But isolated in a good way in that people probably aren’t that bothered about what we’re doing. Saying that, the scene is much more open now than it was five years ago when we started. When we first started we were really separate at that time because none of us went to the Academy or the Guildhall.” He laughs, “we were the losers from Middlesex.”
This is an extract from Jazzwise Issue #130 – to read the full article click here to subscribe and receive a limited edition jazz photograph... Get The Blessing - Bristol Fashion