Speakers Corner Quartet Blesses the Barbican With a Powerful Night of Jazz and Poetry

I was curious how the formality of the Barbican Concert Hall would influence the night’s ambience for Speakers Corner Quartet, a group assembled 15 years ago by DJ Snuff as the house band for a recurring hip-hop and spoken word night at the much more casual Brixton Jamm. I wondered how stage’s height and distance from rows of plush seats might translate the energy between performers and audience, heads tilted up from the stalls or down from the three high balconies.

When the doors opened, though, the audience was admitted into a heady realm smelling of amyris oil. The array of instruments across the stage – guitars, a harp, keys, synths, percussion, strings, and flutes- caught and reflected the warm fuchsias, magentas, and red lights saturating the hall, hinting at the amount of new (mostly untitled and unreleased) music in store for the far-ranging show, ‘Further Out from the Edge.’

A short video first played in which the performers pretended to not know Speakers Corner Quartet. The gag was a bitch of a stretch given the 1,900-seat venue was sold out, and more viewers were livestreaming at home. As the video ended, the quartet– Kwake Bass (drums/synths), Biscuit (flute), Peter Bennie (bass), and Raven Bush (violin/synths) walked on stage, blessing it with chimes. The four played a droning, windswept incantation, a low throbbing kickdrum spurring hazy anticipation. It was the first of many waves of goosebumps of the night.

Speakers Corner Quartet did not bill the evening as a reunion; rather, it was an extension of ongoing collaboration and creation, a palpable undercurrent of love and spiritual familiarity running through the show. They released an EP in 2009 (Further Back than the Beginning) and have not performed as the quartet in a decade, but together and individually have been furthering their musical practices, shaping sounds coming out of south London and beyond, mentoring the next generation of cultural luminaries. Each guest belongs to a constellation predominantly based in south London; all have impressive accomplishments, and many appear on each other’s projects. Several have known each other since childhood. Kwake’s musical direction and the quartet's versatility braided together the breadth of talent and expression. Everyone sounded true to themselves, and they reveled in each other’s playing, Biscuit dancing how the audience would have been had we not been seated. Lyrical themes circled around friendship, realising dreams, and caring for each other in a hostile world.

Songwriter, guitarist, and singer Léa Sen was the first guest to join, warm, yearning vocals wrapped in Raven’s long chords. I had heard her perform a few weeks prior in an acoustic set; on this evening, Peter and Raven’s strings converged with her guitar, pulling out the heartache and opening up the space for Sen’s voice to soar in ‘I Feel Like I’m Blue’.

Peter switched from double to electric bass, setting down a moodier groove for Tawiah to gift the audience a rapturous performance. In under ten minutes, Tawiah took a simple refrain (“Just breathe”), scatted and riffed, her unforgettably rich voice swelling into a power moved by a spirit. The audience was moved to a standing ovation, after which Biscuit and Raven reset everyone with a cryptic, darting interlude that settled into a strings soundscape. Spoken word artist James Massiah mapped the city in a disarming flow and clever wordplay, chronicling a Londoner’s hardships and hopes over a druggy night of dancing and release.

Confucius MC started with “It goes so fast” at a nostalgic, trudging speed, the quartet backing him with psychedelic, prismatic synths. Biscuit added in a wholesome, funk riff to his chorus, “Look after your friends,” taking the energy up a notch in anticipation of Shabaka Hutchings (tenor sax) and Oren Marshall (tuba) joining Confucius MC to close the first half. Kwake started on a stripped-back, militant snare, setting everyone straight in their seats for Shabaka’s driving, bursting mysticism, in turn propelled by Oren’s cannon-like thunder. Confucius MC elevated his rapping to match, but his lyrics were somewhat subsumed by the intensity of the instrumentation.

The two-hour second half commenced with another video. A satellite collaborator from beyond London, US-based Laraaji beamed into – and at the audience, relaying optimistic messages to “take your dreams off the shelf,” with radiant ambience instrumentals. “Look at what you got, not at what you ain't got,” was his final reassurance as the quartet took the stage and the screen cut to black.

Lafawndah (bass flute, vocals) and Trustfall (guitar, vocals) turned the show in a grungier direction. Biscuit and Lafawndah’s flutes stirred otherworldly angst, textured with her bewitching, glassy vocals and Trustfall’s melancholy long notes. The pair ended their set with an acapella duet sung in an ancient, haunting harmony.

Leyla performed one song- I would have loved to hear more – but her velvety melody stuck in my head days later. Biscuit played off her heartbreaking runs and turns of voice like a backing vocalist. Kwake took a moment afterwards to celebrate with the audience (“I wasn’t gonna say anything, but fuck it”). There wasn’t much to say but cheer a lot.

All evening, Ezra-Lloyd Jackson shuttled between two fans at the rear of the stage, diffusing a spectrum of scents centered around amyris oil. I had never been to a show with such a deliberate olfactory element, and asked their approach. Ezra-Lloyd and the performers agreed on amyris oil (also known as West Indian sandalwood) for its relationship to the African diaspora (most of the world’s supply comes from Haiti). He designed a gradual sequence corresponding the music to states of the plant – a muskier earth and roots, the wooden trunk, and floral blooms.

When Coby Sey (vocals, synths), Tirzah (harp, vocals), and Mica Levi (violin) took the stage, Ezra-Llloyd shifted to a misty, marine-inspired scent inspired by their murkier music. Tirzah’s glinting harp, Kwake’s ominous drums, and Mica and Raven’s angular, surreal strings began summoning a storm that wouldn’t hit until later. Tirzah moved to a mic for a “Hive Mind” with Coby, a duet with searching, creeping, overlapping vocals off her most recent album.

Coby stayed on stage for another interlude that felt like an uncanny nature retreat, Biscuit conjuring birdsong over analogue pulsing and a tripping high-hat. Coby’s vocals began tentatively, but as Kwake steered the music into the brewing, lo-fi storm, they gained steam into a fuller openness while never losing a mysterious remove. The quartet built a disorienting, metallic tension.

Ezra-Lloyd added a ganja note, and Kwake moved from his drumkit to a bank of synths, blessing them and the percussion on the platform behind him, stealthily laying the groundwork for a cadence that built into a polyrhythmic techno hedonism, unleashing the energy that had gathered throughout the second set and pulling the audience from their seats. It was as intense as it was fleeting, the six-minute cyclone dissolved with the crash of a cymbal.

Raven and Peter’s strings again reset the energy, plucking plaintive chords and arpeggios like raindrops to usher Sampha (vocals, synths) onto the stage for one cinematic ballad, an ask that resonated with the audience- “can we do this again?”

The quartet’s next interlude was built from Peter’s furious, roiling bassline, and Biscuit’s flute like a kite in lightning. In this tumult Joe Armon-Jones took his place behind the keys to stack dense, kinetic, improbable chords.

The evening felt like a refuge, but the final guest, poet Kae Tempest (above), didn't let us forget the violent world outside. Underscored by the quartet’s turn to a folk-y backing, they reminded the audience

“We live in the thrall in a gaggle of demons with horsey demeanors and outdated opinions, and they sit on their lawns with their thousand-pound picnics fresh from a hard day of speaking in tongues and murdering infants, cutting the funds for education and healthcare…”

At this point, the audience started clapping, obscuring the next line. As the piece delved into insidious evil running the country, the bass took a distorted turn to match Tempest’s conviction. The next poem was recited unaccompanied, the audience barely breathing in arrested silence. Like Tawiah before, Tempest ascended into a different headspace for their next poem, a deeply personal chronicle of coming into one’s own, despite society doing everything to prevent it.

After Kae’s performance, everyone, plus Wu-Lu (guitar) and Hinako Omori (synths), took the stage to jam for a few minutes, the tightly-run show relaxed into a celebratory cypher, performers embracing each other and soaking in the scale and beauty of what they had just created. Once they cleared the stage, the show closed as it opened, with the quartet alone performing a meditative elegy honouring Biscuit’s mother.

The community and vision which made Further Out from the Edge’s extends to every continent and transcends artificial borders of genre. Hopefully the Barbican will make its recording of the night widely available, so future generations seeking inspiration can glimpse some of south London music’s many facets in the 21st century.