Kieran Hebden/Steve Reid/Mats Gustafsson: Live at the South Bank

Rating: ★★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Kieran Hebden (elec)
Steve Reid (perc)
Mats Gustafsson (fl, fluteophone, bar s, elec)

Label:

Smalltown Superjazzz

Dec/Jan/2011/2012

Catalogue Number:

STSJ211

RecordDate:

20 June 2009

The unlikely partnership of veteran US drummer Steve Reid – who played with everyone from James Brown to Sun Ra – and young British electronicist Kieran Hebden, produced a hefty body of work between 2005 and Reid's death in 2010. Together, they recorded four albums, forging a musical language that matched heavy rhythmic insistence with ecstatic freedom, to thrilling effect. This double live album (recorded less than a year before cancer claimed Reid) can be seen as the duo's last hurrah – and what a send off it is: beginning with the deep, droning aubade, ‘Morning Prayer’, Reid soon settles into a pounding Native American beat, flicking out rim-shots like compliments; while Hebden uses minimal samples as melodic building blocks. The effect is so hypnotic that it's 20 minutes before Swedish sax-slinger Gustafsson remembers to play. When he does -leaping in with long, rasping moans – the energy levels go through the roof. The emphasis here is on the more groove-heavy side of the repertoire, as featured on their album, NYC. In the glare of the spotlight, with the adrenalin pumping, tracks like ‘Lyman Place’ are transformed into glorious blasts of up-rushing psychedelic euphoria. Forms come and go, but energy never dies.

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