West Hill Blast Quartet: Live At Cafe Oto
Author: Marcus O'Dair
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Musicians: |
Maggie Nicols (v) |
Label: |
33Jazz |
Magazine Review Date: |
April/2016 |
Catalogue Number: |
33Xtreme |
RecordDate: |
19 December 2008 to 28 October 2014 |
Although they draw on the vocabulary of free jazz, these four musicians are only, to varying degrees, free jazz musicians in any purist sense. Between them, they have played art rock, No Wave, psych-prog and more; Spicer, a journalist for this very magazine, and the force behind the recent Brighton Alternative Jazz Festival, is also a poet. This, perhaps, is their strength: Caines played in Keith Tippett's Arc, and Garside has released material on Emanem; Pyne comes from a different tradition, that of leftfield rock, and contributes not only drums but also the DIY label infrastructure that has allowed this disc to surface. What unites them, on the evidence of this live recording at least, is that each member of the quartet has ingested a large quantity of Albert Ayler, AACM and Ornette Coleman. Clustered around Brighton's Safehouse Collective, not all these guys are virtuosos, but they sure know how to commit – and their collective voice is quite a thing to behold.

Jazzwise Full Club
- Latest print and digital issues
- Digital archive since 1997
- Download tracks from bonus compilation albums throughout the year
- Reviews Database access
From £9.08 / month
Subscribe
Jazzwise Digital Club
- Latest digital issues
- Digital archive since 1997
- Download tracks from bonus compilation albums during the year
- Reviews Database access