PAUL DUNMALL DOUBLE QUARTET 
Cafe Oto, London
★★★★★

A DOUBLE quartet of roaring boys at the Cafe Oto, led by the hotwired, gushing and ever-inventive saxophone master from south London, Paul Dunmall. With him are two drummers, his evergreen confrere Mark Sanders and the younger Miles Levin, two basses; the Hounslow monster John Edwards and his delving sibling James Owston; guitarist Steve Saunders, storming trumpeter Alex Bonney and the protean pianist Liam Noble at the Cafe Oto grand.

At the outset Edwards’s and Owston’s bass duo seemed to come directly, Jules Verne-like from the centre of the Earth when Noble punctuated their deep tempest with his chiming, almost bell-like tolling phrases and the combined thrashing drums of Sanders and Levin essayed the entry of the furious Dunmall. Potency and turbulence, howling notes, snatches of familiar riffs and extracts – I thought I could hear, under it all, half-melodies of Peanut Vendor and Friendly Persuasion – blasting out sequences that threatened to implode the venue’s Victorian ceiling.

After hearing so many Sanders performances, I have never heard him play with such cyclonic force as tonight, in communal sound with the pounding Levin – a maelstrom of drums. Then a sudden relative quietude, and Bonney’s respiring horn, blowing until just naked breath came heaving from it, while Edwards’s bow sawed at his lower strings and his bass brother earnestly plucked right beside him, then joined him in an intense arco colloquy as Saunders came to the fore with his muffled, chinking, low-down notes and Noble’s keyboard runs, Don Pullen like, scattered the piano’s sonic cosmos.

The rest was Dunmall, his septuagenarian power blowing out a life story in huge creative measures until a sudden halt and the music turned to silence: once-played, never repeated, gone and applauded but never forgotten.
   
But you can hear other outstanding improvising musicians coming up soon at Cafe Oto. There are two remarkable solo guitarists: York-born former Henry Cow virtuoso Fred Frith on May 7, and US ace Marc Ribot on May 17-18. Brilliant Chicago flautist Nicole Mitchell is performing with Mark Sanders on drums and bassist Neil Charles on May 26 and the Brighton-born tenor saxophonist John Butcher on May 27.

For details of upcoming events see: cafeoto.co.uk