MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
Jazz albums with Chris Searle: March 22, 2024
Reviews of Max Eastley/Terry Day/John Butcher, Trevor Tomkins' Sextant, and Caroline Kraabel and Pat Thomas
searle
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
ALEX HALL recommends a book that places empirical evidence at the heart of understanding racism
Max Eastley/Terry Day/John Butcher
Angles of Enquiry
(Confront Recordings)
★★★★
MAX EASTLEY is a 79-year-old Devonian who plays the rare electro-acoustic monochord, a 10-foot-long wooden, single-stringed instrument played with fingers, bow or glass rods.
In a trio with percussionist Terry Day and saxophonist John Butcher, all through their album Angles of Enquiry his string whines, bounces, delves, clucks and menaces with low, bowed groans, harmonising with bird calls as his confreres combine with him, creating a soundscape of permanent surprise.
Eastley researches ”Aeolian Phenomena,” and it is a strange god of improvising winds that blows through the heart of this record, with a restless spirit of musical unity testifying in every assertive phrase.
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