Somewhat on a downer this evening after a tediously frustrating day at work. That the glass of Chilean sauvingnon blanc I have beside me right now tastes like vinegar doesn’t make things much better either. Ah well, I had better write about some music and stop moaning before I do a better job of parodying myself than Alastair can do…

Tonight I have tried to listen to a couple of CDs featuring trios involving the Australian saxophonist (and a lot of other stuff-ist) Massimo Magee that I have had here for ages and just haven’t got around to. I say tried, because my focus has been a little disrupted by constant interruptions and my state of tiredness, but I think I have listened enough to bring my thoughts to bear. Massimo Magee is a young saxophonist with a mature outlook on improvisation, his approach being a particularly pure one. Both of these two discs, Of an Evening alongside Tim Green and John Porter, and One Small Step with Matthew Horsley and David Wallis are straight up recordings of improvisations by the respective trios, no edits, just the music sought out live and heard in the room put straight onto a CD. The style and form of the improvisations, although quite different from one disc to the other does have a vaguely jazz related, active and talkative feel throughout.

Of an Evening came out earlier in the year on Magee’s own tiny [Array] label. His list of instrumentation for the meet is typically long, his sopranino sax joined by a clarinet, piano, signal generator, laptop feedback, tape recorder with blank tape, walkie talkies, field recordings, amplifier feedback and a recording of an earlier improvisation by the trio’s drummer Tim Green. If this sounds like quite a collection of potential sounds, well it does strike me that we don’t hear enough of the more potentially abstract sounds, as for the most part this recording sounds like a straight-up sax/sax/drums set, albeit one with frequent dips into near silence and brooding little sounds in the distance, during which I found myself reaching for the volume control, trying to work out if music could still be heard or if the gaps between tracks were unusually long.

So this is a subdued set of four pieces that follows a perhaps predictable, but still somewhat pleasing arc from quiet pondering around small sounds into a flowing, chatty conversation between the three players. When in full flight one or the other of the sax players sounds very much like Evan Parker to me, but then when things draw back into themselves again a much wider set of approaches are used and it becomes difficult to just categorise this music as old school improvisation as it may have felt comfortable to do a few minutes earlier.

Its not entirely my bag, the slow rhythms and searching sax solo that opens the third piece really hits a nerve with me, just the kind of free jazz I don’t enjoy so much. However this section then sees sinewave like tones, groaning drones and other audio detritus thrown in in the background and the piece becomes more interesting, if not altogether completely successful to these ears. For me the music works best when the drums are more texturally percussive and the rhythms cease, so forcing the reeds to find ways other than the melodic ones to add their contribution.

Overall, the sense of communication between the players feels strong, particularly when they play in a jazzy style. Adding the additional less obviously instrumental abstractions to the music does bring an additional element to the music, but somehow these parts feel a bit tacked on, and although free jazz isn’t really my thing the trio do sound more fluid and natural when they stay in that area.

The second trio disc, One Small Step came out a few months back on Julien Skrobek’s Appel Music label in Paris. (though strangely the Appel website makes no mention of it- maybe send Julien an email to enquire)  Again, Magee’s list of instrumentation is long, and various feedback systems join the sax, (tenor this time) clarinet, harmonica and a wooden flute, David Wallis plays something called a Diatonic Harmonica and Matthew Horsley plays oercussion, Uillean pipes (?) a low whistle, conch sheels and a metronome. If nothing else these Aussies like to fill a lot of space on CD sleeves listing instrumentation!

One Small Step is no less a talkative, busy affair once it gets going, but it also has a dark, brooding feel to it, partly driven by the room in which it was recorded, which isn’t named on the liners but sounds a large empty, heavily resonant space as each of the instruments echoes gently and seems to drift off to far corners of the recording as each sound dies away. It sounds like there was only one mic as well, as the musicians aren’t balanced so well, but all of this does enhance the recording’s position as a document of a meeting at one time and place, providing the music with a live feel throughout. Although bustling and active, with either Magee’s sax or Wallis’ harmonica storming off into expressive solo works outs from time to time, there is a little less of a jazz feel here, instead replaced by a slightly more awkward, angular feel to things. If I write often in these pages about musicians communicating together through music, the trio here often sound like they are closely entwined, but rather than in harmony they often seem to be arguing with each other. The music feels quite spiky and aggressive in places, the sax and harmonica often reminding me of sparrows fighting over the pickings on a birdtable. Magee throws in the little odds and ends of less instrumental sounds again, sinewaves and the unmistakeable squiggles of overwound cassette tape appear here and there, but they are less frequent and feel slightly more integrated into the music.

Like with Of an Evening there are sections I really don’t like much. The harmonica solos when they appear set my teeth on edge, and there are sections which feel a bit disclocated, where the natural flow of the music seems a bit disrupted for a while, but all in all One Small Step is probably the disc I prefer of the two. One thing is for sure, there is no small amount of musical talent on display here, particularly when Magee lets rip with his fiery sax warbles. At the end of the day though the music on both discs leans a little too heavily towards a jazzy climate to match up completely with my personal tastes, but if this is more your thing then these two trios showcase some good young talent from down under that will probably please a lot of people.

I should add here that although these two releases weren’t completely up my alley I do like Massimo Magee’s playing (and his approach to improvisation in general) quite a bit, and just as soon as I get my backside into gear here and get the Listen Series back up and running he will have a freely downloadable track available from these very pages.