About Group are:

Charles Hayward (Percussion - This Heat, Camberwell Now, Monkey Puzzle Trio, Clear Frame)

John Coxon (Guitar - Spring Heel Jack, Spiritualized)

Pat Thomas (Piano/Electronics - played with Derek Bailey, Tony Oxley, Jimmy Carl Black and Eugene Chadbourne amongst countless others)

Alexis Taylor (Fender Rhodes, synthesizer, guitar, vocals - Hot Chip)

About Group formed to make a record of improvised music for the Treader label in 2009, having never played together as a whole before the day it took them to make their first album. They then supported Gang Gang Dance at London's Dingwalls for their debut live performance, and followed this with a show at Ornette Coleman's Meltdown Festival at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. About Group also played Glastonbury Festival 2010 and took part in the Calling Out of Context festival at London's ICA, in which audiences were invited to watch the creative process of a recording and mixing session.

Start And Complete, About Group’s second album, was recorded in one day at Abbey Road, Studio 2. The songs were written by Taylor over the last few years and some, but not all of them, were given out as a CD in piano/vocal demo form for the other members of the group to hear a few days before the studio date. The idea was that no one band member would know the songs well enough to have specific parts, or be prevented from playing something like the first ideas that came into their head.

What followed was a collection of songs created in an atmosphere of close listening and instinctive group interplay. The instruments used are a rotating line up of drums, Wurlitzer, organ, piano, electric guitar and electronic textures, ensuring About Group combine a live-in-the-studio band feel around Taylor’s yearning vocal lines. The band’s instincts for experimentation make for subtle shifts in direction and tone, particularly when Thomas’ electronic flourishes move centre stage, blurring the line between improvisation and songwriting structure.

On 'Don’t Worry' and 'Lay Me Down', Taylor’s keyboard vamps, along with Coxon and Taylor's wah guitars and the shuffling beat, suggest what a vintage Muscle Shoals session might sound like in the abstract. And on their re-interpretation of Harvey Averne/Terry Riley’s 'You’re No Good', the band stretch out over ten minutes. Locking into a groove they cut loose into a sustained Kosmiche workout, propelled by one of Hayward’s signature and unique drum parts and Coxon’s almost-soloing on the guitar – showing they are as adept at a head-nodding jam as the elegant constructions of the album’s shorter pieces.




STEVE NOBLE / JOHN EDWARDS / ALAN WILKINSON (trio)

Alan Wilkinson – alto/baritone saxophones, voice
John Edwards – double bass
Steve Noble – drum set, percussion

"Wilkinson/Edwards/Noble steamrollered spectators suspicions with a set as powerful as the Stooges and as fluid as John Coltrane" (Stewart Lee - Sunday Times)

This trio has become one of the hottest bands on the London scene, reaching a new and enthusiastic young audience for the music. Comprising three of the capital’s most experienced and hardest working musicians, they play ‘free jazz’ with one foot firmly in the European school of free improvisation, group music where the twists and turns are born exclusively out of intense listening and an almost intuitive creativity. However, their willingness to embrace a broad spectrum of styles is redefining traditional barriers and prejudices, making the music vibrate with a renewed sense of freedom. They have released two cds on the Bo’weavil label - OBLIQUITY(2007) ‘LIVE AT CAFÉ OTO’ (2009) - This CD was included in the top 100 Cds of 2009 in the Sunday Times!