Alex Neilson returns to OTO with a fantastic self-curated line-up featuring a number of recent collaborators. Performing here with fellow Death Shanties members, Sybren Renema and Lucy Stein, the trio will also be joined by the great bassist John Edwards. Alex and John have hit it off to great effect since playing together for the first time last year, having since played at OTO with Thurston Moore and opening for Jandek in a trio with Shabaka Hutchings. N.E.W. - the London based power jazz trio of Steve Noble on drums, John Edwards on double bass and Alex Ward on electric guitar - are on blistering form following the recent release of new album, Motion, on Dancing Wayang, and are never less than utterly compelling live. Opening this evening will also be the first duo performance from Sybren Renema and Alex Ward on saxophone and clarinet respectively.

ALEX NEILSON

“Already a legendary free-drummer Alex Neilson has played with most of the musical underground’s heavyweights of this era. This one man folk renaissance movement has left a trail of recordings and thrilling live shows with Jandek, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Heather Leigh, Alasdair Roberts, and Richard Youngs in his youthful wake.

Always moving from project to project, Neilson brings a sense of exploration and independence to his playing. As one of the most energetic and ‘in-tune’ free players around, Neilson has a better grasp than most on trying to get across the nature of improvisation.” - stylusmagazine




SYBREN RENEMA

Sybren Renema is a Dutch saxophonist also active as an artist, writer and critic. Over recent years, he has a wide range of acts including Trembling Bells, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Daevid Allen (Gong), Marshall Allen (Sun Ra Arkestra), Hugh Metcalfe, The Cosmic Dead, Death Shanties and many others. Currently, his main focus lies with two projects: Death Shanties, a duo with featuring Alex Neilson on drums and with painter Lucy Stein providing live visuals, and Eierbal, with James T McKay from the Cosmic Dead on guitar.

www.sybren-renema.com/




N.E.W. (Steve Noble / John Edwards / Alex Ward)

N.E.W. are the London based power jazz trio of Steve Noble on drums, John Edwards on double bass and Alex Ward on electric guitar. Their latest album, Motion, was released to great acclaim earlier this year on Dancing Wayang records, and confirms their status as one of London’s tightest units, locking in and breaking apart with uncanny telepathy and synchronicity. Operating at the junction of free improv and rock, they swing and shred in equal measure.

"N.E.W. are never less than an essential live proposition and ‘Motion’, as brilliant as previous releases ‘Newtoons’ and ‘Deadeye Tricksters’ are, is the album that captures them most accurately; the sort of music that, once heard, I couldn’t imagine not existing. ‘Motion’ is a wonderful document of a band that shouldn’t be taken for granted; see them again and again, and listen to this amazing album with the same attitude. Dancing Wayang has bottled lightning with this one." - Ears For Eyes

STEVE NOBLE / drums

Steve Noble is London's leading drummer, a fearless and constantly inventive improviser whose super-precise, ultra-propulsive and hyper-detailed playing has galvanized encounters with Derek Bailey, Matthew Shipp, Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith, Stephen O'Malley, Joe McPhee, Alex Ward, Rhodri Davies and many, many more.

In the early eighties, Noble played with the Nigerian master drummer Elkan Ogunde, Rip Rig and Panic, Brion Gysin and the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, before going on to work with the pianist Alex Maguire and with Derek Bailey (including Company Weeks 1987, 89 and 90). He was featured in the Bailey's excellent TV series on Improvisation for Channel 4 based on his book ‘Improvisation; its nature and practise’. He has toured and performed throughout Europe, Africa and America and currently leads the groups N.E.W (with John Edwards and Alex Ward) and DECOY (with John Edwards and Alexander Hawkins).

"There’s as much rock here as jazz- Ward is all spidery glissandi and slashing power chords. Edwards is a dark magus of a bass player thundering against the elements, while Noble is a violent, malevolent presence. A white- knuckle ride you’ll be glad to take!” (Duncan Heinig- Jazzwise)

JOHN EDWARDS / double bass

John Edwards is a true virtuoso whose staggering range of techniques and boundless musical imagination have redefined the possibility of the double bass and dramatically expanded its role, whether playing solo or with others. Perpetually in demand, he has played with Evan Parker, Sunny Murray, Derek Bailey, Joe McPhee, Lol Coxhill, Peter Brötzmann, Mulatu Astatke and many others.

"I think John Edwards is absolutely remarkable: there’s never been anything like him before, anywhere in jazz." - Richard Williams, The Blue Moment

ALEX WARD

Alex Ward is a composer, improviser, and performing musician, working primarily with clarinet and guitar.

His involvement in freely improvised music dates back to 1986, when he met the guitarist Derek Bailey. He subsequently took part regularly in Bailey's Company events, and has gone on to become a major figure in British improvised music.

His current work ranges from the duo Dead Days Beyond Help, in which he plays guitar and sings, his group Predicate who perform his compositions, regular improvising groups with Steve Noble, Kay Grant and others, as well as more ad hoc encounters with musicians as diverse as Thurston Moore, Joe Morris and Duck Baker.

He brings a unique energy and inventiveness to all these projects, elevating them far above the ordinary and injecting them with a thrilling sense of danger and possibility.

alexward.org.uk

"The bass player John Edwards turns up on the best British free-jazz recordings. The drummer Steve Noble cleaves through improvisatory rumblings with dramatic, decisive moves. And the guitarist Alex Ward, a compulsively creative polymath of indiscriminately omnivorous appetite, is a reliably unpredictable axe-hero for collaborators of all backgrounds. The trio’s second record posits a bricolage bebop, an ugly ecstatic jazz, played on sheet metal, broken glass and barbed wire. Coming Up for Air bubbles like an electric soup, and an elastically extended Empty Ballroom finds Edwards and Noble stretching back to catapult Ward’s electric guitar far beyond the gravitational pull of Planet Rock." ( Stewart Lee) Bo’Weavil WEAVIL 30CD Deadeye Tricksters: The Sunday Times Review