STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
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If Herbie Went West Coast, Cafe Oto, London
Jazz meeting of virtuoso minds
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SOME of Britain’s finest and most audacious improvising musicians were in their own liberated zone at this gig.
Dubbed If Herbie Went West Coast by electronics wizard Phil Durrant, this session recalled an era when Herbie Hancock made his Crossings and Sextant albums and created an epochal rendezvous of acoustic and electronic sounds.
Durrant’s electric beat, generated by an array of switches, wires, modular synthesiser and plugs, combined with Mark Sanders’s pulsating drums and John Sanders’s plunging bass and fomented a pounding rhythmic vibration, while Pat Thomas — switching between iPad sonics and fervent piano runs — deepened the excitation.
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