MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
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
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
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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