gwilym simcock by katharine eastman
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treated piano - early days yet but this might be my least-liked album so far - it's not awful, but it's not minimal all the time, and I'm not yet adapted to the new maximalist fashion (see below)
(LATER - nothing like as bad as I imagined it would sound - while making this album I thought I was creating a confused muddle - but it's actually quite disciplined. What threw me was that this album actually has more than one idea and that's unusual for me. Possibly a first. I'd say it has two ideas, and fortunately both of them are very similar)
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This morning I was alarmed to see a new Youtube Matt D'Avella minimalism thingy saying that minimalism is over. Actually I was a bit relieved. I was already beginning to stop feeling guilty about the growing piles of unread charity shop books up here in the spare room. And I'd already accepted that I'd never be one of those digital nomads whose entire possessions could fit into a tiny rucksack - so long as I can come round to your house and sit on your sofa for six weeks till I find someone else's sofa to sit on.
But musically I'm still fairly stuck on loving simple stuff. Last night I went to the first gig I'd been to since before Covid. I go to the cinema a dozen times a day, eat out a million times per week, go out doing stuff every day blah blah - but for some reason I'd been holding back on gig-going. Though I must admit I'd been holding back on gig-going even before Covid was a thing.
Anyway last night I walked over to Turner Sims to see Acoustic Triangle - a jazzy threesome (obviously?) whose pianist is the great Gwilym Simcock. I've loved him for years - probably stemming from a random pot-luck purchase of one of his CDs in a charity shop. His solo stuff is midway between modern "classical" and modern jazz - Webern fans could like him, Monk fans could like him.
Alongside him, Acoustic Triangle is a famous guy on sax/clarinet called Tim Garland, who I can maybe kid myself that I'd heard of before, and on double bass it's Malcolm Creese, who I can't/hadn't.
I like Turner Sims. Particularly when it's only half-full - which it was last night. I sat well away from everyone else - over by the wall among a bank of peaceful empty seats. Just like I always sit in the front row at cinemas - not for a better view, but because everyone else thinks it's weird to do something like that as they all herd together at the back - oh the bliss of being left quietly alone.
Yes last night there were the familiar horrors - a mobile phone in the front row went off during the quietest moment, much coughing and wheezing from various corners, and that weird jazz-thing of the audience clapping when someone stops playing a bit of a solo - I guess I'm stupid for finding it awkward - it might make sense in some smoky druggy tiny dive in New York in the 1950s, but in a posh smart concert hall with an audience of frowning academics it just looked phony.
And sometimes I was reminded why people like to herd together. Malcolm kept on gazing over at me - an obvious target for attention. And I smiled back. But you can only smile for so long, even in the dark. Tim was too noisy most of the time. The trio were at their best when he wasn't playing at all (which was quite a lot of the time). It's not often that I go to a gig and come away impressed. But I was impressed with Gwilym. He never let me down. Quiet, and even noisy, he's wonderful.
And when he and Malcolm were duetting and strumming/thumping away it was a reminder of what a brilliant combination these two instruments are. Obviously the worst thing about gigs is the between-song banter - the audience forcing themselves to laugh at musicians' childishly pathetic "jokes". But last night I couldn't be cynical. Everyone came across as lovely and human and natural, and even I found some of the jokes quite funny.
The one wrong step, which might have been a right step, was that they started the gig with a really very bad track. 25-ish years ago it suddenly became the fashion for bands to no longer put their best foot forward on albums, and everyone put their worst track in first place and then they put their best track in 2nd place. On albums that seems to work. During gigs it's much riskier, and I must admit it took me about an hour to recover from the shock of that early stumble and to finally realise how good the gig was.
The previous gig I went to - also at the Turner Sims, just before the pandemic struck, was to see Carla Bley - except it wasn't to see her but to see the guy who was playing sax alongside her - Andy Sheppard. And last night I didn't go to see the Triangle, but just Gwilym - tall, dark, shy and sweet and monosyllabic and unfortunately in his tight black trousers walking a lot like Max Wall.
But I had problems of my own. The sole on one of my shoes came off just after I left Turner Sims for the walk home and this morning the house still stinks of the weird glue that I've used to try to repair it - it's made me think uncharacteristic things, e.g. that maybe I enjoy gig-going more than I'd remembered, and one day I might go to another one.
This morning high I've tried to be Gwilym - not easy when (a) you can't play the piano, and (b) the piano you're (not-)playing on is a clunky cheap plastic battery-powered hissy-fitty thing rather than a £20000000000 wires-and-wood masterpiece. Never mind, I didn't get the impression last night that anyone was paying much attention to the music, and that is the impression I will also get this morning. It's a weight off all our minds.
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(recorded this morning, photo Acoustic Triangle at the Turner Sims last night)
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