BALANCE

In the very early 1970s I co-founded the group Balance with guitarist Ian Brighton. We rehearsed in my tiny bedsit in Crouch End, North London, every week - with Ian kindly travelling up from Southend - and gradually the group (often referred to as The Crouch End All Stars) expanded over time - from the stable duo of Ian & myself - to include Radu Malfatti (Trombone) and Phil Wachsman (electric violin) and finally Colin Wood on Cello. We performed live and eventually recorded for INCUS the LP Balance in 1973 (deleted ?) at Trevor Taylor's studio in Southend. Shortly afterwards the group disbanded.

Ian had studied with Derek Bailey and, if I remember aright, Derek had suggested Ian look me up. I also played in The Derek Bailey Group and then in Company (led by Derek Bailey) whenever Derek asked me. However, I also had stood in for percussionist Trevor Taylor for a three-month season in Penzance, Cornwall with Goudie Charles' group the Jazz Roots and Ian played in an improvising group from Southend with Trevor. So the beginning of the duo with Ian Brighton may have come about through Trevor Taylor. However, it happened, I am very grateful for those memorable duo sessions with Ian at Tivoli Road. My bedsit there was tiny. Once you entered the room there was my equipment right before you and then the bed. I had to climb over the bed in order to get behind my equipment to play it.

However, it was a fantastic place - and only £2.50 a week rent! The day I moved in I set up and played a little. When I went down to pay the landlady her rent I asked if she had minded my playing. She replied that she had thought that I was running a bath. There I was trying to play as naturally as possible - including like rainfall! Fantastic - I could play with a free mind with no worries about neighbours - apart from the time I was doing a duo with Mongezi Feza (pocket trumpet) in the summer with the windows open when the landlady walked in after about half an hour or so asking if we could turn it down a bit as the two old ladies next door were finding it a bit too much! That was the only complaint. There were other incidents - often from other flat mates (like the Scottish fraternity) - who'd walk in on a Friday evening blind drunk wondering how I had the nerve to call my playing music! Often demanding explanations and inviting their friends to witness this maniacal "musician" I think simply to prove to their pub companions that they were neither exaggerating or hallucinating!

TO LISTEN TO BALANCE PLEASE CLICK HERE

This is part of track #1 (Side A) from the LP on Incus Records (same as above) featuring: -

Ian Brighton on Electric Guitar

Radu Malfatti on Trombone

Frank Perry on Percussion

Philip Wachsman on Electric Violin

The latest of the Incus label’s output develops that busy, garrulous, skittering kind of music that the Musician’s Co-operative has pioneered in the past four years. Despite that, it’s the sustained and subdued episodes of the record that grab you; particularly where the remarkable percussionist Frank Perry solemnly punctuates long, gathering-mist passages with the tolling of gongs or bells.

‘Balance’ illustrates, to a degree unthinkable a few years back, the speed with which atonal and arrhythmic music has grown up (and the ease with which it becomes natural to listen to). The group is a quintet featuring trombone, cello, violin and guitar plus Perry; and though they regard this example as fairly dated already (it’s 18 months old) the music is a good deal more challenging and less inclined to resort to safe territory than the apparently ‘mind-stretching’ Revolutionary Ensemble of New York. It’s good to know that some local musicians, having given up spade-imitating as a bad job, have dug firmly into some volatile raw materials that don’t owe anything to anybody.

(John Fordham)

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