Sunday 22 April 2018, 7.30pm
The Founder Effect comprising four of Britain's finest and most experienced free improvisers, Alan Wilkinson, John Coxon, Pat Thomas, and Steve Noble, make a welcome return to Café Oto joined by the legendary frontman of Spacemen Three and Spiritualized J.Spaceman on guitar.
First playing together in 2008 the Founder Effect brought out 2 critically acclaimed CDs on the Treader records label in 2013 which demonstrated the group's ability to explore a highly original, dynamic, and intense approach to free improvisation blending acoustic and electronic sounds into a sonic world quite unlike anything else. Their appearance at Konfrontationen festival in Nickelsdorf, Austria in 2014, was widely regarded as one of its highlights.
ALAN WILKINSON (alto, baritone saxophones, bass clarinet) has for many years been a leading figure in the British Improvised Music Community. His reputation of a full blast, take no prisoners approach was cast in the Leeds based trio Hession/Wilkinson/Fell. Based in London since 1990 his current groups include a long standing trio with John Edwards and Steve Noble, the quartet The Founder Effect with John Coxon, Pat Thomas and Noble, and many collaborations past and present with among others Derek Bailey, Peter Brötzmann, Thurston Moore, J.Spaceman, Chris Corsano, Konstrukt and Talibam!
"At its highest points, this session unleashes some of the most preposterously powerful energy jazz heard since Peter Brötzmann's Yatagarasu trio with Takeo Moriyama and Masahiko Satoh" - Daniel Spicer, The WIRE
John Coxon, perhaps uniquely for an improvising guitarist, is inspired as much by the plangencies of Reggie Young as by the astringencies of Derek Bailey. As irascible and as spiky as it gets, his playing is always haunted by the ghosts of popular song and fragments of the blues.
Pat Thomas studied classical piano from aged 8 and started playing Jazz from the age of 16. He has since gone on to develop an utterly unique style - embracing improvisation, jazz and new music. He has played with Derek Bailey in Company Week (1990/91) and in the trio AND (with Noble) – with Tony Oxley’s Quartet and Celebration Orchestra and in Duo with Lol Coxhill.
"Sartorially shabby as Thomas may be, and on first impression even rather stolid, he has a somewhat imperious charisma that’s immediately amplified when he starts to play. Unlike other pianists whose virtuosity seems to be racing ahead of their thought processes Thomas always seems supremely in command of his gift, and his playing, no matter how free and ready to tangle with abstraction, always carries a charge of authoritative exactitude." - The Jazzmann
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).
J.Spaceman has consistently expressed his interest in musics which explore more experimental means to achieve wider emotional parameters, incorporating and juxtaposing cathartic and atonal passages with rhythm and melody in his composed work. A hugely influential and prominent rock musician of the 90s he has shown a keen interest in improvisation in recent years, collaborating with many musicians through and with Spiritualized and Spring Heel Jack guitarist and producer John Coxon.
