Release Date: 27 November 2015
Label: Babel
Packaging Type: Digipak
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 5028159000431
Genres: Jazz Avant-garde
Description
Black Top's first album garnered serious critical plaudits across the music world. Their second, simply entitled #TWO, extends their collaborations to include the man who perhaps more than anyone has extended the range and the properties of the saxophone post-John Coltrane. Black Top #TWO with Evan Parker brings together two strands of English improvised music, two generations of musicians, two cultures in one titanic recording.
Black Top, the duo of multi-instrumentalist Orphy Robinson and pianist Pat Thomas, was initiated in late 2011, as a shape-shifting unit, dedicated to exploring the intersection between live instruments and lo-fi technology. Their virtuoso, freely improvised performances combine twisted loops, samples and dub-effects, which draw on their Afro-Caribbean roots, with a spontaneity and daring rooted in the free-jazz experiments of New York loft-scene innovators such as Sam Rivers.
Recorded in The Vortex in east London as part of Evan's 70th Birthday celebrations the roots of this inspired musical conversation run deep. Though this recording documents Evan's first physical encounter with Black Top they have long worked together as individuals. Pat fondly recalls a session with Evan in Hungary, over two decades ago, with Roger Turner, John Russell and Phil Minton, and Evan responds by declaring that, "Pat is very open to the moment and is equally good at surprising himself into unknown territory and provoking others to take a risk." On the other hand, Orphy has guested with several of Evan's groups but initially played alongside him in the Lawrence 'Butch' Morris London Skyscraper Project back in '97. Since then he has enjoyed a similar musical relationship through the sessions of the London Improvisers Orchestra.
"I felt I could do anything I wanted – which is how I like to feel. Don't we all?" Evan Parker
"It's edgy, uncompromising improv, but full of rugged lyricism, and built on plenty of compelling grooves." The Guardian
Tracklisting
Glockenspiel
Barbacana
Black Top
Black Top
Black Top
Christine Tobin
Christine Tobin
Billy Jenkins
Black Top
Black Top
