Ray Dickaty, Michal Dymny, Tomasz Choloniewski at Cafe Bethel – 9.12

Now this came to my attention at the very last moment (thank Facebook for invitations :) and while both Michal and Tomasz are active on local improvisor's stage in Krakow and I knew their playing, Ray Dickaty was a new name, quick look around the web and I was already curious about hearing improvise a guy who played with a rock band – Spiritualized, and visit to his myspace page reaffirmed my decision to go to the place.

Ray plays tenor, Michal is on electric guitar with an array of strange or common objects (plastick sticks, metal plate, electric razor, comb) and Tomasz, apart from regular drums set, a table full of metal bowls (looking Ikea) and enamel pots (from Olkusz) that played with drumsticks sounds a bit like marimba maybe. They start and guitar puts in the rhythmic drive with fingers drumming the bass strings, then moving to more spare notes, disjointed, abstract. The music gets a nice forward drive provided by Tomasz or Michal, sometimes both, with rock dynamic and its immediacy sometimes coming forward. Great group interplay, sometimes playing some kind of musical catch and run, at other moments longing howls short sound outbursts on saxophone over drone background provided by electric noises on strings. Group moving swiftly between hushed and overblown, melodic labirynths and some simple two or three notes motives, tribal or rock drumming and rhythm-less sounds with pulse all over the place, like dots and lines on some abstract painting. Never staying too long in one place, creating a series of miniatures, divided into pieces (1 st set, 4 improvs), or linking them one to another with some sudden turns and twists (2 nd set, 1 suite-like improv). With saxophone quite often in the background and Michal on guitar taking the lead part (finding some great sounds with the guitar on his lap, and metal plate over the strings, drumming on it with fingers, plastick sticks or razor machine). Overall great concert and it's inspiring to see so many places and musicians locally engaged in free improvisation music.

Hopefully the place will stay open for this kind of performance since it was the first (or one of the firsts) events of this kind in there.