2 nights with The Thing at Pardon To Tu (04-05.05)

Let us start this time with where rather than who. Pardon To Tu has established itself in the recent

years as the busiest free jazz stage in Poland. Few years back such statement could be made Krakow's Alchemia, now I've came to envy the jazz fans in or Capitol. I believe it's perfectly natural that such places come to live and go, but I what I've witnessed in Pardon To Tu gives reasonable hopes that this particular places will live and love the music for a longer while.

The place, cosy and warm, makes the musicians feel at home, the audience is there, filling the house and listening enthusiastically. The musicians are there in the audience as well, to listen to each other, to learn and to enjoy themselves. Warsaw's free jazz scene is flourishing and Pardon To Tu has become it's hang out space. There's creative impetus around the place and its probably the most important manifestation is how the club tries to participate actively in forming its artistic enviroment, an example of which is the residence series of the "2 nights with" and improvised sets featuring the internationally acknowledged guests playing with polish musicians.

Nu Ensemble at 8th Krakow Jazz Autumn - day IV (11.10)

The fourth and the final of the Alchemia evenings was so packed that it seems impossible to me to fit the whole in a single post but I'll try to do a telegraphic one.

Set I 

Once again a solo + duo + solo formula. Dieb13 appears on stage behind 5 (!) turntables, the music is a mirage of loops, electronic noises, acoustic samples. A marriage of analogue sounds in a digital world. Impressive sense of drama and tension and technical mastery in managing the five different sources contemporaneously.

Peter Evans and Per-Ake Holmlander

Peter Evans and Per-Ake Holmlander started off with a series of burps on the horns but this time the real pleasure was to hear Peter Evans playing in the more "traditional" free-jazz vein, with wild runs trumpet flights (l had an immage of a hunter playing his bugle, with the steadier tuba walkig by heavily).

The Thing at Alchemia (Krakow Autumn Jazz 2012. 28.10)

There are few bands in the business that can match the energy level presented on stage by The Thing. The band made a splash this year with the "The Cherry Thing" collaboration with Neneh Cherry but if you think they've been tamed and made ready to sail off to the mainstream market you couldn't have been more mistaken.

The Thing rocks the house with the first violent hit on the drums and the simultanous sharp note of the tenor while the bass strings are being pulled away. And so they storm forward and keep rock'n'rolling through dynamite gritty riffs. Paal ongoingly destroing the drumset with the precise hits, Ingebright plucking the bass strings mightily as if it were a flamenco guitar and Mats balancing his notes on his feet like the heavy weight box champion (on tenor exclusively this time, slightly less power but there's soulfull quickness to make it up).

In the midst of this punk'n'jazz rock'n'roll madness they can surprise you with anything from the hypnotic feedback-mike distortions to a heartwarming soulfull ballad (a wothy dedication to Joe McPhee). All that could very well happen in the very same piece as it occured during the first encore of the evening when I half-expected Ingebright to take the bass and tomahawk-smash the amp with it. 'Nough written.

So here's a mad-dog* round to The Thing. For their continous tour in the search of "meat, barbecue sauce, adventures, vinyls, boots and booze".

Here's to The Thing. Knocking socks off your feet with their music since 2ooo.

mad dog - a shot with a vodka, raspberry juice and tabasco. 

The Thing:
Mats Gustafsson - tenor sax
Ingebright Haker-Flaten - double bass
Paal Nilssen-Love - drums

Alchemia. Krakow. 28.10.2012