John Edwards, Alexander Hawkins, Joe McPhee, Steve Noble, as ‘Decoy with Joe McPhee’ at Café Oto, Dalston – 19, 20, 21, 22 July 2023
I was intrigued when these dates were announced. Joe McPhee played 4 extraordinary nights at Café Oto, in 2019, but then he was with different groupings every night. He ran the gamut – with poetry, a duo with a cellist, power(ful) play with Paal Nilssen-Love, an exploratory outing with the UK’s fine Black Top, and, yes, a great night with organ trio Decoy to round off. He has played Oto, and the nearby Vortex, before, of course. I recall a fabulous night with Joe and Evan Parker at The Vortex in 2015, Evan on tenor, Joe playing trumpet. Someone at my table that night suggested he might go home at the interval, as the first half had been so wonderful that, he felt, nothing could better it. And great nights at both venues with his Survival Unit 111 (Joe, Fred Lonberg-Holm, and Michael Zerang), and, an outlier, with Graham Lambkin at Oto, Joe dressed (amazingly) for the occasion. A mask before they became contested… But perhaps his most consistent engagement with UK musicians has been with Decoy (Alexander Hawkins on Hammond organ, John Edwards on double bass, and Steve Noble on drums).
So here were 4 evenings with the Decoy. It had huge potential, but nonetheless 4 nights! Could the wonder be sustained with the same aggregation over such a period? And the stamina required? Joe McPhee is 83. All expectations surpassed / What an aggregation, and what consistent brilliance, exuberance, intensity, and sheer joy. They all managed to energise and elevate each other and the audience.
This is not intended as a review per se, but some description of what they do may be necessary. The first thing to say is that one of the things they do is simply get better and better. Joe is a stunning musician and composer, coming back from illness that restricted his playing. Here his tenor playing was magisterial, and covered the full range of his interests and ambit. Decoy are an organ trio that have re-invented the organ trio. Alexander Hawkins, whilst I know he cherishes the history of the Hammond organ and his great jazz antecedents, has taken the instrument into another dimension entirely. I remember an interview with Evan Parker where he recalled, as a young post Coltrane improviser, being asked to provide some ‘space music’ with his band. Hawkins certainly produces some blips, whimpers, bleeps and dribbles that could be called space music, but he, and his companions, can also strike up a massive, if occasionally slightly wonky groove. Eerie over fractured backbeat. And sinister sonorities a-plenty. As well as moments of pure gloopiness.
Really, the story is one of cohesion, and how this amazing trio meshes, with itself, and with Joe McPhee, but some indication of who and what are meshing seems appropriate. John Edwards is an astonishing bassist. With huge plucked notes and blistered bowing, he commands attention throughout, with his massive sound and energy. In no sense is he an accompanist or rhythm section player. His dynamic plucked notes are devastating, especially at pace, and his bass recalls, from a different McPhee band, the trance blues of Fred Lonberg-Holm’s electric cello (but we could just as easily mention another Fred – the pure Delta sinew of Mississippi Fred McDowell). John was a monster across the four nights. He and McPhee go back to 2003 and are now perfectly in tune with each other. And, like Alex, John, with his sinister creaks, can do spooky too,
I wrote ‘magnificent’ next to Steve Noble’s name on the first night, and by the fourth, the announcer was introducing Steve in the same way. With his boundless energy, his canny rimshots, his rolls – from gentle to almost martial tattoo – he is the perfect drummer for this group, His mallet work is superb, but, when the band lock together and soar he is fantastic. This is such a marvellously responsive band and his work is key to that.
Before discussing Joe McPhee, it is worth reiterating that this is a wonderful display of togetherness, and there are some lightening unisons in the music. What it is not is band and soloist. Often everyone solos. Often no-one solos. McPhee, in particular, comments rather than hectors. He can, and does, have long excursions, but he can also add a few pithy phrases to the mix. In a way that (if reference is needed) somewhat evokes early recordings by Albert Ayler (in Scandinavia) and Dewey Redman (on Look for the Black Star),
Like Redman, Joe ululates, and sings along with his playing. And sometimes just sings. He also recites his poetry, in this case the powerful and ever pertinent paean to musicians in a digital world, ‘Party Lights’. His tenor playing can be pure lyricism, declamatory roars, ululating with vibrato (over mighty ostinato), muffled, slurred, gently decay, even curdled. He is never far from a melody (a tune referenced or invented). And here he was in reflective mood. A verse from a poem about John Coltrane led to Coltrane hints throughout (an overt snippet of A Love Supreme on the final night). And a particularly poignant tribute to the recently departed Peter Brotzmann, a friend and cohort of McPhee’s, and another Oto favourite, on the second night. Joe’s spoken farewell was extremely moving, then he gave us part of Peter’s epochal Machine Gun. Summoning up musical spirits. And touching on his own back catalogue (of composition and improvisation). He kept returning to his early piece ‘Knox’, on the third evening. Beautiful to hear it again. On the last night he played a lovely ballad form that I was sure must already be a composition. But, no, ‘I made it up’. And that is how astonishing he is, and this band are. Part of their skill is making the new sound strangely familiar, and vice versa, and more besides.
As Joe said on the second night, ‘We must never forget that this music, however far it goes, comes out of the blues’. And it went pretty far, but the back pages were discernible. My title for this piece references Mingus, Sun Ra, and Duke Ellington, all composers Joe has engaged with at various times in his, what, journey. The history and the future – or to quote a McPhee title, A Future Retrospective.
This section of my piece might be called, Happiness – on the level. The musicians love this venue. Joe has told me that he likes this club for the same reason that I do, because the musicians are right next to the audience (sold out, by the way). There is no stage, a fact, referenced by saxophonist / reed player Alan Wilkinson in A Bright Nowhere, a highly recommended film about Eddie Prevost, much of which was shot a year ago at Café Oto. Eddie is perhaps associated with a more austere form of improvised music, but can, of course, drum up a storm, and has played at Oto with Joe and Orphy Robinson… As did the late John Russell, another from a slightly different tradition who nonetheless worked brilliantly with Joe (and loved it, he told me).
CDs by Decoy, some with McPhee, are all very fine, and should be bought if at all possible. But, caveat emptor, this was better. They were all utterly brilliant. And they played with such unfettered joy. I kept noting this down, particularly the grin on Alexander Hawkins face, and Joe’s visible enthusiasm with the audience (where he noted a more than healthy number of young people and women, not always the case with improvised music). The perceptive fourth night announcer (see above) used the word ‘joy’ too. Maybe that is the secret. The audience was abuzz, the chatter outside, and in following days’ queues, was all of wonder and excitement. What a consistently high standard. What a unit. And much more. Because, one, of many, things these gigs did was to show the massive potential in improvised music, listening to and playing, for sheer joy. Yes, there was sadness, reflection, and some hugely powerful playing, but, mostly, there was an unbridled, utterly brilliant, sense of joy. As a potent antidote to these beleaguered times, this music can’t be bettered. Four more evenings at Café Oto with Joe McPhee. Four more evenings of joy. Four more evenings of joy with Decoy and Joe McPhee. Every set a tour de force. And, as Joe is fond of saying, ‘Don’t postpone joy’.
© Stephen C. Middleton 2023
Photos: Joe Harris
This took me back to the late 1990s when I used to read your lyrical pieces in Socialist Future when I was living in Munich. Your gift is to make the reader feel as if he/she were there.