The Late Lunch With Out to Lunch show
"There's nothing else like these shows anywhere on the planet."
Ben Watson’s latest weekly Late Lunch With Out to Lunch show, airs Wednesday 31 May (14.00 GMT) on ResonanceFM (London Community Arts Radio) at www.resonancefm.com or on 104.4 FM. Repeated Saturday 4 June (03.30 GMT) .
This week Ben continues to mine Stellenbosch in South Africa for sounds relevant to his brief (non-idiomatic, anti-semiotic and unpredictable), with Esther Marie Pauw on flute, Pierre-Henri Wicomb on prepared piano, Antionette Theron on vocals, John Pringle on percussion and Jacques van Zyl on electronics. Their improvisations are combined with those of Ammas at the Betsey Trotwood pub: Nick Lubran and Dave Black on guitars, Graham Davis on synths, Out To Lunch on Yamaha keys, Peter Baxter on percussion. The show ends with "Gamma's Poem", Out To Lunch's Word Jazz performed by the late and very much missed Paul Gamble, SF distributor and larger-than-life Philip K. Dickhead.
A Letter From Afar (Albuquerque) in response to a recent show
Dear Mr. Watson:
I've listened to this episode twice so far. What a mixture, what sequencing! Listening to some OTL piano is always a great way to kick off a weekend, and the dynamics in the first piece call into question Cecil Taylor's automatically presumed unconditional adeptness, as much as I love a lot of his stuff -- this is simply more interesting, as it brings you in with some nice piano playing and then introduces melodica and guitar to intensify the intrigue for the ear. Throughout the piece, music slits its throat for the listener and bleeds desperate creativity, searching, poking, insistent on remaining freed up, on not going back to the shackles.
Johnny Watson's familiar but still somehow unorthodox voice barges in, in some brilliant, Weasels-level sequencing. A different angle on the piano indeed. It practically sounds like a different instrument from what we've just heard.
The AMM All-Stars performances from a couple of Fridays ago manage to be haunting, moody and exciteably stimulating at the same time, which perhaps might only be achieved via improvisation. Having AMM pieces bookending Mahler provides quite an interesting sensation...the improv sounds free and unchained compared with Mahler's through-composed, careful approach. The longer AMM closer at the end of the show is a great way to wrap up -- I can't seem to get enough of dialogue-as-a-musical-instrume nt. (And of course one always welcomes the goofy fast version of "Village of the Sun.")
Thanks for putting these episodes together. One can listen repeatedly and never get bored with them. It's impossible. There's nothing else like these shows anywhere on the planet. If there is, I'll betcha the cheek and humor are missing from the host's in-between speech!
Respectfully,
Christopher Fererico