Head

Jon Lloyd | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 17, 2000)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Leo Records UK
• ASIN: B0000281UL
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,180,100 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Audax Drop

2. Fragment 92and93

3. Slingback

4. V-Points

5. Parabola

6. Jump

7. Boots

8. Audax Drop

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent & combustible quartet music, June 8, 2001

By 

N. Dorward "obsessive reviewer" (Toronto, ON Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Head (Audio CD)

Jon Lloyd is an English saxophonist who, unlike Evan Parker or John Butcher, has yet to gain much of a following in North America. That's a pity, as he's a strikingly original player whose music ambitiously ranges from straight jazz to free jazz to free improvisation. His saxophone playing is rather hard to pin down to specific influences: it's obvious he's absorbed British players as different as Evan Parker & John Surman into his sound, & he's certainly absorbed the work of mid-century masters like Dolphy & Coltrane too. One suspects that Anthony Braxton is a key source, not least for Lloyd's interest in dovetailing composed structures & improvisation in the context of live performance--it's appropriate that this disc is on Leo, which released 3 classic live Braxton concerts recorded in Coventry, London & Birmingham which I would guess Lloyd has listened to with care. But ultimately Lloyd is very much his own man: this disc, recorded live on a 1993 tour with his working quartet, is an excellent sampler of his methods. He plays alto & soprano here, & is joined by the formidable John Law on piano, Paul Rogers on bass, & Mark Sanders on drums.

In jazz parlance the "head" is the melody of a tune, usually stated to begin & end a performance (hence the jam-session mime of tapping one's head to signal that everyone should wind things up). Here such conventions of structure are explored & interrogated, with performances often spiralling out from the head & never returning to it. In some sense the entire album is conceived of as one structure placed between two heads: the main obvious recurrence of a theme is in the statement of "Audax Drop", a free-bop tune, in hte first track & its return as the 8th track in a very different version.

I'll give an instance of how this album's ebbs & flows work. "Slingback" begins as a joyous calypso; as Lloyd's solo progresses, it first moves through a stop-start passage, then bursts into free time. The piano takes over, then the bass, which gradually reduces the volume level until it's barely audible...& then, with a few quizzical remarks from the piano, the performance simply stops. After audience applause, the piano picks up where it left off, gradually unveiling a new motif, an intricate, slinky pattern of eighth notes in the treble in which Lloyd & the others eventually join in--we're now in "V-points". Lloyd's solo gradually builds in intensity & volume over a slow bass pedal & the hypnotic repetition of the motif on the piano. Suddenly the solo peaks as the rhythm section moves "out" into hectic free-time; only to suddenly return to the groove, at which point the performance very gradually decreases in intensity & volume....& then evaporates.

That's 20 minutes of a CD packed to full length--the music always finds its own space & time, & is unusually packed with detail & incident. The music deserves a listen, especially nowadays, where such a rapprochement of free jazz & more conventionally structured idioms has been increasingly significant (for instance, in the recent work of Marilyn Crispell & Matthew Shipp; or among players like Dave Douglas & Myra Melford).