stevelawson.net

Since Saturday’s upload, I’ve put 2 more videos on Vimeo for your delectation and delight, which contrast the different ways that the Looperlative can be used to either simply provide a loop for a piece of music, or be integral to the way it’s created, and the sound that emerges.
I’m fascinated by the relationship between [...]

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At the end of Pt IV, I said that band leaders could consider not hiring musicians who don’t blog to help promote the music. A few of you didn’t like that idea, suggesting that it’s all about the music, and why should someone have to be a writer in order to play music?
To which my [...]

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Another thing I touched on in part II was the issue of ‘sidemen’ who have no sense of ownership of a project. This is a big problem when a large part of the cost of any particular gig is paying the musicians. If only one of you is doing the work to get an audience, [...]

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One of the weird ways that a lot of the UK jazz players have been corrupted in their thinking by the pop world is the infrequency of their recorded output. As I said in my last post, cost has a fair bit to do with that. But the reason that cost has become a factor [...]

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So, as I said in Part 1, the UK jazz scene is producing some outstanding music, but

• Doesn’t seem to appreciate itself and
• Doesn’t seem to have done much thinking about its future or even its place in the ‘present of music’.

I suppose I ought to define what I mean by ‘the UK jazz scene’ (should’ve done this in the first post, but still) - my thoughts here are based on conversations with a wide range of musicians, interactions with venue bookers, reading the jazz press here and talking to the people who run the labels. It’s all anecdotal, in that I’ve done no quantitative research, but the trends within my observations are pretty conclusive - the exceptions to them are there, but very rare…

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I’ve been meaning to write this for ages, but the inspiration today came from trying to find a link to send out to Asaf Sirkis And The Inner Noise’s album ‘The Song Within’. I couldn’t find anything but 30 sec clips, and lots of links to buy it.

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As I mentioned in my previous post about LDW photos, as well as Helena, Richard Kaby was taking pictures at the gig. They usually work as a team, and between them provide such an amazing document of the gigs they photograph.
Here’s the slide show of Richard’s photos:

Click here to view in full screen mode
You [...]

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I don’t think it’s too much of an overstatement to say that one of the really lovely things about playing jazz gigs in London is that more often that not, Helena Dornellas and Richard Kaby turn up and take amazing photos. Their flickr pages (click on their names) are about as good a visual document [...]

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Right, wireless is now working on Das Boot - will be back to full blogging speed before too long. But first, some news you really need to know
Hopefully you’re already planning on coming to the Lawson/Dodds/Wood launch gig next week at the Vortex in Dalston. If you’re not, there’s still time to postpone [...]

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Here’s my favourite of the little Lawson/Dodds/Wood videos so far. After doing the 18 minute long group chat that the last four vids were culled from, I did two 7-8 minute interviews, one each with Patrick and Roy, about what they did specifically on the project.
With a project as well defined as this, it [...]

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