By
Colin Green
Such are the flood of releases from British reeds-man Paul Dunmall that it
sometimes feels like you can never quite catch-up. 2018 saw him feature on
eight albums, all on Trevor Taylor’s FMR label which has done so much to
support free jazz and improv over the years.
The Rain Sessions
(FMR, 2018) was reviewed by Paul Acquaro in December and over the next two
days it falls to me to cover the rest, albeit more briefly than they
deserve. Anyone wanting a refresher on this considerable musician can take
a look at the blog’s coverage during our Dunmall week a few years ago,
starting
here
(click on “newer post” to move through the reviews).
Paul Dunmall, John O’Gallagher, John Edwards, Mark Sanders – Freedom
Music (FMR, 2018)
****
Recorded in January 2018 at the Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham – a
favourite haunt in my teens – the quartet consists of Dunmall (tenor,
right), John O’Gallagher (alto, left), John Edwards, double bass, and Mark
Sanders, drums. The presence of the latter two is a virtual guarantee of
quality.
Dunmall has a particular way of developing material, relying on movement in
and around distinct harmonic centres, more modes than keys, travelling from
one area to the next like irregular stepping stones. This is likely
something he learnt from his intensive studies of Coltrane, though taken
into more highly developed areas. It allows him greater fluidity in his
modulations, a more discriminating palette of colours, and the resources to
construct a narrative that shifts between discernible expressive
temperatures. Methodical but unpredictable, it forms a glue that binds his
often lengthy discursions into comprehensible progressions, unpacking and
reconfiguring musical ideas in seemingly endless chains of association, a
continuation of one of Coltrane’s obsessions, and that of other
contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic: the propagation of material
from primary particles, the smallest units of significance. Dunmall is also
indebted to Coltrane for a sense of heroic determination – music as a
spiritual quest striving for transcendence, with the exploration of the
interior life of a musical figure operating as a simulacrum of other
searches, culminating in peaks of vertiginous grandeur that evoke the
Sublime, a place where inner and outer worlds meet.
All this can be heard on ‘Freedom Music One’ and ‘Two’, both of substantial
duration. The basic elements are presented at the outset of each of the
identifiable dramatic zones through which the music passes in a loose sort
of head that functions like a gravitational presence. (I’ve a feeling that
some of these phrases, often closely related, are actually derived from
Coltrane or so similar they could be.) This produces a sequence of vivid
arcs that are also deeply melodic improvisations referable, however
obliquely, to those initial seeds and their germination. O’Gallagher is
perfectly attuned to Dunmall’s thinking and there’s a visceral excitement
as the pair become locked in sinuous counterpoint, ascending and hovering
on the currents generated by bustling bass and percussion. They end with
epic hollering over thundering drums. The shorter ‘Freedom Music Three’ is
a lament of dusky introspection. Here, as elsewhere, Edwards and Sanders
are at their inventive best weaving a rich tapestry of sound with verve and
sensitivity.
As evidenced by the following two albums, Dunmall is too much of a shape
shifter to be regarded simply as a Coltrane acolyte, displaying a
multivalence that is part of his strength and originality.
Paul Dunmall, Philip Gibbs, Neil Metcalfe, Ashley John Long – Seascapes (FMR, 2018)
****
These are performances from November 2017 at the Victoria Rooms, Bristol, a
frequent recording venue for Dunmall, with tenor and soprano saxophones,
Philip Gibbs on electric guitar, Neil Metcalfe, flute, and Ashley John
Long, double bass, all familiar collaborators and a combination that gives
a chamber music feel to the pieces. Full of incessant activity across a
spectrum of registers, always fluctuating, barely still, it’s impossible to
avoid marine metaphors or thinking of some of those breath-taking sequences
from the BBC’s Blue Planet series depicting the sheer variety of
life-forms and complexity of dependence in the aqueous space that lies
beneath the ocean’s surface. This is exactly what’s going on musically, a
diversity of organisms undergoing startling transformations in a wealth of
colour — an airy flute spinning out notes, bubbling guitar, sprightly,
fumbling bass and a saxophone that squeezes into the gaps between. Blink
and you might miss something.
Collectively, the ensemble conjures up the multiple movement of glittering
shoals – bursts of energy darting hither and thither – undulating ribbons
of sound looping and gliding, and odd, interlocked configurations that
proceed crabwise. On ‘Colour of the Season’ there’s an unusual buzzing tone
to Dunmall’s soprano, sounding like an Indian Shehnai (an affect achieved
through his embouchure) playing Eastern scales over the watery strains of
Gibbs’ guitar; like surface of the sea, present yet undefined.
Paul Dunmall, Alan Niblock, Mark Sanders – Dark Energy (FMR, 2018)
****
A session from the Blast Furnace studio in Derry, Northern Ireland in April
2013 finds Dunmall (on tenor) and Sanders teamed with Irish double bassist,
Alan Niblock. The music is largely defined by their relationship with
Niblock whose dexterous, fulsome bass and adroit bowing form the point
around which saxophone and drums circulate Faint echoes and rhymes drift
through the trio, and we hear yet another side to Dunmall, more restrained
and circumspect with accelerations and hard-edged runs tempered by
start-stop reflections, honking asides and suggestive pianissimo phrases
left hanging in the air. On ‘Light Maters’, his expansive saxophone drops
back down, withdrawing into abbreviations, squeals and burrs while Sanders
skims and skitters across his kit like an animating breeze. With susurrus
brushes and soft trills, ‘Life Matters’ is shadows and whispers, barely
there.
Below is the trio’s terrific set from the Playhouse in Derry the following
month, a denser and more loquacious affair, and an opportunity to see
Sanders give a masterclass in drumming.
