64 THE LIST ’i‘ No.
There is an art to doing nothing Roddy Woomble discovers. Just like drinking. Two months isn‘t that long in the scale of things. I know. but Scotland felt almost mythical to me by the time my plane touched down last week in Glasgow. All the things I'd normally moan about — the rain, neds. black pudding — never seemed so appealing. Also liked the fact that the taxi driver called me son. It's the little things like that I miss the most when I‘m away.
Despite my moaning, my American sojourn was a lot of fun and altogether worthwhile. We went to some places that I‘d never been to. some that I'll never go back to. and others I might. Also, some of the concerts were an unexpected delight.
I read a review of one that said something like 'the singer plays 99% of the set with his jacket over his head. then he looses his glasses and falls off the stage'. making me sound quite cool. If only it was the truth and not just the result of all the rum punch my wife had been feeding me. Drinking in America is certainly a different experience.
Unlike Scotland. where it's seen as normal to spend a good seven hours slowly decompressing into alcohol, there it's all about big mea8ures. tipping the barman and getting drunk as quickly as you can before going home early. And the bars don‘t shut till 4am. What a waste.
Not wishing to sound like a man whose life revolves around bars. although I do spend a fair bit of my life near well stocked bars. I'm not actually a particularly big drinker and I don't change that much when I’ve had too much. My sentences just get longer so that I don't even understand them and start laughing. One final note is that I love the smell of whisky. But I've never tried vodka.
It feels quite liberating now to have some time to do nothing. Can't remember who it was who said there's a poetry in doing nothing properly, but they were right. I'm working on that one right now.
Id/ewi/d play Barrow/and, Glasgow. Thu 22 Dec.
1 Der; 2005)
SPECTRAL ROCK
THE DURUTTI COLUMN
Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Sat 26 Nov; the Arches, Glasgow, Sun 27 Nov
When Factory Records first released The Return of The Durutti Column in a sandpaper sleeve at a time when everyone else was inventing post-punk and the don’t- give-a-fuck Factory aesthetic was about to make legends of Joy Division, it went against the grain in every way. Ostensibly the solo debut of sensitive guitar virtuoso \fini Reilly, it was as if such wilfully antagonistic packaging was protecting the fragile, classically-tinged impressionism contained therein.
Almost three decades on, the Durutti Column’s back catalogue is vast, but on forthcoming album, Keep Breathing, Reilly’s deeply personal template remains essentially the same. Delicater plucked and electronically enhanced melodies are married to long- term sideman Bruce Mitchell’s scattershot drum patterns and the fripperies of producer Keir Stewart’s sampling. Occasional female voices add an ethereal touch to a sound that veers between melancholy and euphoric. It’s something pretty beautiful.
One shouldn’t, however, mistake Reilly’s oeuvre for ambient wallpaper drift music, even if a recent composition currently forms the soundtrack for an
Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko is widely regarded as a key figure in the development of post-60s European jazz. He played his part in the creation of a European jazz aesthetic that evolved in a distinctive fashion from the received American model. but retained connections with it. He will lead his current quartet on this latest Visit. featuring three younger Polish musicians. Marcin Wasilewski (piano). Slawomir KurkieWicz (bass) and Michal Mikiwicz (drums). The trumpeter's spaCious. lyrical approach to music remains firmly rooted in the concept of improwsation.
'I don't speak only about playing my solos when I say that I like to improvise freely. I use it to compose and record as well. In fact. really just for anything.‘
Stanko was part of a very productive generation of jazz musicians in his homeland. Contemporaries like Komeda. Michal Urbaniak. Zbiginiew Seifert or Adam MakOWicz all made a powerful impact in the 603 and early 70s. often overlapping with other art forms in the process.
“Those were great days. The position of jazz in the Polish artistic milieu at that time was exceptional. Jazz meant being free and modern. Jazz musicians were highly ranked. and the cream of Polish filmmakers. visual artists. actors and writers simply spOiled us. My own work has been influenced by many other media. such as film. theatre, painting, literature and poetry. as well as philosophy and humanity. in its broad sense.‘ (Kenny Mathieson)
exhibition of conceptual art at Manchester Museum of Science. And the last time this apparent renaissance man played Glasgow it was at Tramway to provide the live soundtrack to A Treatise on the Steppenwolf, a stage play devised by the 12 Stars company. Reilly seems ambivalent about them now.
‘I don’t really get it,’ he admits, scrunching up his face in distaste. ‘Conceptual art doesn’t mean anything to me. There’s no emotion there. No soul. Everything I’ve ever done has tried to convey some kind of emotion, and to just be as honest as I can.’
We’re sitting in a downtown Manchester coffee house-cum-esoteric record shop where Reilly’s girlfriend works. Pastoral electronica is floating out of the shop’s speakers. It’s the sort of generic pap that Reilly is lumped alongside, but he’s having none of it.
‘If you listen to Beethoven’s La Pathetique or Gorecki, it might not be technically brilliant, but you can feel it. This sort of stuff has no melody or heart.’
Keep Breathing, however, is the first album Reilly claims to be happy with. The fact that he’s also said this the last two times we’ve spoken about his two previous albums betrays a rare perfectionist streak.
‘45% is the benchmark with me,’ he grins, slipping some whisky from a hip flask into his tea. ‘I know I can do better, but 45% is a start.’ (Neil Cooper)
JAZZ TOMASZ STANKO QUARTET Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Wed 23 Nov