Al Swainger’s Pointless Beauty, Black Mountain Jazz, Melville Centre, Abergavenny, 29/03/2025.

Al Swainger – electric bass, electronics, Gary Alesbrook – flugel horn, Gary Bamford – keyboards, Jon Clark – drums

Al Swainger is a bass player, composer and educator based in Bristol. I know his playing best through his work as a reliable jazz double bassist and as recently as March 2025 enjoyed his performance at nearby Brecon Jazz Club when he was part of a quartet led by Bristol based vocalist, percussionist and songwriter Tammy Payne. Review here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/tammy-payne-quartet-brecon-jazz-club-the-muse-arts-centre-brecon-11-03-2025

I also saw him play at the 2025 Bath Jazz Weekend as part of a sextet led by saxophonist Kevin Figes that paid homage to the music of the late, great Bristolian pianist and composer Keith Tippett.
https://www.thejazzmann.com/features/article/fifth-annual-bath-jazz-weekend-widcombe-social-club-bath-saturday-4th-january-2025

More pertinent to tonight’s proceedings is the fact that Swainger has appeared at Black Mountain Jazz on two previous occasions, firstly in November 2019 when he was part of a quartet led by the Italian born, London based saxophonist Tommaso Starace. This was a themed performance that paid tribute to the great American alto saxophonist Julian ‘Cannonball’ Adderley. I was unable to attend on that occasion as I was absent as that year’s EFG London Jazz Festival. However the Starace Quartet’s performance was given a five star review by guest contributor Debs Hancock and her account can be found here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/tommaso-starace-quartet-plays-cannonball-adderley-black-mountain-jazz-abergavenny-24-11-2019

In January 2024 Swainger was back at BMJ as a last minute replacement for the advertised Andrew Cleyndert, the latter the victim of a car breakdown, for a performance by the Clark Tracey Quintet of Stan Tracey’s two Dylan Thomas inspired suites “Under Milk Wood” and “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”. Swainger stepped seamlessly into the breach and more than played his part in a magical evening of words and music (the performance also featured the narrating skills of Clark’s son, Ben Tracey) that earned a rare five star review from me. Thus Al Swainger is the only musician to have featured in two five star reviews on The Jazzmann!
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/clark-tracey-quintet-black-mountain-jazz-melville-centre-abergavenny-28-01-2024

Swainger’s appearance with the Tracey quintet was one of the factors behind his return to Abergavenny this evening. The BMJ organisers were very grateful to Swainger for ‘digging them out of a hole’ by depping so brilliantly for Cleyndert on one of the most memorable nights in the Club’s history and felt that they ‘owed him one’, in the sense of inviting him back to the Club as the leader of one of his own projects.

In addition to this BMJ’s Debs Hancock had discovered the music of Swainger’s Pointless Beauty project on line and had been very impressed with its uniqueness. After befriending Swainger on Facebook she invited him and his Pointless Beauty band to The Melville to perform for the Abergavenny audience on a regular BMJ club night.

Swainger may be best known to jazz audiences as a jobbing double bassist, but there’s so much more to him than that. He also plays electric bass and is a prolific session musician who works across a variety of musical genres. Recent engagements include work with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Blue Lion Function Band, Michele Drees Jazz Tap Project and art rock band Grice I’ve also reviewed him on “Almost”, a 2010 album by Devon based vocalist Becky Brine.
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/almost

In addition to being a bass player Swainger is a talented multi-instrumentalist who also plays guitar, keyboards and french horn and only decided to specialise on the bass because this was the instrument that offered him the most freelance work.

Something of a ‘Renaissance Man’ Swainger is also a visual artist specialising in abstract art and the life of a jobbing bassist was never likely to wholly fulfil his creative urges. These find full expression in Pointless Beauty,  a project that began in 2013 that performs music that its creator describes as “cinematic fusion for the emotionally curious”.

This has resulted in two CD releases to date, 2017’s “After & Before”, which featured Swainger on bass and keyboards alongside trumpeter Neil Yates, guitarist Mike Outram, keyboard player George Cooper and drummer Mark Whitlam.

This was followed in 2022 by “Hearts Full of Grace”, much of which was written during the Covid lockdown period. This featured a different version of the group with Swainger and Cooper joined by trumpeter Gary Alesbrook, drummer Jon Clarke and guitarist Ant Law.

Swainger’s Bandcamp page also includes a number of digital releases under the Pointless Beauty banner, ranging from single tracks and EPs to the full length digital album “A Lonely Vigil” (2014). Several of these are largely solo recordings rather than full band projects.

As can be seen some pretty heavyweight names have passed through the ranks of Pointless Beauty. Yates, Outram and Law are musicians with national reputations who have all appeared on these web pages on numerous occasions. The other players are all top quality ‘regional’ musicians, the cream of Bristol and the West Country and many of them are also regular presences on the Jazzmann site. The current version of the Pointless Beauty group is tonight’s quartet line up featuring Swainger, Alesbrook, Clark and keyboardist Gary Bamford.

In addition to his work with Pointless Beauty Swainger continues to perform prolifically as a bass player on the jazz scene of Bristol and the wider West Country and also in South Wales. Among those with whom he plays on a regular basis are saxophonists Simon Spillett, Greg Abate, Alex Clarke, Sam Crockatt, Alex Garnett and Pete Long, trumpeter Byron Wallen, guitarist James Chadwick and pianist Dave Newton.

Tonight’s performance represented a journey through the history of the Pointless Beauty project with a first set largely comprised of material sourced from the “After & Before” album and a second centred around the music of the more recent “Hearts Full of Grace”.

Swainger explained that he had been successful in securing an Arts Council grant to help facilitate the creation of a project embracing music and visual art and tonight’s performance also included visuals projected onto a large screen situated behind the musicians. This was the screen that is normally utilised by the Abergavenny Film Club who also meet at The Melville, but this was the first time that it had been deployed by BMJ . The visuals had all been created Swainger and were controlled by him in an impressive display of multi-tasking as he also played bass and manipulated an impressive array of associated electronic devices. Introducing the show Debs Hancock commented that she had never seen so many wires on the Melville stage, coiling around each other “like spaghetti”.

The visuals were largely amorphous geometric shapes with Swainger wishing to avoid anything too complex, intricate or busy which might interfere with the listener’s focus on the music. There were some who later opined that the visuals were too static and did ‘nothing much’, but for me they added a certain extra something to the live experience but without distracting my attention from the music. I know from my experiences of reviewing other audio-visual shows that it’s a difficult balance to strike. So well done Al, mission accomplished I’d say. He even appeared wearing a T- shirt emblazoned with one of the images from the light show.

The performance itself commenced in atmospheric fashion with the as yet unrecorded “Sighs of Angels” which was ushered in by the sounds of unaccompanied electric bass and associated electronics with drums and keyboards subsequently added, with Bamford deploying an electric piano or ‘Rhodes’ sound as the music segued into “Too Late”, the opening track from the “After & Before” album with Alesbrook’s flugel melodies leading into more expansive electric piano and flugel solos. The recorded version includes a drum feature that incorporates Indian style ‘konnakol’ vocal percussion. There was no vocalising here but Clark was featured at the kit prior to a Swainger electric bass solo that sounded almost guitar like at times, appropriate perhaps given Swainger’s ability as a multi-instrumentalist.
A passage of unaccompanied piano then provided the bridge into “Sonhos Estranhos”, the second track on the “After & Before” album and the final piece of this opening segue. The title is derived from the Portuguese for “Strange Dreams” and the performance saw Swainger manipulating the visuals in addition to playing bass behind Alesbrook’s lyrical theme statement and the subsequent solos from electric piano and flugel as the music steadily began to build in intensity, with Clark’s drums gradually becoming increasingly prominent in the arrangement.

Swainger explained that his decision to specialise on electric bass and its associated electronic effects for this project has liberated him as a bassist and fuelled his overall creativity as a musician and composer. An example of this was the new composition “Out of Time”, a piece inspired by the ringing of church bells in Valencia, which saw Swainger attempting to transpose their complex interlocking to his bass. A combination of stunning high register, live looped bass and Bamford’s ‘acoustic’ piano sounds approximated the timbres and rhythms of the bells, with the shimmer of Clark’s cymbals adding a further dimension. This evolved into an electric bass and cymbal dialogue, with the whisper of Alesbrook’s flugel a late addition to this gently impressionistic and strangely beautiful performance.

The mood remained subdued on “Time Considered”, a ballad variously inspired by the music of pianist Bill Evans and saxophonist Wayne Shorter that was played as a beautiful duet by Alesbrook, who specialised on flugel throughout tonight’s concert, and Bamford, here deploying an acoustic piano sound. Swainger controlled the visuals, while Clark sat out entirely.

The concluding item in the first set saw the quartet increasing the energy levels once more on the as yet unrecorded “Seedling”, a piece representing a conversation between four people over an extended period of time that is variously amicable and animated, with periods of disagreement. All of this was reflected in a musical performance that embraced the sounds of fuzz bass, funky clavinet and synth sounds, electronically echoed flugel and a busy drum feature that seemed to embody that “period of disagreement”. But for all this it was energetic and fun and earned an excellent reception from the members of the audience, ensuring that they went into the break feeling happy.

The second set was given over entirely to music sourced from the album “Hearts of Grace”, which takes its title from a quote by Martin Luther King; 
“All we need to serve…is a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love”.

Swainger himself says of the recording;
“This is an album of states of mind, written in strange and unusual times. A meditation on our place in the universe and how we strive to bring meaning to it”.

Of King’s words he says;
“They help remind me that however invisible and inadequate we feel at times we never lose the power to enrich each other’s lives. No positive action is too small”.

It’s very much an album about mental health.  Most of the compositions were responses to the pandemic as Swainger explains;
“These pieces all represent narrative fragments of my reactions to the 2020 pandemic, but also echo feelings I’ve had for much of my life. Navigating isolation is a huge theme amongst those experiences but there’s catharsis to be found in embracing our feelings sincerely”.

Ultimately it’s a very positive album and builds on the success of its predecessor.

Album opener “The Way Back”, which functions as a kind of overture, began the second set here and commenced with the sound of pre-recorded electronics, to which were added the sounds of electric bass and cymbals. Alesbrook’s flugel stated the theme with Bamford subsequently taking over on synth prior to a more expansive solo from the consistently impressive Alesbrook. A drum feature from Clark was underscored by bubbling electronics before the leader took over with a heavily distorted bass solo, the sound of his instrument sometimes reminiscent of Pat Metheny’s synclavier guitar experiments. This contrasted effectively with Bamford’s deployment of an acoustic piano sound during the course of his keyboard solo. An excellent start to the second half.

The quartet followed the album running order for the next three pieces, beginning with the optimistic “Sunship Travelling”  with its infectious shuffling drum grooves and bubbling electric bass lines helping to fuel solos from Alesbrook on flugel and Bamford at the keyboards, the latter combining funky Rhodes and synth sounds. Swainger’s bass solo embraced liquidly melodic lines that recalled Jaco Pastorius.

“Pause to Breathe” did exactly as its title suggests, an ambient largely improvised piece featuring the layered and textured sounds of the leader’s solo bass and electronics.
This segued into the contrasting “Relentless”, another appropriately titled piece featuring funky drum and electric piano grooves and a heavily distorted electric bass solo from the leader.

“Existential Blues” was in part inspired by the music of American guitarist Bill Frisell and featured Swainger’s bass at its most guitar like, his solo a good approximation of a guitar blues, underpinned by the sinister rumble of Clark’s drums as the music segued into the brief but even darker “Hour of the Wolf”.

Bamford’s keyboard arpeggios introduced the closing “Two Steps”, this followed by Swainger’s electric bass melody and Alesbrook’s more formal theme statement on flugel. This was an uplifting piece with something of an anthemic quality and included a synth solo from Bamford, a drum feature from Clark and the guitar like sound of the leader’s bass. It represented a good way to end a consistently engaging and interesting performance featuring the innovative use of electronics and visuals in addition to some excellent playing and writing.

The quartet had played most of the album in sequence, but with the omission of the jazz ballad “The Shrug”, the paranoid and hyperactive “Stir Crazy” and the elegiac and episodic “Remember the Sky”, which actually closes the album. “Hearts Full of Grace” is an impressive piece of work,  a lockdown inspired suite that embraces a wide variety of moods, colours and textures and which effectively combines acoustic and electronic sounds. Despite the extensive use of technology it’s a very warm and human album.

And we did eventually get to hear “The Shrug”, an almost unbearably tender ballad that was performed as a deserved encore. The title comes from “a shrug of resignation”, but there was nothing resigned about the beauty of the playing here with the gentle fluency of Alesbrook’s breathy flugel combining with the leader’s liquidly melodic bass, underpinned by Clark’s sensitive brushwork.

Tonight’s event represented something of a departure for BMJ and the audience wasn’t the biggest, but in artistic terms the evening was a total success and those that were there all seemed to enjoy it, something that was reflected in terms of CD sales.

Both albums are worthy of your attention, but the later “Hearts Full of Grace” is the most fully realised of the two and really does feel like a unified and significant piece of work.

My thanks to Al Swainger for speaking with me after the show and for clarifying the set list with me.

 

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