Dave Manington’s Riff Raff

“Weightless”

(Lamplight Social Records LSRCD35)

Dave Manington – double bass, Brigitte Beraha – vocals, Tomas Challenger – tenor saxophone, Ivo Neame – piano, keyboards, Rob Updegraff – guitar, Tim Giles – drums

“Weightless” represents the third album release from Riff Raff, the long running sextet led by bassist and composer Dave Manington. Both of the band’s previous releases “Hullabaloo” (2013) and “Challenger Deep” (2018) have been reviewed elsewhere on The Jazzmann.

The group line up has remained the same since its inception and features vocalist and lyricist Brigitte Beraha, saxophonist Tomas Challenger, keyboard player Ivo Neame, guitarist Rob Updegraff and drummer Tim Giles. The sextet perform Manington’s compositions, some of them songs featuring lyrics penned by Beraha.

I’ve previously described Manington as  “one of the great unsung heroes of British jazz”.  Originally from Suffolk he studied jazz at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. He was a founder member of both the Loop and E17 musicians’ collectives and released his debut album “Headrush” on the Loop record label back in 2008. This was a quartet recording that featured both Neame and Giles, plus Mark Hanslip on tenor sax.

Manington is  a prolific, versatile and much in demand sideman who has worked across a variety of musical genres ranging from jazz to rock and pop to TV and film soundtracks. His jazz credits include recordings with Neame, saxophonists Tori Freestone, Andrew Woolf and Tommy Andrews and with the groups The Button Band (led by guitarist and composer Andrew Button)  and Solstice, a co-operative sextet featuring Beraha and Freestone. He is also member of the London Jazz Orchestra, The Coalminers, a twelve piece New Orleans style funk band led by drummer Pat Levett, and CAST, a standards based quartet featuring Updegraff, Levett and saxophonist James Allsopp.

He has also performed with a string of famous saxophonists including Julian Arguelles, Marius Neset, Mark Lockheart, Tim Garland, Iain Ballamy, Tony Woods, Peter King and Alan Barnes plus pianists Gwilym Simcock and Rick Simpson, trumpeter Yazz Ahmed and singer / songwriters Gwyneth Herbert and Lara Eidi.

Manington’s influences include jazz, folk, contemporary classical and electronic music and elements of all of these can be detected in Riff Raff’s sound. I recently enjoyed a live performance by a quintet version of the band, who were without an unwell Updegraff, at a gig promoted by Birmingham Jazz at the 1000 Trades venue in the Jewellery Quarter. It was an event that I attended as a paying customer so there is no review, but it did offer me the opportunity of seeing the “Weightless” material being played live, albeit in a different format and running order to the album.

Released in February 2025 “Weightless” features seven new Manington originals with the leader’s album notes offering valuable insights into the sources of inspiration behind the individual tracks.

The album commences with “Strike The Harp”, a composition initially inspired by the English folk song “Strike The Gay Harp”. Manington improvised around the piece on his guitar, his subsequent explorations eventually leading to a composition that “bears no resemblance to the original any more”! Beraha subsequently wrote lyrics for the new tune, these giving rise to the alternative title “Lost for Words”. The lyrics only come following a lengthy instrumental section embracing unison melodic passages with Beraha’s wordless vocals synchronising with Challenger’s sax lines and Neame adding further embellishments at the piano. The group temporarily goes into saxophone trio mode as Challenger delivers a fluent but powerful tenor solo underpinned by the leader’s bass and the polyrhythmic flow of Giles’ drumming, with Neame subsequently re-emerging to add further interest at the piano. This passage moves into a freely structured section that sees Giles emerging as the only instrumental voice. Updegraff then steps out of the shadows, his unaccompanied guitar setting the scene for the “song” section of the piece with Beraha singing the freshly minted lyrics and Neame adding a touch of additional colour on electric keyboards. Finally we hear a reprise of the opening melody. At just under ten and half minutes in length this is an episodic piece that moves through a series of distinct phases. Rich in terms of colour and texture and freely embracing contrast in terms of pace, style and dynamics, plus Beraha’s evocative lyrics, this is a composition that epitomises Riff Raff’s strengths and their very distinctive musical approach.

“Woolly Mammoth” was inspired by recent science projects and the conjecture of bringing back mammoths by using gene edited elephants. “I would love to see these magical and mysterious ancient beasts brought back to life”, declares Manington. At ten minutes duration it’s a suitably mammoth work, ushered in by the leader’s solo double bass ruminations. The addition of further instrumentation plus Beraha’s wistful wordless vocals leads into the main theme statement, with Beraha’s voice taking the lead and effectively taking the first solo as she continues to improvise vocally. She’s followed by Challenger, whose tenor probes and searches more deeply. Again the piece ranges widely and incorporates loosely structured passages amongst the more formally written sections, with Neame’s piano increasingly coming to the fore.

Manington is a keen runner and this activity inspires “Run the Gauntlet”, which the composer describes as having “a nice rolling gait to it”.  He adds “it sounds like quite an epic run with some rather dramatic moments and twists and turns though”, an observation that also neatly epitomises Riff Raff’s music in general. Wordless vocals again carry the melody but the piece is also notable for a smouldering guitar solo from Updegraff, who skilfully builds the tension and makes judicious use of his range of effects.

Manington’s hobbies also include wild water swimming and the title of “River Swim” is reflective of this. “I want to be part of your eco-system…” he declares, quoting from Beraha’s lyrics. I also wondered if the title might be a reference to the lyrics of the R.E.M. song “Cuyahoga”, or eve the same group’s “Night Swimming”.  It’s a less frenetic piece than those that have preceded it and features Beraha singing her own words alongside a flowingly lyrical piano solo from Neame, with Manington and Giles adding distinctive rhythmic colourings.

“Hold It” is ushered in by a carefully constructed passage of unaccompanied drums and percussion from Giles, who is eventually joined by the leader’s bass. These two have played together since their schooldays and have developed an almost telepathic musical rapport. They are joined by Challenger on tenor, who sketches the main theme, augmented by Neame at the piano. Beraha’s wordless vocals then take the lead, before the song moves into its next phase with Beraha’s semi-spoken lyrics underpinned by increasingly urgent rhythms and her own overdubbed backing vocals. The text of the lyrics, which muse on the nature of mortality and human creativity, is printed on the album cover. Neame then takes over with a typically inventive piano solo before a brief reprise of the lyrics at the close.

The title track sees Manington attempting to “capture some of the strange otherworldliness of floating free of the earth’s gravity”.  The piece is introduced by the lonely sound of unaccompanied double bass, subsequently joined by Beraha in a voice and double bass duet, the singer delivering her own lyrics. Cymbal shimmers, guitar and saxophone combine to bring something of that “otherworldliness” of which the composer speaks, skilfully complementing Beraha’s vocals. Updegraff again makes good use of his range of effects.

The album concludes with the song “When Time Stood Still”, a composition written during he Covid lockdown period, “when time stood still for all of us”. Unaccompanied piano introduces this one, an extended passage that conveys a sense of isolation in much the same way as Manington’s bass did on the previous track. Beraha’s voice is added in duet singing lyrics that reference that strange time, samples include “the seasons become one” and “I get to know you very well”. The introduction of other instruments (bass, piano, brushed drums), seems to signify a gradual return to normality and the leader takes his only orthodox solo of the set, an extended double bass excursion that is both pleasingly melodic and highly dexterous. Challenger follows with a slow burning tenor solo, prior to a reprise of the lyrics.

Riff Raff’s music is difficult to describe but it is consistently colourful and inventive, combining a wide variety of influences and mixing complex,  episodic compositions with more traditional song forms. The blend of instruments and voice is consistently impressive with Beraha’s voice playing a key role in the overall ensemble sound while her empathic lyrics complement the music very well.

Manington is an undemonstrative leader, just one real solo on the entire album, but his bass playing is at the heart of the music and his writing even more so. His compositions are multi-faceted with strong narrative arcs and are rich in terms of colour, texture, moods and dynamics. In the members of Riff Raff he has a tried and trusted hand picked team capable of doing justice to his ideas. There are some fine individual moments here from all the protagonists, but it’s the distinctive overall band sound that really counts.
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