Hairy Bones
London, Vortex
24 March 2010

Peter Br?tzmann; alto and tenor saxophone, tarogato
Toshinori Kondo; trumpet
Massimo Pupillo; electric bass
Paal Nilssen-Love; drums

Well after this show was due to get under way everyone was still outside in the rain while the band sound-checked (just like the last time Br?tzmann played Dalston, back in January). Then, once inside, we heard that Toshinori Kondo’s electronics were not here but in Amsterdam airport. This was not a promising start. But the Vortex came good by inviting everyone to stay on for the second of the night’s two houses, and suddenly no-one was complaining any more. Hairy Bones took the stage looking pretty fresh and immediately launched headlong into a high-intensity blast of power jazz that put everything outside that moment right out of mind.

Hairy Bones: it’s not a great band name is it, compared to Last Exit, for instance. But this is a great band, even on paper. Br?tzmann’s a dogged and justly celebrated pioneer of European free music. Kondo should need no introduction to Br?tzmann fans, as he’s the electric trumpet player in the Br?tzmann-led quartet Die Like a Dog (another great name; Hairy Bones surely loses something in translation from German). Elsewhere Kondo has recorded with everyone from Eugene Chadbourne to DJ Krush. Drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, however, seems to be everywhere at once, from Scorch Trio and The Thing to his duo with Ken Vandermark. A new duo recording with Br?tzmann, “Wood Cuts”, is just out. Electric bassist Massimo Pupillo is best known as the lynchpin of Roman post-Hardcore trio Zu, whose numerous and varied albums include the splendid “How To Raise An Ox”, featuring Mats Gustafsson, and Radiale, recorded in tandem with Ken Vandermark’s Spaceways Inc. Together, Hairy Bones have made only one live, self-titled recording to date, and it doesn’t do them full justice.

Onstage with Zu Pupillo is really something to watch. As he throws himself bodily into wresting punchy, reverberant bass lines he’s indisputably the focal point. Maybe it’s the restricted confines of the Vortex stage, but here he initially seems pensive. For the first lengthy passage he limits himself to his bass’s lowest string, thrumming with gravelly toughness beneath Nilssen-Love’s exuberant percussion. Still, it’s undoubtedly effective in fuelling a lowering tension, their rhythm constantly modulated to contour Br?tzmann’s trademark lung-long squalls of alto sax. Into all this Kondo interjected rapid flurries of trumpet. Remarkably the lack of electronics had a less drastic impact on Kondo’s sound than might be expected; his distinctively loud, abrasive breath attacks were instantly recognizable. When Kondo and Br?tzmann draw together the pace tends to slacken, and their playing takes on a tender tone with the mournful characteristics of gospel that inevitably evokes Br?tzmann’s great hero, Albert Ayler. But another, later duo saw them engage in a circular chase in their higher registers.

Nilssen-Love responded to a slight lull in the main number by whipping up a solo that left a stupefied grin on every face in the audience. First Br?tzmann rejoined on tarogato, giving their duet a abrasively mournful edge, and then Kondo made it a three-way conversation. Pupillo lay out for a long time, but eventually stepped in with a distinctly new approach, using the mid and high strings to produce a loose, fully resonant throb that I could feel in my gut. This perfectly complimented the peculiar sonorities imposed on the group sound by Br?tzmann’s tarogato, and this alone showed what an inspired choice Pupillo is for this group. It’s perhaps Pupillo most of all who helps Hairy Bones transcend the Jazz/Rock divide, just as he’s always attempting - and often succeeding - to do with Zu.

The second number saw Pupillo loosen up further, adding a sense of reined in abandon to the set, before locking into a ferocious groove with Nilssen-Love. Kondo played beautifully measured lines over this but there was no modulating a pile-driving momentum that eventually led Nilssen-Love to hammer out a taut, controlled ending. Lately Br?tzmann’s gigs all seem to adopt this pattern of compression as they progress, and it’s a terrifically effective tactic. A shorter-yet final number had Br?tzmann on tenor sax knitting together a theme with Pupillo’s elastic bass for a measured build to another full-out blaster that somehow transitioned to accommodate a lovely Br?tzmann/Kondo unison theme that signalled closure.

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