Playtime

“Morse Code Through The Lights”

(Interrupto Music)

Tom Bancroft – drums & bodhran, Martin Kershaw – alto & soprano sax, Graeme Stephen – guitar, Mario Caribe – acoustic & electric bass

with guests;
Laura Jurd, Byron Wallen, Natsuki Tamura – trumpet, Denys Baptiste, Iain Ballamy – tenor sax, Ernst Reijseger – cello, Satoko Fujii – piano, Corey Mwamba – vibraphone, marimba

A recent meeting with Scottish drummer Tom Bancroft at Bath Jazz Weekend reminded me that a review of this fascinating album, which was released in October 2024, was long overdue.

Bancroft was appearing at Bath as part of the Secret Path Trio, led by whistler and piper Fraser Fifield that also featured keyboardist Paul Harrison. My review of this group’s performance can be found as part of my BJW coverage here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/features/article/fifth-annual-bath-jazz-weekend-widcombe-social-club-bath-saturday-4th-january-2025

Bancroft is one of the leading figures on the Scottish jazz and wider music scene as a drummer, composer, improviser, bandleader, educator, facilitator and all round mover and shaker. He is involved in a myriad of musical projects embracing a wide ranging variety of musical genres including jazz, folk, electronica and Indian and African music. He has also written music for theatre, cinema and dance projects.

Just one of the many strings to Bancroft’s bow is Playtime, a quartet also featuring saxophonist Martin Kershaw, guitarist Graeme Stephen and Brazilian born, Scotland based bassist Mario Caribe.

Formed in 2014 as an extension of the Kershaw / Stephen Duo the quartet enjoyed a fortnightly residency in a small room above The Outhouse,  a bar in central Edinburgh. With the focus on original new music the sessions began to build a following, with the core quartet also inviting guests from the wider Scottish music scene to join them.

In Playtime’s own words;
“The musical content varied from playing jazz standards to completely free improvisation and everywhere in between. The guests ranged from jazz musicians to experimental traditional folk musicians and to leading improvisers from the Scottish free improv scene”.

Of course the pandemic brought a halt to all this musical and social activity and the members of Playtime began to collaborate on regular livestreams, gradually learning to overcome the various latency issues and other technical glitches that they encountered.

Playtime say;
“Once we sorted out these glitches what was remarkable was that we found we were able to play rhythmic music together even though there was audio latency, and why this worked was not totally clear to us at the time, and to a certain extent still isn’t.  We realised that we had stumbled upon not only a thing to keep us and our audience occupied during lockdown but also a totally valid new way of making improvised music, because the results just sounded unbelievably coherent considering how the music was made”.

Sensing the opportunity to replicate the Playtime sessions online the quartet invited other musicians to join them, with the focus on improvised music, the latency issues mitigating against the playing of formal compositions. “Playing the whole concert improvised was possible so that was what we invited people to do – and they said ‘yes’!”

Playtime’s early livestream experiments during the spring and summer of 2020 largely featured the members of the quartet and smaller permutations thereof. As they became more confident with the technology they began to co-operate with guests outside Scotland, the first of these being trumpeter Byron Wallen in October 2020.  This was a remarkable success and the first half of 2021 saw remote livestreams featuring a host of other distinguished guests from England (trumpeter Laura Jurd,  saxophonists Denys Baptiste and Iain Ballamy and vibraphonist Corey Mwamba), the Netherlands (Ernst Reijseger) and even Japan (the duo of pianist Satoko Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura).

The quartet explain the decision to release the results of their collaborations as an album as follows;
“Anyway, despite – or possibly because of- the lack of a full understanding of why this works we knew this was a unique set of music that we made during a unique time in all our lives and we felt that it was important that we presented it to the world”.

The album appears on Bancroft’s own Interrupto Music imprint and is financially supported by Creative Scotland.

The final album programme has been edited down from some sixteen hours of music and the musical performances are punctuated by short spoken interludes from the Playtime members that tell the story behind the project.

As far as I can ascertain the music is not presented in strict chronological order and is sequenced in the best way as to cohere as an album. It commences with “We Live on a Flat Earth”, an atmospheric collaboration with Laura Jurd that combines the sound of her trumpet with the ambient sound-washes of Stephen’s guitar as Bancroft and Caribe provide both the rhythmic pulse and subtle colouration. Jurd’s trumpet is foregrounded and the overall sound is variously reminiscent of electric era Miles Davis and of the ECM record label.

Track two features Tom Bancroft talking about his lockdown experiences against a backdrop of music sourced from the opening track. “Everything had just…stopped”,  he concludes.

“Through Space Our Minds Can Still Touch” features the core Playtime quartet with Bancroft’s rapidly brushed drums underpinning Kershaw’s squiggling alto sax explorations and Stephen’s fleet fingered guitar lines, these enhanced by the guitarist’s skilful deployment of a range of effects. The piece includes more reflective moments too, with the sound of Caribe’s double bass coming more to the fore. This represents one of the band’s earliest livestream collaborations and sees them living up to their strap line, “New Adventures in Music”.

Mario Caribe picks up the spoken narrative, accompanied by the music of “End Grain”, a piece recorded with Dutch cellist Ernst Reijseger. Caribe recalls that their first livestream effort was a technical disaster, but that they were encouraged to continue by folk musician Martin Green, accordionist with the experimental folk group Lau. Gradually they began to master the idiom and began inviting other musicians to improvise with them on line.

The first of these was London based tenor saxophonist Byron Wallen, who is heard with Playtime on the next full musical performance, “Swing Out of Latency & Into A Circus”. His stately trumpet tones contrast well with the buzzy sound of Kershaw’s recurring sax motif and the quiet bustling of Bancroft’s brushed drums. Kershaw eventually abandons the Minimalist style sax motif to deliver a fluent and expansive alto solo, before entering into a series of exchanges with Wallen. This is improvised music that almost sounds as if it might have been written, a characteristic that distinguishes much of the album as a whole.

Stephen and Kershaw continue the spoken narrative, underscored by the music of “Pulse Oximter”, another piece recorded during the session with Reijseger.

There are then two musical performances back to back, beginning with “Looking Right Into The Eyes”, with Reijseger stepping out of the shadows for the first time. This proves to be a beautifully meditative piece full of rich colours and textures courtesy of the deep, melancholic sonorities of Reijseger’s cello, these contrasting effectively with the melodic keening of Kershaw’s soprano sax and the ambient wash of Stephen’s guitar atmospherics. Bancroft sits out at first before adding deep, almost subliminal mallet rumbles. It’s one of those pieces that calms and unsettles at the same time.

“Syncopatico” features tenor saxophonist Denys Baptiste, initially in a saxophone trio situation, with Bancroft playing brushed drums. Stephen subsequently adds guitar texturing, again deploying his effects pedals. Kershaw then joins on alto to exchange ideas with Baptiste’s tenor as the rhythms begin to become increasingly urgent.

The music from “Syncopatico” then features again as Bancroft and Caribe continue the narrative and explain how the Covid crisis saw the Playtime sessions expand from a purely local concern featuring guest musicians from the Scottish scene into something far more global, thanks solely to the combination of the extraordinary situation in which the musicians found themselves and the rise of the new digital technology. Although they are not represented on this album the members of Playtime were also involved in collaborations with other Dutch musicians and with musicians in the USA.

This global expansion is illustrated by “Bedlam Zoo”, recorded with the Japanese musicians Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura, who were holed up in their flat. This is a genuine slab of old school free improv, introduced by Caribe’s deployment of extended techniques on his double bass and Bancroft’s use of a battery of small percussion. Fujii plays ‘under the lid’, coaxing a remarkable array of sounds from the piano, while Tamura’s trumpet sound, with its rushes of breath, is also suitably abstract. Featuring two uncompromising improvisers as guests this is the most ‘out there’ piece on the album thus far.

The title track features Iain Ballamy on tenor sax and is a thoughtful and intimate performance that sees him duetting with Stephen’s guitar prior to bass and drums being added to the mix. Stephen again makes intelligent use of his effects and, for me,  this section is reminiscent of Ballamy’s more recent work with Rob Luft in the new Molecatcher trio with bassist Conor Chaplin, a group that also featured at the 2025 Bath Jazz Weekend.

The run of unbroken musical performances continues with “Could Be Aliens, Could Be Static”, recorded with Derby based vibraphonist Corey Mwamba. This is another fairly abstract offering featuring extended techniques and the use of electronic effects, allied to the ethereal chiming and twinkling of Mwamba’s vibes.

The brief “Into The Groove” sees Wallen return on a piece that sees him engage in a spirited debate with Kershaw’s alto above a crisp drum groove.

“Ermintrude” is a second piece recorded with the Japanese duo and sounds suitably bovine with Fujii’s deep, percussive piano sonorities combining with Natsuki’s trumpet bellows above a lolloping, increasingly fragmented bass and drum groove.

Simply titled “Duo” the next piece is a brief delightful dialogue between Caribe on double bass and Ballamy on tenor sax. Gentle, thoughtful and intimate it represents an oasis of calm in the middle of what was a very turbulent time for everybody. Nevertheless some kind of solace seems to have been found in this beautiful duo performance. The playing of both musicians is exquisite.

“Bodhran Marimba” represents the second collaboration with Corey Mwamba and features percolating rhythms, presumably laid down by Bancroft and Mwamba on the titular instruments. These are overlaid by Kershaw’s delicate alto sax melodies. It’s an engaging performance that is simultaneously exotic and charming.

The final spoken word item features all four members of Playtime summing up and signing off, and making reference to “the global sonic adventure we all had whilst staying in our houses”.

Finally we hear “The Birds Fly Into The Storm”, another piece recorded with Denys Baptiste, with the musicians improvising around a Stephen guitar loop. Baptiste and Kershaw again combine well as the music gradually increases in intensity, building from quiet beginnings towards a powerful climax that is almost anthemic, despite its abstraction.

“Morse Code Through The Lights” is a fascinating project, one born out of adversity that has borne much rich musical fruit. There are some excellent performances here, both from the core members and from their illustrious guests.

I certainly enjoyed the music, even though some of it may have been a little too abstract for those with more mainstream musical tastes, but I did have my reservations about the spoken word episodes. I’m generally rather adverse to spoken word narratives on music recordings,  regardless of how well they might have worked in a live concert situation (I blame my prog rock youth and Rick Wakeman and David Hemmings) and generally feel that these are best avoided on disc. The Play Time Collective story is more than adequately told in the album booklet and although the spoken word snippets are brief, for me they still interrupt the flow the music. However this is a comparatively minor criticism in the context of what is a very good, and very interesting, album overall.

Of course the album only represents a small proportion of the music played during the course of these collaborations. Much more can be both heard and seen by visiting these links;

http://www.youtube.com?playtimemusic1

http://www.instagram.com/playtimemusic1

http://www.facebook.com/playtimemusic1

http://www.playtime.myriadstreams.com

The last of these is run by Tom Bancroft’s saxophonist brother Phil and represents the best port of call to hear the music of both brothers.

Tom Bancroft can also be found online at http://www.interrupto.com

 

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