Scarla O’ Horror

“Semiconductor Taxidermy For The Masses”

(Not Applicable Records NOT075)

James Allsopp – tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, Alex Bonney – trumpet, piccolo trumpet, Tim Giles – drums, electronics, Isambard Khroustaliov – electronics

Scarla O’Horror is the collective name adopted by the four musicians listed above, all leading figures on the UK’s jazz /improv / experimental music scene. All of the individual band members have featured regularly on the Jazzmann web pages in a variety of different line ups and across a broad range of musical genres.

The quartet first came together in 2020 to record the album “Voltage Controlled Music Parade Vol.1”, which was eventually released in 2022.

At the time the band described themselves as follows;
“Emerging from a the charred remains of their time travelling wheelie bin, Scarla O’Horror are voyagers from a world where Albert Ayler has replaced the house band in David Lynch’s Lost Highway and are now under attack from B-movie aliens controlled by Sun Ra’s Moog and Patrick Gleeson’s ARP 2600”
It’s a description that they still gleefully adhere to, and to which they have added;
“This is a music that uses machine data and yet is entirely the product of human experimentation. A free jazz Frankenstein”.

Their new album sees them experimenting further with the sounds of acoustic instruments melded with electronica. The recording features three collective improvisations documented during the course of a single day at Livingstone Studios by recording engineers Marcus Locock and Luke Farnell. The music was subsequently mixed and mastered at Coda to Coda by band members Alex Bonney and Isambard Khroustaliov.

Their recording methods have been described as follows;
“Their improvisations were based on material generated by synthesisers configured to ‘listen’ and respond to what the instrumentalists were playing, material to which the musicians responds in turn - a unique feedback between man and machine but the very opposite of GPT style AI in terms of its spontaneity (not involving sampling or pre-training of any kind).”

Drummer Tim Giles adds;
“The idea for Semiconductor Taxidermy For The Masses came about as a document of our experiments using acoustic instruments to influence how Isambard’s robot synthesisers react to different instruments. In the studio, the electronics had access to everything each of the instrumentalists played separately, and the behaviour of each of the synthesisers was then fed back to the players in real time. This process forms the basis of the improvisations and the album is a document of this approach. It’s an approach that develops the techniques first documented on the album ‘Voltage Controlled Parade Music Vol. 1’ made two years earlier, with the added granularity of everyone being in separate rooms but connected electronically.”

Meanwhile the electronic musician Isambard Khroustaliov (aka Sam Britton) says of his role in the creative process;
“There is a specificity about the electronics we work with in Scarla O’Horror that’s very much a part of the sound world and the intention; everything is synthesis, there’s no sampling and that decision felt really appropriate considering the idea of how the design of instruments help shape musical expression. When I’m working with a synthesiser that someone else has designed, it’s very much a process of getting to know that instrument, its logic and its idiosyncrasies. Added to this, the synthesisers are all computer controlled, so there’s a machine listening aspect to it as well, where I’m effectively working with the way machines listen in order to encourage the synthesisers to have a conversation with James, Alex and Tim.
So we’re all using improvisation as a means to explore and investigate particular instruments that have been designed and built by other people, in most cases also for a completely different intention. There’s a relationship to the history of jazz that informs this process, in the sense that jazz picked up various instruments and forged new types of musical expression around them. When Sun Ra included a suite of improvisations using a Moog Model D prototype, recorded at the Moog factory before the synthesiser had even gone into production, it seemed to me that he opened a door onto a musical universe that few people have since explored again. I think part of what we’re doing in Scarla O’Horror is exploring this dimension of sound he discovered and how it has the potential to explode musical traditions.”

Reeds player James Allsopp adds;
“In different configurations, we have been making music together for about twenty years now. We have all developed a language of interaction together that is well established and coherent. Having this conversation in real-time with the synthesiser elements really opens up a lot of new possibilities and forces us to reevaluate our pre-existing way of making music together. It’s very exciting to feel challenged by an element in the music that can respond in such a dizzying and kaleidoscopic manner.”

The album commences with the brief “Raccoon With Wound”, which acts as a kind of overture for the lengthier improvisations that follow. It immediately establishes Scarla O’Horror’s distinctive soundworld as trumpet and reeds combine with glitchy, atmospheric electronica to create an alien, Bladerunner like soundscape. The blend of acoustic and electronic sounds is very effective with the band variously name-checking Miles Davis, Steve Lacy, Sun Ra, Herbie Hancock, Joe Zawinul, Don Cherry, Eric Dolphy and Albert Ayler as musical influences on their sound. A love of film, and particularly sci-fi movies, also informs the quartet’s music and all of the pieces on “Semiconductor Taxidermy For The Masses” exhibit something of a cinematic quality.

The title of the nineteen minute “The Rats of Gillett Square” was inspired by the sight of rats plundering the bins in the North London square, which also happens to be the home of the celebrated Vortex Jazz Club, something of a spiritual home for these musicians. The Vortex has long championed the more experimental side of jazz and the members of Scarla O’Horror regard themselves as musical outsiders, perhaps identifying with those rats. This quartet’s music is definitely not cosy supper club jazz, a fact reflected in a freewheeling introduction featuring the fiery interplay of trumpet and tenor underpinned by the polyrhythmic roiling of Giles’ drums. Again the spirit of Albert Ayler is evoked, and maybe that of Ornette Coleman too. It’s ferocious stuff with Khroustaliov’s synths spluttering and whistling in the background, conjuring up images of a free jazz Hawkwind. As the free jazz hurricane eventually blows itself out electronic sounds gradually replace the horns, but Giles’ relentless drum barrage continues unabated. Eventually even Giles tires and the electronics take over, but with the synthesisers now in conversation with the pecked sounds of the horns, with Bonney’s trumpet becoming increasingly prominent in the mix as Giles picks up his brushes and sticks and returns to the fray. Allsopp then enters into an increasingly garrulous series of exchanges with Khroustaliov, underpinned by increasingly busy drumming as Giles begins to build up a head of steam once more. As the tumult again subsides the piece draws to a close via a dialogue between Bonney’s trumpet squalls and squiggles and Khroustaliov’s shimmering, increasingly glitchy electronica. Arguably it goes on for just a little too long, but overall “The Rats of Gillett Square” represents an electro-improvising tour de force.

The album concludes with the near fourteen minute “Ermine Chowder”, a more tranquil and ambient piece that features Allsopp on bass clarinet as Khroustaliov’s carefully crafted electronic textures summon up images of deep space. It’s an alien world that is ripe for exploration, with trumpet and bass clarinet both making delicate investigative forays into the depths as Giles’ brushed drums provide an increasingly regular rhythmic pulse. Bonney’s increasing confidence results in an expansive trumpet solo underpinned by brushed drums, droning electronica and the low register growl of electronically enhanced bass clarinet. As previously the piece eventually resolves itself with a dialogue between Bonney and Khroustaliov, the machines eventually having the last word.

Some commentators have described Scarla O’Horror as being an extension of the prolific electro-improvising trio Leverton Fox, in which Bonney, Giles and Khroustaliov all play. However Scarla O’Horror is subtly different, and not just because of the addition of Allsopp’s reeds. In general I found Scarla O’Horror’s music less abrasive and more accessible than much of Leverton Fox’s output, with the exception of the recent “In The Flicker” album from 2022, which is reviewed here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/leverton-fox-in-the-flicker

That’s not to say that Scarla O’Horror’s music makes for easy listening, but for all its challenges it does make for an absorbing and rewarding listening experience. I particularly like the melding of conventional jazz instrumentation with the electronics and synths to create a distinctive and convincing overall group sound.

A word too for the distinctive and evocative artwork, credited to Atelier Elephant and variously inspired by Charles Darwin and cybernetics pioneer Anthony Stafford Beer.  It makes for an excellent visual accompaniment to Scala O’Horror’s remarkable music and it would be interesting to see if elements of it could be integrated into the quartet’s live performances, although I suspect that in the financially straitened world of free jazz and improv that the cost of adding visuals would be too prohibitive. A nice thought though.

“Semiconductor Taxidermy For The Masses” is available from the Not Applicable Bandcamp page here;
https://not-applicable.bandcamp.com/album/semiconductor-taxidermy-for-the-masses

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