Stillefelt

“Stillefelt”

(Stoney Lane Records slr1883)

Chris Mapp – bass, electronics, Percy Pursglove – trumpet, flugelhorn,
Thomas Seminar Ford- guitar, electronics

Stillefelt is a new trio founded by the Birmingham based bassist and composer Chris Mapp.

The band name is a Norwegian phrase that translates as “quiet field” and the project is intended to be a “dynamically quieter response” to Mapp’s powerful electro-jazz group Gonimoblast, an ensemble that originally included the pooled talents of trumpeter Sam Wooster, keyboard player Dan Nicholls, drummer/percussionist Mark Sanders and sound artist Leafcutter John – plus a whole battery of electronics.

Gonimoblast released their début recording “Always Darkest Before Dawnn” in 2015 and that album is favourably reviewed elsewhere on The Jazzmann.
Link here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/gonimoblast-always-darkest-before-dawnn

This was followed by “The Depths” later in 2015, recorded by the same line up, minus Wooster.

Indeed much of Gonimoblast’s recorded output was documented in 2015, but with some of the material released much later. “Flatlands” featured a quartet that included Shabaka Hutchings on saxophone alongside Mapp, Leafcutter and Sanders.

“6”, which didn’t appear until 2018,  then saw Wooster returning to the fold alongside Mapp, Nicholls and Sanders.

Gonimoblast worked frequently with guest musicians and arguably their most significant release is the double set “Live”, released on Stoney Lane Records and which was recorded at two separate events in November 2015 at The Crossing venue at Birmingham’s South and City College. The first disc features the core quartet of Mapp, Nicholls, Leafcutter and Sanders with the extraordinary Norwegian experimental vocalist Maja S.K. Ratkje, who treats her voice with a stunning variety of electronic manipulations. Disc two features Gonimoblast quartet with Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen, whose solo work, plus his contributions to the bands Food and Supersilent, were a profound influence on the whole Gonimoblast project.

Mapp’s admiration for Henriksen’s work goes back a long way. In 2010 and 2011 Mapp and Percy Pursglove curated Birmingham’s much missed Harmonic Festival, which brought “cutting edge” jazz to the city. Henriksen appeared at the 2011 Festival and gave a memorable performance alongside the Birmingham based electronic duo Dreams of Tall Buildings ( Justin Wiggan and Darren Joyce). Henriksen and DOTB had previously collaborated on the excellent album recording “Rope/Drowning The Heart Sounds” released on DOTB’s Museum label in 2009.

Henriksen’s appearance at Harmonic and all round general influence seemed to have a profound effect on Mapp, who had played orthodox jazz double bass with a number of Birmingham bands for years, but whose solo projects began to rely more and more on electric bass and the use of electronics.  His quintet Gambol, which was active around this time, featured a modicum of sampling and the looped sound of Sam Wooster’s trumpet.

At the 2014 Cheltenham Jazz Festival I witnessed him performing a solo set on bass guitar but with the instrument augmented by a vast range of pedals and various other gizmos. In the main it was a loud, tumultuous performance that revealed the considerable influence of the Norwegian guitarist Stan Westerhus who had given a broadly similar solo guitar performance at the same Cheltenham Playhouse venue at the 2011 Festival.

At around this time Mapp issued a series of solo bass / electronics performances under the generic title ‘Doomprov’, this project seeming to sow the seeds for the Gonimoblast group.

As well as covering  “Always Darkest Before Dawnn” I also reviewed a live Gonimoblast live performance at the Hare & Hounds in King’s Heath, Birmingham in March 2014. This event was a double bill with Polar Bear, another act to have a profound influence on Mapp’s music making, with Leafcutter John making an appearance with both bands. My account of this remarkable evening can be read here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/polar-bear-gonimoblast-at-the-hare-and-hounds-kings-heath-birmingham-27-03-

In my coverage of the Gonimoblast performance at the ‘Hare’ I commented upon the “rock volume levels” and the “almost subsonic electronic bass pulses”, remarking that the latter were almost “physically painful”. In other words Gonimoblast are LOUD and represent the more aggressive and abrasive side of electro-improvising, a legacy perhaps of Mapp’s teenage obsession with heavy metal, a fascination shared with Polar Bear’s drummer and leader Seb Rochford. The same qualities also informed Mapp’s solo ‘Doomprov’ performances.

After releasing six album’s worth of Gonimoblast material it’s perhaps not so surprising that Mapp has felt the need to embrace a different, quieter project. Stillefelt still bears the influence of Henriksen, but with this group the feel is more reminiscent of Henriksen’s lyrical and ambient solo work than the uncompromising electro-improvising of the ironically named Supersilent, the collaborative trio that teams the trumpeter with keyboard player Stale Storlokken and sound artist Helge Sten, aka Deathprod.

Supersilent’s performance, as part of a Scandinavian double bill with Phronesis at the 2018 EFG London Jazz Festival, was a unique listening experience as the trio embraced dynamic and sonic extremes in a highly charged, often excoriating, opening set. My account of the proceedings can be read as part of my Festival coverage here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/features/article/efg-london-jazz-festival-day-eight-23rd-november-2018

With regard to this latest project Mapp himself says;
“Stillefelt began life as a response to Gonimoblast. Before it had a proper name I labelled the project the ‘quiet band’ as a way of demarcating it from Gonimoblast performances, which can often be quite the opposite. In order to facilitate our early meetings I wrote some short, cell-like ideas for the trio, to try and give us a shared resource to improvise with (or without). It was never my intention that the pieces should be played in the same way each time, or even that they be played at all. But, by having the same thing in front of us we might be able to develop a coherent vision for what the trio could be. The track ‘Quiet Field’ represents our first attempt at trying to do that. The pieces remain part of how we play together, some of what we bring with us to each new improvisation. During performances they are stretched to the point where it is not clear where the written material begins or ends, or indeed if something else is being created.”

The musicians that Mapp chose for this project are the Birmingham based players Percy Pursglove (trumpet, flugelhorn) and Thomas Seminar Ford (guitar, electronics).

Also an accomplished bassist Mapp’s long term associate Pursglove is a key presence on the Birmingham jazz scene and is a musician with a national reputation who also plays regularly with London based performers.  Pursglove also studied jazz in New York and has also worked with many of that city’s leading contemporary jazz musicians. He is a respected educator who holds several teaching posts, notably as a lecturer in Jazz at Birmingham Conservatoire. As well as working prolifically as a sideman on both trumpet and bass Pursglove is also a composer of note and in 2014 presented a large scale composition, “Far Reaching Dreams of Mortal Souls” at the CBSO Centre in Birmingham. The piece had been commissioned by the Birmingham based Jazzlines association on the occasion of Pursglove being awarded a Jazzlines Fellowship. A similar honour was awarded to Mapp, which helped to kick-start the Gonimoblast project. Other winners included trumpeter Yazz Ahmed and vocalist Lauren Kinsella. My review of the première of “Far Reaching Dreams” can be read here; https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/percy-pursglove-far-reaching-dreams-of-mortal-souls-cbso-centre-birmingham-
Sadly the music is yet to be recorded.

Seminar Ford is younger and is a project of the Jazz Course at Birmingham Conservatoire. Since graduating he has established himself on the city’s jazz scene. His credits include work with pianists Sam Watts and Rebecca Nash, saxophonist Chris Young and the electro-jazz quartet Autumn. Seminar Ford recently played an important role on Nash’s acclaimed 2019 album “Peaceful King”, credited to her band, Atlas, a recording that also features Mapp on bass.
Review here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/rebecca-nash-atlas-peaceful-king

Seminar Ford’s growing fascination with electronics makes him an ideal partner for Mapp in this new project. Pursglove is also a natural choice in the light of his long musical relationship with the leader and his trumpet and flugel brings a vital humanising element to Stillefelt’s sound.

The programme consists of six part composed, part improvised pieces documented by recording engineer Luke Morish-Thomas, himself an improvising musician, on March 9th 2018. Mapp himself produces and the distinctive album artwork is courtesy of Tom Tebby.

The group went into the studio with a series of compositional sketches by Mapp that acted as “starting points, destinations and waymarks” for the trio’s improvisations. Live audio processing and Seminar Ford’s liberal use of FX pedals were used to create ‘sound beds’, these forming the foundations for the improvised aspects of the trio’s performance.

Appropriately the album commences with “opening” (all the tune title are in lower case) with Mapp and Seminar Ford establishing a shimmering, ambient soundscape. Conventional bass and guitar sounds are still discernible, subjected to subtle electronic embellishments. Pursglove floats serenely above the ethereal backdrop, his delicate musings perfectly suited to the sonic landscape in which he finds himself. Towards the close a more sinister and unsettling element creeps in, a subtle change prompted by Pursglove’s use of extended techniques – pecking, a rush of breath through the mouthpiece of the horn -  allied to the darker timbres now deployed by Mapp and Seminar Ford.

The six pieces seem to flow into one another, in almost suite like fashion. “a kind of a day”,  unfolds in broadly similar fashion, initially sounding bright and optimistic, thanks in no small part to Pursglove’s trumpet/flugel, but with the mood again darkening subtly and almost imperceptibly as the improvisation progresses. Pursglove whispers above Seminar Ford’s Frisell like chording and Mapp’s underlying bass pulse, the melodic trumpet eventually dropping out to leave an extended closing passage featuring electronic timbres, extended guitar techniques and eventually rushes of breath as Pursglove picks up his horn once more.

The piece segues into “towards a rusty future” which announces it itself with an unsettling array of sounds variously generated by breath, wire wound strings and the crackle of electricity. At one juncture the sounds of a ticking clock are approximated as Pursglove’s vocalised sounds eventually metamorphose into a more orthodox, whispering, Harmon muted trumpet sound, again above a shimmering ambient soundscape. There’s a feeling of great spaciousness here, but it’s one of a dark dystopian nature, out of which a certain serenity eventually emerges, the title no doubt chosen to reflect the mood of the piece.
In an unexpected twist of the tail a minimalist style rhythmic pulse emerges that provides the gateway into the next piece, “quiet field”, essentially the title track and the first piece that the trio recorded. Pursglove’s trumpet pipes softly above Mapp’s circling bass pulse and Seminar Ford’s guitar curlicues, the trumpet melody lines subtly lengthening as the piece proceeds. The ethereal shimmer of Seminar Ford’s guitar is at one juncture accompanied by sounds approximating bird song and the guitarist himself sometimes seems to be reaching for the sky via series of pedal generated swells.

The title track then segues into “half life”, which continues the pastoral mood as Pursglove’s trumpet floats serenely over Seminar Ford’s subtle and responsive guitar chording. Featuring mainly ‘conventional’ instrumental sounds it’s the most obviously ‘pretty’ and accessible track on the album and also includes an extended dialogue between guitar and electric bass, with the electronica only coming in towards the close as an adjunct to Pursglove’s returning trumpet.

This presages the final segue into the closing “never…ending”,  a more unsettling item that places a greater emphasis on electronics, extended technique and more obviously ‘free’ playing.

Stillefelt’s music bears an obvious resemblance to the solo work of the influential Arve Henriksen, albeit without the distinctive vocal elements that Henriksen brings to his music. Nevertheless it is fascinating music in its own right, an intriguing mix of acoustic and electronic sounds that slowly draws the listener into its sonic web.

As Mapp has stated Stillefelt is very different in mood and feel to Gonimoblast, even though the working methods of both bands are broadly similar. Stillefelt is less confrontational than its more boisterous companion, but again the trio’s music won’t be everyone. That said I can see it holding considerable appeal for BBC Radio 3’s late night audience, the ‘Late Junction Crowd’ if you will.

Which reminds me… I’m personally of the opinion that Night Tracks, with its greater reliance on classical music and rather stilted delivery is a pretty anodyne and inadequate substitute for the more eclectic and adventurous Late Junction. I know the latter still survives on Fridays, but I do miss those regular mid week programmes. And don’t get me started on the axing of “Jazz Now”.

There will be some who accuse Stillefelt’s music of bloodlessness but at around the forty minute mark the album stays around long enough to make its point but not to outstay its welcome. The changes in moods, dynamics and styles occur subtly, organically and almost imperceptibly, they are not overtly signposted, but nevertheless the attentive listener can become fully absorbed in the textures and nuances of this beguiling music.

As Mapp has stated these pieces are never likely to be played in the same way each time and, as with so much improvised music, one suspects that the best place to hear and appreciate Stillefelt would be in live performance. The trio have already presented their music at the 2019 Manchester Jazz Festival and at the Symphony Hall and Artefact venues in Birmingham.

However, the Covid-19 crisis could not have come at a worse time for Stillefelt who were due to present their music at the Punkt Festival in Birmingham in March alongside their guest, Norwegian sound artist Jan Bang. That festival was cancelled, as is Cheltenham Jazz Festival where the trio was scheduled to appear in May, a performance that I had intended to see and cover.

Hopefully the following two dates may still take place, depending on how the current situation unfolds. Let’s hope so.

8th July 2020 – Jazz at The Lescar, Sheffield

20th July 2020 – The Whiskey Jar, Manchester

“Stillefelt” is available from;

http://www.stoneylane.net

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