The Exu

“The Exu”

(Discus Music DISCUS 182CD)

James Mainwaring – saxophones, Dave Kane – double bass, Emil Karlsen

Naming themselves after a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting The Exu is a trio of improvising musicians based in the north of England.

Its members all cut their teeth on the Leeds jazz scene and all have featured previously on the Jazzmann web pages in a variety of incarnations.

Saxophonist James Mainwaring is arguably best known as a member of the Mercury Music Prize nominated Roller Trio, also featuring Luke Reddin-Williams (drums) and first Luke Wynter and then Chris Sharkey on guitar. The band’s three albums “Roller Trio” (2012), “Fracture” (2014) and “New Devices” (2018) are all reviewed elsewhere on this site, as are live appearances at the London and Cheltenham jazz festivals.

Away from Roller Trio Mainwaring has worked as a solo performer, releasing the albums “Mycorrhiza” (2021) and   “Meditations 1A” (2023) and as the leader of the quartet Tipping Point, featuring Matthew Bourne (Fender Rhodes), Michael Bardon (double bass) and Joost Hendrickx (drums). That group’s debut album “The Earthworm’s Eye View” was released October 2015 and is reviewed here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/tipping-point-the-earthworms-eye-view

Mainwaring has also been part of the bands Space F!ght, Stoop Quintet and a member of pianist John Law’s Congregation group, appearing on Law’s excellent 2020 album “Configurations”, which also sees Mainwaring contributing guitar and electronics.
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/john-laws-configuration

He is also an acclaimed educator, holding a teaching post at Leeds Conservatoire and he has also been involved in the development of digital resources and practice tools for the benefit of musicians.

At the present time Mainwaring’s main musical focus is with The Exu, in which he shares compositional duties with bassist Dave Kane, another leading figure on the UK jazz and improvised music scene and who is also based in Leeds.

Originally from Bangor in Northern Ireland Kane came to England to study at Leeds University and ended up staying. He was a founder of LIMA (Leeds Improvised Music Association) and was musical director of the LIMA Orchestra.

Kane first appeared on the Jazzmann web pages back in 2009 as the leader of the quintet Rabbit Project, featuring Matthew Bourne (Fender Rhodes), Simon Kaylor (tenor sax), Simon Beddoe (trumpet) and Joost Hendrickx (drums). The group’s excellent album release “Eye Of The Duck” (Edition Records) is reviewed here.
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/dave-kanes-rabbit-project-the-eye-of-the-duck

The bassist has also worked regularly with the trio Bourne, Davis, Kane, a collaboration with Bourne  and drummer Steve Davis. The core trio has frequently been augmented by saxophonist Paul Dunmall. Guest contributor reviewed a live performance by this quartet at The Vortex, London, also in 2009.
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/paul-dunmall-matthew-bourne-dave-kane-live-london-vortex-11-august-2009

Tim also reviewed the core trio’s album release “The Money Notes” in 2011, also noting that Bourne, Davis and Kane had performed with Dunmall on the saxophonist’s “Moment to Moment” album, released on Slam Records.
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/the-money-notes

Kane has also featured on these pages as a member of the Anglo-French collective Tweedle Dee at the 2012 Cheltenham Jazz Festival.

His name also appears in my reviews of recordings by World Sanguine Report, the avant jazz / rock group led by vocalist and songwriter Andrew Plummer, and by pianist and composer Dave Stapleton, the founder of Edition Records.

Others with whom Kane has worked include drummer Paul Hession, trumpeter / sound artist Alex Bonney and Shank, a trio with the London based musicians James Allsopp (reeds) and Tim Giles (drums).

The third member of The Exu is Emil Karlsen (born1998), a Norwegian drummer who, like Kane, studied in Leeds and decided to remain.   He has worked with Bourne, violinist Philipp Wachsmann, composer / laptop artist / violinist Phil Durrant and with the London Improvisers Orchestra. Others with whom he has played include vocalist Lauren Kinsella, trumpeter Charlotte Keeffe, saxophonists Mark Hanslip and Martin Clarke,  cellist Shirley Smart and bassists Kane, John Edwards, Olie Brice and Otto Willberg..

His playing has been endorsed by free jazz drum masters Paul Hession and Mark Sanders and Karlsen has performed as part of a drum duo with the latter.

Karlsen’s current projects include Spaces Unfolding, a trio with Wachsmann and flautist Neil Metcalfe that is sometimes augmented by the electronics of Pierre Alexandre Tremblay.

He also plays in a trio with saxophonist John Butcher and bassist Dominic Lash and with Tern, another trio featuring Wachsmann that also includes Martin Hackett on Korg MS10 synth.

“From Where Light Falls”, a 2021 recording by Karlsen’s still ongoing duo with saxophonist Ed Jones is reviewed here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/from-where-light-falls

The Basquiat painting after which the trio is named depicts Exu, the trickster deity of the Yoruba religion, a character that the band describe as; “a patron of boundaries and travellers, invoked during crucial decision making processes and responsible for guiding souls to the afterlife. Basquiat’s Exu symbolises chaos and a disregard for codified rules and conventional behaviour”.

It should be noted that The Exu’s debut album is not an orthodox free jazz recording. Instead the trio draw on an admirably diverse set of influences on an album comprised of a mix of collective improvisations and a series of short, snappy compositions by either Kane and Mainwaring, with no individual track exceeding five minutes in length. Kane contributes five tunes and Mainwaring three, the remaining four pieces being group improvisations. The album was recorded in May 2024 at Kane’s home studio with Chris Sharkey in the engineer / producer’s chair.

Some of the tune titles are indicative of the trio’s myriad influences,  these including free jazz, grunge, death metal, hip hop, bebop and experimental music, as Kane explains;‘we are the sum of our record collections, the films we have seen, the books we have read. It all goes into the mix to make our music.’.

The Exu’s debut veritably crackles with creative energy, the playing spirited and spiky and very much in a British ‘punk jazz’ tradition that includes bands such as Roller Trio, Acoustic Ladyland, Polar Bear and Led Bib, plus various others.

It commences with Mainwaring’s “Riddle Me This”, which combines elements of bop and swing with that aforementioned punk energy. But it’s not all sound and fury, there are more reflective and exploratory episodes too with Kane’s bass coming increasingly to the fore. The Exu are far from one dimensional and exhibit a skilled command of texture and dynamics.

Kane’s composition “Know Time” features another catchy melodic hook and sees the composer’s propulsive bass, allied to Karlsen’s crisp drumming, fuelling Mainwaring’s increasingly garrulous sax explorations. It’s a piece rooted in conventional jazz virtues but possessed of a very contemporary attitude and energy.

Mainwaring takes up the compositional reins again for “B4B”, which features the trio in a more reflective mood with Mainwaring adopting a less abrasive tone as his sax wanders around the sounds of Kane’s grounding bass and Karlsen’s textured and nuanced drumming. The mood is gently exploratory, with Karlsen in the role of colourist.

The first of the spontaneously realised pieces is “Pancakes”, which fits in well with the composed material and sees the trio continuing to explore, subtly pushing the boundaries with Mainwaring introducing such free jazz techniques as pecking and multiphonics. It also includes an unaccompanied ‘no time’ drum episode from the impressive Karlsen.

Companion piece “Waffles” is a Mainwaring composition, a more straightforward piece with a catchy sax motif that triggers an opening series of exchanges between Mainwaring and Karlsen before Kane establishes an insistent bass groove, which Karlsen locks in with, this providing the basis for Mainwaring to stretch out further and to do so in powerful and energetic fashion, reaching again into the realms of free jazz technique. The saxophonist then reels things back in for a closing series of exchanges with Karlsen. A sense of joy and playfulness informs the music of The Exu at all times, no matter how abstract the music might become. One really does sense that these guys are having a whale of a time.

Kane takes up the compositional reins for the rest of the album, beginning with “That’ll Do it!”, ushered in by the sound of his powerfully plucked bass as Karlsen set up a skittering drum groove alongside him. The rhythms continue to mutate as Mainwaring extemporises around them, building from a typically arresting hook, but gradually becoming more abstracted as the trio veer off into a loosely structured free for all. Out of this a rolling polyrhytmic drum groove arises, the basis for more sax explorations prior to a honking, riffy coda featuring a further series of sax / drum exchanges.

The improvised “The Field Next To The Road” features Mainwaring’s distinctive, strangulated sax sounds (on soprano, I think) above a rhythmic backdrop, presumably generated by Kane’s bass,  that resembles the sound of an mbira. The saxophonist adopts a slightly more conventional tone as the piece unfolds, the improvised melodies having something of a folk like quality. Karlsen deploys an intriguing variety of drum sounds and is eventually left to his own devices as the piece fades out.

Kane wears his influences on his sleeve with the title of his composition “Kurt (for Kurt Cobain)”.Also issued as a single this is a suitably grungy romp with bass and drums laying down a monolithic groove as Mainwaring emotes and shreds on what sounds like baritone sax. Hard riffing and belligerent this piece is cut from the same cloth as “Iggy”, Acoustic Ladyland’s tribute to Mr. Pop. It’s certain to be favourite item at the trio’s forthcoming live appearances as they embark on a short series of UK live dates in March, April and May 2025.

By way of contrast the improvised “Versus Medici” is gently exploratory, featuring a fragile lattice of tentative sax, double bass and brushed drums with, Mainwaring gradually becoming more assertive as the piece progresses, while still continuing the search. Again it’s more accessible than much freely improvised jazz and the piece once more fits in well with the aesthetic of the album as a whole.

Kane’s “Bug Glass” ups the energy levels once more with its infectious stop / start riff acting as the vehicle for Mainwaring’s most extreme sax shredding yet. Angry, buzz saw sax eruptions are accompanied by the roiling polyrhythms of bass and drums. Another piece surely destined to become a live favourite.

A final moment for reflection with the improvised “In That Case”, introduced by Kane’s deeply sonorous solo bass meditations and featuring the sounds of Mainwaring’s subtly probing sax meditations and the delicate rustle of Karlsen’s brushes.

The album concludes with a final nod to the trio’s influences and Kane’s composition “Berne it Up (for Tim Berne)”. It’s probably fair to say that Berne’s influence is apparent throughout the album, but Cobain’s less so, other than in terms of attitude. However despite its source of inspiration and the tune title itself this closing piece is not quite frenetic as I was expecting, although it does does eventually build up an impressive head of steam as The Exu pay tribute to Berne’s uncompromising and continually questing spirit.

Drawing on an admirably broad range of influences “The Exu” is an excellent saxophone trio recording that manages to bring something new, raw and exciting to the format without sounding anything like Sonny Rollins. It’s that rare beast, an avant garde jazz record that is actually highly accessible and I predict that the band will make a lot of fans on their forthcoming tour.

That accessibility comes without any hint of artistic compromise from the band. They avoid the idiomatic pitfalls of free jazz by keeping things tight, lean and sharply focussed, there is no musical flab on the bones of these small but perfectly formed pieces. The playing is steely eyed and dynamic but the band members also sound as if they’re having terrific fun and that ‘punk jazz’ attitude really does shine through. In the sometimes po faced world of avant garde jazz The Exu really are a breath of fresh air.

“The Exu” is available from the Discus Music Bandcamp page here;
https://discusmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-exu-182cd-2025

The Exu will be touring the UK joining March, April and May 2025 with dates scheduled as follows;

30th March – Jazztrain, London

April 1st – Digbeth Jazz, The Night Owl, Digbeth, Birmingham

May 18th – Manchester Jazz Festival

April 11th – 92 Degrees, Leeds

April – Hot Numbers Coffee, Cambridge

More information at;

http://www.theexu.com

https://www.facebook.com/the.exu

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