The Golden Age Of Steam

“Tomato Brain”

(Limited Noise Records)

James Allsopp – tenor saxophone, voice, Kit Downes – keyboards, voice, Tim Giles – drums, electronics, voice, Alex Bonney – electronics, voice, Ruth Goller – bass, voice

This release marks the welcome return of The Golden Age Of Steam, the eclectic ensemble led by saxophonist and composer James Allsopp.

TGAOS was originally comprised of the trio of Allsopp, Downes and Giles and made its recorded début back in 2009 with “Raspberry Tongue”, released on the Babel label.

The follow up, “Welcome To Bat Country” (Basho Records, 2012) saw the core trio augmented by Bonney and Goller, the pair subsequently joining the group as fully fledged members.

Both of the previous TGAOS albums have been reviewed elsewhere on the Jazzmann, as have two live appearances by the group. The first of these was by the original trio at the 2009 Cheltenham Jazz Festival. In January 2013 I witnessed the quintet sharing a double bill with Troyka at the Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath, Birmingham.

After a whole eight years since their last recording I had pretty much given up on TGAOS, so it’s good to have them back. Not that the group’s members have been exactly idle in the meantime. Allsopp has worked extensively with vocalist and songwriter Andrew Plummer in the bands Snack Family and World Sanguine Report, indeed this new album appears on Plummer’s Limited Noise imprint.  He also appears, this time playing baritone sax,  on pianist Rick Simpson’s recent release “Everything All Of The Time”, an acoustic jazz re-imagining of the Radiohead album “Kid A”.

Goller is also a member of the bands Vula Viel and Melt Yourself Down, plus a myriad of other projects. Downes has a successful solo career, as well as being a serial collaborator with others while Bonney is a busy and much acclaimed engineer and producer in addition to his work as a musician. The versatile Giles is a stalwart of the UK jazz scene, whose recent work includes recording with saxophonists Tori Freestone and Ed Jones and vocalist Brigitte Beraha. To fully explore the careers of the five members of TGAOS would take up far more space than is available here.

And so we come to this new album, which features the six part, thirty one minute suite “Loftopus”, plus an arrangement of the Ivor Cutler song “Tomato Brain”, which constitutes the title track.

“Welcome To Bat Country” (the title a phrase borrowed from Hunter S. Thompson) was a semi-conceptual affair that embraced the idea of a run down, sinister, psychedelic circus. Meanwhile the “Loftopus” epic deploys the idea of “some ghostly sound-lab, an abandoned Radiophonic workshop or 70s free art space”.

Although divided into six separate tracks for the purposes of the CD “Loftopus” is performed as a single entity and was recorded in a single take.

“Part One” takes us to that abandoned sound-lab deep at night as something begins to stir. Electronic pulses, like ghostly heartbeats, mingle with the echoing murmurs of unintelligible voices, presumably those of the band. Drum sounds also echo eerily, while ghostly Morse code like oscillations emerge. It’s quiet but unmistakably spooky, the mood unsettling, the air pregnant with possibilities.

The entry of Allsopp’s gently brooding tenor marks the demarcation into “Part Two”, his sax seeming to wander around this dream-space, as the electronics continue to pulse and drone. Downes’ keyboards and Goller’s bass add depth to the sound and the leader’s sax takes on a more urgent tone as we slide into “Part 3”.

Downes’ keyboards assume the lead, sketching minimalist patterns, as the leader’s sax keens and cries in Garbarek like fashion. The emergence of a sinister, pulsing electronic motif sees the already unsettling music take an even darker, more ominous turn, the mood compounded by the pounding of Giles’ bass drum heralding the transition into “Part 4”.

The insistent booming of Giles’ drums is augmented by eerie electric drones as the skies darken yet further, before Allsopp’s tenor asserts itself, wailing defiantly above an increasingly powerful backdrop of keys, bass, drums and electronics. The unstoppable power of the music helps to give it an almost anthemic quality, albeit a decidedly darker one than usual.

There’s not let up in the intensity as we move into “Part 5”, with Downes’ Hammond organ emerging as a distinctive voice alongside Allsopp’s still wailing tenor. I’ve regularly compared TGAOS with the instrumental element of Van Der Graaf Generator, thanks to the combination of sax and organ, and I’m reminded of that here as Downes emerges as a soloist. The VDGG comparison is also encouraged by the barely controlled fury of Giles’ drumming.

“Part 6” represents the comedown, the aftermath. The ghostly voices return,  together with the sinister electronic pulses as Allsopp’s distracted tenor stalks the wreckage of this musical chill out zone. Eventually the saxophone becomes lost among the voices, pulses and bleeps as the ‘suite’ closes much as it began.

The overall arc of “Loftopus” suggests a story of the creation of some kind of musical Frankenstein’s Monster, constructed in that hypothetical abandoned sound lab, that eventually roars into rampaging life before subsequently burning itself out and falling silent once more.

The dying embers of “Loftopus” lead into album title track “Tomato Brain”, an arrangement of a song/poem written by the late Ivor Cutler (1923-2006). Allsopp’s taste for the surreal arguably stems from his love of Cutler’s work. The Glasgow born Cutler was variously a musician, poet, author and humourist, whose work still retains a strong cult following.

“Tomato Brain” first appeared on Cutler’s 1983 album “Privilege”, a series of duets recorded with the poet Linda Hirst and produced by the improvising musicians David Toop and Steve Beresford. It tells the tale of a man sitting on the grass eating a sandwich, who, in a surreal macabre twist becomes the sandwich he is eating. “the man is a sandwich, his body’s the cheese, his brain’s the tomato, the pips are his thoughts, the juice is like blood”.

The members of the ensemble give voice to Cutler’s words, their vocalisations emerging from the shadowy electronics and percussion intro, that itself represents the fall-out from the earlier “Loftopus”. Electronics and percussion continue to pulse and chatter around the voices before Allsopp’s mournful tenor emerges to deliver a solo that acts as a homage to Cutler’s whimsical genius.  This is followed by a second rendition of the words and a more extended and powerful saxophone solo, with drums and Hammond also added to the electronic timbres. TGAOS describe the track as “a chance meeting between Ivor Cutler, Pharaoh Sanders and Delia Derbyshire”, a suitably bizarre concept at the conclusion of this weird and wonderful album.

The “Tomato Brain” album has attracted a lot of comparisons. Besides my usual VDGG observation (the likeness is generally not quite so obvious this time round) others have drawn parallels with the works of Herbie Hancock, Jan Garbarek, The Necks, Can and Berlin era David Bowie. I’d also compare the shifting opus that is “Loftopus” with “As Falls Wichita So Falls Wichita Falls”, from the 1981 album of the same name by Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays, although it has to be said that “Loftopus” is far more dystopian and disturbing.

It’s good to see The Golden Age Of Steam back on track. Let’s hope that they get the opportunity to tour this music some time in 2021.

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