Rameses III, Simon Scott, Peter Jørgensen and Seasons (pre-din) at the Union Chapel, 28/11/09

These daylight music concerts feel a little strange, don’t they? My normal gig-going routine just doesn’t seem to work. You know, the usual sort of thing – half a dozen pints and a curry beforehand, cocktails and hookers with the band backstage afterwards, before getting into a brawl with a minicab driver on the way home. I did manage TWO nice cups of tea, and there was some loud tutting about a minor breach of tube etiquette on the return journey, but somehow it just wasn’t the same. Still, there was much to enjoy about the line-up for this Arctic Circle Daylight Music event in the sunlight-dappled (if still absolutely bloody freezing) interior of the lovely Union Chapel.

Richard Youngs, Under Stellar Stream (Jagjaguwar)

On Under Stellar Stream Richard Youngs’ continues his evolution into an artist of considerable stature. He picks up where he left off on his last release for Jagjaguwar, Autumn Response, to build a collection of songs which have a power vastly disproportionate to their simple structures. Under Stellar Stream has a hypnotic quality which will entrance all those who meet its gaze.

Tortoise and Cluster, Royal Festival Hall, 22/11/09

The London Jazz Festival ran round some extremely far-flung bases on this last day. A day which had began so thrillingly by throwing up whole new connections between jazz and dubstep led to a real curveball of a finale, with performances by Chicago’s Tortoise and Germany’s Cluster. Cluster have little or no connection to jazz and, in truth, the jazz element of Tortoise’s music is often overstated: theirs is a music whose structures are as unbending as rock itself, with little space for improvisation. However they do have a jazz-like willingness to take on the asymmetric time signature, and are ever-keen to double up on marimba.

Trouble Tune featuring Geiom, Bass Clef and the London Improvisers Orchestra, The Clore Ballroom, 22/11/09

It is just after lunchtime on the South Bank, and parents with young children are gathering inside in the Clore Ballroom for an afternoon of family-friendly entertainment. Which means sitting on a hard wooden floor while a bunch of the UK’s leading dubstep artists blast bass in their face. Of course. This Trouble Tune event was an imaginative extension to the London Jazz Festival, exploring the overlap between improvisation and this most vibrant of UK musical scenes, teaming Geion and Bass Clef with luminaries of the London Improvisers Orchestra. Follow this with a performance by Cluster and Tortoise in the Royal Festival Hall later in the same evening (review to follow), and you probably have the most inspired day of programming in the South Bank that I can remember.

Black To Comm, Alphabet 1968 (Type)

Another great year for the Type label draws to a close with what may well be one of their best. I’m certainly convinced that it is the finest release that Marc Richter has produced, shoehorning as it does the more abstract drones which have characterised previous Black To Comm albums into a more obviously structured framework, and adding some surprising sounds. The result is a suite of ten epic and atmospheric tracks which covers far more ground than you’d expect.

Night Of The Long Worms, Cafe Oto, 19/11/09

Who or what are the long worms? It is the question that has been on, ooh, just about everyone’s lips since the seemingly Touch-affiliated Tapeworm began their cassette crusade, with releases by the familiar – Philip Jeck, Simon Fisher Turner – and the unfamiliar. I mean, who on earth are the Van Patterson Quartet? And Meltaot? No idea. In fact, who was the head worm himself? Will we ever know? This tidal wave of mild curiosity appears to have reached the most unlikely of quarters. In the queue in front of me at Oto was an orthodox Jew enquiring about the night’s events: “What is this Night Of The Long Worms?”. After an abortive attempt by Oto staff to explain, there was a pause as he mulled over his options. “Will there be dancing?”, he asked.

Broadcast and the Focus Group, Witch Cults Of The Radio Age (Warp); Roj, The Transactional Dharma Of Roj (Ghost Box)

The worlds of Broadcast and Ghost Box have become increasingly intertwined over the years. Ghost Box co-owner Julian House has long been charged with the group’s visual identity via the vibrant series of record sleeves which have graced their work. More recently, Broadcast appeared at the fictional Ghost Box HQ “Belbury Poly” to wrap a live soundtrack around a Julian House short film (an event repeated recently for The Wire Magazine’s Into The Vortex gigs). Hallowe’en 2009 has brought a full-fledged audio collaboration between House’s Focus Group and Broadcast, in which they investigate the “Witch Cults Of The Radio Age’. (As if the muddied waters weren’t swirling sufficiently, former Broadcast member Roj Stevens has also released his first solo album on – where else – Ghost Box).

London Jazz Festival: Vijay Iyer and Lukas Ligeti at the Purcell Room, 15-16/11/09

I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed by the lineup on the South Bank for the London Jazz Festival this year. Jazz to me (as you have probably gathered) is about a risk-taking, non-conformist approach; it is an ever-evolving art-form, not a heritage industry. But on the South Bank this year, voices are “smouldering”, saxophonists are “cool”, and arrangements are “profoundly melodic”; anything remotely edgy (and this seems to include even Led Bib) are banished to the margins. By which I mean Dalston. I had to scour the programme to find some exciting young talent, those who were pushing at the edges and taking jazz to new places. I settled on this pair of gigs at the Purcell Room by Vijay Iyer and Lukas Ligeti.

Food, Vladislav Delay and Eyebrow at the Union Chapel, 12/11/09

Sasu Ripatti and Thomas Strønen are two individuals I’ve been looking forward to seeing for some time, two artists patrolling very different sections of the electronics / live percussion border. Strønen’s work on the Rune Grammofon label is a radical re-thinking of the possibilities of jazz drumming, while Ripatti’s past as a jazz drummer seems some way distant, seeping through in the fractured rhythmic sensibilities of his work under the Vladislav Delay name. Both were to play on the same bill here in one of the Arctic Circle’s Union Chapel events, each as part of a separate duo with a (very different) saxophonist: Ripatti (as Delay) with Lucio Capece, and Strønen playing with Iain Ballamy as Food.

Kevin Drumm, Imperial Horizon (Hospital Productions)

And so Imperial Distortion continues on to the Imperial Horizon: this new release by Kevin Drumm feels less liek a standalone work and more like an absolutely necessary coda to last year’s scarred beauty of a double album. His black metal and evil noise roots seem ever more distant as he heads further out into this ambient sea, with this latest voyage being a one-track one-hour epic. Patient explorers will find this to be one of the most rewarding journeys they will take this year.