SPUNK, Kantarell (Rune Grammofon)

In a spot of Money Will Ruin Everything 2-induced nostalgia, I thought it would be pretty interesting to look back at that very first batch of releases on the Rune Grammofon label, seeing how the label has evolved in the eleven years of its existence. Thinking about the label as it is now, with the likes of Susanna, In The Country, and Hilde Marie Kjersem on the roster, I expected to see a gradual softening round the edges over the years. That doesn’t seem to be the case – amongst the first dozen or so releases were albums described by the label themselves as “vaguely in the Radiohead area” and “trip-hop and minimalist country“. Rune Kristofferson’s stewardship has, it seems, always somehow steered this ship from stormy seas to safer waters and back, and with him on this deck throughout the entire voyage have been two collections of quick-thinking old hands: Supersilent and SPUNK.

Tortoise, Beacons of Ancestorship (Thrill Jockey)

With all this talk of taxons and ancestorship, you could begin to wonder whether Tortoise have half an eye on their place in the firmament of greats. But which place? Each album inevitably hints at such an array of influences, from jazz to rock to classical to electro to soundtracks to dub to genres-that-probably-exist-only-in-their-head-that-is-how-fucking-clever-they-are. Each album sounds almost completely unlike the preceding release. Yet each album always somehow sounds like a Tortoise album.

William Fowler Collins, Perdition Hill Radio; On, Your Naked Ghost Comes Back At Night (both Type)

And so the last release on the Type label, the relatively melodic and summery self-titled album by City Center, proves to have been no more than a twinkle-toed dummy. They have shimmied quickly back to the dark side, finding spaces occupied by team members Svarte Greiner and Xela, piercing my defences with a couple of blistering runs down the flank from William Fowler Collins and On. Damnit, how long till the football season starts, I’m going to run out of metaphors if I have to keep this up much longer.

Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto with Ensemble Modern, utp_(Raster-Noton)

For minimalists, they sure have a lot to say: with the obscurely-titled utp_ (utopia, perhaps?), Carsten Nicolai and Ryuichi Sakamoto return for their fourth collaboration on Raster-Noton. Their reasons were grand enough: utp_ was constructed and performed in 2007 to mark the 400th birthday of the city of Mannheim. Something grand was thereby required: cue the addition of a twelve-strong Ensemble Modern, and some striking synchronised visuals. Raster-Noton’s combination of the CD, the DVD, the score and liner notes by David Toop makes this a grand package indeed.

Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra and The Bad Plus at the Royal Festival Hall, 20/06/09

Given the unmistakeable stench of revolution in the air (and I don’t just mean in Iran, even the Guardian were calling for it here in the UK), now seemed to be a good occasion for an assembling of Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra. As he explained at the start of the show, he first felt compelled to put the band together to make an album under that old charmer Nixon. The next time he made one Reagan was in charge, then Bush Sr, then Bush Jr. “Well, don’t make another one then”, someone yelled from the crowd, amusingly mixing cause and effect. Well, maybe he should quickly make another one, ditching the Spanish/Central American/South African themes, and going for one with with lyrics entirely in Farsi.

Ornette Coleman and the Master Musicians of Jajouka, Royal Festival Hall, 19/06/09

During the course of the South Bank Centre’s Meltdown Festival in previous years, the curator’s presence has sometimes been felt as little more than a face on a poster and a vague shadow before their own closing night performance. Not so this year. Every night Ornette Coleman has been on stage, sitting in with the likes of The Roots, Yoko Ono and Bobby McFerrin in the build up to this, the first of his own pair of performances. An even more familiar sight has been that of The Master Musicians of Jajouka, who have given free performances every day on the Festival Hall’s Terrace and Ballroom – so their right to play on the big stage with the big man himself was well-earned.

Mike Patton and Fred Frith at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, 18/06/09

When did the people of London acquire such a high tolerance for this experimental music lark that they became prepared to shell out thirty of their hard-earned, increasingly worthless and grubby-looking pounds for the right to sit in the same room as a man tuning his guitar whilst another man shouted at him for an hour? If ever there was a Meltdown performance which I thought would struggle to find an audience it was this. But there we all were in our expensively comfy QEH seats, looking pretty relaxed and (for the most part) not in the slightest perplexed by this meeting of two disciples of Ornette by way of John Zorn: Fred Frith and Mike Patton.

Aethenor, Faking Gold And Murder (VHF); Sunn O))), Monoliths and Dimensions (Southern Lord)

“Play your gloom axe Stephen O’Malley…sub-bass clinging to the sides of the valley”. Somehow Stephen O’Malley’s career not only survived his name being invoked in ludicrous fashion by Julian Cope (on the Sunn O))) album White 2), but seems to have flourished. The long-awaited new Sunn O))) album, Monoliths and Dimensions, is probably so long-awaited as O’Malley has been involved in so many other projects, not least his role in the inception of the third Aethenor album, Faking Gold And Murder. These new records are the richest and most rewarding of each band’s discography.

Marc Ribot, Evan Parker and Han Bennink at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, 14/06/09

Before this show started, I paid a visit to the foyer of the QEH’s big sister, the RFH. A free concert by Acoustic Ladyland was in full swing, and the place was packed out. It was a gorgeous sunny day on the South Bank, and yet, hundreds of people were jostling about inside a sweaty space enjoying some raucous punk-jazz. I really hope that by the time it has finished, this Meltdown festival will have demonstrated that the people of London will enjoy some adventurous jazz in a prestigious venue (hello, London Jazz Festival), as well as introducing many more to this exciting – and fun – music. I did my bit by buying a pair of tickets for this meeting of three free jazz veterans, headed up by guitarist Marc Ribot – a man probably most famous to people in this county right now for his guitar solo on Tom Waits’s “Way Down In The Hole” as featured on the opening credits of The Wire. However, this thoroughly entertaining concert was to show a very different side of his musical persona.

The Roots at The Royal Festival Hall, 13/06/09

After a couple of fairly tepid choices in recent years, appointing musical pioneer Ornette Coleman as curator of this year’s Meltdown festival was a truly inspired piece of picking, and one which was guaranteed to give a lineup which would astonish and bewilder in equal parts. Philadephian hip-hop band The Roots would have been securely pitched in the former camp even if they hadn’t brought a handful of legends – tonight was even to feature a surprise appearance by Ornette himself – to accompany them. This was a show which swayed the sometimes staid Southbank to its solid concrete foundations.