Tonight’s Wire XXV show marked the end of an exhausting run of 5 gigs in 8 days for me, and as good as they have mostly been – in fact, tonight’s was up there with the very best - I’m actually quite glad to see the back of them.  It might give me time to tackle what is probably a mounting backlog of CDs I should be reviewing (I’ve totally lost track).  So, for old times’ sake, one last restaurant recommendation for the week: if you find yourself in the Holborn area, perhaps needing to kill some time before a gig, you could do worse than trying out the bulgogi and kimchi at Korean restaurant Asadal – age old recipes served freshly and with fire and spice; much like tonight’s performances in fact.

This extended edition of Spring Heel Jack’s Back In Your Town events (see the review of the Charles Gayle one here) began with the duo lining with one of their perennial collaborators, the 65 year-old master percussionist Han Bennink.  Bennink started off exuberantly, playing some African-flavoured rhythms and blowing a whistle.  Coxon started to generate some waves of sound from his guitar for him to surf, which he did in sprightly fashion, damping his drum with his foot at one point, before playing a snare covered in a towel for a bit.  Ashley Wales was having trouble at the back hearing what he was doing, but the two others were having too much fun to notice; Bennink even pausing to produce some shadow puppets on the back wall. 

The next group featured SHJ with the 71 year-old ex-Coltrane collaborator John Tchicai, with John Edwards on bass, Tony Marsh on drums (it was Tony Marsh, wasn’t it?  I was a long way away), and the way too cool and young looking Orphy Robinson on vibes.  I thought Tchicai was a little slow out of the traps, with some unadventurous melody at the start, but after the ensemble kicked the piece up to a new level with some interlocked drum and vibes, he switched to bass clarinet and then tenor to much greater, and freer, effect.  The highlights of this segment for me were the quieter moments in which John Edwards shone, scraping and brushing his strings to provide an inventive carpet for the others to tiptoe over, while Tchicai ended with a spirited reading, booming about plasticity and divinity.

Then another change of drummer, in coming one of the foremost figures in free jazz drumming, the ever-youthful 71 year-old Sunny Murray.  His playing at first was a little staid, content to coast along on a wave of hi-hat for a bit too long for my liking, but he exploded in the second half, creating a more typical (of him) cacophony of clatter and crash, which somehow managed still to swing.  The vibes, guitar and bass picked up on a groove and passed it around between them, with Tchicai yodelling on top.  Coxon, who was on irrepressible form tonight, fought Tchaicai with rolls of feedback, while the peerless Edwards defended with bowed drones.  Perhaps overrunning – doesn’t everything these days - they had to call an early end to servings from this most bitingly hot of menus, with Sunny doing a little celebratory dance over his drumkit.

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