Musician's Playlist
​EVAN PARKER / PAUL LYTTON - Collective Calls (Revisited) (Jubilee)
Evan Parker: tenor saxophone; Paul Lytton: drums
Recorded March 29th 2019 by Alex Inglizian at Experimental Sound Studio Chicago.
Among the many pairings through which Evan Parker has created the topology of improvised music over the past half century, his work with Paul Lytton back in the very 1970s emphasised the ways in which 'noise' (as cacophony, racket, apparent randomness) could be woven into aural patterns which float up, shimmer and disappear. Lytton's ever-growing collection of objects which surrounded him on stage meant that his 'drum kit' required a van of its own to transport. Together they made three albums in the 1970s, shifting their approach to improvisation each time they recorded. In 1972, the driving rhythms and sheets of sound on 'collective calls (urban) (two microphones)' created a heavy and challenging assault on the listener. Later recordings dialled down the loudness and played with the ways in which silence between sounds could stretch the aural patterns. With Lytton leaving the UK, the duo was folded into the many other projects of these pioneers of improvisation (most notably, for me, their long-standing collaboration with Barry Guy).
Recorded on a single day in a studio in Chicago, Parker's enormous range on the tenor saxophone (incorporating lengthy circular breathing runs, hushed breaths across the reeds or taps on the keys, squawks, screeches and tender balladry) responds so closely to Lytton's versatile drumming (here on what sounds like a conventional jazz kit rather than the junk-yard of the 1970s) that the synergy between them is perfect. The pieces build and fade as naturally as breathing or as a conversation between old friends. Indeed, the titles of the pieces were selected from Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti's autobiography – the first volume of which is 'Party im Blitz'. Not only do the titles feel oddly suited to the mood and atmospherics of each piece, but they also feel like fragments of conversation that you might eavesdrop between old friends. Some of these might be snatches '…confused about England', '…a little perplexing', '…beheading their own king', others feel like the start of an anecdote 'Alfreda was always especially cordial to me…', 'The bonfires of Hampstead Heath', and others seem to offer conclusions 'England feels very remote to me', 'Each thing, the one, the other and both together would amount to the truth'. Canetti's approach to writing was unconventional; not for him the lengthy and rather dull approach to autobiography but, rather, he'd present small vignettes or scenes one after the other, leaving the reader to fill in the gaps and pull these into a coherent whole. So that each thing together would amount to a truth. Not a bad metaphor for the ways in which improvised music works – as both a conversation and also as scenes that the listener cooperates in making meaning from.
That Parker and Lytton continue to not only perform but also shape free improvisation is testament to their unflinching inventiveness. So, it seems very fitting that 'collective calls' is revisited in this their jubilee year. We don't need to mention their ages (although, of course, you don't make a jubilee recording unless you've got a few miles on the clock) but the energy that both bring to the set is stunning and the creativity across the 11 pieces offers a masterclass for anyone who aspires to free music.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
ECM celebrates 50 years of music production with the Touchstones series of re-issues