Label: Otoroku

Another Timbre、thanatosis produktion、Fou Records、Klanggalerieといった当店ラインナップでお馴染みのレーベルに関連諸作を残して来た女性ピアニストSophie Agnelを中心とするトリオの2023年Cafe OTO録音。Evan Parker、John Russell、Lol Coxhillら重鎮勢との数々の共演で知られるJohn Edwards、そしてIncusやカセットレーベルVOTPからの音源でも知られるドラマーSteve Noble、Cafe OTOお気に入りのベテラン3者によるパフォーマンスを記録したもので、楽器に対する真剣でありながらも遊び心のあるアプローチ、また互いの限界点をコントロールする様なテスト的試みも確認出来る鬼気迫る3パート。凄まじいです。



Comes in 4-panel Digipak. Recorded live at Cafe OTO on 6th and 7th June, 2023

Sophie Agnel plays the whole piano. Its body matters as much as its strings. The keyboard's lid is just as good closed as it is open - in fact it’s best slammed open and closed rapidly. Joined by bassist John Edwards and drummer Steve Noble, Three on a Match explodes the piano trio - each player sparking off the other so quickly that it’s impossible to figure out who lit the flame.

Recorded at OTO in 2023, this was the second two night residency for a trio that has fast become one of our favourite improvising groups. Each individually brilliant, Agnel, Edwards and Noble’s enduring connection is in their seriously playful approach to their instrument - in their way of looking at it as a whole and then tearing it apart, breaking it down into its raw materials - wood, brass, steel.

Born in Paris in the 60’s and playing her parents piano as soon as she could stand up, Agnel is classically trained and had a turn in modern jazz. What frustrated her was the strange disconnect between the frame of the piano and its keyboard - a weird boundary that seemed to form some hushed code of etiquette. “The first thing I put inside the piano was a plastic goblet. I’d seen a few pianists do it: Fred Van Hove, for example, put rubber balls inside his. But what didn’t appeal to me was that there seemed to be no link between the piano’s outside and inside.” If you see Agnel play now, the body of her piano is littered with fish tins, ping pong balls, wooden blocks - not that you’d recognize their sounds. Steve Noble surrounds his drum kit with whistles, tubes and towels alongside gleaming brass cymbals and gongs. Their stage is a heady mix of high and low - the grand piano and the gong alongside rubber balls and tiny bells; players half stood up, reaching in, bending toward - relentlessly working their instrument to unburden its sound from genre.

Free improvisation is always a leap of faith, a test of commitment, and these three players are completely unafraid. The music switches deftly from super taut, gut-first string manipulation to extremely loud percussive collisions. The trio can play microscopic mutations on a bass note and then scale up on the turn of a pin to plunge into huge, black chords and ricocheting sonority - dissolving the boundary between body and sound. The crescendo of Part Two is shaped by such cumulative repetition that it feels like a confrontation - a controlled test for breaking point. What happens if we keep going?

As so we left Part Three as the last encore of the residency. It’s a totally exhilarating, skittering reprise - short and energetic - delivered with the kind of grounded abandon you hope to see improvisers play with but rarely do.