137 at The Exchange in Bristol

Named after a magic number with both mathematical and mystical significance, 137 is what used to be called a supergroup playing a very contemporary and experimental update on what used to be called jazz-rock. Adrian Utley of Portishead plays guitar; Jim Barr of Get the Blessing plus work with Portishead plays electric bass; Sebastian Rochford, who has played with just about everyone, including Polar Bear, Sons of Kemet and, most recently, a duo with Kit Downes, is on drums; and the daddy of them all is the legendary Larry Stabbins on alto sax, flute and bass clarinet.

Stabbins’ epic musical journey has taken him from numerous projects with his fellow Bristolian, the late Keith Tippett, and free jazz with Tony Oxley, Peter Brotzmann and Louis Moholo, to pop crossovers with Weekend and the very successful Working Week, both of which he co-led with the late Simon Booth. There’s also been parallel journeys where he’s packed music in to study philosophy, and most recently, to spend a decade sailing the world on his boat. When he finally came back on dry land he phoned Utley and Barr, with whom he’d worked on the excellent project Stonephace, playing a kind of intense, Pharaoh Sanders-influenced dance music that anticipated the current vogue for spiritual jazz by a good few years. The result of that conversation was the new band, 137, whose debut gig at a Bristol boho nightspot this was, held to launch the group’s album, called ’Strangeness Oscillation’. Stabbins – not anticipating getting back in the game – had also sold all his instruments, so there was that hurdle to get over too. That’s the backstory done with, phew.

Playing to a packed, standing audience they performed for an hour until there was nothing from the album left to play. “Thats all we know!”, announced Stabbins from the stage. The tracks had been recorded a year previously, and completely improvised, so it was a matter of filling in the sketches of the tunes – often more like sketches of sketches anyway – to bring the material, and the band, into full performance mode. This they did triumphantly, and the particular character of the music, and of the individual players and their interaction, became more apparent with every minute. In short, this is a monster of a band: loud, skronky (it’s a word, I checked), and dangerous-sounding, with none of that polite round of solos passed around the members in some dull jazz ritual whose time has been and gone.

Instead, there was a full-on, but very musicianly and sometimes even quiet and meditative, sonic assault on each number, with everyone listening keenly before building the edifice of the tune from the ground up. Typically, Jim Barr’s bass guitar would set up a riffy pattern that first Rochford and then Utley would add detail too, with Stabbins’ contributions entering later, starting almost shyly then building momentum towards an intense climax. Although he’s primarily been a tenor sax man in his long career, there was no tenor on the stand tonight, just alto sax, flutes and a wonderfully reedy-sounding bass clarinet which he played superbly, its burbling accents helping to create a really distinctive group sound. Adrian Utley, too, was on stupendous form, foregoing both Grant Green single-note fluency and Lynchian twang in favour of a very effective mix of electronically assisted, pizzicato rhythmic flourishes all over the fretboard neck with carefully wrought, slowly-mounting solo work. There was even the odd full-Hendrix, his Fender held against the Vox amp to raise up atavistic feedback.

The biggest cheer of the night came for Seb Rochford’s extended drum solo, which reached ecstatic peaks of double-time, drum ’n’ bass rhythms before bringing us all down again with gentle mallet and brush-strokes. He even attempted an internal examination of the hi-hat’s innards like a drummer’s version of John Cage’s prepared piano. But basically, the grand first public performance of 137 was all good: noisy, transgressive jazz-rock fun from start to finish. They could become a real goer too, a festival act that really does pull no punches.

137 will be at The Lexington in Pentonville Road, London on Weds 31 July