Strap yourself in and let go of any fixed ideas of how music should sound. Free-jazz ensemble, A Bigger MOUTH have turned it up a notch for their second album, ‘Band Stand’. The single, ‘Structural Nonsense’ is out now and the album will be available to stream and on vinyl from 18th April 2025.
The brainchild of Mike Walter, A Bigger MOUTH is an expansion of the preexisting duo ‘MOUTH’. The band consists of Alan Wakeman (saxophones), Gabriel Keen (piano), Lu Edmonds (cumbus), Mark Roberts (percussion), Mike Walter (saxophone and synthesiser) and Paul Taylor (trombone). Walter’s aim was to take these accomplished musicians out of their individual genres and put them into a different environment – one where the six personalities could have an open meeting.
Each of the bandmates draw on their own influences from jazz, middle eastern, pop, rock, improvisation, classical and Latin music. They have the experience to back it up, having played with everyone from post-punk’s Public Image Ltd to Afropop star Youssou n’Dour to R&B’s Neneh Cherry to Soft Machine.
The ‘Bigger’ version of MOUTH established themselves with the release of their debut album ‘Freedom Pass’ in 2024 which was recorded at the same session as ‘Band Stand’. The band members range not only in musical backgrounds, but also in age. This is the inspiration behind the name of their debut album, explains Walter, joking that “at least three of us have a freedom pass”.
‘Band Stand’ is a high energy, high intensity exploration into wild, new and adventurous areas of music. The unconventional instrumentation is the cement of the band’s unique sound as a sextet and each new track brings its own strong narrative. It is left to the imagination of the listener to determine what that might be. ‘Loose Particles’ for example, with its combination of edgy electronics, howling trombone and billowing piano, brings to mind some kind of futuristic steam-punk spaceship. As the tune progresses, it might be about to take off but then something explodes, electronics crackle and fizz and only rubble is left.
Each number moves and morphs in these unexpected ways, like creative streams of collective consciousness. Grooves turn abrupt corners without letting you get too comfortable and harmony is subject to reform at every beat. The result is a wealth of interesting and extremely varied group improvisations. The cacophonous single ‘Structural Nonsense’ proves to be only a taster of what is to come. Described as “a percussive and playful exploration of tension and release” the tune gives the impressions of something winding up to breaking point and then chaotically unravelling. Saxophones flail, dancing over a relentlessly janky backbeat, then the piano scurries as flaring electronics burn through the texture.
The producer Ian Dean approaches the album from a classical standpoint. This accounts for the lack of compression heard on the recordings as well as the meticulous thirteen-microphone rig that aimed to capture the magic of Masterchord Studio’s impressive Steinway piano. The result is that Keen’s piano playing largely characterises the album. Omnipresent throughout much of the recording, Keen imitates walking bass, flurries in the higher registers and even slams percussively with his palm as in the end of ‘Hundred Years’. Ascending block chords begin ‘Off Grid’ and demonstrate Keen’s ability to manipulate harmony in a way that keeps you on the edge of your seat, yearning for a resolution that is constantly teased, but kept just out of reach.
Edmonds showcases the extensive capabilities of the cumbus, a relatively modern Turkish stringed instrument that combines a sazbus with a banjo. The fretless nature of the instrument allows for a lot of expression and sometimes it is uncanny, almost as though the instrument is trying to talk. A similar fluency and yet altogether different sonority comes from the trombone. The murmuring plunger adds so much colour and shape to Taylor’s melodic playing. He started using muted more while playing with the band as a means of escaping from his natural musical vocabulary. This is exemplified over the persistent groove of ‘Six of One’ which slyly creeps along as Taylor navigates his way through the murky landscape. This tune is perhaps as near to ‘conventional’ as this untamed album gets, with distinguishable solo sections for trombone, piano and drums. There is even a strong sense of tonality, though this is pushed to its limits during the piano solo.
The track, ‘Hundred Years’ shares its name with the Hundred Years Gallery, an art space in Hoxton, East London. It was through a monthly Wednesday night residency here that A Bigger MOUTH were able to hone their sound and approach to improvisation (or “playing freely” as Walter preferes to put it) in front of a live audience before they took to Masterchord Studio, London where the album was produced and engineered by Ian Dean.
Having become accustomed to playing freely together in front of a live audience, maybe trying to replicate the energy in a studio environment would be more difficult? Walter acknowledges how he has made a virtue of this by making an album which is purposefully calmer – which can only leave me wondering at the extensive amount of energy that must be conjured during their live performances:
The album does a fantastic job of capturing the raw intensity and spontaneity of high level free playing, and while you can bet that it will never be the same again, you can witness something similar take shape in a form of its own in the live context.
A Bigger MOUTH play monthly on the second Wednesday of each month at Hundred Years Gallery
Forthcoming dates:
Wednesday 14 May 2025
Wednesday 11 June 2025
