Alcyona Mick and Liam Noble, Distant Plains: The Planets Revisited

There was a certain serendipity in listening to Distant Plains this morning.

I think it came out as recently as Friday but I did not know about it until today.

Why serendipity?

Well after listening to the new Billy Childs I started thinking and making a playlist of players in the same realm at least a bit. Make no mistake though, gentle reader – this is very different to Triumvirate in several ways: idiomatically, format, approach and outcome included.

The obvious one was Gwilym Simcock.

And then I thought of Liam Noble.

The English pianist is here in a two piano album with compatriot Alcyona Mick best known for her work with Blink.

It’s quite an intense work, beginning as feverishly as you’d imagine, given the title, with ‘Mars, the bringer of War’. The approach is more a kind of Cecil Taylor type approach than a Childsian one.

But what’s here isn’t as “out” there as what Pat Thomas or Alex Hawkins do. Again individualism is key, while players may share some things in common there is a lot of width even within avant-garde jazz made by contemporaries or near contemporaries.

So lots of highly abstract chordal statements, big wodges of sound, poignant meaningful afternote pauses abound and yes it is stimulating.

A bit more background? Ok: Jointly composed – it is free improvisation in a spontaneous composition sense to avoid confusion. Playing in a free improv style is possible in other hybrid ways. How long have you got?

A “reimagination” – much used and abused word that – it’s of Gustav Holst’s The Planets suite through “a lens” of free improvisation. Listen blind, with no knowledge whatsoever of titles or further details, however, and I’d wager you would have no idea of that. How could you? Neither pianist quote thematic sections of Holst or play with motifs. It is instead a disciplined digression on an epic level of control and individualism that is built upon their own ideas as improvisers.

The pianists recorded the session at Abbey Road under the direction of Penny Rimbaud known for Thatcher era protest group merry pranksters the punks Crass. Rimbaud as Holst whisperer apparently played Leonard Bernstein’s recording of the suite to the duo immediately before the pair entered the studio. This prompt served as “the sole creative spark for their spontaneous performances.”

Alcyona, who is an alumna of the Birmingham conservatoire and has since carved out an interest in writing for film, was taught by the elder of the pair, Oxford educated Liam, 57, whose best work is found on the Basho label. I have heard Alcyona play largely standards in a duo several times with drummer/percussionist supremo Paul Clarvis with whom Noble has also worked in the trad jazz and cod opera loving band Pigfoot to effect.

Usually I am not a fan of two-piano albums. But I do really like this loads. It’s a wake up call.

‘Neptune’ has “ethereal vocals” from the Enya-of the-Squats, Eve Libertine also of Crass – and what a great way to draw this very special protest album of sorts to a close. Protest against what, you may well ponder, gentle reader. Complacency, perhaps. The pair exude the ability to rail against having to play mind numbing tunes, and dispel a reluctance in other circumstances even in themselves to be free in the moment.

Further reading
– A Room Somewhere 2015 review