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Jazz Club

The Rainbow, Digbeth, Birmingham UK

27-01-10

It’s easy to see why Led Bib was chosen as the 2009 jazz contenders for the Mercury Prize. The great and the good who decide such things have predominantly rock music ears and tastes, and if you pretend for a moment that the two musicians encircled by bass, drums and keyboards are guitarists rather than saxophonists, well, Led Bib could just be a rock band.

But of course they are more than that, just as Miles Davis’s 1970s bands were not rock or funk outfits, and the Zawinul Syndicate was not a world music group, and John Zorn’s Naked City was not a punk band. Like those groups Led Bib is made up of jazz musicians trying to move the music into other territories and enjoying not only the resultant blend but also the resultant clash.

There is a comment elsewhere on this blog about the influence that US musicians like Tim Berne have had on the young UK jazz groups currently making a stir, and the hand of Berne can be felt hovering above Led Bib in blessing.

The back courtyard at The Rainbow provides an apt setting. Its pastiche of a graffiti-emblazoned derelict  factory complete with metal crowd-control railings and skip-retrieved pub benches is cool as hell or post-industrial pretension depending on your viewpoint.

And Led Bib achieve a kind of industrial shriek when they are at full tilt. Their opening few numbers acted as a kind of metallic barrage, the twin alto saxophones, the distorted Fender Rhodes and electric bass played high and strummed all inhabited a narrow sonic band where the ear could buzz and thrill to the nuances of the clashing tones and timbres.

Certainly any conventional jazz presumptions need to be checked in at the door – horns sonically in front of the rhythm section?, extended solos?, the relief of the ballad? No, no, no, you won’t find those here so don’t look for them. The band gives variety in a much more limited way – by leaving one or two of the five out for a while. Some of the evening’s most interesting moments came for me when the saxophones rested and Toby McLaren could show his singular harmonic and melodic sense at the Fender Rhodes. In fact McLaren was fascinating throughout, his percussive technique at high energy moments making him look like a conga player rather than a pianist.

And leader Mark Holub, though behind everyone else on the stage, is crucial, bringing a great rolling and churning energy and bottom to the band, and often managing to combine power and subtlety the most effectively of the lot.

They finished the main set at their most powerful, with saxophonist Chris Williams’ Zone 4 – this had a depth and more subtle texture, as well as stronger melodic fragments, without skimping on the metal power. Or did I just prefer the more extended soloing in this one?

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