Bazmatron / Group Listening, Sy: gigs, Unitarian Church, Shrewsbury, 28/06/2024.

Ian Mann enjoys an improvised set by guitarist / flautist Barry Edwards (Bazmatron) followed by the duo Group Listening and their blend of chamber music, minimalism, folk, avant rock and electronica.

Bazmatron / Group Listening, Sy: gigs, Unitarian Church, Shrewsbury, 28/06/2024.

Bazmatron (Barry Edwards) – electric guitar, effects, wooden flute

Group Listening;Stephen Black – clarinet, tenor sax, wind synth, electronics, Paul Jones – keyboards, electronics, tenor sax

The latest event in Sy: gigs’ “Letting The Light In” series featured a short improvised solo set from guitarist and flautist Barry Edwards (aka Bazmatron) followed by a lengthier, more formal, through composed performance from the Cardiff based duo Group Listening.

Now in its second season “Letting The Light In” stages its events at two Shrewsbury churches, the 100 seat Unitarian Church and the larger St. Alkmund’s Church, which can accommodate 240. Both venues are well appointed and their excellent acoustics are well suited to the varying musical styles presented by Sy. gigs.

Chris Taylor, the promoter and organiser of Sy: Gigs is keen to stress the importance of music to mental health and general well being. This, together with a love of nature, is at the heart of the Sy: Gigs ethos as Taylor continues to successfully build a community of adventurous music listeners in Shrewsbury.

The “Letting The Light In” series embraces various strands of music with jazz just one of the elements in an eclectic range of events that also incorporates folk, ambient, electronica, contemporary classical and avant pop / rock. A number of events are double bills so a single evening of music may encompass several of these. It’s a series of events that is likely to appeal to listeners of such BBC Radio 3 programmes as Late Junction, Unclassified and Night Tracks.

BAZMATRON

Bazmatron is the alter-ego of guitarist, composer and improviser Barry Edwards, a musician who studied jazz at Birmingham Conservatoire.

Edwards has since followed a career that has seen him combining the roles of musician and promoter. Prior to the pandemic he and his partner Claudia Lis had curated a series of wide ranging events at the Hermon Chapel in Oswestry, Shropshire, with a number of top quality live albums being recorded at the venue during this period. These include “Live” by Magpie Trio, a group led by drummer Sam Jesson, and “Locked” by an improvising quartet featuring Edwards in the company of saxophonist Bruce Coates, bassist Trevor Lines and drummer Ed Gauden.

Edwards and Lis are currently running Hafan Yr Afon, a cafe and community and visitor centre in Newtown, Mid Wales. They have already begun to present musical events,  including a recent performance by Silent Form Quartet, an Anglo-Norwegian ensemble led by the Birmingham based saxophonist Mike Fletcher. It is to be hoped that similar events will be able to take place in the future.

Edwards’ interest in free improvisation has also seen him working with Gauden and saxophonist Mark Hanslip as part of the trio  UNschooLED, releasing the album “Hymns For Robots” on George Haslam’s SLAM label in 2016.

Other musicians with whom Edwards has worked include saxophonists Alicia Gardener-Trejo, Martin Dunsdon and Lyndon Owen, violinist Sarah Farmer, trombonist Dave Sear, bassist Colin Summervell and drummers Jim Bashford and Tymek Joswiak.

Edwards’ work as a manager at Hafan Yr Afon has entailed that there has been less time for him to focus on his musical career, but he has continued to perform as a solo artist under the Bazmatron banner as well as still collaborating with other musicians.

His solo guitar performances incorporate the extensive use of electronics, which Edwards dubs ‘Bazmatronics’, presumably as a homage to King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp and his ‘Frippertronics’.

Fripp is an acknowledged influence for Edwards in his role as a solo guitarist. Other sources of inspiration include Derek Bailey, Fred Frith, Sonny Sharrock and Mary Halvorson. Indeed I remember meeting up with Barry and Claudia at a gig at the MAC in Birmingham in January 2020 when Halvorson was playing as part of a trio led by drummer Tom Rainey and featuring saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock. My review of that show by the Tom Rainey Trio can be found elsewhere on this site.

A particularly important figure for Edwards was the late, great guitarist and improviser John Russell (1954-2021), with whom Edwards studied.

Tonight’s set was a short, twenty minute improvisation featuring the sounds of electric guitar, ‘Bazmatronics, and wooden flute. The latter had been found by one of Edwards’ friends who had found it while carrying out a house clearance and subsequently gifted it to Barry. The origin of the instrument remains unknown, although Edwards suspects that it might be Aboriginal. In any event he loved the warmth of its tone and decided to incorporate the instrument into his performances,  it’s sound representing a nice acoustic contrast to the electrically generated timbres of the guitar and its associated effects.

Introducing his performance Edwards explained that it would be entirely improvised, “it keeps me on my toes”, and that he would be attempting to “turn chaos into order”, a neat definition of this art of ‘instantaneous composition’.

The opening passages were played on guitar only and included the use of live looping techniques as Edwards skilfully layered his sound,  making effective use of overtones and also deploying the instrument’s tremolo arm to enrich his sound.

The use of extended guitar techniques included the use of string scratching and scraping and hammering on, but Edwards’ jazz heritage was not forgotten as he also included a smattering of bebop inspired chords and phrases.

Elsewhere Edwards generated ambient soundscapes sculpted via the deployment of foot pedals and his floor mounted ‘Bazmatronics’ effects unit. Looped and layered these provided the diaphanous sonic backdrop for Edward’s soft and breathy playing of the wooden flute, which also included gentle Roland Kirk style vocalisations. The combination of guitar and flute sometimes reminded me of the cult band Jade Warrior.

As the sonic backdrop reduced in volume to an almost subliminal drone Edwards played a flute solo of sorts before returning to the guitar and adding an ethereal wordless vocal as the twenty minute improvisation drew to a close.

I was highly impressed by my first experience of Edwards as a solo artist. This ‘spontaneous composition’ incorporated a strong narrative arc and saw Edwards making skilled and astute use of the instrumental, technological, and even vocal,  resources available to him. There was a genuine feeling of having been taken on a musical journey with Edwards genuinely succeeding in his aim of creating “order from chaos”.

In their roles as promoters I have known Barry and Claudia for a number of years and consider them to be personal friends, but this was the first that time I’d actually seen Barry performing. It was good to see him play so successfully in front of a full house, earning an excellent reception from a supportive and discerning audience. The success was all the more remarkable as he had been unwell in the days leading up to the concert and at one point it had been very much ‘touch and go’ as to whether he would be able to perform at all. I’m glad that he was able to make it, this was a short but thoroughly absorbing and enjoyable set and the perfect curtain raiser for Group Listening. Well done Baz! Ian Mann - The Jazz Mann

Read the full review here

Watch the gig here