Music Spoken Here presents Empirical
Thursday 8th May at The Marr’s Bar, Worcester
West Midlands jazz fans were spoiled for choice on Thursday with two top-class gigs happening in the region – Empirical at The Marr’s Bar in Worcester and Sultan Stevenson at the Wolverhampton Arts Centre. I’d already seen Sultan Stevenson’s trio a couple of times last year, at the Spotted Dog in Birmingham and then at the Brick Lane Jazz Festival in London, so didn’t mind missing him this time round.
Empirical exploded onto the UK scene in 2007 with the release of their debut album “Empirical”, picking up the Jazzwise Album of the Year award. The original lineup met through Tomorrow’s Warriors and included Jay Phelps (trumpet), Kit Downes (piano) and Neil Charles (bass) who all departed after the first album, leaving Nathaniel Facey (alto sax) and Shaney Forbes (drums) to take the band forward with Tom Farmer replacing Neil on bass and the addition of Lewis Wright on vibraphone. This quartet produced five further albums and two EPs, with the latest album “Wonder is the Beginning” being released on Whirlwind Records last year. Shortly after the recording, Lewis relocated to the US leaving the core trio of Tom, Nathaniel and Shaney.
Previous West Midlands tour dates included Wolverhampton in November and Birmingham in April, both featuring David Preston (guitar) and Ivo Neame (piano) alongside Tom, Nathaniel and Shaney, although Nathaniel was absent at the Birmingham gig. Tonight’s quartet included Jonny Mansfield on vibraphone (an instrument making it’s first ever appearance on the Music Spoken Here stage) and Luke McCarthy on drums, as Shaney is currently touring with “Hamlet Hail To The Thief” – a collaboration between the Royal Shakespeare Company, Factory International and Thom Yorke of Radiohead.
As the band took to the stage and got settled, Tom started to tap out a rhythm on the body of his double bass. Nathaniel then joined in with syncopated clapping, followed by rimshots from Luke and dampened chimes from Jonny as Nathaniel then transferred the rhythm to his sax, restating it with a single note for a few bars before expanding out with some delightful, melodic interplay with Jonny on vibes in “Initiate the Initiations”, taken from their 2016 album “Connection” and written in honour of absent drummer Shaney Forbes.
“Ursa, The Major Minor Bear” from “Wonder Is The Beginning” was introduced with a lilting bass line as Jonny chimed in, harmonising Tom’s line before Nathaniel set down the melody with lush tones before journeying out into a stellar feature followed by an equally pleasing solo from Jonny demonstrating impressive dexterity as his four mallets danced around the vibraphone with absolute precision.
A soft, spatial, dreamy vibes solo introduced“True Cost” from the same album, eventually accompanied by an anchoring bass line. Nathaniel breathed further life into the piece with a more delicate and restrained tone, as the piece became more intense and rose to a stern refrain from Nathaniel while Jonny added bright colour and Luke turned up the excitement a notch on the drums.
Nathaniel announced “Aspirations of Respectability”, the last piece of the first set, written by Tom in 2009 and as yet unrecorded, as a piece inspired by some of the band’s great heroes, leaving us to see if we can work out who they might be.
The second set started with a return to “Wonder Is The Beginning” with “Naitoku”, announced by Tom as “a piece about newcomers, when you start out at something.” A delicate, bowed bass and muted vibes introduction before Luke interjected with a simple beat on the snare drum. Nathaniel sidled in with deliberate tones spread thin to start, building with intensity and purpose to a theme that was then enriched further in turns by Jonny with spritely runs on the vibes, Tom dropping some depth and fury and Nathaniel weaving around the lot while Luke shuffled the proceedings along from behind the kit.
“Driving Force”, a more pedestrian piece written by Tom from the “Connection” album, was about ulterior motives, inspired, as Tom revealed, by the idea of “an avant-garde, picture where you have to decide for yourself what it is about.”
Empirical’s second album “Out ’n’ In” was a tribute to Eric Dolphy, a big influence on both Tom and Nathaniel and the next piece, “Gazzelloni” was originally written by Dolphy, inspired by his Italian flute teacher and was included on the album. A dynamic, extended solo sax introduction from Nathaniel led into a swinging bop affair that featured Jonny and Tom.
Nathaniel revealed that his longtime fascination with dragons, and in particular the depiction of “Drogon” in Game of Thrones, was the inspiration for the last piece of the second set, which featured some intricate rhythmic play between Jonny and Luke.
The audience, a tad smaller than have turned out for previous Music Spoken Here gigs this year, were engaged throughout and showed their appreciation for what had been a stunningly good performance from everyone. The band returned for an encore of “Written by Hand”, a new composition from Tom about the nostalgic feeling of receiving a hand-written letter. This was a proper chill-out piece with drawn-out, determined tones from Nathaniel’s alto sax and dreamy vibes to send us on our way uplifted and filled with warmth for the ride home.
Wonder Is The Beginning is available to buy on Bandcamp. With the tour now coming to an end, the band featuring Jonny Mansfield are set to play The Nutshell Arts Centre in Winchester on 18th September. They are also appearing with Ivo Neame at NQ Jazz, Manchester on 26th May.
Music Spoken Here return for a special occasion on Thursday 22nd May, celebrating three years of the best UK jazz, funk & fusion with their 50th show at The Marr’s Bar. They are also expanding their program with a new ‘Sunday Service’ series with events on the last Sunday of May and June, featuring soul, gospel, RnB and reggae. If the two pilot events are well supported, Sunday Service will become a regular series from the Autumn. For mor information visit the Music Spoken Here website.
By: Dave Fuller