Kieran Hebden/Steve Reid/Mats Gustafsson
Live At The South Bank (Smalltown Superjazz)

“I had as much fun playing that night as I’ve ever had playing music.” – Kieran Hebden

“What’s happening here is a special relationship, like Miles and Coltrane, or Dizzy and Bird.” – Steve Reid

So spoke Steve Reid, veteran jazz drummer and percussionist, of the remarkable musical relationship he forged in the final years of his life with Kieran Hebden (Four Tet), the British electronic musician/producer young enough to be his grandson. Even up to his death at age 66, in 2010, Reid continued to push himself outside his comfort zone in his duo with Kieran, which began in 2005 and led to four albums on the Domino label.

Now, courtesy of Norwegian label Smalltown Superjazzz, comes the fifth and final installment of the pair’s momentous synergy – Live At The South Bank, due out November 15, 2011. The music on this double CD was recorded in concert on June 20, 2009 in the foyer of the Queen Elizabeth Hall at London’s Southbank Centre, as part of the Meltdown Festival curated by free jazz legend Ornette Coleman. For this marathon workout, Reid and Hebden were joined by Swedish power saxophonist, Mats Gustafsson, whose fiery blowing style had inspired Kieran to seek out a drummer like Steve to work with in the first place.

Clustered tight on the stage, the trio whipped up a tempestuous performance – Mats wearing a white T-shirt boldly declaring, “FREE THE JAZZ;” Kieran with a table-load of laptops, electronics and effects units; Steve hunched over a stripped-down kit. “Morning Prayer”, the incredibly tense build up from Steve and Kieran, was so entrancing, Mats even forgot to play for the first 20 minutes. This is so far beyond jazz that the term becomes useless: instead, it’s a liberating, occasionally anarchic group sound that evolves as organically as a frank, spirited conversation. Occasionally the rhythm breaks down, goes crazy, changes shape. Other times, like the Krautrock groove of “Untitled,” it locks into a machine momentum that threatens to steamroller everything in its path. That’s improvisation. That’s why they call it free.

Live at the South Bank stands as a memorial to a thrilling and productive partnership sadly cut off in its prime.

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About Steve Reid, Kieran Hebden and Mats Gustafsson:

Born in 1944, Steve Reid worked as a teenage drummer as part of the Apollo Theatre house band in New York, which saw him backing some of the US’s big Motown stars including James Brown and Martha Reeves And The Vandellas. After serving a two year prison sentence for refusing to fight in Vietnam, he worked as a session musician, appearing on recordings by a who’s who of soul, jazz and R&B players including Dionne Warwick, Sun Ra, Horace Silver, Frank Lowe, Charles Tyler, Arthur Blythe and Freddie Hubbard. His own group, Legendary Master Brotherhood, formed in 1974, released the electric space-jazz trilogy Raw, Nova and Rhythmatism between 1974–76. In 1986 he drummed on Miles Davis’s jazz-funk album Tutu. He could move with ease between rhythmic grooves and the abstractions of freedom.

His first collaboration with Kieran Hebden came in spring 2005, when the duo played two improvised concerts in Paris and London. While living in Switzerland for several years in his later life, he released occasional records with various groups before recording Spirit Walk (featuring Four Tet) for the UK Soul Jazz label. 2006 saw the release of the studio collaborations Live At The Exchange Session Volumes 1 and 2 (Domino), all taped on a single day in London. The duo issued two more collaborative albums for the label, the last being NYC (2008). He died of throat cancer in New York on 13 April 2010.

Kieran Hebden was born in South West London in 1977. He first came to prominence in the post-rock band Fridge (since 1997), then struck out in his Four Tet guise, under which he has released numerous albums, mixtapes, singles and remixes – the latest is There Is Love In You (Domino 2010). In addition he has worked with the likes of Burial and Thom Yorke, amongst many others.

Born in 1964, Mats Gustaffson vein-popping, no-compromise blowouts have been heard in all kinds of contexts, from appearances with Sonic Youth, Jim O’Rourke, Boredoms’ Yoshimi P-We, improvising legends Derek Bailey, Joe McPhee, Peter Brötzmann and Ken Vandermark, to his own power outfits Gush and The Thing. He has also worked extensively in many media, including dance, painting, theatre and poetry.

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