Steve Reid, Spirit Walk

[Nate Dorward]

Just was in a record shop today & spotted this; I remembered it got some rave reviews, & the presence of some of the folks on the British scene that I admire--Tony Bevan, John Edwards & the elusive Nat Catchpole (where's he nowadays? he used to be a thoughtful contributor to Jazz Corner & Bagatellen)--made me pick it up. It's got Kieran Hebden of Four Tete & a few unfamiliar names like Boris Netsvetaev, Neil Kleiner & Chris Henderson. It's an attempt at combining electronica & jazz.

Jeez........

is this as terrible as I think it is? Well, it actually gets a LOT better after the first two tracks, but only in the sense that it doesn't actually take an act of will not to flip off the stereo posthaste. (The 15-minute spoken word piece "Drum Story" is the one that REALLLY tests you with this.) Some nice work from the players, but I'm left wondering what all the excitement is/was about. Or is this yet another of those discs that gets a lot of hype for a moment & is promptly forgotten? I just think that the electronics have been done better by a lot of other people (such as the Spring Heel Jack collaborations)--some of the stuff here is just dumb, like the cuckoo-clock spasms on the last track--& Reid can sound pretty clutzy at times (the opening track especially).

[JohnS]

Good to see Reid's name again but I'm afraid this one isn't for me.

[Chalupa]

I haven't heard this but I did see Reid and Hebden perform right before Christmas. I thought the show was pretty cool. They didn't perform any spoken word pieces though.....

I had a similar reaction to your's at a live performance of Lotte Anker / Sylvie Courvoisier / Ikue Mori that I saw last month. I thought Ikue Mori's contributions were horrible that night. She just kept using the same analog synth samples over and over again through out the evening. On the first two pieces of the night her laptop contributions were okay but as the evening wore on they became really distracting making it hard to listen to the music the other two were playing. I've seen her perform before as part of John Zorn's Masada and I thought her laptop contributions then were excellent so this was rather disappointing for me. .... I don't know maybe she had a off night.

[Captain Hate]

None of these comments are surprising; I like some of Reid's old stuff but he is *extremely* uneven, to the point of being unlistenably embarrassing at times.

[Alexander Hawkins]

His current band, featuring my friend/frequent partner in musical crime Dominic Lash on bass, is *REALLY* something live...Netsvetaev on keyboards, Joe Rigby on tenor, a fantastic Senegalese percussionist whose name I can't remember I'm afraid, and Hebden...can't comment on Spirit Walk because I haven't heard it, but these guys played hands down one of the most exciting gigs I heard last year!