The Squid's Ear Magazine


Beresford / Palmer / Stagner / Turner: Short in the U.K. (Incus)


 

Price: $19.95


Quantity:

Out of Stock

Quantity in Basket: None

Log In to use our Wish List
Shipping Weight: 5.00 units

Sample The Album:


product information:

Personnel:



Roger Turner-drums, percussion

Bob Stagner-drums, percussion

Dennis Palmer-synthesisers, voice

Steve Beresford-keyboards, small trumpet


Click an artist name above to see in-stock items for that artist.




Label: Incus
Catalog ID: CD27
Squidco Product Code: 7629

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 1996
Country: UK
Packaging: Jewel Tray
Recorded by Matt Saunders at The Place, London, July 1994. "Our world as we know it" recorded in concert at the Incus Records night.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

Steve Beresford with The Shaking Ray Levis, influenced by their shared interests in TV cartoons, preachers, mushy peas, the world of the painter and the preacher Reverend Howard Finster.


Artist Biographies

"Roger Turner (born 1946, Whitstable, England) is an English jazz percussionist. He plays the drumset, drums, and various percussion, and was brought up into the jazz and visual art cultures inhabited by his older brothers, playing drums from childhood in informal jazz contexts.

Turner studied English literature and contemporary philosophy at Sussex University, playing with Chris Biscoe for the British Council in 1968, a first concert in improvisation. His move to London gave him contact with the first and second generation improvisers and he began to play primarily with Lol Coxhill, Gary Todd, John Russell, Hugh Davies, Steve Beresford, and Phil Minton.

In the years immediately after 1974 his work was primarily concentrated on opening the way to a more personal percussion language. This was also a period of intense collaborations that structured many of his future approaches to music-making and saw the formation of two long-lasting acoustic duos with Phil Minton and with John Russell. Recordings of these duos document an extreme attention to timbre and pitch, as well as a constantly shifting speed that typified much of his work at the time. The duo with Minton toured extensively throughout Europe, USA and Canada.

In 1979 he established CAW records with John Russell and Anthony Wood, and recorded the solo album The Blur Between focussing on single surface improvisations: a linear and reduced equipment approach he had started using with Carlos Zingaro and others in live performances.

In addition to forming Trump music with Gary Todd to promote improvised music in London, he also involved himself in formative activities of the London Musicians Collective during this period. He was awarded Arts Council of Great Britain bursaries for solo percussion in 1980, and in 1983 for investigation into percussion with electronics. Extensive festival and club solo work followed, including the Bracknell Jazz Festival and the Brussels Festival of Percussion.

In 1982 the trio The Recedents was formed with Lol Coxhill and Mike Cooper exploring the possibilities of electro-acoustic music, in which Turner initially played drumset and EMS Synthi A as a means of bending the sounds of various metal percussion instruments. This group, still existing, mixes song, jazz, punk/thrash, with acoustic detail in always shifting sonorities, and has worked throughout Europe, Canada and the UK, also recording for the French Nato label. Involvements with experimental rock musics and open-form song included extensive work in duo with Annette Peacock 1983-5, with whom he toured in Europe and Scandinavia. They recorded the album I have no feelings for Ironic.

In 1984-5, he was invited for workshop residences at Alan Silva's Institute Art Culture Perception in Paris, where long-term collaborations with Alan began, culminating in The Tradition Trio with Johannes Bauer. This group was central to his explorations of forms of free jazz, an interest that has seen him working with musicians on both sides of the Atlantic (including Elton Dean, Irene Schweizer, Cecil Taylor, Roy Campbell, Henry Grimes, The Wardrobe Trio and Charles Gayle).

Since the early 1980s his work has focussed on numerous projects with improvising musicians and groups, touring Europe, Australia, USA and Canada. Perhaps the most important of the later groups would be Konk Pack, formed in 1997, with Tim Hodgkinson and Thomas Lehn, a group whose use of volume and sense of detail continues the exploration of an electro-acoustic dynamic that forms one of his main musical concerns. This group has toured extensively in Europe and USA.

He forged working relationships with Japanese musicians over the years: in the 1980s with Toshinori Kondo in the trio with John Russell, but since the mid-1990s in concerts and recordings with guitarist Kazuhisa Uchihashi in Austria, Japan, and U.K, and in the recent (2009) Hana-Bi three-day event in London that included the guitarist and the pianist Chino Shuichi.

An active involvement in visual art has always been in dialogue with his music, and an inspiration for it. In the forefront of this is his work with Susan Turcot (the investigation/documentation of music and sound-drawing both in Europe and Canada-including the Being Rich box collection --, and music for her 2008 animation film Bitumen, Blood, and the Carbon Climb.

His music for dance/performance includes work with Alexander Frangenheim's Concepts of Doing, Stuttgart ; Carlos Zingaro's Encontros projects in Lisbon and Macau; and most recently in the Josef Nadj production etc.etc. (premiered Vandeouvre, France, 2008) and which is a continuing involvement.

In March 2009 he was invited to travel and perform on the Arctic island Svalbard, and was also invited to attend and play in the Comprovise event in Cologne, Germany in June 2009, set up to examine any possible relationship between improvisation and composition.

Turner's music-making with international improvisers in ad hoc and group collaborations have since the 1970s to the present day included Toshinori Kondo, Derek Bailey, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, William Parker, Cecil Taylor, Otomo Yoshihide, Shelley Hirsch, Joelle Leandre, Keith Rowe, Ab Baars, Barry Guy, Barre Philips, Henry Grimes, Paul Rutherford, Gunter Christmann, Marilyn Crispell, Irene Schweizer, Frederik Rzewski, and Malcolm Goldstein."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Turner_(musician))
4/2/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Bob Stagner (born July 13, 1957 in Chattanooga, Tennessee) is an American drummer and percussionist who has worked with a wide range of artists in every discipline, from Blueground Undergrass to Derek Bailey and Howard Finster. Stagner and Dennis Palmer co-founded the free improvisation duo the Shaking Ray Levis and the Shaking Ray Levi Society, an arts education organization that supports emerging artists in performance, art and film. Stagner also works with The Rhythmic Arts Project, founded by drummer Eddie Tuduri. He is not only a musician but also a very talented drum teacher."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Stagner)
4/2/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

Dennis Palmer (1957 - February 15, 2013) was a musician, visual artist, and educator from Chattanooga, Tennessee. He co-founded the Shaking Ray Levis, an improvisational music duo, with percussionist Bob Stagner in 1986. Palmer was known for his mastery of the Moog synthesizer and his unique storytelling abilities, contributing significantly to the free improvisation music scene.

-Squidco 4/2/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Steve Beresford (born 1950) is a British musician who graduated from the University of York. He has played a variety of instruments, including piano, electronics, trumpet, euphonium, bass guitar and a wide variety of toy instruments, such as the toy piano. He has also played a wide range of music. He is probably best known for free improvisation, but has also written music for film and television and has been involved with a number of pop music groups.

Beresford played in Derek Bailey's Company events and in the groups Alterations with David Toop, Terry Day and Peter Cusack, and the Three Pullovers with Nigel Coombes and Roger Smith. He was also a member with Gavin Bryars and Brian Eno of the Portsmouth Sinfonia.

Beresford has continued to play free improvisation with a number of prominent musicians, including Evan Parker, Lol Coxhill, John Zorn, and Han Bennink. He has collaborated extensively with Swiss-American artist/musician Christian Marclay and is an active member of the long-standing London Improvisers Orchestra.

From 2010 he performed various pieces by John Cage, including Indeterminacy with Tania Chen and comedian Stewart Lee, and a performance with Ilan Volkov at The BBC Proms 2012 at The Royal Albert Hall in London.

He has also worked with a number of popular musicians, including Ray Davis, The Slits, Frank Chickens, Ted Milton and The Flying Lizards. In 2015 he performed a duoproject with the upcoming Norwegian singer Natalie Sandtorv at the Blow Out! festival in Oslo, Norway.

He was awarded a Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists in 2012. He is a senior lecturer on the Commercial Music course at University of Westminster.

Beresford's music and his teachings have inspired the musical community in the UK for over a decade. British songwriter and performer Katy Carr cites Steve Beresford's lectures on musical themes associated with Free improvisation, Experimental music, John Cage, musique concrète, Diamanda Galás and The Slits as a source of initial inspiration with regards to the creation of her debut album, Screwing Lies released in 2001."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Beresford)
4/2/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. The pencil - a history 09:04

2. Trees without dogs 00:33

3. Our world as we know it 05:24

4. Name without a street 00:13

5. Bulldog eating a wasp [Waspers] 14:42

6. Matzoh spectacles [thank you Lol Coxhill] 01:27

7. Earthling-a-ding 03:39

8. Faster than $ sound 11:23

9. Standing on a whale 05:53

10. Fearing puffins 05:03

Related Categories of Interest:

Improvised Music
European Improvisation, Composition and Experimental Forms
February 2007

Search for other titles on the label:
Incus.


Recommended & Related Releases:
Other Recommended Releases:
Houtkamp / Tramontana / Beresford / Blume
Frush
(FMR)
Expanding the enduring free improvising trio of Netherlands tenor saxophonist and clarinetist Luc Houtkamp, British pianist and player of electronics and objects Steve Beresford, and German drummer and percussionist Martin Blume, with Italian trombonist Sebi Tramontana for this exceptional concert captured live in 2023 at LOFT, in Cologne, Germany.
Frequency Distasters (Beresford / Magaletti / Martino)
Naize
(Confront)
An expressive piano trio from Steve Beresford on piano, Italian-born, UK-based drummer/percussionist Valentina Magaletti, and Italian Bassist Pierpaolo Martino, Beresford using piano preparations, electronics & toys to expand the palette of their instrumentation, all three bringing a wealth of experience in jazz, free improv and experimental sound to their solid conversations.
Freed, Moss / Union Division
Micromotives [2 CDs]
(Discus)
Seeking new methods of performing real-time collective composition through improvisation, composer & guitarist Moss Freed developed a language of hand signals that could be used among a large ensemble with instructions to guide players towards particular activities, heard in this spectacular set of seven improvisations, each named for an iconic improviser or composer.
Armaroli, Sergio (Armaroli / Minton / Schiaffini / Turner)
I Dream I Was An Earopean
(ezz-thetics by Hat Hut Records Ltd)
Two percussionists--vibraphonist Sergio Armaroli and drummer/percussionist Roger Turner-- and two brass players--trombonist Giancarlo Schiaffini and trumpeter Phil Minton, who doubles on voice improvisation--are heard in these studio recordings from Udine, Italy for nine "Dreams" that turn introspective slumber into restless visions through profoundly paced playing.



The Squid's Ear Magazine

The Squid's Ear Magazine

© 2002-, Squidco LLC