John Stevens’ Away
Album: John Stevens’ Away/Somewhere In Between/Mazin Ennit
Label: BGO
Tracks: 8+15
Website: http://www.bgo-records.com

The energetic and intelligently ventive drummer John Stevens led the acclaimed, challenging (and distinctly chameleon-like) “New Music” (read free-jazz) group Spontaneous Music Ensemble for a whole decade before taking a parallel, small-scale combo to play in Berlin’s Quartier Latin in the autumn of 1975. This quartet was named John Stevens’ Away, and comprised Stevens and his faithful alto sax player Trevor Watts with American guitarist Steve Hayton and bassist Pete Cowling, both of the latter playing electric instruments (Stevens had himself been getting used to electricity through his membership of John Martyn’s touring trio during 1974/75). The five tracks making up the quartet’s blistering eponymous live album are spellbinding examples of the musicians’ keen interplay, much in the post-bop vein, laced with the kind of grace that could be found in classic Ornette Coleman recordings, or the toughness of Sonny Rollins. Also notable was the sensitivity with which Hayton’s electric guitar was employed, and there are some quite beautiful moments amongst the rough-and-tumble – and, as ever with Stevens’ work, the drum solos are economic and controlled and really do hold one’s attention. This was jazz-rock, but jazz-rock with attitude and also abstract fusion of a uniquely accessible kind.

The Somewhere In Between album followed quickly the very next year (1976), and marked a complete change of lineup, though it continued the threads of the use of electric instruments in experimentation and the exploration of contemporary ideas on rhythm. The opening and closing tracks contained some minor acknowledgement of the then-prevailing trends in disco and funk respectively, though mercifully without that genre’s unlistenable synthy noodlings. A welcome sparseness and often surprising lyricism were features of this tight new five-piece ensemble, which was also notable for the presence of both electric and acoustic basses, used to particularly moving effect on the epic 18-minute Spirit Of Peace, a tribute to Coltrane’s drummer Elvin Jones (this track builds into a magnificent duet between David Cole’s guitar and Robert Calvert’s soprano sax before the climatic, restrained drum solo). All told, an invigorating album of fresh-sounding music, and like its predecessor brilliantly remastered for this handsome BGO reissue.

Mazin Ennit, the third panel in the triptych of John Stevens’ Away albums for Vertigo, appeared in 1977, and retained the Somewhere In Between lineup; while it consolidated the group sound and dynamic, it presented one expansive long track and a series of short tracks, some of which were almost cheekily commercial and deployed transformed rhythms from the Caribbean, Latin America and South Africa, while others exhibited a gleeful sense of improv that might have been seen as a cross between SME and Zappa-esque invention, and there’s even a masterly, time-fracturing solo guitar piece (Still Here). The album may have been seen as something of a musical compromise, but it all sounds pretty persuasive today, and not in the least “slight”. The current reissue also usefully appends a brace of non-album singles which were “alternate versions” of existing album tracks featuring guest vocalist-musicians (John Martyn on Anni and Terri Quaye on Can’t Explain).

Incredibly, this is the first time these three albums have appeared on CD – and this is to be celebrated, for they’re excellent examples of Stevens’ inventiveness, flexibility and artistry. A word of praise too for BGO’s accompanying booklet essay, whose sense of perspective affords a superb appraisal of Stevens’ immense contribution to the British music scene.

David Kidman