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Review

Led Bib

Live: London, Vortex 24/06/2009

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by Tim Owen

July 09, 2009

/ LIVE

Tim Owen with another look at band of the moment Led Bib

Led Bib

London, Vortex

24/06/2009

It’s been a while since I last saw Led Bib, back in 2006. That night, also at the Vortex, their set followed a brilliant solo improvisation by Matthew Bourne and a set from the too rarely-seen Pinski Zoo; both tough acts to follow.
Their current set naturally draws heavily from their latest album, Sensible Shoes, while about a third is drawn from the album they were promoting in 2006, Arboretum. In the first set, selections from each bookend the sole number from their intervening release, Sizewell Tea, which I have to confess I’ve yet to hear. This conveniently emphasised how much the band have come on in the last three years. There’s been no dramatic shift in sound, but overall impressions of the two gigs were as different as my responses to the CDs they respectively promoted. Much of the bands’ publicity continues to emphasize their ?playfulness’, and the band still does clearly have a lot of fun at times, but the impression that hits hardest is of a new found seriousness to them. The newer material is tougher, even darker, it’s compositions and group interplay more knotty and intricate. It’s only a matter of degrees, but the change is significant. Volume, forcefulness and density have all been turned up a notch or two.

The first manifestation of this growth was superficial and the most obvious; having walked into the room after the first number had started I wasn’t immediately sure that this was Led Bib on stage, although it sounded like Led Bib? The drummer didn’t look familiar until his face brightened with a joyous grin, and there was the Mark Holub I remembered. That grin would return to his face frequently but for the most part he was, like the rest of the band, purposeful and concentrated. It’s a good sign, emphasizing the maturity of the band as a unit and also of their material, which is today much less readily passed off as a variation on that of their most obvious (and acknowledged) influences: John Zorn and the New York ?downtown’ sound that reached its first maturity in the early 90s. Those influences were never problematic; Led Bib’s take on the whole thing had a freshness and enthusiasm that was infectious. Extrapolating from what was already a winning formula which recast the best elements of Be-Bop and Post-Bop for a new era, Led Bib were the best bet for the type of crossover success that some commentators seem to think will cast Jazz a new halo of trendiness: Fat chance. What Led Bib seems to be evolving is much more promising, as they cast aside external referents to develop their own unique sound. The band are tighter these days, and Holub’s compositions more mature. He remains the main songwriter, but Sensible Shoes also features two distinctive pieces by saxophonist Chris Williams, who is clearly influenced by music beyond jazz and brings to Led Bib material that contrasts and compliments Holub’s songbook perfectly. Whereas Williams’ 2.4:1 (Still Equals None), which the band do not play tonight, is a foray into abstraction that signals an entirely fresh trail, his Zone 4, with which the band close the gig, is contrastingly songlike, gradually building to a climax with some of the best group playing of the night. With two distinctive songwriters now producing strong and distinctive material, I’ll be keeping a closer eye on Led Bib in the future.
The others in the band shouldn’t be overlooked. Liran Donin’s double bass playing is remarkably direct and well defined; though he favours the more supple electric bass he keeps the bottom line solid, without aping rock styles. Toby McLaren pulls off a similar trick with his Roland keyboard, which he favours over the in-house grand piano, going beyond coloration and rhythm to develop key melodic lines while managing not to sound derivative of the unignorable first wave of electric jazz. Pete Grogan’s sax occasionally combines with Williams’ in close harmony, but usually they have quite distinctive things to say. In fact, and this is my one significant criticism of the gig, at one point I noted the band all pursuing independent lines of inquiry at the expense of the whole. Certainly this was a negative for some other audience members, overheard critiquing what they evidently saw as unwarranted complexity in the first set (which, remember, consisted mostly of relatively ?old’ material, one of which was their version of Erik Satie’s Gnossienne No. 1, a clear set highlight for me now, as in 2006). At times in that first set it’s true that things didn’t quite mesh satisfactorily, but I’ll forgive that since everything came together every time and, in any case, I applaud the firming ambition and positive evolution of the group. They have already risen far above the token Jazz-category Brit award that seems ever more inevitable.

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