Gonimoblast

“Always Darkest Before Dawnn”

Gonimoblast is an electro-improvising group led by the Birmingham based bassist and composer Chris Mapp. Mapp has been a significant presence on the Second City’s jazz and improvised music scene for a number of years and together with fellow bassist Percy Pursglove (the latter also a highly talented trumpeter) he founded and curated the much missed and fondly remembered Harmonic Festival.

Mapp has played orthodox jazz double bass with a number of Birmingham bands but his solo projects have always included a degree of electronica. His 2010 quintet Gambol featured a modicum of sampling and the looped sound of Sam Wooster’s trumpet.

In recent years Mapp has developed his interest in electronic music and also revived his teenage fascination with heavy metal and at the 2014 Cheltenham Jazz Festival I witnessed him performing a solo set on bass guitar but with the instrument augmented by a vast range of pedals and various other gizmos. In the main it was a loud, tumultuous performance that revealed the considerable influence of the Norwegian guitarist Stian Westerhus who had given a broadly similar solo guitar performance at the same Cheltenham Playhouse venue at the 2011 Festival. A glance at Mapp’s website http://www.chrismapp.co.uk reveals that he currently has three albums of solo performance available, all of them issued under the umbrella name of “Doomprov” - great title. 

Also in 2014 Mapp performed in Birmingham with Gonimoblast as part of a double bill with Polar Bear at a packed out Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath. Polar Bear’s Leafcutter John guested on electronics alongside the core quartet of Mapp on bass guitar and electronics, Sam Wooster on trumpet, synthesiser and electronics, Dan Nicholls on keyboards and synthesiser and Mark Sanders on drums and percussion. The quintet played a single forty minute piece that I suspect was largely improvised with Sanders adding a vital humanising aspect to the whorls of electronic sound generated by his colleagues. I was impressed.

2014 proved to be a big year for Mapp who was appointed as one of three Jazzlines Fellows by the Birmingham based Jazzlines organisation in conjunction with Town Hall/Symphony Hall and the Jerwood Charitable Foundation. The other musicians to be appointed were vocalist Lauren Kinsella and trumpeter Yazz Ahmed.

The financial incentive offered by the Fellowship has allowed Mapp to document some of his current music beginning with “Always Darkest Before Dawnn” which was recorded at Flood Studios in Digbeth, Birmingham and released in April 2015. “The Depths”, a second volume of Gonimoblast material is to be released on July 31st 2015 so now seems like a good time to look at the first album before it is superseded.

“Always Darkest Before Dawnn” - is the spelling an oblique reference to Sunn O ))) ?- sees Mapp delving even deeper into the world of electro-improvisation than he was doing even in 2014. The album features three pieces by the core group of Mapp, Wooster, Nicholls and Saunders and one further item that sees the addition of Leafcutter John. Besides the obvious influence of Leafcutter’s “parent” group Polar Bear Mapp also cites the inspiration of the Norwegian triumvirate of Food, Arve Henriksen and Supersilent.

All the pieces have titles sourced from the name of the album itself and we begin with “Always” which quickly develops from near silence into frantic, full on electro-improvisation underpinned by Sanders drum and cymbal pulses, these initially subsumed into an electronic fug featuring whistling synths and other electronica plus breathy smears of trumpet. Eventually the music slackens in terms of pace but not in terms of intensity as the electronics become darker, murkier and more sinister in tone, this being counterbalanced by the fact that Sanders’ playing becomes more recognisably acoustic and human again. As at the Hare & Hounds show he’s a vital acoustic presence in an otherwise essentially electronic soundscape.

“Darkest”, the lengthiest piece on the album at over fourteen minutes, adds Leafcutter John to the line-up and dives even further into the electronic depths. Leafcutter’s computer generated glitches and crackles are complemented by rather more old school synthesised sounds, presumably courtesy of Messrs. Nicholls and Wooster. Sanders adds succinct percussive commentary and eventually coalesces with the bubbling synths to create a pulsating rhythm that forms the backdrop for Wooster’s electronically enhanced but intensely human trumpet squeaks and shrieks, squawks and snorts.

Eerie electronics juxtaposed with brushed drums usher in “Before” which is distinguished by the subsequent acoustic dialogue between Wooster and Sanders. The trumpeter’s lively open horn, acoustic playing draws an increasingly spirited response from Sanders, the drummer still deploying brushes. It’s one of the best moments on the album and the pair are eventually joined by bass, keyboards and electronics as the music heads for darker, electronic waters once more, generating some deliciously dirty keyboard sounds in the process. 

“Dawnn” is more obviously ambient, almost musique concrete, and builds from an introduction featuring droning synths and Sanders’ cymbal and percussion strikes, scrapes and shimmers. The drones become deeper and more sinister and Sanders responds with playing that is both more distinctive and dramatic as he conjures up a stunning array of percussive sounds, again a vital human agent in the electronic swirl. Eventually Sanders ceases to contribute and the music winds down and resolves itself in a wash of electronica.

Mapp promises that there will eventually be five to six albums of Gonimoblast material, presumably the improvised nature of the music ensures that it’s relatively cheap and easy to record. It will be interesting to see how the group’s music develops after this very promising start. The group’s music won’t appeal to everyone but it certainly caught the ear of Tim Owen, a man who is far more attuned to this type of music than I am, and who was fulsome in his praise of the album in his recent review for his own Dalston Sound website http://www.dalstonsound.wordpress.com

Despite the occasional inevitable longueur I also found much to enjoy here, particularly the mix of electronic and acoustic sounds and the way in which the music is constantly unfolding. Despite the session being led by a bass player there are very few orthodox “bass” sounds on the recording. Instead Mapp and his colleagues conjure up a commendably wide range of electronic colours, textures and timbres. This is is the sound of technology being used in an inquisitive and creative way, true to the original pioneering spirit of electronic music.

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