Leverton Fox

“Eternal Gong Bath of the Sunbed Mind”

(Not Applicable NOT084)

Alex Bonney – trumpet, electronics, Tim Giles – drums, electronics, Isambard Khroustaliov – electronics

Leverton Fox is the long running London based electro-improvising trio featuring trumpeter Alex Bonney, drummer Tim Giles and electronic musician and sound artist Isambard Khroustaliov (aka Sam Britton).

The first edition of the group featured Bonney, Giles and electronics specialist Matt Groom and this line up recorded the trio’s début album “Country Dances”,  released on the Gravid Hands label in 2009.

Thus constituted the trio toured as part of a double bill with the Norwegian duo Humcrush (Stale Storlokken, keyboards, Thomas Stronen, drums) in 2010. Former Jazzmann contributor Tim Owen reviewed the joint show at London’s Vortex here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/humcrush-leverton-fox-the-vortexlondon-16-04-2010

Following the Humcrush tour Groom left the trio and was replaced by Khroustaliov. The band then began their long association with the Not Applicable artistic collective and released their second album “The Human Arm” for the label in 2012. A number of other recordings followed namely “Smart Casual” (2013), “Kanga” (2016), “Velcro Bird” (2016),  “Foreign Object Worship – Arhus Rites” (2018), “I Am Zebra” (2019) and “Magascopz” (also 2019).

Khroustaliov has also issued a series of solo recordings on Not Applicable as well as a number of collaborations with other musicians, among them percussionist Maurizio Ravalico, bass clarinettist Lothar Ohlmeier, pianist Dirar Kalash and drummer Rudi Fischerlehner. He has also been a member of the electronic duo Icarus alongside fellow sound artist Ollie Bown.

Bonney and Giles are more deeply rooted in the jazz scene and between them have appeared on the Jazzmann web pages on numerous occasions and in a wide variety of  musical contexts, from the comparatively straight ahead to the seriously experimental. In addition to his work as a musician Bonney has also featured regularly in his role as a much respected recording engineer and producer.

As Leverton Fox the members of the trio have continued to hone their collective electro-acoustic sound both in the studio and on the road. In addition to Humcrush they have also toured with Polar Bear, Sons of Kemet, Blurt, and Sly and The Family Drone.

In 2022 Leverton Fox released the album “In The Flicker” on the Not Applicable imprint. Recorded at night outdoors in the Sussex countryside the site specific “In The Flicker” represented Leverton Fox at their most pastoral and ambient and was arguably the trio’s most accessible recording to date. My review of that recording, which represents the source of the biographical detail reproduced above, can be found here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/leverton-fox-in-the-flicker

More recently the three members of Leverton Fox teamed up with saxophonist / bass clarinettist James Allsopp under the collective name Scarla O’Horror, releasing the excellent album “Semiconductor Taxidermy For The Masses” on Not Applicable in 2024. Review here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/scarla-ohorror-semiconductor-taxidermy-for-the-masses

This latest release is a studio recording, captured by Bonney at New River Studios, but the circumstances behind its eventual release are most unusual, as the album notes on the Not Applicable Bandcamp page explain;
“When The Residents recorded their album Not Available, they allegedly decreed that it should not be released until the group had forgotten that they had made it. In the case of Eternal Gong Bath of the Sunbed Mind, the latest release by the trio Leverton Fox, this is an album based on a recording session that had completely slipped their minds until they rediscovered it, and recognised its merits from an “outside” perspective.”

Meanwhile the trio’s approach has been described as follows;
“Leverton Fox are singular in that they stress the value of playing electronics collectively, the importance of that dynamic, on which they lay greater stress than production. They follow Derek Bailey’s dictum that improvised playing should be “non idiomatic”, with the players departing as much as possible from the preconceived roles of their practice, resulting in a freer outcome”

Listening back to the recordings from the “outside perspective” described above the members of Leverton Fox have stated that at some points in the proceedings they could not remember who was playing what.

This time round suggested influences on the trio’s sound include Holger Czukay, Gyorgy Ligeti, Herbie Hancock, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Raymond Scott, Hector Zazou, Pauline Oliveros, Conrad Schnitzler, Morton Subotnik, Miles Davis, Faust, Polar Bear, Nurse With Wound, Cabaret Voltaire and 23 Skidoo – an eclectic and intriguing mix that is indicative of the scope of Leverton Fox’s music.

At around twenty four minutes in duration there has been some debate as to whether “Eternal Gong Bath…” constitutes a full length album or just an EP. With six different tracks I’ll just about classify it as an album, particularly as the work explores a variety of moods, dynamics and textures plus a mix of electro-acoustic improvising styles.

The recording commences with the scene setting “Seals for Spronky”, a beguiling mix of electro-acoustic sounds that evoke an underwater soundscape featuring sounds approximating whale song and other undersea noises.

The aquatic theme continues on “Serenade to a Blobfish (Subaqueous Sound System)” with its scuffling, scuttling percussive sounds and eerie, flute like electronics. It’s an underwater seascape that is not always serene with darker, more unsettling textures also pervading the music, sometimes imbuing it with a threatening, sinister quality.

“Sounding Balloons at the Karmen Line” takes us away from the ocean and into a more dystopian sonic landscape inhabited by glitchy electronics, droning synths and the semi-martial percolations of electronically enhanced percussion. Like all the pieces on the recording it’s a self contained sonic universe, a sound movie that tells its own individual story within the wider context of the album.

The percussive sounds continue into “Sleeper Train”, which, as the press release suggests, “is the nearest Leverton Fox get to figurative”. In addition to the railway like rhythms the music is also full of more ambient colours and textures, these sometimes suggestive of the wildlife living beside the track side as the sleeper train of the title makes its way through the night.

The very brief (thirty seven seconds) of “Socrates The Quail” continues the wildlife theme and squeezes a rich panoply of quasi-avian sounds into its short, but intensely agitated, duration.

The recording concludes with “Speculative Aerodynamic Problems of a Human Headed Winged Lion” – Leverton Fox have a great way with titles. Buzzing synth drones that evoke a swarm of angry bees are absorbed into a wider, swirling electronic miasma as Giles’ percussive sounds continue to come to the fore. Subsequently the music becomes increasingly tumultuous with powerful and insistent electro-acoustic rhythms underpinning the clarion call of Bonney’s electronically enhanced trumpet. It’s about the only occasion that the trumpet is readily recognisable as such. Something of a ‘mini-epic’ this is the album’s lengthiest track at over seven and a half minutes duration, eventually resolving itself as the drums suddenly drop out, leaving a chorus of synths and other electronica.

“Eternal Gong Bath…” finds Leverton Fox continuing to refine their distinctive practice and the results are both interesting and immersive, drawing the listener into their unique sound world. As the press release suggests it squeezes a lot of information into its brief running time. There is no noodling, every sound is made to count.

“Eternal Gong Bath of the Sunbed Mind” is available from the Not Applicable Bandcamp page here;
https://not-applicable.bandcamp.com/album/eternal-gong-bath-of-the-sunbed-mind

 

 

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