John Coxon is the boss of the Treader label but is best known as part of Spring Heel Jack with Ashley Wales, an outfit with roots dating back to the electronica scene of the mid-90s. They took drum & bass down a downtempo path and soundtracked many an after party as a result and their Masses album in 2001 showed them to also have a love of jazz, particularly its structure - or lack thereof. This album found them record a number of ambient pieces and then have labelmates improvise over the top. The results are intense, experimental sounding - even now - and as fascinating as ever.

-

‘Masses is an utterly unexpected, and utterly gripping, collaboration between the East London duo, Spring Heel Jack, and a group of top-flight improvisers, drawn largely from New York’s ascendant free jazz network but also including Evan Parker and microtonal violinist Matt Maneri.

‘If there are precedents for this particular mix, in which studio-processed audio environments are played back in real time as the triggers for, and fixed components in, a series of group improvisations, they feel few and far between. George Rusell’s 1967 Electronic Sonata For Souls Loved By Nature, Bob Ostertag’s Say No More Project, and some of Evan Parker’s explorations in the realm of synergetic electroacoustics provide three possible and very different models. But as Matthew Shipp points out, Masses ‘creates its own space and time’.

‘Masses opens a tunnel on a space where matter and anti-matter can co-exist without the vernacular power of either state being compromised or diminished. It is a total triumph.’

(The Wire).