HESSION / WILKINSON / FELL – Foom! Foom! (1992)

Label: Bruce's Fingers – BF5
Format: CD, Album; Country: UK - Released: 1992
Style: Free Improvisation
Recorded on 20th & 21st February 1992 at Kite Recording Studio, Cambridge.
Liner Notes – Ben Watson
Photography By – Jo Fell
Producer – Roger Chatterton
Written-By – Alan Wilkinson, Paul Hession, Simon H. Fell

This album dates from the early days of digital recording, but the sound is excellent, specially for this occasion remastering in the ART&JAZZ Studio, by VITKO.

The first studio recording of the Hession/Wilkinson/Fell trio. Despite the group's reputation, this CD contains much unexpected beauty and delicacy.

What can you say when you get three jobs like this together who just want to blow the gates off of heaven every time they get together? Is it possible to sit and write a close analysis of every wrapped encounter on the bandstand, analyzing each improvisational encounter and how one of these complete free-for-alls is different from one another? I suppose it is, but why? This trio -- with Wilkinson on soprano, alto, and baritone; Simon Fell on bass; and Paul Hession on drums -- would be insulted if they weren't bored to tears reading such a thing first. This is extreme music made for extreme ears. That said, in the symbiotic interrelationships that are formed, torn apart, and re-formed among the fissures these tunes create, there is a logic at work, one that relies heavily on the idea that listeners don't really know what harmony, rhythm, and melody are yet, and they are still working toward that idea -- albeit in a violent and hilarious way. This is a band who has no trouble making an audience sit up and take notice either on the stand or in their living rooms, and the reason for that is simple: Nothing about this music is compromised or half-baked; it's furious with humor built in, and it's knotty, scaly, confrontational stuff played with warmth and verve. Highly recommended.

_ By Thom Jurek (AMG)



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