The PurePhase Ensemble is certainly quite a unique musical concept. It’s an
international music collective, created especially for the annual SpaceFest
festival in Gdansk in Poland, which plays live only the once before disbanding.
Each year, in the first week of December, several musicians from Poland and elsewhere
take part in several workshop sessions where they collectively compose a
concert's worth of music which they then present live to the festival-goers.
This one-off performance is recorded and subsequently released on Nasiono Records.
The programme for each workshop is jointly curated by Ray Dickaty, a British
saxophonist improviser and former member of Spiritualized (1997-2002), and
Polish musician/Nasiono Records label boss Karol Schwarz. Along with these two
key figures, every festival involves a new musical director who is asked to
co-curate the workshop. For the 2014 SpaceFest Ride guitarist/singer Mark
Gardener was invited to be the musical director for the fourth incarnation of
the Pure Phase Ensemble and bring his significant talent as a musician and
songwriter to the project.
If you have
not heard any of Mark Gardener’s music since the messy implosion of Ride back
in the mid 90s this record will be a bit of an eye opener…..this line-up of
Pure Phase Ensemble mix up Kosmische jams, Space Rock freak outs and swirling
Shoegaze a million miles away ‘Vapour Trail’. However, this is not just Mark
Gardener and some Polish guys acting as his backing band but a proper
collective effort with the entire band bringing something to the party, all
playing off each other and sharing the musical limelight. With the involvement
of Ray Dickaty in this project there is inevitably a feel of early
Spiritualized here (calling the project Pure Phase Ensemble is also a bit of a
giveaway)……..the crystalline ‘Morning Rise’ emerges from a hazy drone to open
the record, with chiming guitars and lazy sax intertwining it is a beautiful
tune that would not sound out of place on an album like Lazer Guided Melodies.
‘Peter Song’ is in the same vain with a bouncing, dubby bass line driving the
song forward amidst a sea of swirling synths and sax. This version of Pure
Phase Ensemble can also rock out like a mutha and kick up a wall of noise….. ‘Zostan
na noc’ is a heavy, heavy monster of a loud/quite/loud Space Rock jam with
skull crushing bass, squalling sax, big rock drums and pulverizing, distorted guitar
riffs crashing into more delicate passages. The centrepiece of the whole album
is ‘Notatki’, an epic 15 minute Kosmische wig out which really messes with your head …….building
from a clicking rhythm track and pulsing synths ‘Notatki’ initially shares a
lot of musical DNA with the Harmonia track ‘Veteranissimo’. As it gains pace the drums really kick in
hard building and building, pushing the tune well into the outer reaches of deep
space……… when you think
the track has peaked it goes again……..more far out, finding more gears and
pushing harder, growing into a big, beautiful cosmic freak out. This is an
absolutely fantastic track that is worth the price of admission alone. The 55
minute set closes with ‘Happy Dancing Woman’, a joyous, polyrhythmic groove
driven number that is the perfect conclusion to a brilliant set of what are
mainly improvised songs. The only disappointing thing about this record is that
this was a one off performance never to be repeated again. This performance was
recorded before the no doubt very lucrative Ride reunion shows and it will be
interesting to see what direction Mark Gardener takes when that adventure
reaches its conclusion……we can only hope that he is able to put a band together
and make music that is exciting and forward thinking as the songs on this
album.
You can get
your hands on the CD of Live At SpaceFest! from the Nasiono Records website at www.nasiono.net and the digital download is
available from either the Pure Phase Ensemble Bandcamp page at https://purephaseensemble.bandcamp.com/
(where there is also a link that will take you to the Nasiono Records website)
or iTunes. It’s a fantastic record and a must hear for fans of bands like
Spirtualized…….check it out, you won’t be disappointed.
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