Craig Scott’s Lobotomy – “Technicolour Yawn” single review

A brief glance over the influences at work here will have left field music devotees salivating to hear more; Aphex Twin, Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, Debussy, Derek Bailey, John Zorn, Thelonious Monk and Meshuggah. Craig Scott is a Leeds based improviser/composer/guitarist and affiliate of Ikestra and Shatner’s Bassoon. With a CV like that the music here cannot fail to spark interest, and thankfully it does just that. “Technicolour Yawn” teases the listener with a fairly straightforward broken beat opening before turning the music inside out and manipulating the sound using fragments of electronic dissonance woven together with more “traditional” sounding jazz and classical chamber instrumentation. As Craig himself explains,

“The initial idea of the project was invert the relationship of
composition and improvisation in my music, instead of the composition
informing the improvisation, freely improvised material was recorded and
then manipulated and re-composed...”

The above description may cause the casual listener alarm, but the end result is by no means incongruous. The tune meanders amicably over its duration and should please lovers of experimental music and circuit bending alike. The project as a whole is a fascinating deconstruction of the relationship between composer and improviser and demands four minutes of your time. 

Craig Scott website

Bandcamp page

Shatner's Bassoon - Aquatic Ape Privilege in Jazz Yorkshire

Any group of musicians, who name themselves after a fictitious area of the brain from the television series “Brass Eye”, out of the mind of Chris Morris, must come with a series of very welcome preconceptions. Shatners Bassoon is essentially a group of Leeds based improvisers/composers who, since 2010, as graduates of the Leeds College of Music, have been performing and collaborating under the influence of artists such as Frank Zappa, John Zorn and Mike Patton. It would be misleading and reductive however to label this collective as reproductions of those influences. “Aquatic Ape Privilege” is their forthcoming release, and three tracks are available to hear on the website Soundcloud as taster of their efforts.



“This Is How You Make A Buck” opens with a flurry of electronic scurrying, before a frenzy of scathing electric guitar, voice and saxophone cut through the chaos. The piece takes then on an air of sinister controlled pandemonium, punctuated by hysterical saxophone, guitar and keyboard passages. Certain elements of this piece are whimsical and eccentric and somehow reminiscent of early Soft Machine or Henry Cow, which may help anchor the music down for the passive listener. With the nine minute “This Is How You Make A Buck” drawing to a close in a more pastoral frame of mind, the next composition available to preview, “Leland” is all together more sensitive with skittering saxophone skirting gracefully, yet ominously, over the gentlest suggestion of keyboard, percussion and electronics. This then meanders into the final piece “Someone Killed My Panda” which continues to unsettle the listener with the merest hint of piano sprinkled over an ambient soundscape of brass, bubbling electronics, percussion and delirious spoken word passages simmering under the surface. The effect over the nine minutes is one of unease and perplexity, until the final few moments descend into a maelstrom of sound. ...

Read the full piece at Jazz Yorkshire