"ZAUM"

STEVE HARRIS QUINTET

Steve Harris Drums Cathy Stevens viola Geoff Hearn saxophones Karen Wimhurst clarinet Udo Dzierzanowski guitar

Recorded atStudy Gallery, Poole, England.18 Oct 2002

SLAMCD 253 Bar code 5 028386 02530

TRACKS:

1 What did you dream 7m 18s

2 Lorry in the pond 3 02

3 Zaum 10 20

4 Let it come down5 58

5 At house-for-one 2 04

6 Petit socco 7 18

7 Derail9 26

8 The nightmare of real things 3.08

9 Arc light 7 02

Steve Harris

Za Um "This is a spontaneous performance recorded in Poole last year for saxophonist/producer George Haslam’s unswervingly independent Slam label. It features a quintet led by improv drummer Steve Harris, with viola player and electric violinist Cathy Stevens, saxophonist Geoff Hearn, clarinetist Karen Wimhurst and guitarist Udo Dzierzanowski. The guitarist introduces a raw, abstract-contemporary dimension to which the others respond.

There’s an odd, crabwise groove and a kind of faltering grace over a steady guitar riff to Lorry in the Pond. The title track opens like a Jan Garbarek piece, with Hearn’s soprano sax hauntingly wheeling and gliding - as if in a distant room - before the clarinet enters a slow dance with him and Hrris’s loose, splashy drum sound. Some of the music is brooding and darkly minimalist, with Morricone guitar twangs echoing over rumbling bass-drum patterns; some is squawky and impulsive, some vivid and conversational. This is virtuosic and varied improvisation." John Fordham, The Guardian