Soil & Pimp Sessions @ Roundhouse, July 15 2008

Why?
I first saw the Soil & Pimp Sessions at the sublimely brilliant Garden Festival in Croatia last year (more on which soon, hopefully). I had never heard of them, and they blew my fricking ears off. I’m a fan of jazz, I guess, but in a fairly superficial way. I like the scene, and the clubs, and, yes, I guess I like the music. But it can sometimes be a bit wanky, no? The only jazz club I have ever frequented was Matt and Phreds in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, which was excellent, but on a number of occasions I found myself a little bored. I can appreciate the musicianship- which is as high as you can get on a popular level, before hitting classical- but as an experience, I’d take the significantly less talented bunch of indie kids who can put on a good show any day. But the S&P Sessions were one of the best live acts I have ever seen...playing hyperspeed “death jazz” in a perpetual frenzy, brass akimbo, racing around the stage and egging on the crowd. If this is jazz, then I’m in.

The Venue
The Roundhouse is a London institution. There’s a nice symmetry to its story, too. Back in the day, when trains couldn’t run in both directions, they would chug into the roundhouse after terminating at Chalk Farm to be swivelled 180 degrees and sent off in the opposite direction. It was a turntable! And then, in the 60s, it became a gig venue, and hosted a veritable cavalcade of big names...Pink Floyd played the opening night, then came the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, etc. The venue has been renovated over the last few years, and is once again one of London’s prime gig venues. The remodel is quite squeaky, so don’t expect must and punky ambience, rather well-dressed London indy media types, who have met for a few drinks before a gig on the nice terrace bar. The main space is excellent; under the old domed roof, with lights rigged in a hexagon on the ceiling supports. If you’re into that type of thing, there is something very satisfying about hearing very modern sounds in an antique setting. Death Jazz pulsating against bricks and steel and fittings notched together in the 1850s.

What they look like
Soil & Pimp sessions are a quartet of Tokyo hipsters, with all the flourishes. The sax player and the trumpet guy are the dapperest, miscellaneously attired as if fresh from a rummage in a Lower East Side second hand store. I think, although I can’t be sure, that the Tokyo equivalent is this place, if the two guys in the pic are anything to go by. And then there’s the pimp, The Agitator. He is dressed as a 60s boudoir pimp, podgy and jewelled. His role is to cajole. There is a self-referential Japanese thing about his vocals...wailing to the crowd through a loudspeaker, eyebrows curled, “Do you want MORE?!” The whole band, in fact, comes onstage in full Japanese robes before stripping off, again self-referentially doing the Japanese thing, as they know that that is their buzzword gimmick- that they are Japanese- despite being a million other things before simply just Japanese.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that The Agitator’s role, sans any musical instruments (apart from the occasional theramone solo!), is needless, but in fact he ties the room together, and maintains the frenzy. The saxophonist and trumpet player are brilliant to watch, playing solos with one foot mounted on a speaker, or playing one handed, or with their bodies arched backwards or buckled forwards as the scream down their instruments. When they finish their incredible solos, they shot “slam-dunk” looks as the audience roar their appreciation as if to say “Yeah? And what?” In between solos, they skip around the stage with their instruments slung around their bodies like guitars, jerking their bodies hip-hop-style to the beat. Very, very cool.

What they sound like
I have never seen a band with such a talented roster. Each musician- the saxophonist, trumpet player, pianist, and bass player- are nothing short of virtuosos. There is an occasional veering towards self-indulgence, and some of the free-form moments are lost on me, but then such is jazz. The music, self-styled “death jazz” is a kind of intense, 300 notes-a-second, sooped-up latino style jazz. It is incredibly passionate, intense, full-bodied sound, that by the end rendered me a little fatigued, in the same way as when you spend the whole day wandering around Rome, you get a little non-plussed by the 13th unbelievably stunning church you’ve seen in an afternoon. It’s like that with the solos, which make the whole experience, at times, more of a performance than a gig. But it really has to be seen...these guys are phenomenal. The last track involves the bass player repeatedly slapping his strings with a stick as the brass goes nuts and the crowd are instructed to chant “Soi!” over and over again to the beat. It feels a bit like a revolution.

Conclusion
For such a cerebral artform- jazz- this is as visceral as it gets. I can’t imagine I would listen to an album of theirs, as the music is not necessarily my thing, and there is simply no way that the live experience could ever translate. But as a performance S&P are near faultless, and manage to do that most important of things- move the crowd. Top marks.

Pics: ArneCoomans, markhillary, volume12

Tags: soil & pimp sessions the roundhouse camden garden festival tokyo death jazz gig review matt and phreds jazz