This is British improvised music at its absolute finest. Three giants of the UK scene – pianist Robert Mitchell, double bassist Neil Charles, and drummer Mark Sanders – locked in a room at Café Oto in February 2022, no safety net, no second takes, just forty minutes of pure telepathic interplay. The result is devastating.
Vol. 2 captures the second half of The Flame's legendary debut performance – and if Vol. 1 was a revelation, this is the confirmation. Three extended pieces that move from tender introspection to volcanic intensity and back again. Abstract rhythms, dreamy melodies, adventurous improvisation – all woven together by musicians who have spent decades mastering their craft and are now operating at the highest level.
Mitchell – Professor of Jazz Piano at Guildhall School of Music, Steinway Artist, BBC Jazz Award winner, one of the most prodigious keyboard technicians in Britain – opens the album with a dedication to his mother: "A Son Of Windrush Reflects – All Across The Spirit Prism." His poem, tenderly recited, pays tribute to the nurses who served in the UK's National Health Service from 1948 onwards, and addresses the ongoing Windrush Scandal – a national disgrace now entering its sixth year. This is music with a conscience, music that speaks to history and injustice while reaching for transcendence.
Charles – a key figure at Café Oto, collaborator with Anthony Braxton, Alexander Hawkins, and Elaine Mitchener, veteran of the Sun Ra Arkestra and Mingus Big Band – anchors everything with a sound that sits somewhere between Gary Peacock, William Parker, and Fernando Grillo: searching, lyrical, physically immense.
And Sanders – the legendary free music drummer who has worked with Derek Bailey, Henry Grimes, Matthew Shipp, Wadada Leo Smith, Charles Gayle, John Butcher, John Tchicai – provides the pulse, the fire, the constant creative provocation.
Together they are The Flame. And the name fits perfectly: this music burns.
Recorded at London's Cafe Otto in February of 2022, The Flame comes to life like most screams do: with a whisper that soon becomes a cutting clamor seizing then shredding the expected. All twenty-two minutes of "Ignitions" is a rallying cry. A call to arms that things have changed (a lot) while we sat lonely in our hovels, in our castles, in ourselves. Each person's voice needing its moment. Each person's voice with something to say even if it is just to offer a few kind words or community, of encouragement, of warning.
A wild frisson, "Clouds Ablaze" informs what the title strongly implies: the fuse is lit and if we scramble to extinguish it we will only add fuel to the fire. So the action and the reasoning for that and any collateral reactions must be clear. Once set into motion, Mitchell's percussive runs, Charles' fevered, exotic drive, and Sanders' deeply ingrained spontaneity clarify and strip away the scaffolding. Leaving the moment of clarity and creation set in one's mind long after the outburst is over." - Mike Jurkovic
