Moist Revisited 1

 

In 2001 I'd known the estimable Peter Marsh for a little while. If memory serves, my colleague at state51, Dan Hill, had contacted Pete to get him to contribute to the webzine motion (now archived as Sonomu) which we'd set up for the company. Anyway, by 2001 Pete and I (and Dan, for that matter) were working for the BBC on its fledgling bbc.co.uk/music and at some point in amongst the daily brouhaha Pete asked me to sit in live with the the London-based Lob, a large, floating-personnel collective who negotiated the terrain somewhere between ambient abstraction, funk, jazz and free improv, and for whom Pete played bass.

So I sat in with the group for a couple of shows in London and Brighton, at which point the group promptly disbanded. (Pete's always assured me it wasn't my fault; as a fellow only child he understands that we always assume things are.) What followed is slightly hazy in my mind when it comes to detail, but essentially Pete suggested that the two of us form a quartet with Lob's then drummer, Andy Cato (no, not that one), and the alto and tenor saxist Ralph Littlejohn. Which we did.

The four of us began rehearsing in earnest  2002, a handful of gigs followed and we decided we needed a name. In time honoured fashion, coming up with a name we all liked turned out to be by far the most tricky thing of all, and in moment which reveals all the problems which reside at the heart of democracy, we settled on possibly the worst band name in music history: Moist. 

The gigs continued, but intermittently, and eventually we decided to start up a residency at a bar/cafe/venue in East London which Pete had happened across, the Fleapit in Columbia Road. We kept the residency up for the best part of 18 months and for my money it transformed us all to some degree. For one thing Pete transferred almost entirely from bass guitar to upright. For another, I slowly moved away from the guitar-as-sound-generator approach I'd been employing since I first started gigging with Schütze in 1996 and started, well, playing the guitar in a way possibly recognisable (if hardly impressive) to the teachers I'd had at the Musician's Institute in my teens.

We also had a lot of fabulous acts join us as co-headliners, including O Yuki Conjugate, Linear B, Justin's Eva Hipsey collective, Fazzini, Ian Watson, Lucy Jane and Loop Ellington. Not to mention a whole bunch of great players who sat in with us: Lucy Jane, Matthew Shorter, Justin Spooner, Kevin Pollard among them. Oh, and we had consistently great films provided for us by David Thorpe and inter-set DJing from Jamie Tetlow. If this all seems a bit in-the-family to regular readers (Justin and Matthew, for instance, now work with me at Double Shot, Lucy, Pete, J & M, Jamie, David and I all worked at the BBC together) then so be it. It was a bit of a family, and to be honest there was rarely anyone in the audience unknown to at least one of us. So it was incestuous, for sure; the more self-aggrandising chronicler would call it a "scene".

By the end of 2007 it felt like things had pretty much run its course; certainly Pete and I were looking to take the group in different directions - directions which I think Pete's exploring to great effect with, among other, Lucy Jane and Clang Sayne and which I've gone with Nape. So we wound the residency up in December that year, reviving it in the autumn of 2008 for a single "Club Moist Redux" at which we were joined once again by the Conjugates and my own son, Frank, in his Figit guise.

I miss playing with the group a lot; like any residency, it had its loungers, and of course, it was rare for us all to be happy with our own playing on the same night. But I still think that when it worked, it was pretty fucking good. I've rarely been happier than when we slammed in that Crimsonesque whole-step modulation in Contempt.

But, but, but… we ended up bizarrely well documented on the recording front, despite releasing jack shit (whatever a "release" means now in any case); Ralph had a tasty little multi-track digital recorder and recorded a lot of our rehearsals and some of our shows. So I've taken the liberty of beginning to sift through the whole lot and piece by piece, slam up the stuff which I think deserves it. It's a mixed bag sonically and compositionally, for sure. Some of these pieces are essentially private jams, four players figuring out a mutual direction which worked. Others are a combination of composition and improvisation. I suspect it'll take a while to get all the good stuff up there; forgive me for not doing it with any obvious schema in mind. I will attempt to annotate where possible, but sometimes I'm not going on a lot. 

So… take it all in the spirit in which its intended and if you happen to be a Club Moist attendee, I hope it brings back some fond memories. 

Moist: Len Lancaster, June 07 by simonphopkins

Len Lancaster was about as close as we ever got to a signature tune, I guess, and was named after Pete's granddad. Its genesis was pretty typical. No more than a daft melody and riff I wrote on the tube home to Leyton one night, utterly transformed over the course of a couple of rehearsals, principally by Pete introducing a calypso-ish rhythm to the second half. If you're interested in such things, modally it's a pretty straightforward E Dorian and unsually for us it's in 4/4 throughout. This version's from a 2007 rehearsal, so quite close to our demise.

Moist: Song for Eurabia, 2005 by simonphopkins

From a couple of years earlier, again a rehearsal performance of a piece we often played out live. Formally it's certainy what I'd consider classic Moist: as a conposition it's no more than a few pre-determined parameters - overall structure, a modal centre (A Phrygian dominant), time signature (7/8) - and other than that it's completely improvised. We normally opened with a double bass solo but this rehearsal version kicks straight in to the riff for some reason. My solo here is a bit noodly, I'm afraid, but Ralph is on fire. We never agreed a title, but Ralph's tongue-in-cheek Song for Eurabia unfortunately stuck.

Moist trio - improvisation, 2004 by simonphopkins

This is very different, a blissed-out atmos-jam sans-Andy (I believe Euro 2004 had him fully occupied). Synths and drum programming all courtesy of Peter.   

More soon...

Comments

[peter]

"I've rarely been happier than when we slammed in that Crimsonesque whole-step modulation in Contempt."

me neither. i do have a recording of the last gig which has a storming version of that tune. will get it to you anon...

[Nickreynoldsatw]

When do I get to hear Contempt again?

[Dan]

"Incestuous"? I had no idea. I thought you were all just good friends.

[Glynn]

Song for Eurabia reminds me of Radiohead's The National Anthem for some reason...

All the jams are pretty tasty. Gonna DL and throw them onto my iPod for future road trips...