Brass Mask - Live

The Guardian 60

(Babel)

The superheated chemistry of Loop Collective saxophonist Tom Challenger’s Brass Mask band fuses New Orleans funeral dirges and frolicking knees-ups, gospel music, South African townships jive and free collective improv-blasting. On this live recording from Dalston’s Servant Jazz Quarters, there’s also an elevated role for treated samples and loops from earlier Brass Mask rehearsals and gigs. Tuba player Theon Cross crucially embraces the bass and rhythm role with exuberant inventiveness. He mixes a steady hook with whooping variations on the swaggering, Loose Tubes-like Lil’ Liza Jane, and brings contemporary embellishments to the smeary gospel polyphonies of I Thank You Jesus. Challenger’s studies of Haitian ritual music set trumpeter Rory Simmons loose on the cacophonously funky The Bague. Standout tracks include the percussion-racing Merman and the townships-influenced Nyodi, with its tight grooves and spacious soundscapes . This is an ambitious and shrewdly produced attempt to catch an unusual band’s raw live energy on record – only integrating the sampled material more fully and unpredictably might have done that job even more seductively.