Pulled By Magnets + Ben Vince
(St John on Bethnal Green. EFG London Jazz Festival. 20 November 2019. Review by Richard Lee)
I’m quite wary of church gigs. I like that they’re repurposing a building (often with the devil’s music) but generally, unless it’s plainsong in Latin so I don’t have to try and understand the words, or a single sax and/or swelling organ, the boomy acoustic doesn’t work for me.
I was therefore delighted to find that the sound in St John at Bethnal Green was surprisingly good. Resonant but not echoey and above all, warm; which was in stark contrast to the chill that pervaded the church itself. They’d done their best to replace the failed boiler with a few electric space heaters but the struggle was in vain. However, as Ben Vince commenced his solo set, blowing long tones on his tenor to be looped at the keyboard and various boxes he initially fumbled at, I was put in mind of an alpine horn and subsequently, as tones layered, of bagpipes.
Vince soon got into his stride, setting up rhythmic and melodic motifs, driven by sometimes fearsome basslines but the sense of communion and indeed penance in the chill of the night seemed to hang over the set. I’m probably old school in wanting anyone on a platform with a sax to impress me with virtuosity of some kind, where here it seemed to be used merely as a tone generator. That said, the 45-minute set built up to its climax, an impressive wall of Bannockburn sound that almost dispelled the chill. Almost…
A blurred Pete Wareham before a station of the cross. Phone snap by Richard Lee.
For the record their debut gig was actually about a year ago, also in a church, also in London, and they have played at least once since then, at the Late Junction festival.
My mistake. Thanks.
And now corrected.
Old Church, Stoke Newington, where the album was recorded. That was a blinder too.