Special mention: The Immediatists
“Like Lalo Schifrin and The Dirty Three being raped by The Swans”.
The Immediatists were an improvisational band that I briefly joined for a few months in 2007. Consisting of a core lineup of Sam Geoghagen on drums, Steve Marton on violin, Barnaby Oliver on guitar and Myself, coming in a bit later on.
Prior to my coming on board to play bass they had already been getting around as a three piece: guitar, violin and drums. At the time I was not really interested to join any band, but having worked with Barnaby Oliver before, at his request I joined them for one of their weekly jams which turned out some interesting things. I kind of stayed on, semi-joining the band but did not really feel like it was a full time thing, and they in fact still performed shows as a three piece, which I thought was a good idea in continuing to challenge notions of how a band should function, taking out and adding members for different shows. In hindsight I actually think they were a better band as a three piece. The inclusion of my bass tended to ground or anchor the music in certain heavier directions or grooves that were sometimes difficult to break, eliminating more of the free form nature they had prior to my joining. But from these recordings, we still created some great stuff that amazes me even now. I particularly love the deep growling fuzzed bass sound brought to these sessions, but I also love the sound of the earlier lineup on the track “He is Genesis”.
As mentioned we dabbled in attempting to break rules and preconceptions about performing live, and during a few performances it was suggested that any band member should stop playing when they felt like it, or could walk off the stage go and grab a beer while the other members continued playing, and then resume his position when ready. We tried this on a couple of occasions and it was quite fun.
Barney always records his performances and rehearsals, so The Immediatists had accumulated a rather sizeable amount of material from just playing together outside of shows. After I came on board there wound up being material for two to three albums and with the nature of the band every “album” had a different sound, and different vibe about it. Each week I would obtain the previous week’s recordings and edit them down into the best moments and produce copies for the other members the next week. We went on with this routine for a short while. The problem we were having was in deciding what the band was, where we were going etc. Playing improvisational music can be one of the greatest joys for a musician and also one of the worst things ever (when it doesn’t work). Taking into account also that regardless of how much of a good time we had when playing them, a lot of the recordings and their extended running times become dead boring after one to three tracks, which is nothing against any of us involved, its simply the nature of the improv beast. All in all we had our fair share of bum sessions but we also had some firey good musical times where it all gelled. But we still couldn’t quite figure out or agree on what we were doing.
Due to my own personal and professional problems at the time my days were numbered in that band. It all came to a head (at least in my head) after a performance at a venue named The Wesley Anne. To those that don’t know, the venue utilises an interesting noise limiting device that cuts the main power to the stage if the music volume raises over a certain decibel level. We were aware of this before going in, but had no idea how extreme the device proved to be. The noise levels we were playing at were acceptable, certainly not deafening by any means, considering that the venue was full of the din of chatting Saturday night punters. Regardless, the device begged to differ. So with the power cutting out at random intervals it killed any possibility of our set going anywhere interesting. The resulting performance was especially bad that evening and that was the end of it for me, and also the first and last time in dealing with The Wesley Anne and their shitty device.
Here are a few of my favourite moments.
The Immediatists - Fib Skipper by Zac Keiller
The Immediatists - He Is Genesis by Zac Keiller The Immediatists - Grueling Phoenix (excerpt) by Zac Keiller The Immediatists - Grantee Parvenu by Zac Keiller
