Polar Bear, led by Scottish percussionist and composer Seb Rochford, has been a major creative force since its formation in 2003. The band has extended its popularity beyond the narrow borders of the jazz scene, has been a strong influence on the new wave of young British jazz musicians, and has journalists reaching enthusiastically for categories into which it can be neatly slotted. Readily defying attempts to be pigeonholed, Peepers—the band's fourth album—is a stunningly enjoyable collection by one of the most talented, adaptable and surprising groups in jazz. Its 12 tracks demonstrate the breadth of Rochford's writing, as well as the ease with which the musicians can move between moods and styles. By turns the tunes are joyous, funky, freeform, sad, mysterious and, frankly, a bit scary.
The album begins in joyous mood, with "Happy for You," written to celebrate the arrival of saxophonist Pete Wareham's newborn baby. This mood continues through "Bap, Bap, Bap," with a deceptively simple staccato sax line that starts, unsurprisingly, with the twin tenors of Wareham and Mark Lockheart going "Bap, Bap, Bap.""Hope Every Day is a Happy New Year" finds Rochford seemingly hitting everything in the studio, while Leafcutter John adds some springy and uplifting effects as bassist Tom Herbert holds it all together. "The Love Didn't Go Anywhere" brings a more sombre mood with its beautifully atmospheric but unrelentingly sad tenor duet. The scariness comes mainly from two short improvisations, "Bump" and "Scream," both of which are credited as group compositions.
The more mysterious aspects of Peepers are found on "Want to Believe Everything"—with its wonderfully loose groove, courtesy of Rochford—and the strange and wonderful "Finding Our Feet," whose Middle Eastern vibe comes from Leafcutter John's sampled and altered vocals. Both tunes have a timeless and otherworldly quality to them.
Previous Polar Bear albums have augmented the quintet with guest instrumentalists and singers; Peepers needs no such augmentation. Rochford's imaginative compositions are driven admirably by his bandmates, whose shared musical understanding enabled the entire album to be recorded in two sessions, with a real feeling of spontaneity and pleasure. Peepers is the finest Polar Bear album yet, which makes it a very fine recording indeed. - Bruce Lindsay
In the same way as it was impossible to imagine an Art Blakey or Elvin Jones group without those two percussion geniuses, it's impossible to imagine Polar Bear with anyone but Seb Rochford on the drum stool. The once Mercury-nominated group's two tenor-sax lineup is certainly central to the meditative hum of its quirkily harmonised melodies, and the contrasting sax sounds of Acoustic Ladyland's Pete Wareham (raw, spooky, sometimes anguished) and Mark Lockheart (drier and more Wayne Shorterish) furnish plenty of contrast. But Rochford's mix of circus-oompah patterns, punchy funk with neatly-spliced jazzy offbeats and encyclopaedic world-rhythm references mean you could listen to this compelling set just for him. This fourth Polar Bear album, with electronics specialist Leafcutter John featured on rock-ballad guitar, takes their special story on. It has clucky one-note themes over accents like smashing bottles, wistful long-note reveries, car-horn sax choruses turning to free-jazz wails and solemn chants over finger-cymbal pings. Rochford deliberately minimised the studio preparation, and withheld the music from the band up to the last moment, and Peepers certainly reflects that freshness. - John Fordham
Categorising Sebastian Rochford poses problems. Jazz is at the heart of his work, yet his understanding of and engagement with a wide range of genres are such that it’s impossible to shoehorn his recordings into neat and tidy boxes. Peepers is Rochford’s fourth album as the leader and percussionist of the London-based Polar Bear, alongside collaborators Leafcutter John, Tom Herbert, Pete Wareham and Mark Lockheart. It confirms that the unassuming but sharply focused young Scot is pursuing his muse as openly and as adventurously as possible, studiously avoiding any straight retreads of his previous work while letting a distinctive composer’s voice come to the fore.
More than its predecessors (2004’s Dim Lit, 2005’s Mercury Prize-nominated Held On The Tips Of Fingers and 2008’s Polar Bear), Peepers sounds very close to a live Polar Bear performance. The kind of session that has won the group a diverse audience with exuberant music that opens out into moments of freewheeling abstraction. Rochford’s gift for melodic writing acquires new depth on this latest venture, where the music displays both art and pop sensibilities in the most organic and coherent fashion. “I wanted to open the music up with a different kind of harmony,” he says.
Above all there is a sense of completeness in the emotional sub-text of Rochford’s writing. Peepers has moments of unbridled joy – like the euphoric ‘Happy For You’ – where the whole band bounces on a rock beat without resorting to cliché. In the front line, the two tenor saxophones create prickly, grainy timbres and also let rip with solos that contrast the marked difference in tone between the two players. If there is a certain ruggedness in the way that the instruments come across in the performance, it is wholly intended. Rochford insisted on simple working conditions.
“The recording process was definitely different this time,” he explains. “I wanted to record this album as raw and spontaneous as possible with us just setting up in a room and playing, with no separation or headphones. I thought this would alter the way we played together in the studio, hearing how the tone of our instruments blended naturally like we do in rehearsals or gigs.
“Many of my favourite albums were recorded this way so I wanted to try it and see. I also wanted to record the tunes when they were in a more naïve state, so I didn’t give most of the music to everyone till just before the recording, when we had two gigs at [north London venue] the Vortex and then two days in the studio.”
Such a relative lack of preparation might unsettle many bands, but Rochford’s desire to challenge himself and his band members is an essential part of his creative drive. In the last few years this has produced music that has been widely acclaimed, including a BBC Jazz Awards Rising Star gong and the inclusion of Held On The Tips Of Fingers in Jazzwise magazine’s 100 Jazz Albums That Shook The World and The Guardian’s 1000 Albums To Hear Before You Die. He has performed with everyone from Joanna MacGregor and Andy Sheppard, Brian Eno and David Byrne, to Pete Doherty and Herbie Hancock, and as part of Acoustic Ladyland and Basquiat Strings, as well as in his own projects Fulborn Teversham, Room Of Katinas and Big Dave.
If his bandmates provide Seb Rochford with a high degree of technical and creative skill to help fulfil his artistic vision, they are also capable of gelling as an ensemble - by no means an obvious occurrence among virtuoso musicians. Much of the success of Peepers results from precisely this cohesion, as well as the freshness of Rochford’s writing. The unsettling crackle that John draws from his laptop on ‘Drunken Pharoah’ is vividly enhanced by the close harmonising of the mighty twin tenor sax frontline while the drums and bass keep a tight lid on the bottom end of the music. Everybody plays with great attention to sonic detail.
Elsewhere, ‘The Love Didn't Go Anywhere’ sees Leafcutter John play guitar on a beautifully loping piece that has the subtle afterglow of classic Roxy Music, with Bryan Ferry’s vocal replaced by the rapier glide of the two reeds, while Tom Herbert’s hefty double bass pounds out concise but penetrating lines. Interestingly, prior to the sessions, Rochford listened to a lot of ‘60s soul (“Aretha and Marvin Gaye”), an influence that he has channelled with more guile than is immediately discernible.
Rochford’s bandmates have that vital mixture of experience and youth, maturity and energy that often defines the best ensembles in improvised music. Tenor saxophonist Mark Lockheart has been a highly respected player on the British jazz scene since the early ‘80s, when he debuted with the revered big band Loose Tubes. Pete Wareham, the group’s other tenor player, is best known as the leader of Acoustic Ladyland (in which Rochford also drums). Double bassist Tom Herbert was also an original member of Wareham’s band and has racked up a huge list of credits through his work with anybody from stellar jazz soloists Andrew McCormack and Finn Peters to membership of 2009 Mercury prize nominees The Invisible.
Finally, Leafcutter John, who joined Polar Bear following their debut release, is an irrepressibly open-minded artist intent on exploring as many novel sound worlds as possible, while retaining a connection to folk music of the most ancestral kind. The producer of four solo albums, the versatility of John’s work at any given point is breathtaking. Perhaps his most significant contribution to Peepers is the unsettling Middle Eastern influence on ‘Finding Our Feet’ (featuring his own recorded vocal), and it’s with John’s influence that Polar Bear’s live performance transcends its base elements, featuring as it does playful interjections of noise triggered by games console controllers, and a balloon solo…
On his accompanists Rochford makes a telling observation. “Our friendship is really important to me. If you’re friends it makes a big difference to how you and the music grow. They’re all open to new things and our friendship means that it’s about more than just music. Everyone’s coming from a different place with different influences but can share in the same concept. It’s an exciting thing. It means things can stay open.”
Peepers thus stands as another strong document of both Seb Rochford’s development as a bandleader and writer as well as player. This is a group album that could not have been born without the strength of character of each musician involved, a superb, rich whole that is very much more than the sum of its illustrious parts. It’s also about vision. “The word peepers is another way of saying eyes,” Rochford says mischievously. “A musician friend of mine uses it mainly to describe cheeky ones!”
Tracks
01. Happy for You
02. Bap Bap Bap
03. Drunken Pharaoh
04. The Love Didn't Go Anywhere
05. A New Morning Will Come
06. Peepers
07. Bump
08. Scream
09. Hope Every Day is a Happy New Year
10. I Want to Believe Everything
11.Finding Out Feet
12. All Here
PETER WAREHAM tenor saxophone
MARK LOCKHEART tenor saxophone
SEBASTIAN ROCHFORD drums
TOM HERBERT double bass
LEAFCUTTER JOHN electronics, electric guitar
All music composed by Sebastian Rochford, except (7) and (8) by Rockford, Wareham, Lockheart, Herbert and Burton.
Recorded at Pinna Studios, London
Leaf Label Ltd - BAY 74CD
https://www.sydrecords.com
www.polarbearmusic.com
www.myspace.com/sebastianrochford