Music / Jazz
Review: Underscore, Southbank
The conundrum of so-called library music – off-the-shelf pieces available for film and TV soundtracks – is that it needs to be both distinctive and unobtrusive. Jazz musician and composer Kevin Figes must have trawled through swamps of this stylishly bland product to find the twenty or so pieces for this project and then, of course, he had to transcribe and arrange them for his 9-piece Underscore band. That’s a massive amount of work for such a marginal musical genre and it was a shame so few people came along to Southbank for its debut performance.
Kevin Figes (far right, playing flute)
For those that made it, however, the reward was a tightly executed slice of charming nostalgia that wafted through the 60s and 70s, occasionally triggering a flicker of recognition from some (justly) long-forgotten TV show or advert. On a stage bedecked with 70s curtain material and resplendent in a wide-lapelled period suit, Kevin led from the front on flute and saxophones through numbers like Keith Mansfield’s Teenage Travelogue with its tinkling organ under tight-locked vocals and brass harmonies or the cheesy cocktail vibe of In A Bossa Mood, Gordon Reece’s generic Braziliana piece.
Dan Moore, Emily Wright, Jonny Bruce, Ben Waghorn, Kevin Figes
Funkier pieces followed, notably Alan Hawkshaw’s Studio 69 and Alan Parker’s Stones-clone Hot Night, the latter implausably combining Denny Ilett’s searing old-school rock guitar with a two-triangle percussion line. As the decades rolled by shades of heavier rock and flashes of electronica emerged with trumpeter Jonny Bruce switching to Moog synthesiser and Dan Moore stretching the tone on his keyboard. Things ended, inevitably, with Simon Park – the only library composer to have had a number one record – and his groovy Stoned Out and Isaac Hayes-inspired Precinct were both excellent showcases for the whole band.
Though she never actually sang a word Emily Wright’s vocalisation was crucial to the authenticity of the sound, as was the judiciously used percussion contribution of Lisa Cherian and Simon Preston. Their atmospheric additions to the basic instrumentation gave each piece its character, and this is what library music is all about: uncomplicated melody and referential styles fleshed out into something that already feels half-recognised. Given the line-up’s immense credentials as a Bristol jazz supergroup there was something perversely entertaining in seeing them holding themselves back, with saxophone tyro Ben Waghorn and uber-drummer Matt Brown both behaving themselves impeccably, the latter locked into Andy Crowdy’s emphatically predictable bass-lines throughout.
For all that we were in the up-beat Southbank room on a Saturday night this was concert music, deserving of careful listening, especially for exceptional moments like the sustained noir tension of the theme from Fritz Lang’s Le Secret derrière la Porte and the oddly pastoral interlude of Ode to Summer. Underscore may have been an eccentric labour of love for Kevin Figes but the results are worthy of a much wider audience than the lucky few that heard this performance.
Read more about Kevin Figes many musical projects on his website
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