Music / free jazz
Review: Westport Sound 2025, Malmesbury – ‘Small, but perfectly formed’
Was it 60s comedians Morecambe and Wise who popularised the catchphrase ‘small, but perfectly formed’? Whatever, it’s a great way to sum up the achievement of Westport Sound, Malmesbury’s annual festival of outlier music .
Conceived in the spirit of the late Keith Tippett’s sporadic Rare Music Club nights from the 90s, the festival aimed to bring together a miscellany of musical acts whose only common factor was being out of the mainstream. This second year programme was therefore a splendid cascade of the unusual delivered to a very appreciative audience in two comfortably sized neighbouring venues in the centre of Malmesbury.
Saturday opened in St Mary’s Church Hall with traditional Carnatic music from Southern India performed by singer and veena player Durga Ramakrishnan. Her delayed arrival meant that her highly strung veena had problems settling down and some of the instrumental ragas she played were unfortunately plagued by tuning issues.
is needed now More than ever
Happily she was in fine voice, however, and her devotional songs to Hindu gods Krishna and Rama provided a blessing to open the festival.
Argia at Westport Sounds 2025
What followed in the Hayloft venue behind the Three Cups pub could not have been more of a contrast, however: a loudly abrasive and sustained improvisation by young trio Argia that deliberately eschewed musical order.
At times the three musicians – guitarist Tara Cunningham, bas player Caius Williams and drummer Theo Guttenplan – were playing at different speeds, while Tara randomly detuned her guitar every now and then.
Towards the end Theo was playing the drums with a towel while Caius wove a plastic fork through his bass strings and hit them with a drumstick. It was playfully chaotic but seemed to have its own internal logic nonetheless.
Mark Sanders of Last Dream of the Morning at Westport Sounds 2025
After that another improvising trio appeared in the Hall, but these were three very seasoned stars of the free jazz world.
The decades of experience in Last Dream of the Morning showed in the intuitive speed with which they worked together and the complex ideas that swiftly developed between them.
Saxophonist John Butcher brought a remarkable vocabulary of sound from soprano and tenor saxes, including trilling birdsong, a detuned radio and odd vocalisations, while drummer Mark Sanders used his eccentric kit set up (so many gongs!) to great atmospheric effect.
Between them powerhouse bassist John Edwards was another instrument abuser, dragging the bow around, slapping the body and weaving a drumstick into the strings. It was all part of a coherent spontaneous narrative, however, that reached a timely conclusion.
Bryn Wyrd at Westport Sounds 2025
What next? Well, obviously, being Westport, that would be a Warp-style journey into electronic IDM in the Hayloft with Bryn Wyrd aka Aaron Ward and Anthony Brown from Bristol’s Repo Man.
Aaron had the inevitable table of spaghetti-linked gizmos at his fingertips while Anthony delivered solid pumping double bass riffs, his sound also open to manipulation by the electronica at Aaron’s disposal.
It was pretty industrial, clanking pulses and sweeping noises shifting and phasing in and out as their pieces progressed and they even found time for a quieter interlude to let them quaff their beer. There was another bit of bass-bothering too as Anthony berated his instrument with a bunch of keys.
The New Eves at Westport Sounds 2025
If seeing the cello and violin in The New Eves’ line-up suggested some kind of classical-meets-folk fusion their sound instantly dispelled that illusion.
This was powerful post-rock that at times recalled New Order and the Fall as well as offbeat punk acts like the Slits or the Delta Five. Above all the crashingly straightforward stand-up drumming of Ella Oona Russell and Violet Farrer’s violin drone were straight out of the Velvet Underground playbook – and jolly good they were, too.
All four were strong personalities with their own distinctive voices and the songs were imaginative and strange, Kate Mager’s bass a precise rooting element throughout while Nina Winder-Lind’s cello and unsettling vocal warbling added much to the originality. Obviously they are going far as a band – but happily that brought them to Malmesbury
137 at Westport Sounds 2025
After their lengthy (and well-deserved) ovation the stage was cleared for a real supergroup of contemporary jazz – and probably the only band that could have followed the New Eves’ crowd-pleasing set.
The cryptically named 137 is a quartet of very big names: Adrian Utley (Portishead guitarist and experimental musician), Larry Stabbins (top improvising saxophonist returned to performance after a decade away), Jim Barr (bass player of Get The Blessing, Portishead and Goldfrapp) and drummer Sebastian Rochford (Polar Bear, Sons of Kemet, Andy Sheppard Trio …).
Not all musical dream teams actually work, however, but fortunately this one does. Their set ranged from spacious electronic atmospherics to fine Ornette Coleman-style workouts with the occasional prog riff surfacing through their constantly improvised melee. They were all on top form, with Larry’s cutting flute and eloquent soprano both particularly effective elements.
But the real WOW (i.e. Way Out Westport) factor was an absolutely stunning drum-led track which had Seb thundering for about five minutes. It was remorseless and while his flailing arms became a blur he never stopped finding fresh ideas … until, with a rare sheepish smile, he did. And it stopped, to a mighty roar from the audience.
137 may have been a climax to the day but the real pleasure of Westport Sound was in the richness of the musical mix and the neatness of the set-up: two venues literally a stones throw apart, one of them a very comfy pub serving tasty meat-free food and decent beer.
Sadly circumstances prevented me from also taking in Sunday’s programme which included ‘slacker-Trad’ banjo, A/V installation, an electro-clash duo and more improv, including the awesome pianist Pat Thomas. I have every reason to suppose I would have been just as impressed by that, too.
All images: Tony Benjamin
Read next:
Our newsletters emailed directly to you
