Vazesh and the Vampires live review in New York City Jazz Record

Review of Orange Winter Jazz Fest by John Shand

The Necks have been hugely influential in Australian jazz. As Lionel Loueke did previously, Abrahams guested with The Vampires, a band partly inspired two decades ago by Swanton’s world-beat group, The catholics, with its fondness for jaunty melodies. Nick Garbett (trumpet), Jeremy Rose (saxes), Noel Mason (bass) and Alex Masso (drums) played pieces by the horn players, the hallmarks of which were coiling, intertwined melodies and dub reggae’s extravagant use of echo. Abrahams typically found his own way into the music on Garbett’s reggae-based “Ortigara”, supplying the idiom’s trademark off-beat accompaniment one moment and improvising lines that could have been penned by Nino Rota the next—except for the saw-tooth edge to his keyboard sound. Jolting surprises broke hypnotic spells throughout The Vampires’ set.

Rose has become a pivotal figure, not just for his expert playing and composing, but because his Earshift Music is the country’s premier jazz label. He’s also a member of another trio including a little Necks voodoo: Vazesh, with Swanton on bass and Hamed Sadeghi playing the tar, a waisted Persian lute with a sound closer to a banjo than oud. They performed entirely improvised music in the much warmer acoustics of the Uniting Church: Rose’s opening solo bass clarinet delivered long, grumbling, didgeridoolike notes and higher, plaintive cries that became a three-way conversation with tar and arco bass. The sound quality bordered on otherworldly; Rose’s tenor was monumental amid these gentle musings. As Sadeghi played, the slight scrape of plectrum on string generated overtones that suggested a ghostly fourth instrument. Extended bass techniques, laments and nursery rhyme-like melodies were also present.