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Review: Ruby Rushton / Ill Considered, Fiddlers
All in all this was a pretty sick evening, in both senses of the word. We’d heard before the gig that illness had prevented Ruby Rushton trumpeter Nick Walters making the date and main man Ed ‘Tenderlonious’ Cawthorne was going the same way fast, thus the headliners would go first (while stocks lasted) leaving (thematically named) support Ill Considered to take it to the top.
Meanwhile, as the Ruby Rushton trio took to the stage, your reviewer began to be abdominally troubled, possibly due to a hastily eaten Indian meal. It was all adding up to an ominously rumbling start.
Ruby Rushton: Tenderlonious (sax) and Aidan Shepherd (keys)
Reduced to what was effectively an organ trio the Ruby Rushton sound converged on Ed’s multi-instrumental talents and he duly obliged by switching with rapidity between flute, soprano sax, keyboards and hand percussion – often within the same tune.
is needed now More than ever
His flute style, to the fore on early hit Eleven Grapes, owed much to the great Yusef Lateef, fluid and cosmic in its timing to provide an interesting tension with the roaring precision of Tim Carnegie’s drumming and the solid punctuation of keyboard player Aidan Shepherd’s left hand bass lines.
The flute grew a sharper edge on Triceratops, an emphatic 5-time number graced with snappy drum’n’bass style percussion that missed the eloquent trumpet of the record, especially in the ponderous middle section, but still showcased the drummer’s smart way with crossbeats.
Ruby Rushton: Man of the Match Tim Carnegie
Given that the Ruby Rushton collective has at times featured hipper-than-hip sticksman Yussef Dayes the ebullient Tim Carnegie has a big drum stool to fill but he was without a doubt Man of the Match, visibly enjoying himself and locking in the energy of pieces that might well have wandered off otherwise.
That said, when Tenderlonious took to his mini synth it freed Aidan for some more interesting two-handed playing in Elephant & Castle where his harmonic wanderings finally took him into a rapid fire arpeggio-off with the bandleader. That number also featured a proper-job drum solo, leaving Tim Carnegie to round off the set before they bundled hastily off the stage and straight on to the M4, no doubt.
Ill Considered
There was a mild note of disappointment when Ill Considered arrived minus percussionist Satin Singh but at least he was depped and, anyway, regular drummer Emre Ramazanoglu had the biggest cowbell ever to grace the Fiddlers stage.
Half a metre long, it had the resonance of a monastery steeple chime whenever he judiciously dropped it into play. This is an improvisatory quartet fronted by saxophonist Idris Rahman and mysteriously hooded bass man Leon Brichard (who spent most of his time with his back to the audience). They were clearly feeling their way to start with, the sax player toying with effect pedals, the bass looking for a root in things, but once coalesced around an emergent bass riff the momentum picked up exhilaratingly.
Within the ensuing turmoil you could detect challenging interactions, especially between sax and bass, but also a quick-witted capacity to make collective decisions and dynamics and direction, ultimately leading to an amicable resolution that relaunched as a cover of the descending riff from Love Will Tear Us Apart.
Ill Considered: Idris Rahman (sax) and Leon Brichard (bass)
In this improvising context Idris Rahman seemed especially liberated, releasing some seriously powerful blowout moments that the interdependent drum and bass seemed empathetically capable of supporting wherever it went. It was less clear how the additional percussionist (whose name I didn’t catch) could fit in so tightly-knit a conversation and, indeed, it was often a struggle to hear his contribution.
The overall effect, however, was truly ‘sick’ in the parlance of today, though sadly by this time so was your reviewer who thus had to leave before the end, albeit with a firm conviction to catch the second band again as soon as possible. And maybe avoid ill considered hasty eating in future, too.
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