Headrush by Dave Manington Quartet

The music for Headrush was written between 2004-07, in the period just after the formation of the Loop Collective. The bands’ starting point for the music is collective improvisation but compositionally it draws on as wide a range of styles as possible and the written material includes strong elements of folk, groove, electronic music and “classical” influences as well as contemporary modern jazz harmony. Often the music has been rewritten many times after rehearsals sent the music spinning off in different directions. So in many tunes, for instance “Slughunting” and “Gruntled”, you can hear written themes based on ideas originally improvised in rehearsal. I would then listen through the rehearsal tapes and subsequently write out and develop the most interesting phrases into new melodic ideas to blend into or extend the existing written material. This is a very effective way of developing a cohesive band sound and a more collective approach to the music. Everyone also feels more involved in the creative side of the process.
Most of the material is through-composed with the themes re-emerging in different forms (“Mark 3”), different keys (“Moong Dahl”), or time signatures (“A.S.B.O.”, “Gruntled”). The most important thing for us is to develop an authentic band sound and understanding so each time we play the music can be re-invented together, and often quite radically.
The folky “Johnathan Livingstone Seagull” was written after reading the book of the same name by Richard Bach, a strange tale of an outcast seagull learning to fly, which is also a homily about self perfection. “Lonesome George” was written for the giant tortoise who is the last of his species, from the island of Pinta in the Galapagos, which I visited in spring `07 and had a lasting impression on me.
“..an emphasis on collective improvisation and less of a focus on individual soloists than you might find in traditional jazz. It also grooves like hell, with Manington's acoustic bass and Giles' sprightly drums laying down some thick, beefy yet, at the same time somehow mercurial riffs – full of stops, starts, wrong turns and dead ends, yet rocking in the grip of a savage momentum..” JAZZWISE nov '06

Bassist and composer Dave Manington is one of the mainstays of the London jazz scene, a founder member of the Loop Collective, he has played with the likes of Mark Lockheart, Tim Garland, Iain Ballamy, Pete Wareham, Gwilym Simcock, Natacha Atlas and Yazz Ahmed. He's also in demand for a broad range of different ensembles, playing with musicians from everywhere from S. America to the Balkans.