Cargo Records

Geography (with special guest Lol Coxhill)

Geography, Lobs finest studio recording, unavailable since the demise of Death Bunny Records, is repackaged by Sartorial Records in a limited edition of 250.

On release in 2002, John Fordham wrote in The Guardian:- "Jazz being a personal, spontaneous and open music, its practitioners have always hoovered up useful and useable inspiration from all kinds of genres and sources. But the process has accelerated in recent times with the rise of the DJ, advances in studio and performance technology and sampling, and post modernism's unabashed willingness to reshuffle the same old deck. Lob are a young six-piece band with links to rock, folk, R&B, dance-grooving and improv. They make ambient electronic records spiced with plenty of real-time hip-hop and drum'n'bass percussion. The legendary British improv soprano-sax individualist Lol Coxhill guests on one extended track - the result is a fascinating soundscape in which gritty improvising styles, originally forged in locations where chilled-out would only have meant the heating had failed, are set against long ambient chord-drones and synth-texture reveries.Saxophonist Ralph LittleJohn explores the impulsive, arrhythmically phrased sax improvising style of Ornette Coleman via Steve Coleman and Tim Berne, while drummer Andy Cato plays machine beats like a human being. Gurgly, squirty bass sounds mix with distant banshee hoots and noises like people trying to start cars with dodgy batteries, drum'n'bass beats clatter under long synthesiser sighs, while edgy alto-sax improv whirls over bumpy funk. In fact, the whole group occasionally suggests an expanded Spontaneous Music Ensemble with an ambient undertow." Fine praise, and plenty of reasons to seek out the reissue...

Track Listing