John Russell and Roger Turner
Birthdays
(Emanem)

John Russell
Analekta
(Emanem)

John Russell
Hyste
(psi)

FREE improvising guitarist John Russell taught himself the instrument at the age of 11 while listening to the blues and rock of John Mayall, Frank Zappa, Muddy Waters and King Crimson and the London Jazz Composers' Orchestra led by Barry Guy was also an influence.

He was a regular at John Stevens's Little Theatre Club where he met epochal saxophonist Evan Parker and free guitarist Derek Bailey, with whom he studied for a year, and all these experiences helped to form his music, forged too at free sessions at the Unity Theatre and the Red Rose club. There in the mid-’80s he formed the Mopomoso Club, a co-operative venture that brought committed free musicians together and enabled them to tour across Britain and Europe.

The experimental percussionism of his long-time drum compadre Roger Turner is truly empathetic on Birthdays, recoded at the Red Rose, and such is the intensity of the sonic unity on opener Absinthe that deciding who is playing is all but impossible. The same is true on Ghosts of a Chance and The Monthly House, where the striking, strumming and caressing of skins, strings, metal and wood become all-inclusive, a music permanently in the making.

The timbre is all but quiescent on What Feeling and, as you listen to the brief three minutes of Romney Marsh, you wonder what boyhood dreams inspire its evocations of nature.

Russell returned to the Red Rose to record Analekta, whose four tracks have three duos and a large improvising collective of nine musicians, Quaqua, including two Belgians, a German and a Spaniard.

Russell's partner for The Bite is saxophonist Garry Todd whose horn guffaws, glides and rumbles beside Russell's ever-acoustic plucking and strumming. On Blart, veteran trumpeter Henry Lowther blows lyrically and high-edged and Russell's guitar is like a provocative playmate who leads his companion to ever more audacious sounds.

On nonet piece So it Goes, the gathering of diverse improvisers plays together with such ardent connection as to forge an alliance of acoustics and electronics, combining breath, percussion, voices, strings, keys and reeds that make estrangement and division lost concepts.

Russell returns to his native Kent for solo album Hyste (“signal” or “call”), with each track having a title in Kentish dialect. Russell is such a gregarious and company-loving musician that to hear him alone is almost disconcerting, but Hyste is a compelling record that enables the listener to recognise his truly unique artistry.

Lend an ear to Alleycumfree, an imaginary Kentish nowhere-land which Russell finds on his lone guitar journey of 31 minutes. There is no other comparable guitar sound in music — snatches of the blues and sheer melodism arriving at the heart of improvisation that produces strange an uncanny beauty of daring and boldness.