I am immersed in Bob Dylan’s Shadow Kingdom . It is a cooling autumn day with rain promising to advance mould and humidity again here in Brisbane but for now the dry has come and Bob is singing “Queen Jane”. It is a moment of suspended troubles and demands as he croons byond belief and analysis.
A few weeks ago I drove across town to The Bearded Lady a kind of parallel space akin to Bob’s time in Greenwhich Village. I was there to listen to Milton Man Goh – a jazz fusion trio of remarkable young Queensland Conservatorium graduate musicians I knew from the early days of Paint it Red at Jugglers Art Space and The Stairwell Project. Zak Sacrewski [ Bass] Andrew Saragossi [ Sax] and Ben Shannon [ Percussion] all jumped on board my Stairwell Project idea in late 2015. They formed part of Jazz Kill with Brodie McAllister performing at the Royal Brisbane Hospital entrance and then along with other musicians The Stairwell Project grew to what it is today.
A support act at The Bearded Lady that night hardly grabbed my attention at first but then it seemed as if American minimalist Steve Reich was in the room. One on base and loop and another on trumpet on tour from Germany were given the opening set space. As the night unfolded I decided to buy one of their two LP records they held in a canvas bag as they waited for a buyer on Boundary Street, West End. “PayPal only” he said as I fiddled around with the email address he gave me on my phone and then it was mine. It is a beautiful piece of work. No CD’s no digital downloads. Today’s prelude to Shadow Kingom was this “Taking Birds”. It is as I have found with some German paintings – discinctly different, engaging and inviting. A style owned by another way of seeing, of composition and musicality. And there is a Reich parallel.
“Ippio Payo’s music matures until it emerges its way into the light of day all by itself. LIke a chick as soon as the time is right, after days and weeks of maturing in the egg, pecks its way through the fragile shell into the light under its own steam and timidly unfolds for the first time what will one day help it to soar. Some ideas then become swallows, which make the summer for people who listen carefully, and others become condors, whose mighty wings sound like the mountain ranges of the Andes, Ippio Payo’s music feels its way forward like fledglings taking flight : sometimes it flicks hooks like a hummingbird, sometimes it sails majestically like an albatross. The songs cross every border – migratory birds that fly over the Himalayas and navigate biotopes over thousdands of kilometres with pinpoint accuracy – and find their listeners in Croatia, Spain, France, Australia. “ [ From the liner notes]
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