Daevid Allen - Brainville At The Knitting Factoryv

Slightly woolly Soft Machine combo

“The most eccentric three-piece jazz-rock outfit of the Canterbury school” was Daevid Allen’s own succinct summing-up of his ad-hoc partnership with Hugh Hopper and the late Pip Pyle, though the early line-was a quartet including keyboardist and producer Mark Kramer. From it came the studio LP The Children’s Crusade, a later live cut entitled Brainville: Live In The UK, and an erratic schedule of concerts fitted in as best the former Soft Machine members’ commitments allowed, including this early performance in New York from 1998.

Apparently named after the opening track on Sun Ra’s Sun Song LP, Brainville’s music is principally a melding of discordant improvisation around the dots with bags of treatment on Allen’s guitar and ethereal vocals; dense, dark and uneasy experimentalism. It’s demanding of concentration and patience, and works in moments, rather than as a whole. An acquired taste indeed, but it sits alongside Hopper’s Soft Mountain sessions as an eclectic Canterbury offshoot worthy of note.

Voiceprint | VP 427 CD

Reviewed by Ian Abrahams
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