Ill Considered cuddling up after a highly energetic gig.
The annual We Jazz festival is a nice event in the depths of November darkness, even though jazz music is not exactly my top music genre I follow. While the festival traditionally spreads its gigs around Helsinki (some are even “secret gigs” where the artist or even the venue is not revealed until the last minute), I settled for two days at the nearby Korjaamo venue.
It started on Friday with two gigs. The first one was some Finnish jazz band that failed to impress me, but the main interest was anyways towards the other band from called Ill Considered and hailing from London.
I’ve heard their music via Bandcamp a few years ago and instantly could tell that this band must be amazing to experience live.
And sure enough, it was pretty much the best gig I’ve seen all year (must point out I seen only a handful, however). This was full throttle improvised jazz and my goodness how well this trio gelled together.
I was fully invested in their groove, random directions and exploration. They were relaxed and enjoying themselves too during the gig, which is always nice to see as a spectator. I felt good and happy to witness them live.
After the gig the saxophonist came down from the low stage to quickly chat with the audience personally thanking him for the concert. I really wanted to thank him also, but for some reason I couldn’t gather the courage, fearing I would just say something dumb. Weird how the mind works.
The next evening there were far more live performances, but after Ill Considered they didn’t hit the same sort of level, so I couldn’t get much out of them. The only performance that sticked with me was from Talk Show (drums and trumpet). It was so shamelessly avant-garde (for example, blowing the trumpet with its other end submerged in water), that the small movie theatre where it took place went from full to half empty towards the end.
I had to admire their fearless approach of how far you can experiment in producing sounds and I even thought about buying their debut album afterwards, but despite they promised to be at the stands to chat and sign their record, I didn’t see them showing up. Well, saved some money then.