2007 · Album
The Gearbox Explodes!
Recorded October 2006, St. Dominics Retreat Working Mens Club, Newcastle upon Tyne, England · Foghorn Records · Personnel: Sunny Murray (drums), Tony Bevan (saxophone), John Edwards (bass)
Three Voices in Newcastle's Free Fire
Edwards bent over his fretboard, plucking out lines as hard as a shower of pebbles.
The Gearbox Explodes! announces itself through John Edwards' bass. On this live recording, Edwards doesn't accompany Murray so much as argue with him — plucking and driving beneath the drums with a melodic insistence that keeps the date from dissolving into pure abstraction. Recorded at St. Dominics Retreat Working Mens Club in Newcastle upon Tyne, the trio catches Murray at full intensity, his hands moving across the kit in ways that demand active response rather than passive support. Edwards answers that demand by refusing to play timekeeper. Instead, he's a voice in the conversation, shaping lines that push back against the rhythm rather than reinforcing it.
Tony Bevan on saxophone supplies the third angle — two horns in his hands, wrestling sound out of them with visible effort. The Penguin Guide to Jazz writers imagined this session as documentary material, picturing Murray as a dancing painter, Edwards plucking like pebbles, Bevan forcing air and metal into confrontation. That's not hyperbole. The three musicians don't settle into roles. Murray drives, but Edwards and Bevan won't stay driven; they carve their own paths through each piece, creating density rather than direction.
This is free improvisation recorded live, with all the risk and energy that entails. It's not a studio session polished into submission. The sound is rough, the interaction immediate, and if it sometimes feels chaotic, that's the point — three players refusing to fade into the background, each one insisting on being heard.
