11. Ryan DriverBass Piano III
This band has been together for decades, with Martin Arnold on electric guitar, too. I chose this one because I hadn’t listened to it in a while and I wanted to. It’s basically him on his synth, which is a Realistic Concertmate made by Moog, and on a piano that was detuned to be a bass piano by Andrew Wedman, a friend of ours. Ryan’s playing both, playing his tunes and improvising. On his records generally there’s not a lot of improvising, and I wish there were more. So with this record I can’t complain – there’s a shitload of improvising. In fact, you don’t think he’s going to get to a song at all. The song emerges out of the improvisation very naturally and very beautifully. He’s a great singer, his lyrics are amazing. And his sense of harmony – sometimes it sounds to me like Olivier Messiaen playing jazz standards. What can I say about Ryan? I fucking love this guy.
I first met Ryan in Toronto. I had come up playing punk rock, then I heard Derek Bailey and Eugene Chadbourne and I stopped. I decided to learn how to play guitar in a different way. When I emerged out of that cave of listening to a shitload of contemporary music, improvised music, experimental music, Ryan was part of the first bunch of people I came across. They were all at York University learning music and other things – dancers as well. They were all taking improvisation classes with Casey Sokol, a great educator and musician in Toronto. Ryan just blew my mind. We played as a duo and I felt like I had fallen in love. I’d never felt this before playing music; I’d never felt so free. I was just not worrying about what he was thinking or doing. The space between us was just so easy to take care of and tend to.
