Turkish free jazzers Konstrukt are scheduled to play four gigs in the UK in September, including a performance alongside Graham Massey’s current group Toolshed at the Soup Kitchen in Manchester.
Massey, who in the 1980s played with Factory Records’ Biting Tongues and later in chart winning acid act 808 State, has in recent years grown more and more into an agent on behalf of the more otherworldly forms of Jazz.
According to Massey, he first met the Istanbul band by coincidence in mid-2015, when with their gig at Manchester’s Islington Mill approaching, the band were in desperate search of a 1960s transistor organ which he was happy to supply. Konstrukt’s performance the following day blew everyone away, leaving “chin stroking and hip posturing for the overjoyed wild unknown,” as Massey put it. Shortly afterward he found himself jamming along with the band he hardly knew, happily exchanging ideas, passing the ball, and leaving the work of translation to the sound itself. The performance saw drum machines being heavily incorporated into the band’s sound, producing several strange invitations to a stroboscope flooded dancefloor. You can hear a part of the recording above.
And indeed, Konstrukt’s music feels every bit as engaging and alive. It is the mysticism and transcendence evoked by the afrofuturist visionaries of whom Sun Ra is but one luminary, that shines through their sound. Importantly, and the spelling out of the band’s name does become quite suggestive here, there is also a fair share of the repetitive German psychedelic sensibility, i.e. of synthesis and pulse. Obviously, this fits extremely well with the musical aesthetic conveyed in the work of Massey, who next to playing with Toolshed, in the late noughties also released music with the synth-based collective Sisters of Transistors. Now that Massey has chosen to throw himself fully-fledged into the world of cosmic Jazz though, of which Konstrukt are definitely one of the considerable contemporary examples, it should probably pay off to see them circle around each other and space out together through sound.
Konstrukt UK Tour Dates
September
10th – Alternative Jazz Festival, Brighton w/ Alexander Hawkins
12th – Cafe Oto, London w/ Alexander Hawkins, Alan Wilkinson & Daniel Spicer
13th – The Soup Kitchen, Manchester w/ Graham Massey’s Toolshed
14th – The Glad Cafe, Glasgow w/ Tony Bevan
