Mike Reeds Separatist Party - Bello Bar

Mike Reeds Separatist Party - Bello Bar

Words: Billy O’Hanluain

I checked my expectations in at the cloakroom and surrendered to the sound of surprise.  It can be liberating to go to a gig in the manner of a musical blind date, open to new experiences, and not quite knowing how the night will unfold. This turned out to be a night to remember.

Support came from Cian Nugent (guitar) and Ruadhan O Meara (electronics), both surrounded by a medusa mass of tangled cables, and a plethora of pedals and sequencers, but from such apparent chaos, something sublime emerged. Their sound draws on minimalism and drones and is at first reminiscent of the ambient swirls of Laraaji’s music; it evokes vast electronic landscapes haunted by Dub echoes and studded with shards of shimmering light. Embryonic sounds emerge, blaze and then fade like sonic embers, segments of sound are imbued with seductive menace, here is a duo that have only played together a few times, here’s hoping they pursue their partnership, it’s brimful of promise.  

Mike Reed’s Separatist Party come on with the full force of a Pentecostal news bulletin broadcast from a street corner of a bruised cityscape located in the very near future.

 Vocalist and poet Marvin Tate enunciates with an almost unhinged but highly disciplined fervor, conjuring images of urban collapse, betrayal, and isolation, to the backbeat of Reed’s sparse ritualistic drumming, it’s a brilliantly ominous and commanding opening, to a deeply funky, apocalyptic- punk-jazz ceremony. The spirits of Sun Ra and Gil Scott Herson haunt the stage as the Bitchin’ Bajas trio lay down a jazz groove that’s laced with urban menace and dark sensuality, they evoke the sound of exuberant protest with the urgency of the most politically conscious hip-hop. Shades of Don Cherry echo in LaMar Gay’s defiantly vulnerable trumpet lines that punctuate each hip segue and every wrong turning that’s right in this extended jam that summons a Gospel like state of rapture in the room; they found a new convert tonight.