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TIMELINE | PRESS/guardian review The Guardian October 24, 2003 Timeline Even jazz devotees sometimes bewail the number of silver-haired members of the audience - but maybe they don't get to the right places. Over the past year, London's Vortex has confirmed the presence of a youthful crowd interested in the work of a circle of young UK players, who make new rather than retrospective music. Attending this week's Timeline gig was like walking into a students' union bar. Timeline is an offshoot of the F-ire Collective, a loose-knit London organisation exploring new jazz, ethnic musics and experimental funk. Its activities extend into education as much as performance. This gig was built around a repertoire of Nigerian tribal songs filtered through the rhythms and vocal approaches of Cuban music - but with plenty of pungent jazzy improvisation stitched into it, notably from a young rising star, guitarist David Okomu. Hearing Okomu live is eerily like reprising the early appearances of John McLaughlin, from the time when McLaughlin's phrasing was a distillation of his immense guitar knowledge rather than a display. Clearly fascinated by the role of the guitar in the Miles Davis 1970s fusion bands, Okomu established a brooding background commentary on the slow Latin opener, with its strangely sleepwalking cowbell pulse. Timeline's speciality is rhythmic experimentation, and the pieces exploited the tensions, embraces and collisions between the guitar and Leo Taylor's brittle, asymmetrical drum patterns, Tom Herbert's anchoring bass grooves, Nick Ramm's bursts of Cuban-piano cheerleading and Barak Schmool's thoughtful alto-sax lines. Vocalist Maurizio Ravalico gave the music an impassioned gravity, negotiating the treacherous tempos with stabbing hand movements that seemed like guidelines to himself as much as the audience. Slowly the set developed into a fascinating accumulation of a kind of African hi-life bebop, Joe Zawinul's world jazz and cutting-edge Buena Vista improv. But it was the lazily paced construction, clean sound and suddenly stinging acceleration of Okomu's guitar breaks that remained an indelible memory. · The F-ire Collective play the Bridewell, London EC4, from November 5. Box office: 020-7936 3456. John Fordham All enquiries should be directed to info@f-ire.com
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