'All There, Ever Out', by Alexander Hawkins Ensemble Top Album for 2012

At Babel we are delighted that 'All There, Ever Out' by Alexander Hawkins Ensemble has been chosen as one of the Guardian's top five Jazz albums for 2012. Making his choice, John Fordham described the album as, 'ruggedly experimental free-jazz, classical South African townships bop, Hammond-organ blues ... with idiosyncratic tributes to Thelonius Monk and Art Tatum thrown in...'. The album was released in April and back then Fordham wrote, that the music sounded 'like all the future jazz you might imagine without ever being able to conceive of the details, but it also joyously invokes the past'. 


The ensemble consists of:

Alexander Hawkins: pianist, organist, composer and bandleader, works steadily in a vast array of creative musical contexts. His own distinctive sound-world is forged through a search to reconcile both his love of free improvisation and a profound fascination with composition and structure. Hawkins’ main vehicle as band leader is his Ensemble. 

  

Javier Carmona: drummer and percussionist from Madrid (now settled in Barcelona after seven years in London). He is very active in the European free improvisation scene, and has performed with musicians such as John Tchicai, Evan Parker, Carlos Zingaro and John Russell, and others. 

Otto Fischer: guitarist and songwriter. He has performed with a variety of top musicians, both from the UK and the US. His individual style led to him being dubbed ‘a sort of digitized electric griot’.

Dominic Lash: double bassist, although his activities also range much more widely. Now based in New York, from his native Oxford, he has performed with musicians such as Tony Conrad (in duo and quartet formations), Joe Morris (trio and quartet), Evan Parker (duo, quartet and large ensemble) and the late Steve Reid. His current projects include The Dominic Lash Trio.

Hannah Marshall: cellist, active within improvised music in London and Europe, playing with, amongst others, 'Zinc' with Roger Turner and Tim Hodgkinson, and string trio 'Barrel'. She also works internationally with Luc Ex's and Veryan Weston's groups SOL6 and SOL12, in a trio with saxophonist Gianni Mimmo and pianist Nicola Guazzaloca, and Swiss duo 'diatribes'.

Orphy Robinson: vibraphonist, multi-instrumentalist and composer. He has written music for television, film and theatre, opera and contemporary classical music. As a major figure on the jazz scene he has released records on Blue Note and played with Don Cherry, David Murray, Henry Threadgill, Courtney Pine, the Jazz Warriors, Andy Shepherd, and many others.