Words by Justin Turford
Dave De Rose is much more than just a drummer for hire though these skills have kept this Anglo-Italian multi-instrumentalist, producer, composer and educator permanently in demand. Living in London, he has since moving to the UK from Rome in 1996 to study jazz at the Guildhall, self-released 18 records on his own label, whilst touring & recording with artists such as Electric Jalaba, Roisin Murphy, Bastille, Mark Ronson, Mulatu Astatke, Rokia Traore, Raul Monsalve y los Forajidos, Vula Viel and Trio Trekke. Highly prolific and constantly searching, his newest and seventh release with his improvisational outfit Agile Experiments is an intriguing, rhythmically angular and electrifying trip through Dave’s lockdown creative process.
The project was known for finding new and raw oblique grooves and releasing what came out of one-off live free improvisation performances, the unrehearsed live session released as their latest record. The pandemic created new challenges, with no audience and not being able to get everyone in the same room together forcing a fresh approach to the composition of the recordings. Leaning heavier on his own crack production chops, Dave formed new shapes using only himself and two others from the wider collective, Giannis Angelopoulos (drums & percussion) and Josh Arcoleo (tenor saxophone), generating a sound that shares similar DNA to fellow rhythmic-travellers Sons Of Kemet, Kieren Hebden and ILL CONSIDERED.
Every track on ‘Bloom Anubis’ seem like a fragment of the whole, the limits of only a few instruments enabling spaces to be carved differently. The percussion instruments are supple and complex (they were all recorded pre-lockdown but utilised in 2020 by Dave in the studio), good luck beatmatching ‘Inspectawreck’ as the low-slung grooves turn to Art Ensemble chaos. The aptly named ‘Joy’ sounds like Fela Kuti jamming with Ultravox, 80s style synth-bursts repeating a simple chord riff as the entanglement of the rhythms become denser and more erratic as the effects ramp up, the sax a constant and expressive companion.
The first single ‘Bloom Anubis’ is a loose-limbed scorcher. Every time I’ve played this on radio, somebody has messaged me asking me what the hell it is ensuring it should be a surefire leftfield summer hit on the more experimental dancefloors with its driving and insistent sax refrain, wonky bloops and motorik drumming. ‘Life Is Not A Drill’ is a deliciously smooth and emotionally uplifting tune that manages to sound both pastoral and city-bound at the same time. Perhaps this is what London sounded like when the cars left the streets and the birds could hear each other. ‘Dream Loss’ belongs on one of the early ‘Headz’ compilations on Mo’Wax, a dope-fuelled downtempo groove with squalls of sax, dubbed out FX and our friendly bloops again. Gotta love a bloop sound.
‘Bloom Anubis’ is a minor key tour de force filled with emotion, playfulness and just that bit of magic that comes from a (hopefully) rare moment of enforced downtime. Excellent. 9/10
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