A Night at the Crypt

Kevin Davy has been leading his quartet for the best part of a decade, the often changing line up creating it's own challenges. On a blustery Autumn evening I ventured to Camberwell's cosily underground jazz venue, The Crypt, to see Davy and his present line up perform a set of mostly original numbers. One wonders why KDQ have not pushed through the glass ceiling of mid size venues and short tours and played something a little larger. Certainly the band members, Bousid Adda on electric bass, Adrian Lawrence on drums and Jackson Baird on keyboards appeared to want to play the roof off this small vegetarian jazz oasis. Davy often held back, playing the silent conductor raising and lowering his hand as if holding a church service. What began to look increasingly like a good natured jam session would then get the addition of the sombre tones of Davy on trumpet.

It was unfortunate then, with the combined skills of the quartet that keyboardist Baird opted to relegate himself to stage comedian. Playing each adrenaline dripping chord with the enthusiasm of a baby who has just discovered his own fingers for the first time and throwing his Timotei hair over his shoulders, Baird growled and gurned his way through the set. It is a pity that Baird's obvious skill and dexterity could not be employed by following the novice's jazz adage that less is most definately more.

The same could be said of Bouzid Adda on electric bass but, it appeared, from the response of the crowd, that I was alone in thinking this. If getting what you pay for at a jazz gig is measured by the speed at which notes are played, then the audience definately got a lot more bang for their buck as far as Adda was concerned.

The second set brought with it a warmth and fluidity that had been missing from the first and a greater emphasis on more Drum and Bass referenced numbers. Here Adrian Lawrence on drums was given the opportunity to express the breadth of his playing and be used for more than a human metronome as had been the case initially. Lawrence plays with a unique exactitude and technical fluency and, one would hope, that with the musical development of KDQ he would allow himself a little more experimentation and playing 'outside the bar'.

Finally on to Kevin Davy himself. As Miles taught us, the instrument of choice for expressing the melancholic in the human condition IS the trumpet. He attacks his playing like a barfly with a story told one too many times but no less poignant for telling it. I hoped for a solo that would tear at my gut, but that solo never came.

KDQ's success lies in its user-friendly and multi-referential nature of its compositions. Its failings lie in its avoidance to explore the obvious excavation of human depths that jazz, like its 12 bar cousin, the Blues, offers. As it stands KDQ as a collective is less than the sum of the parts of the musicians who join Davy on stage. Individuality and something that can appear like old-fashioned showing off takes precedent over working together as group. And that's a real pity, because the talent is there. A little risk taking may exclude some of KDQ's long standing followers but it may actually lift the band above the ceiling that has prevented them from taking the leap from gig to concert.