Matt Clark & Mark Wastell
Live at Mopomoso, Vortex Jazz Club, London — 20 April 2025
Matt Clark — guitar
Mark Wastell — percussion
Matt and percussionist Mark Wastell first met in Brighton at On The Edge, Safehouse’s regular improvised music performance series, where Matt was performing with Adrian Southby and Mark with John Butcher and Phil Durrant. Their first performance together came unexpectedly at London’s Mopomoso improvised music series, when Mark stepped in after Matt’s original collaborators were unable to make the gig.
Recorded live at the Vortex Jazz Club in Dalston, this spontaneous first encounter brings together two distinct approaches to free improvisation, built around close listening, texture and real-time musical interaction. The programme also featured John Butcher, Dom Lash and Emil Karlsen, and the duo of Martin Hackett and Keisuke Matsui.
Larker – Malbec
Live at The Rose Hill, Brighton — 13 June 2024
Matt Clark — guitar
Annie Kerr — piano
Toma Sapir — percussion
Formed through a chance encounter at Brighton’s Safehouse Open Sessions, Larker began when Matt and pianist Annie Kerr started meeting regularly to explore free improvisation as a duo. Ideas for frameworks and structures emerged naturally from these sessions, gradually developing into an approach that moves between open improvisation and more structured composition. The addition of percussionist Toma Sapir, a previous collaborator of Matt’s, completed the trio, bringing another layer of texture, interaction and rhythmic possibility to the music.
This film captures Larker’s debut performance at The Rose Hill in Brighton for the Safehouse collective, supporting a trio of Steve Beresford, Faradena Afifi and Paul Khimasia Morgan. Malbec reflects the trio’s developing approach to collaborative improvisation, combining predetermined frameworks with space for spontaneous interaction and collective decision-making.
Simian Carbuncle
Live at Ealing Extranormal, OPEN Ealing, London — 20 April 2024
Matt Clark — guitar
Adrian Southby — guitar
Simian Carbuncle is an experimental guitar duo exploring the sonic possibilities of unorthodox and extended techniques. Matt and long-term collaborator Adrian Southby (Dragons of Disgust, Cosmic Transmissions Collective) are improvising guitarists active within the experimental and improvised music scenes of Brighton and London.
At the heart of the duo is a simple rule: no effects. Rather than using electronic processing to transform the sound of the instrument, Simian Carbuncle explores what can be produced directly from the electric guitar itself. Preparations and physical interventions are encouraged — from placing objects against the strings or pickups to using an eBow or volume pedal — provided the fundamental sound of the guitar remains unprocessed.
This self-imposed constraint becomes a starting point for free improvisation, encouraging an exploration of texture, resonance, noise and the less familiar acoustic and electromagnetic possibilities of the electric guitar.
MC3 — Autobiography of a Poet
Live at OPEN Ealing, London — 19 March 2022
Matt Clark — guitar
Charlotte Keeffe — trumpet
James Edmunds — drums
MC3 began during the first UK lockdown in 2020. Conceived from the outset as a physical trio, the restrictions on musicians performing together initially led Matt to explore recording, sampling and remote collaboration. As restrictions eased, the project gradually evolved into a live trio with trumpeter Charlotte Keeffe and drummer James Edmunds.
Matt first collaborated with Charlotte and James on recordings that experimented with different locations and recording environments. The trio subsequently recorded Sounds of the City, bringing all three musicians together in the studio and establishing the conversational approach that became central to MC3.
MC3 brings together three distinctive musical voices, using free improvisation, collective listening and spontaneous interaction to create music that moves between abstraction and recognisable fragments of melody, rhythm and texture. This performance of Autobiography of a Poet, recorded live at OPEN Ealing, captures the trio finally playing together in the form originally envisaged.
The three are distinctly different in their styles of play but they interweave and engage in dialogues which make them sound like long-time associates who are comfortable together. Autobiography of a Poet … features sensitive group playing from all three players and reinforces the fact that this trio has its own unique sound which is highly recognisable…
John Eyles, All About Jazz
This trio produces a version of free playing which uses familiar traces of music to give a frame to its more radical elements. This brings an appealing warmth and humor to the work, and is a far cry from the usual forbidding stereotypes given to free music…
Jerome Wilson, All About Jazz