W I R E
May 2002
PINSKI ZOO - LONDON 93 FEET EAST UK
The poster told us
that No Immortal, a club night run by Kingsuk Biswas of Bedouin Ascent, was
featuring two “legends” who have “influenced a
legon of freestyle Techno, breakbeat and Hip-Hop experimentalists”. The
organizers had managed to convene authentic line-ups, too. Pinski Zoo comprised
the quartet who cut 1990’s East Rail East , the Zoo’s finest release:
Jan Kopinski (alto and tenor sax), Steve Iliffe (keyboards), Karl Wesley Bingham
(bass) and Steve Harris (drums). Kopinski hasn’t only learned from Ornette
Coleman how to shuffle a groove into freedom, he’s also learned to train
the family: his son Stefan Kopinski’s electric bass fitted in beautifully.
Pinski Zoo play a jagged, reconstructed boogie music which manages to solve
all kinds of problems which foxed post-Miles Davis fusion. Kopinski isn’t frightened
of simplicity, and some of his themes come direct out of Polish folk song and
the Gene Ammons-style tenor-Hammond strip joint tradition. But the rhythm section
is never cast into a subservient role. In the authentic P-Funk manner, the quintet
turn their instruments into a drum circle. With Stefan laying down a heavy ‘one’ (his
intro to “Polish Journey” managed to invoke both Deep Purple and
dub, something even Davis never quite achieved), Bingham is free to cavort in
the upper register, coming on like a cello and even a lead guitar. He has his
harmolodic chops down, his thumbed motifs dancing and glinting just like his
persistent smile. Iliffe is responsible for the gothic, discordant aspect of
the Zoo, a panic nightmare dreamed by Joe Zawinul. His jarring, determinate, ‘bad’ chords
chase away the classicism that usually vitiates keyboard contributions.
A track from Ghost Music, Kopinski’s spooked-out solo album, was almost unbearably sick and scary. Drummer Steve Harris makes sure each beat feels like an attack, there’s no coasting in the Zoo’s harmonic thinking, and none in the rhythm department either. Faced with this twirling, defiant, East European danse macabre, the audience seemed unsure whether to dance or lie down and die, which seemed quite correct.
Review BEN WATSON