THE WIRE, April 2003

Zone K , Kopinski & Konikiewicz

Alto and tenor saxophonist Jan Kopinski has been leading Nottingham’s free-funk jazz quintet Pinski Zoo for 23 years. The group have just reconvened for an album and tour after two years set aside for the various solo projects. Kopinski’s collaboration with Polish keyboardist Wojtek Konikiewicz stretches back almost as far to the early 1980s, when they began a regular programme of touring and recording. This live set was recorded in February and March 2002 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Gainsborough and Nottingham. Kopinski has captured a big, open sound, even if it hasn’t enough reverb to fill between the instruments. Pinski Zoo’s drummer Steve Harris seals this trio with his perpetually suspended percussion smears. He keeps up a cascade of ringing snare and flashing cymbals, anticipating and facilitating the shifting momentum of their lengthy workouts. The trio share a vocabulary of jazz fusion, albeit with a gritty edge that discourages any backsliding. Though some of Konikiewicz’s sounds shimmy straight out of his keyboard’s standard settings booklet, his attack gives them a slightly distorted edge, and a crackling immediacy. Kopinski, meanwhile, sometimes smears his lines with electronic effects, wah-wah pedalling or harmonizing them into chortling abstraction. The opening “Corner Jam” is a tense 13 minute prowl that sprawls over into “Night To Dream”, with Kopinski ruffling his sore-flesh tone with a rough vibrato. When he switches to alto for “Troika”, he’s more evidently in thrall on Ornette Coleman, as Harris underlines the track’s folksy bounce with a curtly snapping tattoo. The restful solo piano interlude of “Impresja XV” is soon erased in the closing standoff between Kopinski’s electronically distended saxophone and Konikiewicz’s quicksilver piano rushes.

Martin Longley