Biography of Golden Age of Steam (The)

The Golden Age of Steam is a new trio performing music composed by reeds player James Allsopp and features the outrageous drum stylings of his "Fraud" co-leader Tim Giles along side the Hammond organizing of keyboard wizard Kit Downes. These compositions attempt to create new structural spaces for improvisation by establishing highly ambiguous sound worlds that explore the intangible area in between rhythm, tonality and total improvisational freedom. These pieces are inspired by the combination of anarchic playfulness and formal logics of Ligeti’s music, the joyous saxophone thunder of Coltrane and Ayler and the twisted lyricism of Captain Beefheart...amongst many other wonderful people and their musics. The music is sometimes labyrinthine, sometimes eerily sparse, incorporating seismic riffs, limping marches and intricately woven contrapuntal textures into a multi coloured world of improvised sound.