Porpoise Corpus

Winners of the Peter Whittingham Award 2006

Porpoise Corpus is an exciting contemporary ensemble under the direction of Peter Whittingham Award winner of 2006 - Dave O'Brien. Few stylistic stones are left unturned as they create compositions of logical yet unpredictable narrative, and improvisations of dramatic power and beauty.

Dave O'Brien (piano)

A musician who has always had an itching desire to explore the unfamiliar and likes to invite audiences and band-mates to join the quest. In demand as a double bassist, bass guitarist and pianist, he works with many other groups in London playing jazz, rock, funk, m-base, samba, son-montuno, and various fusions involving other influences such as south-Indian music, flamenco and cabaret. He has recently been on musical field trips to Cuba, the Gambia and New York, where he attended a course at the School for Improvised Music.
He won the Peter Whittingham award for a project to curate two nights at Pizza on the Park this December, both featuring newly commissioned music from Porpoise Corpus, in collaboration with the film-makers/VJs Dandelion & Burdock, as well as four other bands also working with visuals. The award was given based on a live audition with this band and the submission of the pre-mix version of this record.
Links to other projects Dave is involved in:-
www.myspace.com/daveobass
www.themonroetransfer.com
www.myspace.com/hooverville
www.myspace.com/pena
www.myspace.com/semtaquartet
www.myspace.com/ritmosdacidade

Guy Wood [aka Wampa] (drums)

Probably London's most enthusiastic but subversive drummer. He has also lent his considerable skill to the production of our record. He is in demand as a drummer, laptopist, workshop leader, producer, cross-arts collaborator and composer all over the country, offering his expertise to community-based projects as well as professional ones.
This last year and a bit, he has been particularly busy creating an extended program of new music with live video accompaniment for his own band, Hubcap (which features porpoids Spencer Brown and Jonathan Bratoeff), producing Jonathan's last release on the F-IRE label, "Points of Perception" (P.O.P), performing with his drum-and-bass duo Sion and completing a masters at the same time. Currently he is producing for the latest electronica project from Onallee, of Roni Size's Reprazent fame.
Links for other Guy related things:-
www.myspace.com/wampa
www.sion.co.uk
www.sionlive.com

Jonathan Bratoeff (guitar)

Prolific as a composer and band-leader in his own right, having made three albums including "Between the Lines" and "P.O.P" (both on the F-IRE label), his name is attached to that of a septet, quintet, quartet and two trios, each with its own set of original music and its own unique sound. Members of these bands include Seb Rochford, Nick Ramm, Pete Wharam, Oscar Gusjonsson, Tom Arthurs, Tom Mason, Ingrid Laubrook and Dave Smith.
Find out all about them at:-
www.jonathanbratoeff.com
www.myspace.com/jonathanbratoeff
www.f-ire.com

Tom Ward (alto saxophone)

Tom is a player of dynamic energy, and a sound full of lyrical angularity and passion. His artistic voice has emerged from a love of the music of Albert Ayler, Eric Dolphy, Tim Berne, Parkers Evan and Charlie and messed-up electronic noise, and from constant forays into the unfamiliar. He has studied the art of the wooden flutes of the Fula tribe in West Africa, and also takes a keen interest in the science of music and its relationship to the cosmos.

Tom Challenger (tenor saxophone & clarinet)

A highly progressive musician and keen collaborator with many inspiring players on the circuit such as The Heritage Orchstra, The Herbaliser, Red Snapper, The Optomist Club, Clark Tracey, John Taylor, Mike Garrick, Lol Coxhill, Jeremy Warmsley, Don Rendell and Julian Joseph. His intelligent approach to harmony combined with his spontaneous and instinctive sensibility is given a voice in this band, as it is in the many projects of his own direction, such as Ma and La Ferme.
Check out:-
www.myspace.com/tomaschallenger
www.theheritageorchestra.com
www.loopcollective.org

Spencer Brown (bass)

One of London's busiest electric and acoustic bassists, his warm powerful sound and creative approach has allowed him to work with jazz luminaries such as Dave Cliff, Clark Tracey, Adrian Reid and Leon Greening. He also allows himself more than a smattering of rock, funk, and Balkan music.

Porpoise On The Park Festival preview: Mike Flynn, Time Out London In spite of their dodgy rhyming epithet, Porpoise Corpus are yet another exciting new Brit jazz band happy to punch above their youthful weight. Thanks to the excessive musical abilities of their leader, pianist/bassist/ composer Dave O’Brien, they won the Peter Whittingham Award. Now they’re using the £4,000 prize money to take over the (mostly shut down) POTP for two nights to showcase new, off-kilter jazz-inspired music. With PC’s music lurching between Jarrettish piano interludes and funky schlock-horror jazz-rock, it’s the perfect amorphous soundtrack for these spots accompanied by intense stop-motion visuals from Dandelion And Burdock. Opening night support comes from the artsy, angsty post-rock of guitarist Nick Gill’s The Monroe Transfer, plus intriguing audio/video artists The Brains and Hunch Band. Known for their subversive mainstream works – using samples of kitchen utensils to recreate ‘The Omen’ theme for ITV’s ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ for example – sound designers Chris Branch and Tom Haines are the very definition of this emergent boundary-blurring music/art movement. Saturday will feature a reduced Heritage Orchestra, appearing as a 12-piece brass-led ‘band’, who’ll play their superb filmic funk. There’s also the second PC set and their own drummer Guy Wood’s frenetic beat-laden solo project Hubcap. 3D glasses are optional.

Gig review: Stephen Graham, Jazzwise "Porpoise Corpus, a group led by award winning pianist Dave O'Brien (pictured), launched its debut eponymously titled CD for the F-IRE label this week and performed at London's Vortex club in Dalston last night.
While the first set last night saw the maturity and post M-Base influenced facility of guitarist Jonathan Bratoeff expressing itself with confident lines and a curling attack, the band itself blends a cryptic sense of funk with a freshness, indicative of the confidence of the new breed of bands on the London scene."

Album review: Alan Brownlee, Manchester Evening News, 16/11/2007 ****
"AMBITIOUS and adventurous jazz of dazzling variety, the fare ranges from buoyant fusion (The Seventh Trip), to haunting loveliness (Neverending). Predicted Consequence crosses Mahavishnu Orchestra with Death Metal and is over in a minute.
The strengths lie in the writing - all the tunes are by pianist Dave O'Brien, a mercurial melodist - and the top-class musicianship.
The elegant, impassioned saxophone of Tom Challenger announces a star in the making, while Spencer Brown and Guy Wood make a marvellously funky and fiery rhythm team."

Gig review: Jack Massarik, Evening Standard, 08/11/07 ****
"They have a daffy name and all look incredibly young, but Porpoise Corpus make seriously good music. Their debut album contains many impressive moments and last night they sounded even better. A sextet with two saxes, guitar, piano, bass and drums, they played stylish, fast-moving, episodic originals that held the interest as securely as the ever-changing scenery from a train window.
Thrash-rock passages by drummer Guy Wood and bassist Spencer Brown gave way to interweaving sax lines or gentle, semi-classical solo-piano meandering but every change of pace was linked by strong logic. Some ingenious melodic twists, especially for the saxes, also flickered with rare jazz elegance.
Pianist-composer Dave O'Brien, who did the arranging, can take a bow. Beneath his overgrown Beatle haircut ticks a jazz brain of unusual vision and originality. British writing of such intelligence and whimsical, anything-is-possible spirit has not been heard since the young Django Bates was first unleashed.
Frameworks as fine as these called for superior soloists. Jonathan Bratoeff, extracting a remarkably warm, round tone from his solid-body guitar, lyrical altoist Tom Ward and fluent tenorist Tom Challenger all played brilliantly. O'Brien kept a lower profile, but his understated explorations were no less fascinating. Keep an eye on him.""

Album review: Chris Parker, Nov 2007 "This eponymous debut album from the sextet Porpoise Corpus (their name comes from the fictional body of literature produced by the cetaceans in the Illuminatus! trilogy) perfectly captures their immediately appealing sound: leader/keyboard player Dave O'Brien's compositions unaffectedly draw as much on fusion and occasional bursts of heavy, abrasive rock as on the relatively straightforward jazz head-and-exposition approach, his keyboards and Spencer Brown's bass moving easily between acoustic and electric instruments.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Bratoeff (guitar) flickers and swoons through the more lyrical numbers and struts confidently through the up-tempo fare; saxophonists Tom Challenger (tenor) and Tom Ward (alto) play themes in harmony in a manner that sometimes recalls the 1980s London-based band B Shops for the Poor as well as contributing attractively blustering but thoughtful solos; and Guy Wood pushes the whole thing along with a superb display of robustly propulsive drumming.
The band's material (all by O'Brien) is basically divided between the softly noodling lyricism of 'Out of Sight, Out of Mind' or 'Silence is Gold and Diamonds' and the tricksier garrulity of fusion, sparked either by comparatively simple riffs or more dramatic, complex heads, but whichever mode they're operating in, Porpoise Corpus display all the imaginative vibrancy and commitment that makes them such a compulsively listenable live act. Recommended."

Gig review: Chris Parker, January 2007 "Moving easily and unaffectedly between the sort of hypnotically sinuous extended improvisations pioneered by the likes of Steve Coleman and the more structured, declamatory 'head'-sparked music of fusion, Porpoise Corpus have opened up a rich seam in adopting this powerful yet adaptable approach, and with soloists of the calibre of Bratoeff, Ward and Challenger, they handsomely reward sustained attention of the sort given to them on this occasion by a gratifying large and enthusiastic crowd."

Dave O'Brien (piano)

Guy Wood [aka Wampa] (drums)

Jonathan Bratoeff (guitar)

Tom Ward (alto saxophone)

Tom Challenger (tenor saxophone & clarinet)

Spencer Brown (bass)

Forthcoming gigs: