The Hub at the Vortex, London
Tuesday November 5, 2002, The Guardian,UK

By John Fordham

Wherever the Hub comes from, it isn't the Charlie Parker school of jazz. If this Brooklyn power trio hasan obvious guiding spirit, it is probably John Zorn -plus a lot of general mind-jangling listening to subterranean thrash-metal bands.

A look at the band's European gig-list indicates that they could be on the road about as much as Pat Metheny, albeit visiting rather tattier venues, attended by much younger audiences who aren't fazed by the lack of regular tunes. At the London stop of that tour, the trio were maniacally exhilarating. They look like an American college rock band (the drummer came on in a singlet, shorts and a headband), but that is where all links to the familiar break down. Their music is loud, fast, indifferent to traditional build-ups and resolutions, often refers to jazz but in a broad-brush (or hurled bucketful) manner rather than in studied detail, and is as exciting in its twitchy energy as it is often unlovely in its textures and tone.

The band's sound unceremoniously switches between tautly organised ensemble music and howling abstractions. This performance took in a jigging, squirty, Ornette Coleman-like alto sax theme from Dan Magay over Sean Noonan's thrashing drums, with intervals for Noonan's furious nickety-nacketing on the woodwork of the kit. The remarkable electric bassist Tim Dahl, meanwhile, swapped his fast, rubbery, stream-of-sound improvising for eruptions of raw noise.

The trio's skillfulness in sustaining and varying a regular groove is matched by a periodic indifference to the usual rules of steady tempo. A bass figure faintly reminiscent of an old Headhunters lick pulled the saxophonist into a lurchingly jazzier manner,while Noonan's drum pulse remorselessly changed tempo beneath. But the trio can also be conventional, as with an unexpectedly gentle visit to samba, Magay's sax carrying the tune in high, breathy exhalations. Sporadically, Magay also accompanied his fierce alto sound with harmony-generating electronics, while Dahl's fast, jazzy bass-walk under a free-sax blast of sound was gripping in its precision and energy. A real breath of fresh air, even if it hits your eardrums at dangerous velocities.

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