Bass Tone Trap

Bass Tone Trap was formed in 1981 when Paul Shaft and Martin Archer's previous group, the ethno-Stockhausen inspired "de tian", possibly Sheffield's unlikliest ever group, co-opted additional recruits Carver, Jasnoch and Infanti from the Sheffield Free Music Group. After an initial period with synthesizer player Ian Clarricoates, the group was completed by the addition of vituoso free jazz / RnB sax man Derek Saw, surely one of the most underrated and unsung stylists ever to remain hidden from general public view.

Given their respective backgrounds one might have been expecting the new group to be more interested in amplified egg slicers than in the riotous jazz-punk pell-mell which quickly became the group's trademark sound. But as listeners as well as players all the group were equally interested in pop as well as experimental musics, and saw a role model / middle ground in, especially, the electric band music of Ornette Coleman. The result was a more or less equal mix of Prime Time, Art Ensemble of Chicago, free improv and white boy funk - not so unusual when you look at the corresponding "No-wave" scene in New York at the same time, or Don Was' Ze label experiments, and indeed the whole Sheffield ethos of popular music colliding with experimentation apparent from Cabaret Voltaire or The Human League.

This was a time when the UK scene was undergoing one of its periodic so called "jazz revivals". BTT of course were too naive to understand that they were simply too difficult to fit into this, although similar (but vastly inferior) Pigbag and Rip Rig & Panic scored a measure of commercial success at the same time. Nevertheless, between 1981 and 1984 various incarnations of the group played numerous local dates with occasional forays to jazz festivals and clubs further afield, and although the recorded legacy is small, their tightly played and wide ranging music clearly points the way forward to the adventurous music which would be produced by these musicians in the coming decades.