Look, let’s try and keep this even briefer. Steve Reid is still the legendary drummer who in 1964 at 19 years of age played on Martha Reeves & the Vandellas’ ‘Dancing In The Street’ before moving on to play with Miles Davis, Fela Kuti, James Brown, Fats Domino, Sun Ra, Peggy Lee, Chaka Khan, Dexter Gordon, Dionne Warwick and a big, broad, lolloping spectrum of other legends. And Kieran Hebden still considers his life to have changed since meeting him. My life’s changed too. Thesedays I’m seeing the world more loosely, more fractally, more strangely, more beepy, more fruitily and more experimentally than ever before. Do not switch off your television sets. You have entered the ‘Exchange Sessions’ zone where a pair of daft old geezers with skewed jazz leanings exchange all manner of unexpected sounds and mind-boggling beats. It’s freeform something but I’m not sure what. Some might say they’re arsing about; but not me. Some might say they’ve got more money than sense; but not me. Some might say they’re devising the stuff of nonsense and looking for that rare quixotic blend of Alice Coltrane and Silver Apples but I say let them. I’ll say owt’s good for a bit of kudos. Nowt’s too rich for me.
Give them the key to let themselves in on the way out. I just might have gone to bed.