The Golden Age of Steam
Raspberry Tongue
BDV 1086

James Allsopp - saxophone, bass clarinet, compositions
Tim Giles - drums
Kit Downes - Hammond Organ, Wurlitzer


"Sax/Hammond/drums trio GAOS - a freewheeling post-fusion improv unit that allows astonishing saxophonist James Allsopp, keys ace Kit Downes and drummer Tim Giles to explore the outer limits of Ayler, Beefheart and Ligeti." Time Out

"...blistering..." Jazzwise

This is the debut recording from The Golden Age of Steam, a new trio performing music composed by reeds player James Allsopp and featuring the outrageous drum stylings of other Fraud co-leader Tim Giles alongside the Hammond organizing of keyboard wizard Kit Downes, winner of the BBC Jazz Award for Rising Star in 2007. These compositions attempt to create new structural spaces for improvisation by establishing highly ambiguous soundworlds that explore the intangible area inbetween tonality, rhythm, and total improv freedom. These pieces are inspired by the combination of anarchic playfulness and formal logics of Ligeti's music, the joyous sax thunder of Coltrane and Ayler and the twisted lyricism of Captain Beefheart among others.

The Golden Age of Steam were featured on Radio 3's Jazz on 3 recorded at the 2009 Cheltenham Jazz Festival

James Allsopp and Tim Giles were key figures in the band Fraud that had a major success at the 2007 festival; but with Kit Downes the material is free-er, spacier and more thoughtful and contemplative. But it is in that area of music that combines structure with freedom and moves from composition to improvisation and back in interesting and unpredictable ways.

LOOP Collective Festival Review Feb 2010
Chris Parker
...Giles also took the drum chair in the evening's closing act, the Golden Age of Steam, a trio completed by keyboardist Kit Downes and tenor/bass clarinet player James Allsopp. Like Blink, they operate in the hinterland between structure and freedom, but draw more readily on the seething, raw power that characterises the music produced by another Allsopp/Giles band, Fraud, than on the more restrained acoustic subtleties of Mick, Fincker and Clarvis. In Allsopp the band has an engaging, relaxed spokesman, capable of drawing audiences into his relatively eccentric soundworld (tune titles such as 'Goldfish Nightmare', 'Imaginary Handbag' and 'Butterdome' a good indication of the originality of his compositional approach) with perhaps surprising ease, given that the textures produced by Downes in particular are frequently startlingly unpredictable. Culminating in a robust visit to the closing two tracks on their forthcoming album, Raspberry Tongue , 'Eyepatch' and 'Oboe or Glockenspiel', this was a rousing hour's music and a fitting climax to another rich and varied Loop Collective programme."

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