Recording of the Week, Binker & Moses, 'Feeding the Machine'

Binker & Moses – saxophonist Binker Golding and drummer Moses Boyd – are a London-based duo, playing a self-described style of ‘semi-free jazz’. The pair have been playing together for the best part of 6-7 years now, but Golding and Boyd have spent their time more so building a name for themselves for their individual exploits; Binker Golding has released a number of his own projects, as well as offering his sax sounds to a handful of other artists, while Moses Boyd has similarly build up his sideman portfolio, while also working as a radio host for the BBC and record producer, as well as enjoying his own Mercury accolades for his 2020 album Dark Matter. Their collaborative project is one that’s seen the two playing either as a bare sax and drums duo, or occasionally featuring guest collaborators such as fellow Londoner and harpist Tori Handsley – who we interviewed back in 2020 for her solo debut, on which Moses played drums – to old hands like free-improv saxophonist Evan Parker. The pair’s last release together, 2021’s Escape the Flames, was also a favourite of ours – you can read our full review here – but this year’s Feeding the Machine is the duo’s first lot of new music since 2018’s Alive in the East?. Their latest album features the pair with one extra collaborator, but a significant one; producer Max Luthert, who provides a number of hands-on contributions to the production and texture of Feeding the Machine that make it the most intriguing Binker & Moses album to date.

If early releases like 2015’s Dem Ones revelled in the rawness of the duo’s austere drums and sax sound, then Feeding the Machine flips this formula on its head and imagines the fullest possible form of the 'Binker & Moses sound'. Tracks still lean heavily on that same improvisational aspect, with Golding and Boyd bringing their A-game of skronky, screeching sax and blistering free-jazz drumming, though there’s plenty to enjoy as far as riffs and grooves go, too. Don’t expect your usual jazzy chord changes here – this is modern London jazz, and at a pretty experimental edge of the style to beat, though that’s not to say the duo don’t get plenty of chances to show off their well-honed chops throughout (just don’t expect any II-V-I’s).

Luthert’s contributions on Feeding the Machine take the form of some heavy post-processing of the duo’s performances (perhaps he’s the ‘machine’ in question, while the duo feed him the music); there’s tasteful synthesiser overdubs, atmospheric reverb, and ample use of tape loops, mostly serving Binker Golding’s saxophone. On the opener 'Asynchronous Intervals’, Luthert uses this technique to create a faux call-and-response with himself, while ‘Feed Infinite’ uses a bed of reverb-drenched sax to create some dense textural ambience against a rhythmic synth pattern. Golding’s playing style is very much in the same school of that ‘riffy sax’ à la Shabaka Hutchings, while there’s plentiful swirling lead lines all over Feeding the Machine as well as multi-layered chordal passages. Boyd provides a tasteful mixture of all-out drumkit chaos and solid locked-in grooves, often showing both sides in one track like on ‘Accelerometer Overdose’ and ‘After the Machine Settles’. Luthert does more than simply slap some reverb and echo on the pair’s performances, too, offering dense synth-heavy sound design to the arrangements – Feeding the Machine is a real joy to listen to on a good pair of headphones. The London jazz crowd aren’t afraid to break tradition, and Feeding the Machine is one of the most gleefully experimental examples of that – at what point is this even jazz anymore? If it sounds as cool as this, I’m not sure I’m all that bothered.