In December of 2014, something amazing happened at Spacefest in Poland and that amazing thing was among many things, the Pure Phase Ensemble, a group of musicians, hand-picked by someone or a group of someones -- who know(s) what the fuck they're doing -- to compose, arrange and perform original work exclusively for the festival.

Now, it's in the power of the committee or whoever's behind that thing to just let it happen once, in front of a live audience, never to be heard again. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure they would have some kind of set up a la Munich, where they hunt down people who record the show live, but they really don't have to because legend has it that the prick-hunters down at Nasiono records got in the committee's faces and said "No! We'll record the thing and release those recordings every year as live albums!"
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And it's been going on since the beginning with the last release being Pure Phase Ensemble 4.

Okay, I made up everything after the Munich reference, except for the fact that the recordings do exist, you can check out our review here.

Not only did we get a chance to listen to a solid recording and review it to boot but we couldn't idly stand by and let it be, we had to get in a little deeper so we arranged a interview with one of the clout-heavy originators of the group which we shall waste no time to get to... here's our interview with Ray Dickaty!

Ray Dickaty doing his thing on Facebook!

Since the Pure Phase Ensemble exists exclusively for the SpaceFest shows, how hard is it to leave that music behind? There are so many hooks in this thing, it would be like losing a family member to not be able to touch those songs again.

Well it is difficult to leave the music behind, but that is the agreed format for the event. Only once, when we did the PPE3 with Laetitia Sadier did we actually repeat the gigs, once again in Gdansk and once in Warsaw, the reason being is that all of us felt that we didn't do the songs true justice by only playing them once and for the sake of the songs that we should play them again and really allow them to start breathing. It worked, and then we were content.

I grew up in a environment of open experimentation with music, such as listening to the likes of Spiritualized, Hawkwind; which I imagine is still its very own niche and still, it seems like writing music should be second nature where it's more hands on, going through-the-motions, such as how you all wrote the music for this ensemble. It's far more inclusive and collaborative, which is how you were able to write this music so fast. Do you feel artists write this way more nowadays?

No, unfortunately, I believe that many artists struggle to write in a more open-hearted improvised way and I wish more did. There are exceptions of course and you can feel this music more. It hits you in all the correct ways, like the bands you mentioned above with Hawkwind being a prime example of this perhaps in a more shambolic way, but more open to the music being allowed to grow organically.

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In Spiritualized the albums were quite meticulously recorded but live is when the songs truly came to life and I often considered that the resulting studio albums were “overworked” as some of the desk mixes were (in my opinion) although rough, more real than the final released record.

I also believe that a band should try out new material live before committing it to tape, as this often allows a song to work itself into a stronger composition. Often the case is the other way round though, make a record then tour it….and then you realise “damn this live version is a much better version than the one we recorded on the record”

Having said this though, making a studio record is a different process and that studio record should really be seen as a separate art form in itself.

There's always been this idea that a certain style defines a generation or some era in music. Referring to the process of song writing as a collaborative effort -- such as what you have been able to accomplish through these recordings and your career -- do you think I might be onto something in that this method of collaboration is what makes one generation's music different from another? Not so much in the sound or style but rather the willingness to abandon techniques that stifle creation?

Maybe. I think successive generations try to do something different from the previous whilst still retaining the aspects of the groups that influenced them - some more successfully than others. It's difficult to truly come up with totally “new” music that's never been heard before without the use of some newer technology.

If you’re in a room with the classic bass, guitar, drums and vocals you are already setting out certain limitations, although this can be good, work within your limits and define and redefine what it really is you are trying to do and say, and then you may be onto something. I’m thinking of the Ramones as being a fine example of this and by strict limitation, they defined a new “rock n’ roll” sound, but there are many more examples I could give.

On the margins of the mainstream is generally where the most interesting music is found, as I’m sure you're aware. These ideas are often then taken and incorporated into the mainstream in some watered down version.

Pure Phase Ensemble 4's Live At SpaceFest Is Too Short-Lived To Enjoy With One Listen

Even in the free improvisation world, the set up instrumentation already defines boundaries, but away from playing songs, this is where I feel that true music can often be found, starting from nothing and allowing sounds to interact in possibly unexpected and unplanned ways can produce something marvellous and new. Then if you take these ideas back into the rock world, which I do with the PPE’s then something within the classic rock band format, of interest may occur.

Having said all this I’m still a sucker for a classic chord progression played right and a beautiful melody.

In your biographical timeline you refer to a stigma in the music scene built around you performing in rock bands. Would you say that the climate was conditioned at the time for that kind of rejection for a good reason? I don't imagine we have that problem anymore.

Well I guess I came up against this in the improvised music world in London after I had departed from Spiritualized.

"AMM (improvisation group)" by Andy Newcombe - http://www.flickr.com/photos/92523880@N00/3538998177/in/photostream/. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Commons.

I really wanted to get into this music more and spent a couple of years attending workshops with Eddie Prevost (AMM). Here it was other members of the group that were often more vocal about “rock musicians” trying to play free jazz - don't forget I also play sax so this is an extra burden to some, as I’m not putting a contact mic’ on a glass of fizzy water and processing the sound OR making music out of a squeaky floorboard and a piece of paper; I’m more “traditional daddio” in my instrumentation.

I was made (by some) to feel like a dilettante “dipping ones feet” into the free jazz world before disappearing back to the safety of playing large concert halls. Little did they know, or even want to know that actually all my music making from the very start has been about improvisation, from art classes at school where a trio of us would go to the local art school and bang around inside dismantled pianos, make tape loops and mess with synths (this was a way out of sport for us more creative types - Ha !) to my first proper band that I formed in London in the early 90’s (Skree) which started as a Jazz/Thrash?/Punk group but quickly changed into a more organic improvised noise project.

But “hey” they were not interested.

This has in some ways continued in that having been in a well known band, or done some sessions for well known artists although in some ways has opened doors for me, in others its like there’s a mistrust that I’m not a “true Improviser” (why because I love pop/rock/prog/blues/country/folk etc etc music’s..?) but maybe the scene is changing now with the newer / younger generation coming through who don't perhaps see such history as a “burden”..

Earlier I asked about leaving work behind such as the music you helped create with the Pure Phase Ensemble 4 without being able to come back to it. In the movie Lost Highway, the character -- who is also a horn player -- when asked if he owns a video camera, he makes it clear that he doesn't want to remember things the way they happened but rather, the way he remembers them. Aside from the fact that Pure Phase Ensemble 4 live at SpaceFest is not a structured studio recording, you also have another project, the Warsaw Improvisers Orchestra, which is likely not recorded; which seems to indicate to me that you prefer to experience these projects as something far more personal than pressed and manufactured copies for the masses?

It really depends. In some ways music that is free / improvised that happens only in that moment - maybe that should be that way it is , lingering as a sweet memory.

But in order to get gigs you need evidence, and this comes in the form of documentation - its purely practical in one sense, but in another its also sometimes good to capture those moments and re-listen for pleasure as well as learning or at least trying to figure out what made that particular piece / or moment of music so damn special.

Plus, I like listening to free jazz / improvised music records, not all the time as I love so many forms of music and there’s never enough time to listen to everything I may wish to and also play and create music.
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Actually with the Warsaw Improvisers Orchestra (WIO) we have recorded a live concert which should be released early next year in its entirety on CD in Poland, (I wanted double vinyl but due to costs…I imagine it won't happen…) but in an edited form it will also be released in Autumn 2015 in the USA on a tape label called Astral Spirits.

This was a large group of 29 musicians and I am very pleased with the music we made on that night and am so relieved and happy that I had the foresight to get the gig recorded properly and employ a professional unit to capture us in action, live / creating in a great sounding acoustic space.

There may also be a documentary DVD as well as the entire process from arrival, set up to concert and post gig was filmed.

Back to the original question though, it is really a combination of both that is both desired and necessary.

What would you say the Pure Phase Ensemble 4 music is a commentary of or rather, on; or is it designed to be opened to interpretation?

The only commentary would be that of us as people getting together in a room for 4 days with the specific task of creating an entertaining and satisfying body of music to be performed to an intrigued and hopefully attentive audience that satisfies first and foremost US and secondarily THEM. This along with all our own personal baggage / insecurities / humour or whatever would be what we put into the music -probably at more subconscious levels would be the only commentary.

I can't imagine why the Warsaw Improvisers Orchestra couldn't be also some social-political commentary for the people there?

This is so different from the PPE’s and yes in a way WIO has taken on a form of a social political nature, totally without any forethought regarding this perspective from me though, this is only how others may interpret us.

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But by doing what I do or did, in starting this ensemble as a foreigner, and being open in mixing and matching instrumentation, experience, talents together in one space - and importantly meeting every month at a regular venue has led to a social situation that I never envisioned which in turn has had a knock on effect within the entire free jazz / improvised music scene in Warsaw, and rippled into other scenes as well.

Throughout your career, how has your view on what your music should say to listeners changed?

Really its stayed pretty much the same as always from the start. If the music touches me, as some music often does, in certain ways - then I wish that it touches others in the same way.

I trained as a Sculptor before “falling” by intention into playing music and I see that the music I like and try to create, sculpts space and time with sound - this may sound conceited, but the spine tingling sensations I had when looking at certain sculptures - purely on a “gut feeling” level, no interpretive academic nonsense needed here, are similar or the same to the feelings I get when listening / experiencing / creating / playing a great piece of music and this has been my constant.

There's always this angle that gets worked into a lot of these scenes that the message is about unity and peace, but I wonder if there's something you're disturbed by or angry about that makes you want to be free-form abrasive with your instrument, outside of the fact that you want people to focus on your music, what do you think needs to be fixed in society?

This is too big a question and I am angered by so much that is wrong in the world but also try to be positive that some of the current changes economically and politically that we are currently experiencing may result in a better world for us all.

The only true political group with a specific message that I instigated is a band called “Line of Fire” in a sense we play / have played to the already converted, but still it's comforting to know that the performers that you see feel the same as you do. In this group we specifically play hard improvised music to a backdrop of edited footage of politicians, bankers, scenes of global corporations, wars and riots and in some way it both purges our inherent anger and sustains it enough to want to continue the struggle against the true evil as we see it - that of global capitalism.
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In the question's terms of free form "abrasive" music, well I have always felt and heard a beauty in noise, not all noise music, but some, and within the maelstrom there can be found an inner peace.

Who are the up-and-comers in your area? Since you use a lot of visuals projections in your work are there video artists, musicians or any up and comers in the area you would recommend and thanks for your time Ray.

I don't currently use a lot of visuals in my music, the exception being “Line of Fire”, but the people we use freeform projections from edited footage and mix and match and improvise to our sounds as we do to their images. They are a small arts collective called Malarze kolektyw wizualizatorów.

Music wise, well there are so many performers now - from younger generations here in Warsaw that have picked up on this music (partly due to my work with the WIO - or so I’m told ) that its best for people just to look and see whats available online by searching Warsaw, Improvised, Free, Music, or other appropriate search terms.

Well there it is! The man himself! Really, gives me a good impression of the perspective of a mega-talent from under the dome, breathing the air of great talents!
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By the way, that great Pure Phase Ensemble 4 album by Nasiono records is selected as #82 of NBT Music Radio's best of 2015! And it doesn't end there folks because, along with Rick Dickaty's WIO Polish release this next year, we should expect a PPE 5 because SpaceFest happened this month!

We'll let you know what we think of that when that's released!