[Ahmed] – the quartet of Antonin Gerbal, Joel Grip, Pat Thomas and Seymour Wright – have become a monster group in a live setting. For their current London residence at Cafe Oto, they follow an unbeatable blueprint for any creative ensemble, which is that each set consists of one idea taken as far as they can, with a single song stretching often up to one hour. Anyone who values the instincts of jazz musicians will find a pure expression of it here; equally, those who want to feel the power of a bad ass group taking jamming to another level (The Necks, Joshua Abrams Ensemble, Oren Ambarchi, etc) will find it resonates.

There’s some great in depth pieces on the group, charting their progress from an ensemble put together to explore the compositions of Ahmed-Abdul Malik to their present incarnation using other compositions as a springboard, including Stewart Smith’s recent big one for The Wire, Francis Gooding’s original profile around their inception, plus a conceptually neat series by Joshua Minsoo Kim over at his prolific Tone Glow newsletter where he interviews each member of the group separately. 

The evenings at Oto have been dedicated to the work of Thelonious Monk (whom Malik played bass for) – two sets each night, four songs in total, with their takes on “Evidence”, “Round Midnight”, “Friday 13th” and “Epistrophy”. You can catch them at Oto now, and they have a new boxset Giant Beauty recorded at Fylkingen in Stockholm for the Edition Festival out too. Here’s what stood out.

They play the tunes. When a group plays for an hour it’s familiar for them at some point to flick a switch and launch into free playing, as if that freedom has been earned by the logic of what went before. Throughout these four sets, there wasn’t a dynamic of total improvisation. It was more like the players sifted through the compositions to find what freedom they could within them. No ego dominates. 

They swing. When groups are this explosive, the story of a performance is often that the musical pieces get scattered and you witness a kind of glorious falling apart. But some of the most joyous moments with [Ahmed] is when Gerbal and Grip drop into a sturdy bebop-era swing pattern, with a steady ride cymbal and rimshots pushing it along. As much as [Ahmed] are a new project they are also proudly repping old school values.

They keep it together. They set up at Oto with Thomas on pianist on one side and Wright on sax on the other. Throughout the sets they constantly bounce pieces of melody between each other while the rhythm section work away in the middle. It keeps a feel of balance and equality between the four that’s a little different to some of the more anarchic and cathartic groups exploring the free zones of jazz.      

They stick to the plan. Groups exploring the jazz songbook are a well-loved part of the live circuit, and despite their intensity [Ahmed] exemplify this. Almost every note is there to serve the composition. It took until around half an hour in to most sets before Thomas and Wright left behind fragments of original melody and riffed on it more freely, but even then, it seems like a brief deviation before the the gravitational force of the composition slowly seems to drag them back into shape towards the end, and there is the satisfaction of the composition resolving itself in a coda.

They get down. No surprise really, but when you have a quartet with a blazing rhythm section and license to roam, there are ecstatic moments where they shred like their lives depend on it. Props to Antonin Gerbal in particular, who explores every bit of the drumkit and often lands on a fat breakbeat or a lean motorik rhythm like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Testament to where playing it by the book will take you.