LIVE IN NYC '98

A couple of months after their short trio tour of the UK, Brainville popped up in New York and hooked up with Kramer, another of Daevid Allen's regular collaborators. They played two sets at the Knitting Factory, highlights of which are captured on this 2008 release.

This time around there is nothing from the Gong songbook, and again the set list draws mainly on Allen/Kramer songs with a bit of early Soft Machine for good measure. For much of the time there are two basses, and it sounds like Kramer mostly holds the beat and allows Hugh Hopper's fuzz bass a more melodic role. For the most part the improvisations are longer and looser than on the Obscura release, so although some of the same songs are played, they sound substantially different to the trio recordings from a couple months before. After an hour of this Kramer sits at the piano and we get a pleasant version of the Hugh Hopper song Memories (previously sung by Robert Wyatt and Whitney Houston, among others).

A few days after this they went into the studio to record the slightly underwhelming Children's Crusade; this album comes much closer to realising the potential of this remarkable line up. It's distinctly non essential, but well worth investigating if you're a Canterbury pilgrim.