Buckley Batchelor artist page

Discography
Life as We Know It

Big Air (w/ Myra Melford and Jim Black) 'Ten Tall Tales ' scheduled for release in August 2008

Steve and Chris first met when they were students at the Leeds College of Music in the early 1980s. Initially members of the seminal big band LooseTubes, they both have been able to consolidate their reputations in the various successor line-ups (such as working together with Django Bates in large and small formations) as well as together. Their first joint band was in the line-up Orchestra Rafiki, working together with percussionists from West and East Africa though their first recording together as a quartet (The Whole and The Half) was a 1990s version of the early Ornette Coleman/Don Cherry collaborations.

Chris Batchelor was an honorary member of 3 Mustaphas 3 and appears on releases by North African rai musicians based in the UK and has also worked with Hermeto Pascoal on several occasions in the UK. He is also a lecturer in music at Middlesex University, where, together with Stuart Hall, has inspired an intriguing generation of jazz musicians to emerge in the UK (such as Rob Townsend who works with Richard Fairhurst). With Stuart this love of Hermeto is brought together in the band The Hermetologists, that are due to release a CD on Babel in 2006 where their arrangements are used as the foundation of a band including some of their long-standing colleagues including Huw Warren and Iain Ballamy. Chris also depped for Ian Carr in 2005 in the legendary Nucleus at Cargo in London.

Steve Buckley has spent long periods in Ghana, and also recorded in a free improvising trio with tuba Oren Marshall and drummer Steve Noble. He appears on several other Babel releases, including the first two by Christine Tobin and several by Billy Jenkins including the (in)famous Scratches Of Spain. In 2005 Steve Buckley played with Big Air's tuba player Oren Marshall as Part of the Dangerous Duets series for BBC Radio's Jazz on 3 which was commissioned by The Wapping Project and the Jerwood Charity and recorded for Mark Lockheart's Big Idea..

Recorded between the shortest day 1997 and the longest day 1998, Babel released Life as We Know It ('Buckley and Batchelor join Django Bates and Iain Ballamy as really important names in 90s jazz and make this the unexpected highlight of the year so far. "Life as we know it" moves British jazz forward in a very accessible yet inventive way.' Peter Bacon - The Birmingham Post, CD of the year, 19-06-99 )

On the CD Buckley and Batchelor create grooves, world beats and improvisations enhanced by samples and hard disk manipulations by Pete Beckmann as well as percussion support by Mark Sanders and Paul Clarvis. Due to the complexity of incorporating Pete Beckmann's electronics, the group performed rarely live, though they did a tour of Canada in summer 2000.

In 1999, Batchelor and Buckley toured in an extended version of Equal Interest with Myra Melford, Leroy Jenkins and Roscoe Mitchell. The collaboration was revived in 2001 for a special BBC commission which involves downtown NY based pianist Melford and drummer Jim Black and British tuba player Oren Marshall. Big Air was very well received and won the BBC Jazz Award for New Work in 2001 and after reforming for a outstanding performance at the 2005 London Jazz Festival are scheduled to release a CD of the work Ten Tall Tales on Babel in mid-August 2007.