PAKT: improv supergroup on west coast tour
Percy Jones, Alex Skolnick, Kenny Grohowski, Tim Motzer
PAKT West Coast Tour Feb 1-13 … see dates below.
The online listening party on Bandcamp a couple of weeks ago featuring the band PAKT was a lot more fun than I expected. Don’t get me wrong; I knew the music would be great and I’m sure everyone in the band are fun guys. But how much fun can you have in a text chat room with a bunch of fans listening to a recording? Turns out quite a bit.
If you don’t know about PAKT, I suggest you fasten your seatbelt right now and head on over to their Bandcamp page for a listen. You’re gonna hear free improvisation from the first to last notes. This is the kind of music that takes time to develop in a song, in a band, in a career. Each member of this band embraces the risk of exploring new territory every time they pick up their instruments. They’re going for a thrill ride and taking us along.
The players in PAKT have careers that span genres from metal to jazz to fusion to free improv, and back again. Percy Jones may be the best known of the group, not only because he’s been playing the longest, but early on he redefined what the electric bass could sound like. Along with his work on Brian Eno recordings, I remember seeing his fusion band Brand X in 1979 when Phil Collins (yes, THAT Phil Collins) was in the band. I did not know that the band reformed a few more times over the decades, always with founding members Percy and guitarist John Goodsall. The final iteration of the band saw highly regarded NY avant-scene drummer, and current member of avant-metalists Imperial Triumphant, Kenny Grohowski join on drums. Brand X ended with the death of Goodsall, but Kenny and Percy would soon meet again in PAKT.
Of the two guitarists in PAKT, Tim Motzer is known as a free-improviser and sonic texturist, while Alex Skolnick is known as that guy from Bay Area thrash metal band Testament who took a break from metal to study jazz and follow his passion, which of course led him to playing free improvisation.
Metal fan that I am, Testament was never really on my radar like Prong, Metallica, Slayer and Sepultura were. I first became aware of Skolnick at the end of the 90’s when he performed on a CD with the band Attention Deficit, featuring Tim Alexander of Primus and bass player extraordinaire Michael Manring. This was a combo of funk, metal, jazz, fusion and improv that I still eat up to this day. Sadly, this band only released 2 CDs and I never got a chance to see them live.
Motzer met up with Grohowski in 2019 to record free improv with Markus Reuter, the German touch guitarist and composer perhaps known to some of you for his work in Stick Men with Tony Levin. The 2019 recording called Shapeshifters was recorded at ShapeShifter Lab in Brooklyn. This same location would be where the very first performance of PAKT would take place in the middle of the pandemic in 2020.
August 15 2020, during the lockdown, when risk taking seemed to be part of our daily lives, PAKT did their first performance to a live audience of one. The rest of the audience was part of the live stream beamed from ShapeShifter Lab. The lone person in attendance with the band was the man who brought them all together, Leonardo Pavkovic of MoonJune Records.
From this initial meeting in 2020, flash forward to 2 weeks ago at the PAKT Bandcamp Listening Party where I found myself in a group text chat with the band and Leonardo. During this exchange I was inspired to contact Leonardo about doing an interview. He readily accepted and in a few days I was talking to him via Zoom about PAKT and MoonJune Records. Near the end of our conversation we were talking about the upcoming PAKT west coast tour. I saw there were a couple of open dates while they were in the Bay Area. Of course I had to tell him about my local venue Winters Tavern. Other improvising bands like Mike Baggetta’s mssv had played there recently. We started brainstorming ideas, and we’re still working on them as I write this. All I can say right now is, if you’re in the Bay Area and you want to meet PAKT, stay tuned. If you’re too far away but can enjoy a live streamed event, stay tuned.
My Zoom conversation with Leonardo was extensive and will be a two-part video that I’m working on now. Part 1 is about PAKT and Part 2 is about MoonJune Records and how Leonardo started it by working with Soft Machine. Is there a Giorgio Gomelsky connection? You bet there is.
PAKT West Coast Tour 2024:
Feb 01 - Seattle, WA (Funhouse)
Feb 02 - Portland, OR (Alberta Abbey)
Feb 03 - Eugene, OR (WOW Hall)
Feb 04 - Redding, CA (The Dip)
Feb 07 - (moved from Feb 6) Meet & Greet Event Pacifica, CA (Winters Tavern)
Feb 08 - Mill Valley, CA (Sweetwater)
Feb 09 - Lompoc, CA (Flower City Ballroom)
Feb 10 - Los Angeles, CA (Baked Potato, 2 shows)
Feb 11 - Los Angeles, CA (Baked Potato, 2 shows)
Feb 12 - Costa Mesa, CA (Wayfarer)
Feb 13 - Phoenix, AZ (The Rhythm Room)
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Mike Baggetta (mssv) and Jake Firmin (The Hominoids) talk improvisation
The Feb 6 event at Winters Tavern has been moved to Feb 7.
Thank you Rick. I knew nothing about them.