SEED.

SEED. AT TURNER SIMS CONCERT HALL, SOUTHAMPTON – 1/10/21

The sun is setting as I drive through the New Forest. I think about stopping to take a photograph of it but I miss the turning and then it’s too late. The moment has passed. I curse myself initially, but then I think that maybe it’s a good thing that I missed the turning. Maybe the world doesn’t need any more people taking photographs of sunsets in the New Forest. Maybe what the world actually needs is more people not taking photographs of sunsets in the New Forest. And so, I think as I drive down the darkening and brightly lit motorway towards Southampton for the second time in less than a week when before last week I hadn’t been there in decades, maybe it’s a good thing that I missed the turning.

Walking round the almost deserted campus of Southampton University, trying to find the Turner Sims Concert Hall is an alienating and strangely disconcerting experience. 

'alienating and strangely disconcerting'

The buildings are cold and officious, somewhere between a school and a hospital. 

‘cold and officious’

There’s hardly anyone around, and everyone that I do see looks either like a student or a security guard. A sign urges people to 'STAY APART’ which hardly seems like a good foundation on which to build a community, academic or otherwise. 

‘STAY APART’

It’s quite cold and I walk quickly to warm up. 

The Turner Sims Concert Hall seems to be staffed entirely by old women, which is fine. They are unfailingly polite, it has to be said. I had been expecting the gig to be full of students, but as it goes I have never seen so many grey and balding heads at a gig before, at least not since the last time I was at the Tivoli Theatre in Wimborne, which becomes my point of reference. It reminds me of the Tivoli Theatre in Wimborne, which I have only been to once to see Zoot Money, and which was also full of aged people. There is a faint smell of incense which masks an underlying scent of decay mingled with a subtle odour of despair. 

‘subtle odour of despair’

SEED. (formerly SEED ENSEMBLE; the ‘Ensemble’ has been jettisoned, presumably considered superfluous) epitomise what is so great about London jazz, a real melting pot of genres, musical styles and influences but with a distinctive sound and style all of its own. I’m not going to list all the genres or try to describe the sound but it is enough to say that it is music that I don’t think could have been made anywhere else on Earth. I mean it probably could, but you get the point. “I hope we take you on a journey,” says Cassie Kinoshi, before leading the band through a sublime set of spiritual jazz, and the first place that I am taken is back to the streets of London, which the music somehow seems to evoke, and it makes me feel a little homesick, because even though I don’t live there any more London still feels like my home. I wonder if it always will, or whether the feeling will fade with time.

‘a little homesick’

It’s the kind of place where they sell ice cream in the interval, and so they sell ice cream in the interval. I consider buying some chocolate ice cream, because why not, but then I remember that I’ve already had two cinnamon swirls today and think that I’d better not overdo it.

seed.’s music is fuelled by an anger that almost seems incongruous in the sedate surroundings of the Turner Sims Concert Hall. The band really let rip on Neptune, which, Kinoshi explains was inspired by her discovery of an ancestor, also called Neptune, who was enslaved on an “estate in Scotland”. The band take turns doing quick fire solos, full of fire and passion and righteous indignation, and joy. It’s the best of humanity to turn anger and injustice and cruelty into joy and beauty and togetherness. It’s a thing of sublime beauty. At the end there is an explosion of applause and a slow standing ovation. It should have just happened straight away but it took a while to get going. 

Back in the car I eat another cinnamon swirl - one that I put in some Tupperware earlier - while driving around Southampton looking for a petrol station in the Great Fuel Crisis of ’21, the crisis being that there is plenty of fuel to go around, but that people just can’t get their hands on it quick enough. Truly a crisis for our times. I don’t find one so I pull over in a lay-by and write about it instead.