Loitered Lens: Soweto Kinch

[dropcap style=”font-size:100px; color:#992211;”]T[/dropcap]aking a cue from John Coltrane’s metaphysical approach to tone, and developing a visual structure of reference for multiple musicians to control a musical language teetering on the brink of dissolution, Soweto Kinch directs music as a puppeteer pulls strings.

Nonagram, Kinch’s recently released album plots its dominant tones with reference to a geometric figure. If Coltrane introduced the practice with the pentagram in Expressions, Kinch brings it further with Nonagram:

The album concept revolves around a nine-sided wheel or nonagon. Each musical point along the wheel explores a feature of different numbers or shapes. For instance the track exploring ‘3’ uses frequencies such as 60Hz and relates it to 180Hz (the internal and total angles of an equilateral triangle).

– Soweto Kinch, Sleeve notes to Nonagram.

Doing justice to such painstaking artistic industry, Carl Byron Batson caught Kinch’s album launch at the Roundhouse in Camden. An evocative visual record of a timeless jazz aest

hetic.

Photos by Carl Byron Batson. Not to be reproduced without express prior permission.

Carl Byron Batson

Photographer, published poet, former party animal, body builder, grave robber
to the stars and renowned chainsaw juggler, Carl can often be spotted on his
Harley Davidson pretending to be in Terminator 2. He is also frequently seen in
the press pits of old London town, camera in hand, avoiding being hit by bottles
of wee and crippling his opposition with secret Kung Fu moves.

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