“The combination of a staccato drumbeat, primal screams and psychedelic guitar riffs from Kwabata and Segers’ ever-deepening grooving bass leads to a shamanistic ritual.” – Georges Tonla Briquet, JAZZ HALO
“This is a fantastic recording of a one-off trio with all three players at the top of their game; a union that, although trading on their strengths, still manages to shed new light on their playing and gives up more with every listen.” – Mr Olivetti, FREQ
“A formidable fast-moving storm that pushes determinedly towards the outer edges of rock’s usual sonic boundaries” – Sid Smith, PROG MAGAZINE
Makoto KAWABATA – guitar
Guy SEGERS – bass
Charles HAYWARD – drums, vocals
Live recording 25th May 2013 by Mark LANG at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, Brighton UK
A wonder trio consisting of Charles Hayward (This Heat), Guy Segers (Univers Zero) and Kawabata Makoto (Acid Mothers Temple), captured live. A special evening in which the three veterans met on stage, setting the atmosphere on fire with a unique concert, short-circuiting forty years of rock history from blues to noise via the most liquid and rarefied psychedelia.
Charles Hayward has always asserted a very personal idea of improvisation, in some ways equidistant from the abstractness of European free and the muscularity of the jam session. The case of this trio is therefore no exception, in which the musicians nonchalantly range from pounding rock to shifting polyrhythms, from rarefied atmospheres to the searing intensity. The sound is energetic and compact, centred on Hayward’s violent momentum and on the search for an immediate empathy with the audience; free form mixing with an idea of post-atomic fusion.
For the avoidance of doubt, the record sounds almost bootleg-quality, but it doesn’t detract in the slightest from the fury of this trio who, on stage, create rants between punk, hardcore, metal, prog and the like. We’re talking about a power trio in the best punk groove.
Any group featuring Charles Hayward, the former Quiet Sun drummer and member of experimentalists This Heat, is worth listening to. Joining him in Uneven Eleven are ex Univers Zero bassist Guy Segers and Acid Mothers Temple guitarist Makoto Kawabata. Their improvisation-led approach means that where one player goes, the others follow with lightning-fast reactions. Abrupt transitions in density, tempo and mood take three lengthy pieces that comprise the album on a whirling collage of bruising psych-drenched exchanges, punkish detours, Dadaist vocal outbursts and craggy shards that boil with the kind of volatile momentum associated with Can or, not surprisingly, This Heat. Long sections are tethered to trance-like repetitions of Segers’ unwavering bass, across which Kawabata’s jagged oscillations flicker anf fly, with both musicians somehow hanging on by their fingernails to Hayward’s hyper-driven snare work. All three players fearlessly dive in, fusing into a formidable fast-moving storm that pushes determinedly towards the outer edges of rock’s usual sonic boundaries – Sid Smith, PROG MAGAZINE
It has taken some years to finally release this heavyweight collaboration between bassist Guy Segers, percussionist Charles Hayward and guitarist Kawabata Makoto. Recorded live in Brighton back in 2013, the album consists of three extended improvisations and follows nicely on from the Uneven Eleven release on Sub Rosa back in 2015. Where that album captured the show at Café OTO on the previous evening of 24 May 2013, on the next night at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar the fluidity of the trio and their egalitarian approach had clearly started to gel.
Hayward’s drums definitely add structure to their twisted fuzz template, with Guy’s warm insistence helping the trio to touch lightly on Public Image Ltd‘s “Albatross” here and there before shooting off at tangents, Kawabata’s guitar exploding into fireworks before throttling back. Guy lays a bed for Kawabata, but he manages to effect the bass in ways that change the sound, providing unexpected textures while Hayward batters in his unique way. The pieces change minute by minute over the course of sixty-six minutes, but the democratic nature means that even when there may be a brief battering-ram pummel, an explosive burst of phased guitar or a neck-throttling bass run, the strength of the trio prevails.
Hayward’s guttural mantra-like vocals, a few words intoned rhythmically, add some post-punk vigour, while looped chiming guitars hint at a simple minimalism that ignores what came before. There are the faintest hints of Cream and Metal Box-era PIL in the long-form approach but they drive and drive, pushing the separate pieces on and on. Stripped down to basics, second piece “Limpid Intone (Psalmodie Limpide)” really merges the three players as sudden intense explosions are assimilated until cohesion is lost. Things eventually coalesce again, but into an abstraction of pointillist slashes as tempos change and tides surge.
If you try focusing on just one of the players you really start to lose yourself, the other elements bubbling up overwhelmingly in the background and there is absolutely no dropping of energy levels. They are on it all the way through, so by the time the punk jazz fusion of the final track “Mineral Knot” arrives, you are already a bit worn out. Here more of Hayward’s simplistic vocals over a feedback drone once again change the atmosphere, with the bass a low-end smear that coats everything. There is a satisfying singularity to it that suggests you could dance to it; just don’t blame them if you break your hip.
This is a fantastic recording of a one-off trio with all three players at the top of their game; a union that, although trading on their strengths, still manages to shed new light on their playing and gives up more with every listen. – Mr Olivetti, FREQ https://freq.org.uk/reviews/uneven-eleven-live-in-brighton/
Since the dawn of this century, time seems to move faster and faster. Trends flare up and fade almost instantly—what is celebrated today becomes yesterday’s news by morning. Music is no exception. Perhaps it is the digital age, meme culture or our shrinking attention spans that push us ever onward in search of the “next new thing.” Sometimes, though, it is worth hitting pause and rewinding—not to the 1920s and Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five (though that is never a bad idea), but just a decade or so, to rediscover something raw and vital. One such discovery is Uneven Eleven, a power trio that blurred the line between jazz, rock and unfiltered energy.
British drummer Charles Hayward, who has always stood with one foot in jazz and the other in rock, brings his fierce rhythmic intellect to the group. Known for his work in Quiet Sun with Phil Manzanera, This Heat with Charles Bullen and Gareth Williams, and Massacre alongside Fred Frith and Bill Laswell, Hayward was part of a generation that reveled in collisions—where hard-edged rock met the freedom of jazz. Think of the sonic assaults of Last Exit (Peter Brötzmann, Laswell, Sonny Sharrock and Ronald Shannon Jackson) and you will sense the lineage. Uneven Eleven follows that same uncompromising tradition. The trio—Hayward, Japanese guitarist Makoto Kawabata (Acid Mothers Temple, Gong) and Belgian bassist Guy Segers (X-Legged Sally, Univers Zero)—first appeared on the two-disc Live at Café Oto (Sub Rosa, 2015). This release, recorded live at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar in Brighton in May 2013, captures the same trio in peak form.
Across three sprawling tracks—ranging from eleven to over thirty minutes—the band unleashes collective improvisations that blend ferocity with precision. This is not background music; it is a full-body experience. Kawabata’s guitar howls and fractures through Segers’ relentless low-end surge, while Hayward drives everything forward with primal intensity. Imagine if Public Image Limited had possessed the chops of a free- jazz unit, and you will have a sense of the chaos and control at play here.
Uneven Eleven’s Live In Brighton is a reminder that some music resists the clock entirely. It is timeless not because it looks back, but because it insists on being fully alive in the moment—loud, fearless and gloriously uneven. – Mark Corroto, ALL ABOUT JAZZ https://www.allaboutjazz.com/live-in-brighton-uneven-eleven-discus-music
What happens when three greats from the improvisation scene come together on stage? The trio Uneven Eleven gives us an idea with this live recording. The performers in question were guitarist Makoto Kawabata, bassist Guy Segers and drummer Charles Hayward. The scene of the crime was Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar in Brighton (UK). Date: 25 May 2013. Just to recap for those who may have forgotten. Japanese musician Kawabata Makoto founded the legendary Acid Mothers Temple, played with various offshoots of this band as well as with Baroque Bordello. Brussels-based bassist Guy Segers was one of the founders of Univers Zero, established the Carbon 7 label and continuously releases material on his Bandcamp site. Brit Charles Hayward sat behind the drums for Crass, Massacre, Camberwell Now and, of course, This Heat, among others.
Brace yourself for a wall of sound built from garage rock, punk, metal, prog and various distortions thereof. These gentlemen know how to create a tsunami of sonic waves with decibels, reverb and a lot of swagger. Importantly, each has his role to play. Hayward relentlessly provides the ground structure. He doesn’t allow himself a second’s rest. Segers supports him with his fat bass sounds. The man specialises in grooves that you rarely hear in such a context. Kawabata, in turn, is clearly under high tension. There are parallels with Jimi Hendrix and Elliott Sharp, but he goes much further. The three develop an incredible synergy. The twenty-one-minute opening track “Knead The Beat” is a pure splinter bomb from the first to the last decibel. The way they (slightly) slow down and speed up without looking back is particularly breathtaking. The guitarist’s “sung” part further enhances the trance effect. They slow down briefly before launching into ‘Limpid Intone (Psalmodie Limpide)’, but the tension remains palpable. And then they’re off for half an hour of swirling trance. Hearing is believing. The combination of a staccato drumbeat, primal screams and psychedelic guitar riffs from Kwabata and Segers’ ever-deepening grooving bass leads to a shamanistic ritual. Mixing was handled by Guy Segers, who has been releasing some powerful stuff with his Eclectic Maybe Band in recent years. Also for fans of Moonjune Records and Jon Irabagon’s I Don’t Hear Nothin’ But The Blues. – Georges Tonla Briquet, JAZZ HALO
Those who were at the concert at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar in Brighton on May 25, 2013, will surely remember it, given the intensity of this Power Trio. It was impossible to remain unmoved by the onslaught of notes and raw energy that erupted that day.
Charles Hayward is no newcomer to this genre; this formula, a blend of rock and jazz but definitely not jazz-rock, is his forte. His approach to rhythm is driven by urgency, defying all convention. Like a mischievous imp popping out of a box, he had already made a name for himself in another venomous trio, Massacre, where he combined his frenetic energy with that of Fred Frith and Bill Laswell, all within hypnotic tracks. With Makoto Kawabata and Guy Segers, a different musical strategy takes hold: the length of the compositions flirts with a psychedelia devoured by punk-derived influences. The guitarist, accustomed to the uncontrolled outbursts of Acid Mothers Temple, acts as a guide, leading his two colleagues down obscure paths. The three of them deconstruct what they had just sketched out in the preceding minutes, the discomfort carrying the music into other realms.
Charles Hayward’s vocals echo those of Damo Suzuki, the singer of Can. His contribution to “Knead the Beat” injects a dose of dramatic tension. The bassist controls the spatial arrangement with an iron fist. Once his playing is anchored in the guitarist’s explosive, irregular bursts, he doesn’t deviate an inch, providing a rhythmic stability that underscores the crucial importance of his contribution to the avant-garde groups Art Zoyd and Univers Zéro.
A profusion of exciting rhythms overlaps in improvisations that constantly feed on unexpected jagged edges, as in the cataclysmic “Mineral Knot.” The musicians create a masterful chaos, their spontaneity infusing a process far more elaborate than it initially appears. The thematic density that unfolds over the course of just over an hour during this concert sheds light on a dazzling trio. – Mario Borron, CITIZEN JAZZ https://www.citizenjazz.com/Uneven-Eleven.html
Live In Brighton (recorded on 25 May 2013) is a musical testimony entirely improvised collectively by the trio UNEVEN ELEVEN, on stage at Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, an underground concert venue in Brighton (now defunct), offering 64’47” of free rock. Avant-garde, experimental, psychedelic, krautrock, progressive, jazz, rock, RIO music. The trio consists of Japanese guitarist Makoto KAWABATA (ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE, GONG), Belgian bassist Guy SEGERS (X-LEGGED SALLY, UNIVERS ZERO) and British drummer/singer Charles HAYWARD (who has worked with Phil MANZANERA, Charles BULLEN, Gareth WILLIAMS, Fred FRITH and Bill LASWELL).
The opener, ‘Knead The Beat’ (21’38”), features swirling Krautrock sounds, relentless riffs and a frenetic, torrid rhythm, depicting one of the greatest periods of German underground rock in the 1970s (CAN, NEU! among others). Explosive attacks and Herculean forces mixed with choppy drums, saturated bass with cavernous rumblings, dense electric guitar and a range of effects pushed to their limits. Tidal waves of intense, jerky drumming, repetitive shocks from the three instruments in the style of CHEER ACCIDENTS and KING CRIMSON. Each time, the three fiery soloists renew their sharp playing, strings and sticks sharpened to perfection, electric tirades and increasingly precise, technical drumming, working tirelessly on the past 48 years of progressive rock and psychedelia. In the background, we hear a sample of the famous riff from CREAM’s ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’. A narration by Charles Hayward is repeated briefly.
Limpid Intone (Psalmodie Limpide) 32’02”, musical excitement evolving into a kind of trance, the savage calm before the storm, a certain anxious serenity concealing a certain dark pressure, an underlying volcanic eruption of strings, for example. Charles Hayward’s stony refrain —repeat again— is repeated several times, and electronic effects whistle along with onomatopoeia, lending the score a sense of strangeness.
‘Mineral Knot’ 11’07”, hints of combative madness in this chaotic piece, stomping away with its soul in sharp, brief drum beats repeated throughout the track. The ample bass, in its raw curves, resonates powerfully in its rhythmic impulses, increasingly transformed into rocky reliefs, heralding the imminent start of a battle cry.
Charles Hayward’s incantations are haunting, devoid of sensitivity, leaving no room for dreams beneath their bleak structures. The tightly knit playing of the three soloists complements each other’s improvisations and challenges the ear. Inspired by Krautrock, with relentless rhythms, they continue their turbulent and tense instrumental twists and turns, the three artists merging into a single, powerful and dizzying frenzy. Makoto KAWABATA’s electric guitar fits into this demanding, delirious collective groove, spreading its notes, as tainted as they are congested and dark, into the chaos of the cacophony desired by the three musicians. – Marie MESMER, HIGHLANDS
Despite the band name Uneven Eleven is effectively an improvising international ‘power trio’ featuring the Japanese guitarist Makoto Kawabata, Belgian bassist Guy Segers and British drummer / vocalist Charles Hayward. Of the three I’m most familiar with Hayward, having first heard him back in the 1970s when he was a member of Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera’s Quiet Sun project, appearing on that group’s only album release, 1975’s “Mainstream”. It’s an album that wears its age well and which features Hayward as an instrumentalist, vocalist and the composer of two of the tracks. He later founded the influential experimental rock band This Heat and its natural successor Camberwell Now before embarking on a solo career that has delivered a dozen albums under his own name.
Hayward has also been a serial collaborator across a range of musical genres, including membership of the trio Massacre with guitarist Fred Frith and bassist / producer Bill Laswell, a band with certain similarities to Uneven Eleven. More recently he has been a member of the collaborative quintet Abstract Concrete. Kawabata is the leader of the long running and still ongoing Japanese psychedelic rock band Acid Mothers Temple, with whom he has recorded prolifically since the foundation of the group in 1995. He has also worked with numerous other groups in addition to being a prolific solo artist. Guy Segers is best known as a member of the Belgian instrumental rock band Univers Zero, an act that recorded some fifteen albums between 1977 and 2023. Currently Segers leads the similarly prolific Eclectic Maybe Band and previously led the group Emergent Sea. He too is a serial collaborator across a range of genres and has also worked as an electronic musician in a long running duo with flautist / keyboard player Roland Binet. Segers has also played alongside Kawabata as a member of Acid Mothers Temple. At one time or another all three members of Uneven Eleven have worked with an edition of Gong.
Although “Live in Brighton” was only released in October 2025 it was actually recorded in May 2013 at the now sadly defunct Brighton venue Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar. That same tour also yielded two other live albums recorded at London’s Cafe Oto.
“Live in Brighton” features just three tracks, all wholly improvised, that last in excess of twenty one minutes, thirty two minutes and eleven minutes respectively. Yet the music never sounds like ‘free improv’ or ‘free jazz’ in the usual sense. Powered by Hayward’s indefatigable drumming it combines jazz chops with rock energy and a near punk spirit and often sounds as if it may have been written. It was recorded live by Mark Lang and later mixed by Segers.
Album opener “Knead The Beat” sets the tone, a twenty one minute outpouring of energy that emerges out of a swirling atmospheric intro featuring the sounds of electronic effects, presumably generated by the FX pedals of both Kawabata and Segers. Once Hayward starts to lay down an implacable beat that some have compared favourably to the ‘motorik’ rhythms of Krautrock, and particularly Jaki Leibezeit of Can and Klaus Dinger of Neu! we have lift off. The music might be relentless and full on but there’s still plenty of variety on offer thanks to the rich panoply of sounds generated by Kawabata at the guitar who deploys his full range of FX to the max, and then some, and at times also plays the instrument with a bow a la Stian Westerhus. Fabienne Cresens’ photographs on the album sleeve offer visual evidence of this and it also looks as if Segers is playing a six string electric bass. Segers’ low register bass rumble often occupies the middle ground between Kawabata’s overdriven guitar and Hayward’s tumultuous drum onslaught but he raises his head above the parapet periodically, adopting a slightly higher register when his bass playing takes the lead. It’s a genuine musical white knuckle ride given an extra frisson of danger by the cockney-fied sneer of Hayward’s punk like vocalising, although the recording quality makes it difficult to make too much sense of the words, which are presumably spur of the moment, stream of consciousness utterings anyway. Following Hayward’s vocal interjection the performers embrace both extra energy and extra complexity as the music races towards the finish, with Segers’ bass again coming to the fore at times. There’s a final sonic assault from Kawabata’s guitar before the energy finally dissipates and the music seems to collapse in on itself like the audio equivalent to a black hole. Stunning stuff. What an exciting start.
The thirty two minute “Limpid Intone” (Psalmodie Limpide) again begins relatively quietly, but there’s a simmering tension there right from the start as the three instrumentalists intertwine, with Hayward’s drum explosions hinting at further musical fireworks to come. Sure enough the trio are soon locking into another motorik style drum groove, with Segers providing a counter bass motif. Kawabata feeds of these sources of musical stimulation, his chiming guitar figure at the front of this hypnotic three pronged musical assault. Hayward’s “repeat again” vocal refrain emphasises the relentless nature of a music that possesses its listeners and which threatens to trample everything in its path. The spirits of Neu!, and particularly Can, are definitely stalking the room and one can imagine the audience in Brighton willingly embracing a trance like state, the sheer force of the music is irresistible. Eventually there’s a shift in direction but the music remains strange and compelling with heavily distorted guitar now surfing the beats. The music later becomes more chunky and angular with drums and bass variously coming to the fore, with Segers giving notice of his virtuosity before the trio lock together again for a relentless, high energy finish.
The album concludes with the eleven minute “Mineral Knot”, which I suspect may have been an encore on the night. It’s instigated by Hayward at the kit, who punctuates his drum groove with vocal exclamations as Segers locks in with an eerie bass rumble and Kawabata unleashes a wall of wailing feedback, this is a trio that looks to Hendrix as well as to Krautrock. The trio then mesh together with a cerebrally funky collective groove topped by Hayward’s mantra like vocals, a chant centred around the words “beautiful heartbreak”.
It may have been recorded more than a decade ago but it’s great to have this music out there and available. It still sounds fresh and exciting and just bristles with energy and invention, especially as it’s collectively improvised rather than written. Things cohere remarkably well and this trio of experienced improvisers have developed an impressive collective rapport as well as standing out as individuals. Uneven Eleven constitutes a real musical juggernaut.
I enjoyed this album a lot, swept along by both the raw power and the creative energy of the music, even in the comfort of my own home. What it must have been like to be there on the night I can only enviously imagine. Yes, the music can maybe get a little too repetitive at times but the sheer power and energy of the music more than makes up for that, ultimately it’s thrilling, exciting and uncompromising stuff. Kawabata, Segers and Hayward are all virtuosos on their respective instruments, and Hayward’s sheer stamina is something to be admired too as he consistently stokes the improvisatory fires with both drums and voice. I appreciate that this is music that won’t suit all ears but it gets a definite thumbs up and a recommendation from me for those who are into this kind of thing, including adventurous rock fans who may in any case be familiar with these players from other projects. – Ian Mann, JAZZMANN https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/uneven-eleven-live-in-brighton
The cover image is of a bridge stretching across the strand. Is this the parapet in Brighton, England, that Uneven Eleven — really a trio — might have passed twelve years ago on their way to Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar, where this album was recorded? Does it point to more abstract concepts of connection across spaces and styles? Is it a metaphor for this intercontinental supergroup of Makoto Kawabata (Japan), Guy Segers (Belgium), and Charles Hayward (UK)? Whatever its meaning, it is a simple and colloquial image, and the shading and pixelated quality make something of a memory scrap or ephemera, a hazy snapshot from a prior time, bright sky with an ominously looming swathe of storm clouds, and all.
I focus on the image because Live in Brighton is something of a throwback. It is hard to shake a patchwork of influences decades arear. Almost any rock-infused guitar-bass-drum trio invites comparisons to the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Especially with Segers and Hayward’s (relatively) barebones scaffolding and Kawabata’s love for multihued and feedback-laden sonic eruption, the Hendrix influence is effusive. However, the parallels that stick out most lie in 1980s postpunk experimentalism. Segers, of Univers Zero and Eclectic Maybe Band fame, leans away from the grander gestures of his proggier projects and, instead, settles into a series of raw and gummy grooves that sometimes pull on earlier traditions (he even quotes “Sunshine of Your Love” for a few measures in the opener, “Knead the Beat”) but generally call to mind later, grungier traditions. For his part, he sways between Joe Lally’s boxy architectural figures and Mike Watt’s nervous itineracy, though I imagine these parallels reside more with me than Segers.
Charles Hayward, of This Heat fame, is a perfect complement and similarly strips down his role to heavy, clunky rhythm. No pretentions. Just driving beats and heavy, miasmic, feedback-draped jams. At times, Hayward barks some lyrics from behind his set, seemingly marking transitions in tempo and trajectory through sloganeering. “In Limpid Intone”, the 30-minute second piece, he even seems to channel Ian Curtis, and Kawabata and Segers prove more than content to join the seance.
The final selection, “Mineral Knot”, has a halting 5/4 cadence, where the stumbling fourth beat keeps the song from untangling and launching into the stratospheric open jam that always seems just a half-minute away. Instead, the trio captures and controls the energy, juggles it, stretches it over long distances — like the bridge on the cover, framed with neither beginning nor end — examines its congeries of knots and gnarls, but, in the end, allows the energy to die out on its own accord in a psychedelic ambient fog. A fittingly dank and mesmeric ending to a thoroughly rocking outing. – Nick Ostrum, SQUID’S EAR https://www.squidco.com/cgi-bin/news/newsView.cgi?newsID=3001
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