Jack Goldstein of the band Fixers tells Tim Hughes why he is leaving behind psychedelic rock for a night of music by avant-garde composer John Cage

WHEN it comes to new music Oxford band Fixers have never been ones to take the easy road.

Constantly experimenting, the avant-garde indie-rockers delight, surprise and confound with an approach which sees them pushing the boundaries of what we expect from a band. Quite simply, you just don’t know what’s going to happen next.

But even that inventiveness and rapier-sharp genius doesn’t quite explain frontman Jack Goldstein’s latest project.

Having assembled a cabal of like-minded musicians, he will perform an evening of music by one of the 20th century’s most enigmatic and controversial composers – John Cage.

The night will see Jack, bandmates Roo Bhasin and Chris Dawson; jazz-rock improvisationalist Ian Staples, from the band Red Square; and Max Levy, who plays under the name King of Cats, playing some of the late American writer’s most challenging compositions – including a piece which essentially consists of four minutes and 33 seconds of silence.

I caught up with Jack to ask one question: why?

“As a band we have elements of being sonically unhinged,” he says. “We are influenced by a lot of ‘60s psychedelic music but also more avant-garde stuff. And one of the most influential is John Cage who is among the most famous avant-garde composers.

“After Stockhausen he is probably the best well known avant-garde composer of the past century. But even though lots of people’s music may have been influenced by Cage, you don’t get a lot of young bands playing it. And I just wanted to do it.”

It is the best possible answer. But even for a fan with a missionary zeal for spreading his music, Jack admits it is not easy.

“It’s hard music to perform,” he says. “But it is easy to understand and get your head around. It’s what you get from it. I like the idea of doing stuff and learning from it.”

One thing Jack is not doing, is preaching to the converted – though, he insists, fans of 20th century avant-garde music are more than welcome. The Eynsham artist is sharing his enthusiasm for Cage’s music with a wider audience of music-lovers who may otherwise be put off attending such a concert. Which is why he is staging it not in the immaculate acoustic surroundings of a smart concert hall but in a room above an Oxford pub.

“We decided to put it on at the Port Mahon,” he says. “It’s not being paternalistic, though. The pieces we have chosen are interesting and adaptable and I like the idea of doing it at the pub with all its smells and clattering sounds going on.

“There is something great about it.”

They will give a taste of the evening at an in-store performance at the Truck Store, in Cowley Road. He says: “We will drop by and play a piece called Inlets, from 1977. It is not performed much, but involves different sized conch shells and the sound of burning pine,” he says.

It’s all a long way from the sun-kissed psychedelia which initially saw them signed to Vertigo Records and headline a stage at the Reading and Leeds Festivals.

“Playing this music is the equivalent of someone giving you a very long narrow tube,” he adds. “Cage is saying ‘there are no limitations but only within strict limitations’.

“The hardest thing is doing what Cage is telling you to do. The most interesting thing, though, is finding ways of making new sounds. You have to open your mind to finding new ways of doing stuff.”

The show follows the 100th anniversary of the birth of the composer, who was a pioneer of indeterminacy and chance-controlled music and of using instruments in unusual ways. Cage was greatly influenced by Eastern philosophies such as Zen Buddhism and the Chinese I Ching.

Jack’s performance will include a rendition of 4’33” – a three-part piece in which the musicians do nothing, the idea being that the listener creates their own understanding by listening to background sounds from the surrounding environment – in this case, a busy pub.

“That piece is one of the few things people know about Cage, and it’s always dragged out as a piece of anti-music,” says Jack. “As a kid I wouldn’t have considered listening to Cage. I thought it was rubbish. But interestingly enough, it’s got a lot to do with psychedelia, which is also random and crazy in its way and which is an extension of his music.”

They will also play the 1959 piece Indeterminacy, which consists of 90 stories, each lasting one minute, to piano accompaniment. Yet another piece features one second of silence, which Jack performs for me, with a smile. He accepts, I suspect, an element of playfulness in some of this, but also something deeper.

“As far as Cage is concerned, there’s a lot more to music,” he says. “He was aware that music doesn’t need to convey a message. It is more about what sounds are there.

One thing the evening certainly isn’t, he says is a Fixers gig.

“I’m not concerned at all about people knowing who is performing these pieces,” he says. “We have got to perform without expression which is good, but also hard as there is a lot of absurdity, humour and beauty as well as interesting nuances, craziness and insanity.

“I’m aware people will come down as they know it’s us performing, but that doesn’t matter. And I’m not trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes. On the contrary, I want to open their eyes.

“I have no preconceptions as to how people might act at this show. If people turn up and are surprised, that’s great. But if people turn up and find it funny, that’s also great.”

An Evening of John Cage takes place at the Port Mahon, St Clement’s, Oxford on January 12. Doors 8pm. Go to wegottickets.com