Percy Jones

Percy Jones (born 3 December 1947) is a Welsh bass guitarist best known as a member of the jazz rock ensemble Brand X, with whom he played during three stints: 1974 to 1980, 1992 to 1999, and 2016-2020, with the group ending shortly before the passing of their founding guitarist John Goodsall in 2021.

Jones, who was born near Llandrindod Wells, has also done extensive work as a session musician, and has been active with other groups. He played with a trio called Stone Tiger (featuring guitarist Bill Frisell) in 1982/83. Jones was also one of the driving forces behind Tunnels, a fusion collective which released four albums between 1994-2006. While residing in New York, he also worked with the improvising group MJ12.

Jones was also briefly a member of the group Soft Machine in 1976, the "poetry rock" group The Liverpool Scene (featuring poet Adrian Henri) in the late 1960s, and has contributed to albums by prominent artists such as Kate Bush, David Sylvian, Brian Eno, Steve Hackett, Suzanne Vega, Richard Barbieri, Fovea Hex, Mark Wingfield, and Paranoise, amongst others.

He released the solo album Cape Catastrophe in 1990. In 2021, he started touring and recording with an improvisational ensemble called PAKT, featuring guitarists Alex Skolnick and Tim Motzer, and drummer Kenny Grohowski.

Artistry

Jones's playing style incorporates an unconventional three-finger right hand technique to pluck the strings (like Les Claypool and, before him, John Entwistle), in contrast to most bassists using two fingers. He also employs sliding harmonics. Over the years, he has employed various other extended techniques, such as deliberately pulling the strings (5 string bass) over the edges of the fingerboard (creating a distinctive buzzing rattle) and thumb-on-the-fingerboard left hand technique to achieve wider-interval double stops than are normally possible. and has expressed admiration for many British blues bands.

Electronics work

Jones studied Electronic Engineering at the University of Liverpool, and has used his electronics skills to potent effect in music over the years. In the late 1970s, he designed and built various analog signal processors for use with his bass guitar, perhaps the most unusual of which was an amplitude- and frequency-sensitive flanger that would vary the character of its flanging effect based on what notes were being played into it, and how loudly they were being played. He also designed an envelope-controlled VCF (Voltage Controlled Filter), which can be heard to good effect on "Noddy Goes to Sweden" from Brand X's 1980 album Do They Hurt?, as well as an analog drum machine, which featured preset rhythms in various (odd) time signatures, such as 15/16.

Jones is an avid amateur radio operator and has developed several innovative, compact antenna designs for the HF bands utilized by amateur radio.

Discography Solo Propeller Music (1990) Cape Catastrophe (1990) The Bang (1991; later rereleased as Bang! in 2011) with Tim Berne, Bobby Previte, Mark Feldman, Herb Robertson, and Matteo Ederle Percy Jones and Tunnel (1993) with Tunnel Percy Jones Scott McGill Ritchie DeCarlo (2010) with Scott McGill and Ritchie DeCarlo

With Brand X Studio Unorthodox Behaviour (1976) Moroccan Roll (1977) Masques (1978) Product (1979) Do They Hurt? (1980) Is There Anything About? (1982) Xcommunication (1992) Manifest Destiny (1997) Missing Period (1998)

Live Livestock (1977) Live at the Roxy LA (1979, released 1995) Live from Chicago (2015) Live from Stockholm (2016) But Wait, There's Still more! (2017) Locked and Loaded (2018)

Compilation The Plot Thins: A History of Brand X (1992) X-Files: A 20 Year Retrospective (1999), compilation including side projects Timeline (2000) Trilogy (2003)