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Kaufmann / Gratkowski / de Joode - Kwast

Achim Kaufmann / Frank Gratkowski / Wilbert de Joode
Kwast

Konnex 5129

Kwast is an apparently all-improvised recording for Gratkowski’s reeds (here consisting of clarinet, alto sax, and contrabass clarinet) Kaufmann’s piano, and de Joode’s string bass. Perhaps 90% of it can be placed comfortably the "modern classical" boat, and, as such, it compares quite favorably with, e.g. Graewe’s Other Songs or DeChellis's Under Careful Watch.... Each of the nine mid-length tracks here has plenty of substance, drama, sensitivity and virtuosity. Apparently, Gratkowski and Kaufmann first met while studying at the Conservatory of Music in Cologne, and this fact is unsurprising, given the close similarity of their styles. When they’re fast, they’re furious, when they slow down, they exhibit a Bergian languor. One can guess that they listened to a fair amount of Webern, Schoenberg, Boulez, and Carter during those student days and nights in what used to be the avant-garde music capitol of the world. De Joode seems a bit less comfortable in this context, however, and sometimes just seems along for the ride. He tries—and generally succeeds— in doing pretty much what the other guys are doing, but I’m not sure he adds as much value to the proceedings as Joelle Leandre or Kent Carter might have. Whether considered as part of a trio or as a duo plus continuo, however, Kaufmann and Gratkowski certainly kick ass here. Gratkowski has been widely impressing the free improv scene with both his writing and improvisatory skills for at least a decade, so perhaps not much must be repeated here about his architectural prowess and chops, but Kaufmann may be unknown to some of Grat’s followers. Unlike Graewe, who has also been a good foil for Gratkowski both in concert and on disc, Kaufmann has the merit of knowing when to shut up. He can let loose with Ligeti or Cecil inspired fire without feeling the need to burn down an entire continent over and over again and again. He understands, that is, that he can also provide excellent input even when he isn't hammering or arpeggiating as if in some sort of contest. Those who enjoy Kaufmann here, should also check out his recent solo outing on Leo, Knives. It’s equally impressive.

Walter Horn

Serge Baghdassarians / Boris Baltschun / Alessandro Bosetti / Michel Doneda - Strom

Serge Baghdassarians / Boris Baltschun / Alessandro Bosetti / Michel Doneda
Strom
Potlatch
P 204

I admit that my first thought upon seeing this disc was, “There goes Jacques with his soprano players again!” Happily, “Strom” manages to achieve a strong, harsh balance between the reeds and the electronics employed, resulting in a cleansing, abrasive bath of sound.

The first of six pieces begins with sharp, sandy whistles from Doneda and Bosetti, augmented in kind by Baghdassarians (guitar and mixing desk—incidentally, no recognizable guitar sounds are to be found herein) and Baltschun (sampler—possibly one operated along Sachiko M lines?). This sets up the general mode of the disc, the four musicians remaining within touching distance of each other, intertwining with enough ease so as to often make distinguishing who’s doing what a futile exercise. The saxophonists favor long, whooshing lines, lending the pieces an automotive sense of forward thrust. The evocation of metal scraping metal, like old train wheels making a tight bend in the track, is almost inescapable. Things edge several more steps into brutality with the next track (all are titled “Stromung”, I, II, III, etc.), rasping flutters high and low, pinging flanges, massive engines beneath the floor, subsiding just a bit as the evening shift takes over. While that might be the single most impressive piece here, none of the others falls far short. Each is wonderfully self-contained, both concentrating on a given sound-area and still leaving the feeling of unconstrainedness. “Strom V” is quieter at its start but no less disturbing for its guttural belches and thin wheezes and it too erupts into a fantastic spray. The last selection, atwitter with spittle and buzz from the beginning, is a fine conclusion, blasting through subterranean passages, up into heavy traffic and out into the icy night air.

It’s an excellent recording, matching the strongest work I’ve heard from all of these musicians individually. Highly recommended.

~ Brian Olewnick

Alberto Pinton Quintet - The Visible

Moserobie 022

By now, it is quite possible to discuss Ken Vandermark as an influential jazz figure. This comes as something to a surprise to an observer such as myself, for, like many, I was distracted throughout much for the 1990's by the Wynton Wars. But the din of that decades clashing slogans had faded fast -- so it seems -- and now critics have no excuse but to try and puzzle out just how this earnest, flat-topped kid from America's heartland -- the region that spawned REO Speedwagon, Styx, and Head East ("Save my life I'm going down for the last time / woman with the sweet loving better than a white lie / bring a good feeling ain't happened such a long time…") -- has become such a defining figure, both in "American jazz" as well as in certain categories of "European improv".

Vandermark's success, I think, is a rare testament to the efficacy of being a true believer. His constant name-checks of great musical figures of the past (and present) are not simply attempts to anchor his own music in some great tradition or canon. Vandermark's tributes are true "shout-outs": they are a form of advertising, an attempt to turn listeners on in the best -- i.e., most genial -- Comic Book Guy fashion. Ask yourself honestly: would Peter Brötzmann enjoy the reputation he now enjoys were it not for his Chicago connections? There's something quintessentially all-American about being so proud of one's influences, of holding on to one's heroes, so that one can natter on and on about them without coming off like a shill. See, vim, that's the key. Enthusiasm; like the man says, it's contagious, right?

Of course, the same enthusiasm infects Vandermark's many records. And, like all great passions, his is mostly indiscriminate, encompassing as it does everything from Jimmy Giuffre's sere pastorales to the suave lurching of prog rock rhythms (think of how you might bang your head to King Crimson's Red). Vandermark, of course, is very well connected in Sweden, and the form of free improvisation specialized in by collectives such as AALY and The Thing represents the ne plus ultra of his aesthetic. Which brings me to this new release from baritone saxophonist / clarinetist Alberto Pinton and his Stockholm quintet: Mats Älekint (trombone), Mattias Ståhl (vibraphone and marimba), Torbjörn Zetterberg (bass), and Jon Fält (drums). Here is music that proudly proclaims its debt to tradition, aims for urgency and authenticity rather than fizz and thrills, welcomes fugitive tonalities and formal experimentation, and refuses to make any aesthetic compromise in order to have all that it wants -- all in 45 lean minutes.

Cliché that it is, nonetheless the group comes storming out on the disc's first two pieces, "Hammerhead" and "Interference". Both themes possess a muscular intricacy, and each player exerts himself accordingly. Pinton, who loves slumming it in the lowest registers of his baritone sax, is nevertheless fiesty, almost reckless, reeling off phrases at near-quadruple time. Älekint takes a more woozy, legato approach, molasses to the saxophonist's four-alarm salsa. Zetterberg's bass line rumbles as it paces around unpredictable intervals, and Fält -- a truly impressive player who is quite attuned to Pinton -- is all over kit but never loses the swing in the battery of little sounds (woodblocks, triangles, tambourines [I would swear]) with which he surrounds himself. The percussionist's approach is an inventive mixture indeed: equal parts Baby Dodds, Paul Lytton, and Gary Young. Vibist Ståhl, meanwhile, has the most difficult role to fill in this ensemble. Not only is the bass clef so dominant here, but the mix itself emphasizes the ensemble's darker colors and the music's complexity over the clarity of individual instrumental voices. Appropriately, Ståhl's own timbre is chunkily spectral rather than tinkly. Whatever light he brings to the music is more like the glow cast by a jack o'lantern than the sparkle thrown off by the precious stone woven into a cold evening's costume. Come to think of, there is something magical about the way the ensemble eases into "Interference"'s big, almost ridiculous but grin-inducing, riff.

Unfortunately, the third piece, "Days" is symptomatic of the problem that plagues the center of The Visible's program: mushiness. There is really nothing wrong with the compositions themselves per se, which are solid, if a little four-square. Or with the improvising, which stays in character. But, like the early boppers, these young players are still searching for a comfortable approach to ballad or down-tempo material, and their uncertainty causes them to swoon occasionally into a bland volubility. "For Them" is the exception that proves that rule, a lovely, pensively bitter piece that features an affecting marimba solo and Pinton's best John Carter-via-Vinny Golia clarinet solo of the date. The one work here tinged with blue, "For Them" would have made a satisfying album closer, but Pinton has attached the "Mirror For Contra-Alto Clarinet". An exploration of the rich sonorities that this little-heard member of the clarinet family can produce, and a sensitive duet (midway through) with Fält, but it would have worked better as a prologue than a postscript.

A certain generic amount of generic music is inevitable with the Vandermark(-derived) approach, however, and the end results are often so endearing and "uncool" that such lapses are more easily forgiven than not. The Visible is, after all, quite enjoyable and easy listening by and for jazz geeks. No pejoratives intended, honestly. Only jazz geeks could reference Eric Dolphy's Out To Lunch as creatively as Pinton and his colleagues do. Both recordings share the same basic instrumentation. And both recordings sustain a mood of disturbed meditation. Dolphy employs open spaces -- caesurae? -- within his compositional structures as well as within his piano-less ensemble, with the result that the music seems like very sheer material stretched thin, almost transparently so in spots, over the void. Pinton, however, pits poses against themselves. That is, the longer the flex is held, the more concentration it requires, and the more imminent it breaking looms. Pinton's music only seems brawny, just as the braininess of Dolphy's music is misleading. Out To Lunch is the greater achievement, of course, but Pinton is to be admired for even daring to match his wits against a master. He is also to be congratulated for producing such entertaining results. As many of Ken Vandermark's projects are, The Visible may be yet another chess match against a canny old-timer, a jazz classic. The key difference, though, is one of attitude. Dig: Pinton's is the kind of cold-eyed, jack-hammer precise, swiftly meting yet balls-out strategy that stokes the gents even as it impresses all the ladies la-deezzz.

~ Joe Milazzo

Sounding a New Note

The sorry state of jazz radio just got a stiff shot in the arm. One Final Note celebrated its inaugural broadcast on the airwaves last night with what is slated to be a regular Monday night slot on KFAI Community Radio here in the Twin Cities. An off-shoot of OFN the creative music webzine it’s sure to carry the same high caliber content in aural form.

I stayed up past my bed time and caught Scott Hreha in the DJ chair as he spun silver platters by Ted Sirota, Jeff Parker, Fay Victor (so great to hear her disc getting some play), Billy Bang, The Revolutionary Ensemble & Gold Sparkle Trio + Ken Vandermark. Missed the remainder of the set list as drooping eyes and a fatigue-fogged mind necessitated retreat to my lady’s beckoning boudoir. But I plan to be as much of a repeat listener as the Monday night grind allows. Scott's got his ear carefully attuned to the cadence of new releases & future shows are certain to feature more slam-bang music.

So crank that dial to 90.3 FM either the old-fashioned way if you’re in the area & within reach of the tower's signal, or via the space-time defying power of web-stream and check it out. Oh, and do tell a friend or ten too.

Fred Lonberg-Holm - Dialogs

Emanem 4109

Dialogs may seem a counter-intuitive title for a collection of solo improvs, but in the case of cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm the quixotic mantle fits. Cradling his dinged and battered instrument (pictured both on cover and traycard insert) between his crossed legs he sets about hatching a program of music heavy with odor of idiosyncrasy and irascibility. Aiding him in the enterprise are a handful of added accoutrements- listed in the notes as small speakers, test amps, piezos and motors- taped, glued and wired to various surfaces giving the contraption a cyborg-like appearance. Organic wood wedded with synthetic circuitry and metal- a duality that plays out in the ongoing duel/dance between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ tones.

Lonberg-Holm is notorious for devising nefarious ways to torture and persecute his cellos. He’s one of the few arbiters on the instrument who can easily equal the cacophony of an amp-cranked guitar by playing purely acoustic. Plugged in watch out because any speakers in the vicinity are likely to fulminate and even detonate under the compressed din. That might resemble fawning hyperbole, but it’s not far from the truth. His own canny, quirky personality feels at odds with the violence meted out his defenseless implement.

The disc’s eight pieces are assigned simple sequential numbers to differentiate them. Lonberg-Holm keeps all but two to modest running times. At fifty-four minutes it’s terse for an Emanem outing. Through all manner of rubbing, scraping, sawing and plucking a full range of ferrous and alien sounds spool out from the tautly wound strings.

On the opener he carves a tuneless jig pocked with air horn harmonics. Moments of outright lyricism are few and striking when they do occur. Track two opens with an ear-piercing sustained tone that bruises while it stupefies veering off into a jumble of knife-edged drones and puttering stops. The piece finds focus in a coarse colloquy between slicing arco streaks and a sustained mechanized drone. Suddenly Lonberg-Holm sharpens bow pressure mimicking the machine in a scribbling swathe of nose-bleed register modulations. The action ends with a skein of finespun chamber-style sonorities that fritter away into silence.

Track five finds him aping the plink-plonk pitches of guzheng or komungo. Track six involves noises that sound alternately like a swarm of mosquitoes and a muted outboard motor. Number seven, the most overtly mellifluous of the clutch, traces ribbons of whirring harmonics that almost take on the sonic cast of Scottish bagpipes. The remainder of the set follows a minefield course fraught with sonances that would take reams of paper and subjective prose to qualify. Some of the more abstruse maneuvering struck me as overly enigmatic and mileage may vary, but this is an introspective expedition almost certain to transfix intrepid ears.

~ Derek Taylor

United States of Belt - Pancake Alley

Chloe 005/Champ 05

Boston’s creative music scene is one of the richest in the country, yet some of its best players and activities are well below even ardent improv fans’ radar. Outside of the more familiar forms of jazz and free improvisation, the city boasts a developing and very rich community interested equally in non-idiomatic improvisation, electro-acoustic music, and, for lack of a better term, New Music. One of that scene’s key figures is bassist Mike Bullock, whose imprint Chloe Records teams up on this fascinating release with Champ Records, who have previously released the creations of the fascinating Troy, NY group United States of Belt.

What better time to reflect upon the sonic meanings of the United States than now, when the stunned silence following the Presidential election opens up a huge void. By turns hilarious, sentimental, and intensely challenging, United States of Belt’s performances – two long tracks, “Ping Pong Holiday” and “Sleepytown Breakfast” – are constructed from field recordings collected and assembled during the band’s travels around the country. The musicians themselves (the liners identify “featured players” – Vic Rawlings on banjo and electronics, Erika Tompkins on blueberry pancakes, and Jordan Tinker as narrator – though I’m not sure who the other participants, or even the principals, are) apparently formulated the concept of “an imaginary town on a riverside with many attractions.” And this general carnivalesque approach isn’t a bad angle onto the fascinating, Barnum-like panoply of sounds here.

The collected recordings were orchestrated – given a narrative, if you will – and then smashed together live in Boston’s Cyclorama, described as “a huge, cylindrical building with a unique sound open and reverberant.” That explains where the crashing, submarine sounds come from; and the overall effect is pretty powerful. Stock pieces of sonic Americana bounce and crash everywhere, as if they were ghosts trying to escape some spirit-prison of nostalgia. Disparate voices cry out in solitude (a man cautiously repeating “Hello? Hello?” or a churchified organ) and merge together (a corny, nasal rendition of the national anthem colliding with massive metallic sounds). “Sleeptown Breakfast” begins softly, ominously, sounding almost like a cascade of thumbtacks clattering across a tin roof until a lonely train whistle catalyzes a dizzying stream of events once more. Strange highlight abound, most provocatively what sounds like a Chinese folk song bouncing along a pulse track of whooshing water and car engine noises.

Folks around here listen to a lot of stuff, most of it – good or bad – falling within certain well-defined parameters. This release is not only immediately pleasing, but welcome in the way it eludes conventional genre. As dense as an Elliott Carter composition, as familiar as the street parade calliope and fireworks that close the disc, this is fantastic stuff.

Joe Newman & Cootie Williams - Jazz at Midnight (Gitanes)

Cut-out bins can often be a music maven’s most efficacious supply chain. I discovered this unassuming slim-line two-fer on an afternoon jaunt to a local brick and mortar yesterday. The quirky coupling of Cootie Williams with organ first piqued my eye, but the presence of a Joe Newman 10” as opener wasn’t a bad bargain either. The Newman cuts find the Basie brass staple fronting what appears to be a pick-up septet in at a Parisian club. Frank Wess, another longtime member of the Count’s coterie, is the only other name I recognize in the ensemble the players make for a relatively tight unit roving through two long jams (the first book-ended by crackling solos by the leader) and a comparatively budget rendering of “Loverman,” where Wess lets his lust-light shine. Always nice to have a baritone saxophonist in a swing band’s ranks and Henry Cocker’s heavy horn adds a welcome gruff patina to the charts and in solo. Newman sounds a shade rangy in spots but the crew pours a lot of gusto into the date and keeps the swing meter needle tilted to the red. Concert fidelity is of its era, but the rhythm section gets a surprisingly fair shake in the mix. The Williams cuts are both curiosity and revelation. Cootie was an icon in twilight, the laurels of his Ellington years somewhat threadbare after a detour into commercial R&B and still years away from his belated reunion with the Duke. The chosen fare isn’t exactly fraught with risk. “Night Train” and “Mood Indigo” make predictable appearances, the latter achieving an ambience akin to if it had been lifted from an old Victrola. But Williams’ officiates the pick-up band of tenor, organ, guitar and drums, which sounds more like an early rock combo with its hot skittle grease organ ladled with plenty of shimmering Sun-Ra style distortion, hard chugging blues guitar and foursquare traps beats, with comfortable aplomb. Downright weird to hear his Armstrong-reminiscent bugle patterns fastened to such a chassis. All but the straight up juke joint blues sign-off “Three O’Clock in the Morning” (a reference to the music’s birthing hour?), which openly flouts the disc's title, allow room for lengthy solos. The group demonstrates their mettle at playing soft and syrupy too on "Lil' Darling." There’s a pleasing piebald texture to these cuts that rubs me right. All in all a stone cold steal for the five-spot shelled out.

Sonore - No One Ever Works Alone

Okkadisk 12053

Witnessing the Brötzmann Tentet- made in a matter of minutes a nonet by the sudden departure of saxophonist Mars Williams- at the ACME Fest this year, the impetus of this new Okkadisk emerges as elementary. Minus Mars that particular frontline had Joe McPhee’s tenor in the ranks, but the core reed phalanx still consisted of Herr Brötzmann, Gustafson and Vandermark. Hearing them blast full bore from the stage the natural inclination to wonder what they would sound like sans band seems a natural by-product.

Reeds-only ensembles aren’t the rare birds they once were with bands like ROVA and the WSQ still active. But Sonore doesn’t take their shared directive from any one page or precedence; the strong personalities of each member virtually mandate that. Given the caliber of the ordinance on hand the danger of blowing apart the gunwales and sinking the ship in a churning sea of histrionics weighs heavy. Brötzmann unsheathes most of the members of his horn arsenal including alto, tenor, a-clarinet, tarogato and the hulking bass sax. Gustafson and Vandermark stick to tenor and baritone with the latter also hoisting b-flat clarinet. The three wisely abstain from the temptation raze and roar uninterrupted without respite.

Seven collectively-devised pieces contain welcome compositional focus and relative restraint starting with the overlapping overtones opus “Elements of Refusal.” Vandermark bleats out a striated baritone vamp through bellowing honks while his partners spool and spindle atop with dueling tenors. The piece soon plummets into freeform polyphony, only to break again into a string of duets that move from lyrical to belligerent with Brötzmann’s tenor as the fulcrum. Gustafson’s gnarled reed pops preface the bleak fugue-like tapestry that is “Trees After A Fire” soon joined by the tandem droning of funereal clarinets. “Broken Hymn” shapes out of a ripping dialogue between Brötzmann and Gustafson and ruminative bass clarinet venture by Vandermark. Along with “Blessed Assurance, Uninsured” it contains some of Brötzmann’s most nakedly emotive playing as he traces a frayed thematic thread with a vacillating tone that is at once leathery and tender. These moments have become more frequent in his graybeard years and their presence here is most welcome.

Picking out who’s voicing what isn’t that difficult though there are times when the tangle of multiphonics becomes so dense that it feels as if there are far more than three souls conjuring the sounds. Stunningly layered harmonies regularly surface amongst the din. Wielding his bass sax like broadsword on “Death Can Only Kill Me Once” (how’s that for an archetypal Brötz title?) the German engages bass clarinet and then baritones in a note-splintering paean to the bottom register. The program’s closing pieces are shorter and less magisterial in scope concluding with the title track, an ornery fragment that leaves the sound floor wide open for more. Tapes from a tour by these three lie in the can. With luck the wait won’t be long for another slab of glorious noise to drop.

~ Derek Taylor

John Hudak/Jason Kahn/Bruce Tovsky - For the Time Being (Cut)

John Hudak/Jason Kahn/Bruce Tovsky
For the Time Being
Cut

A better way of writing the artist list would be like this: John Hudak w/ (Jason Kahn, Bruce Tovsky.) Hudak is the common term to both pieces on the disc, on the first he collaborates with Kahn, and Tovsky he works with on the 2nd. Both collaborations were recorded live; the one with Kahn was at the Diapason Gallery, located anomalously near Koreatown in midtown Manhattan (the only Gallery I know in the immediate vicinity), and the 2nd at the Roulette Festival of Mixology. I remember putting both of these dates into my mental calendar, and swearing profusely when I realized that I’d forgotten both.

There’s a type of experimental music that I haven’t figured out how to categorize yet. Maybe "circular music"? The best way to tell is to put the suspected piece on repeat and listen casually; when you’ve been through it a few times, pay close attention for a few moments and try to figure out where you are in it’s linear progression. If you can’t really figure it out, than that loss of temporal referent in a piece of experimental music is what I mean by circularity.

I suspect that this sort of thing has its roots in Satie, but I find it to have taken its highest form in the work of Maurizio Bianchi. I’ll quote a friend of mine, Jim Flannery, who wrote about this aspect of MB on an old post to DroneOn:

The evanescence of the experience had something to do with the composition (or "decomposition", as he called it) as well ... Bianchi's special talent was for draining any hint of perceptible goal-seeking out of the material: no tension/release, no elaboration/reaffirmation of pattern, no building to high pitch/volume, no satisfied settling back into a tonic, no triumph of consonance over dissonance (or vice versa), no drama, no program. No progress. No history. Just this *block* of *sound*.

Circularity has something to do with narrative, and the absence of linearity thereof. When it comes to Hudak and Kahn’s duo laptop collaboration, the movement seems as such. When their half of the disc is on, the record sounds as though it could have easily started as few hours ago, and will end a few days henceforth. It likely has something to do with the sounds themselves; it is as though Hudak and Kahn are controlling interlacing clouds of sounds: slow waves of static hiss, pulsed sinewaves, clanking percussion samples, low drones. You can pick the layers out of you listen closely, but the blur is both vertically across the sound field as it is across time. The overall impression one gets is of days where the mornings aren’t beginnings; look to college life when the days seem to be bracketed more by the writing of papers than by the rise and fall of the sun, where patterns and habits emerge and dissolve in quick succession, and life seems to move in overlapping, intersecting circles. Hudak and Kahn are far more poised in their execution of these sorts structures than students like me who stumble through it, but regardless, the logic seems about to be the same.

The 2nd piece on the disc, the collaboration of Tovsky and Hudak, however, is of no interest to me. Tovsky plucks iterative patterns on his guitar, treats them through his computer, loops them, speeds them up, and adds some more notes, while (from what I’m guessing) Hudak drones away in the background. I find their duo to be astronomically dull and a chore to listen to; the two layers have a tangential relationship at most, Tovsky’s guitar seems to be entirely digital in it’s output, most of its contribution occurs in the higher end of the frequency spectrum, whether by plucked notes, or glittery metallic sounds. Hudak makes sweeping, spacey guitar drones. I wouldn’t want to say that there’s nothing of merit on this section of the disc, only that whatever merit is there, I am deaf to.

Nullsoft No More

There's an interesting, MSN-sponsored piece on the demise of Justin Frankel's Nullsoft in today's Slate.

My favorite quote from Paul Boutin's article?

With Nullsoft gone and Frankel spending his time building a special-effects computer for his electric guitar, the old Winamp/Gnutella gang probably won't get back together for one more hit. Conventional wisdom says Frankel is more likely to join the millionaire has-beens who dot the hills in my San Francisco neighborhood or become a trophy hire at a tech startup, like contemporaries Fanning, Marc Andreessen, and Linus Torvalds.

Choice it may be, but all it can prompt from me is a soft and resigned chuckle. When asked what my career goals are, my most common response is "retirement." And, speaking from personal experience, I know how very, very old playing the enemy within an organization becomes. Its a good thing our kind are easily recycled. Besides, for every Mister Roberts, there is always an Ensign Pulver.

Consider this firecracker: Winamp may be your father's media player / ripper / burner, but, as an innovation, and as a cultural artifact, its contemporary importance cannot be over-estimated. "Digital asset management" is increasingly interpreted to be an individual right, inalienable or at least in need or protection, and our concepts of property are increasingly in flux -- mostly thanks to Winamp and the tools that followed in its wake. Really, Fankel's original application deserves to be in a museum of some sort, but, without much of a material reality, it really can;t be enshrined under glass.

Wait a minute; that's not much of a shame or so inappropriate after all.

3 False Walls

Tiny Hairs Coldless	Uchihashi Kazuhisa / Gene Coleman Storobo Imp.	Molar The Time and Motion Studies

False Walls

The Chicago improv label False Walls is pretty young – six releases in a little over two years – but already this imprint seems to be finding a quirky and interesting identity for itself. Based on these three very different albums, that identity so far seems to be an insistence on viewing the concept of “improvisation” in a much broader context than is usually imagined. Within this catalogue, there is a heavy emphasis on the idea of improvising, as most broadly defined, without worrying about the actual style of music that’s spontaneously produced. It’s a refreshing approach, and these three low-key discs all provide their share of simple pleasures without being particularly striking or revolutionary on their own merits.

Coldless is the sophomore disc from the Chicago sextet Tiny Hairs (their debut was also the first CD on False Walls). Initially, there’s not much here to suggest improvisation at all. The group plays very tightly, in a vaguely rock-inflected mode that sometimes recalls meditative post-rockers like Jackie-O Motherfucker, or the quiet moments of Godspeed You Black Emperor! It’s subtle, gentle, drifting rock, seemingly as tightly constructed as a premeditated composition. This is especially true of the moments when the group collectively swirls into an ambient murmur, or when the darker grind of feedback or violin drones threaten to unsettle the mood, only for everything to re-coalesce into its former hazy subtlety. This fog hangs over everything on the album, and the hour of music here has a hallucinatory quality that’s affecting and emotional for exactly as long as it takes to play the CD. Afterwards, that mood dissipates almost immediately, a transient calm that’s easily disrupted once the music stops playing.

The collaboration between Japanese guitarist Uchihashi Kazuhisa and the transplanted American clarinetist Gene Coleman provides an entirely different perspective on improv, one that will be much more familiar to aficionados of the European plink-and-plonk approach. Kazuhisa, in the contexts I’ve heard him, is an incredibly diverse and versatile musician, tending towards psychedelic guitar fuzz and drones, but here he and Coleman seem united in a much minimalist (even pointillist) sound. They approach their duo as a blank space, filled with spiky intrusions of sound that make brief splashy pinpricks of color on the surface. Not that Storobo Imp is in the near-silent school of improv most notably practiced, of late, by another Japanese guitarist, Taku Sugimoto. That’s just not Kazuhisa’s style, and there are a lot of pinpricks here – individually, they remain small and indistinct in a vast white field, but taken together they create quite a lively mess of sounds. The album is book-ended by two longish tracks on which Kazuhisa plays guitar and electronics, and one of the album’s best stretches occurs on the first track, when he provides a shimmering high-pitched drone over which Coleman improvises some stuttery but quite melodic playing. On the five briefer tracks in the middle of the album, Kazuhisa plays the daxophone, an obscure instrument made from vibrating wooden strips, which sounds eerily like a human voice. On these tracks, the plaintive cries of the daxophone blend in better with Coleman’s jittery playing, but this actually works to the album’s disadvantage. Without the foil of Kazuhisa’s more stable droning electronics and crisp guitar tones, Coleman’s playing comes off as indulgent and wanky. And there’s not much to Kazuhisa’s playing here, either, beyond the novelty of its odd sound.

Finally, Molar’s Time and Motion Studies is yet another very different stance on improvisation. Molar is an electronic trio whose music is a thick, crisply digital take on improv, incorporating some guitar and keyboards as sound sources but relying on heavy live processing and manipulation. It’s another layer of improv that’s become prominent – even passé – since the widespread use of laptops has allowed musicians to incorporate techniques formerly associated with post-production directly into a live performance. What Molar comes up with on this album is rhythmic and propulsive, more closely linked to techno than to fellow electronic improvisers like Fennesz or the Mego laptop crew. It’s a pleasant and fairly relaxing of down-tempo electronics, easily transitioning between more experimental parts (the gorgeous layered drones on the appropriately named “Pulse”) and more beat-centered sections.

On the basis of these three albums, False Walls at the very least promises a somewhat different perspective in a world of increasingly tight specialization, with improv labels pigeonholing themselves into aesthetic corners and narrow definitions of improvisation. These albums may not provide anything truly stunning or original to chew on, but they are each a window onto a different way of improvising, a different outlook on spontaneity. That in itself is reason to give this label a closer look, and to hope for greater things in its future.

~ Ed Howard

+Minus - A Rainy Koran Verse

+Minus
A Rainy Koran Verse
Trente Oiseaux
TOC043

“A Rainy Koran Verse” is a quick follow-up to +Minus’ first disc, released earlier this year (and one of my favorite recent recordings). This one consists of three live performances, or sections thereof, recorded in May 2004 during an English tour. Before I get to the music, I’d like to mention one interesting extra-musical aspect of the disc: the “liner notes”, which include photos and a fun-to-read tour diary by Mark Wastell, are included on the disc itself in .pdf format. It’s a nice idea, one I wouldn’t at all mind seeing become more popular, at least for those musicians concerned with elaborating verbally (and graphically) on their work. In this case, I was happy to read of the source for the lovely cover photo as well as the derivation of the disc’s title. Before learning of its genesis, I was convinced it was an anagram and was intent on sitting down and “solving” it.

As on the prior disc, the modus operandi is for Gunter to supply “basis tracks” (pre-existing, generally drone-like electronic compositions) often augmented by live playing on his recently invented cellotar while Halliwell confines his alto work (as nearly as I can tell) exclusively to feedback, something he does superbly. Wastell, in the interim, has abandoned his “amplified textures” and works directly with tam-tam, bowed prayer bowls, snare drum and bells. My problem, such as it is, with this alignment is that all three musicians often end up occupying a very narrow sonic sliver, all in the mid to high range, ringing hum sphere. Now, I can easily see where the subtle variations within a tightly focused stratum could make for fascinating listening. Alvin Lucier’s juxtapositions of sine waves with equally pitched instruments, for example, set up all manner of amazing aural moiré patterns. Here, for the most part, I just don’t get that same sense of absorbance, I don’t lose myself in the drones. Part of me feels like I’m simply missing something, but repeated listenings have, more often than not, failed to transport this listener. There are moments in each section, such as when Wastell switches to brushed snare in the opening track, where my interest gets piqued, but they tend to be more episodic than thought through. Gunter’s cellotar lines, when the instrument’s being played more or less like a traditional cello, can take on an appealing, slightly Romantic character and occasionally, as happens toward the end of the first track, the trio sounds rather startlingly like a section of one Gavin Bryar’s subtler pieces. It’s a nice area, one I’d love to hear developed further.

The second track worked most successfully for me, largely due to the handfuls of sonic grit tossed into the mix. It’s not an overt change, more, perhaps, a basis track with an increased amount of rumbling, some scratchier cellotar playing, Wastell doing a greater percentage of clicking and tapping instead of bowing. But it creates an atmosphere that varies in a very natural way, flowing from one field to another. Gunter’s languidly sensuous cello comes even more to the fore here but, balanced by that undercurrent of edginess, there’s a palpable sense of embeddedness, of rootedness in the world rather than ethereality. It’s a lovely, rich track, the one piece on this disc that compares most favorably with the earlier album. A jarringly awkward edit (intentional?) leads to the third piece wherein the performance reverts a bit to the territory covered in track one. There’s a nice wind-buffeting undertone at one point, but the ringing sonorities overhead are a bit too…just there. Hard to explain, except that I don’t pick up a purpose for them. There is some attractive ambient sound on this track, some shuffling and banging and I get the impression that, sitting in the space itself, I might have found myself far more drawn in.

My ambivalence about the disc probably stems from several factors, including my great appreciation of their first. “A Rainy Koran Verse” rings true less often than I would have hoped or expected but it’s still, overall, an enjoyable recording and I remain anxious to hear subsequent ones. I'd even argue that the second track is worth the price of admission.

~ Brian Olewnick

Two from For 4 Ears

eRikm/Gunter Muller/Toshimaru Nakamura
Why Not Béchamel
For 4 Ears
CD 1553

Jason Kahn/Gunter Muller
Blinks
For 4 Ears
CD 1552

Perennial favorite Gunter Muller returns with two more releases on his fine label, his collaborative prowess featured on each.

The trio on “Why Not Béchamel” (no question mark in the title) is certainly an intriguing one on paper. Despite the near total electronicity of each, their approaches are distinct enough to ensure a wide range of sound. “Keburu” is all dark, ominous undertones split through by blasts of high-pitched static bleats and pops. Not too surprisingly, given the presence of Muller and eRikm (I’m using what is apparently the latest preferred spelling of his nom de musique), rhythmic patterns emerge with some frequency, generally as throbbing pulses or iterated swashes of white noise. It’s an effective mélange; as ply after ply is layered in, spun and twisted you get a rich, physical sound field full of spatiality and color until the plug, or cable, is harshly pulled. “Kabel”, easily the longest track at almost 25 minutes, occupies fairly similar territory but is less intensely claustrophobic and more expansive. There are multitudes of overlapping rhythmic elements sunk into near tonal beds of hum. At one point several minutes in, I swear that for a moment I thought I was hearing a West Indian gospel choir, softly intoning over local percussion. Very strange. This actually develops into a section rather reminiscent of Jon Hassell’s Fourth World music. One of the things I’ve always appreciated about Muller is his ability to just set things on simmer and percolate along, something very much in effect on this piece. A good Muller recording is sometimes like watching a bubbling stew and this one goes excitingly aboil at its conclusion. They close out with a brief nightscape of croaks and cheeps, interrupted by the odd train whistle or shooting star. It’s a good, strong recording, guaranteed to tickle one’s pleasure buds.

Muller’s duo with Jason Kahn (here wielding a Powerbook, no percussion) is different in structure, consisting of nine shortish tracks, but the music touches on the same areas albeit with an increased lucidity perhaps due to having only two sets of hands involved. Again, rhythmic elements abound but instead of the abstract static patches that Nakamura is wont to generate, you hear more bell-like tones and a generally brighter palette. My problems with the disc are twofold: 1) there’s a bit of sameness in approach on the tracks and 2), perhaps contradictorily, I wanted to hear the pieces at greater length instead of the 5-7 minutes allotted. There are plenty of attractive samplings to be found. “Fourth Blink” (all the tracks are titled First through Ninth Blink) opens beguilingly, for instance, with a mysterious aspect that I would have loved to have heard delved into further. Several of the pieces, in fact, end rather abruptly, picking up and leaving just as they’re beginning to cook. Even though I think the duo would be better served by stretching out, it’s an enjoyable disc, one of the finer things I’ve heard from Kahn in a while. Still, the delights offered by “Blinks” have something of a momentary quality to them, for me, while those of “Why Not Béchamel” linger on for a good while longer.

Ernest Dawkins’ New Horizon’s Ensemble – Mean Ameen

Delmark 559

Musical chemistry is a delicate science. Upset the equilibrium between elements and the entire concoction is rendered inert or worse. The death of a member can deal a deadly blow to the body politic of a band. Ernest Dawkins’ ensemble faced just such a crisis with the sudden passing of his longtime friend and colleague, trumpeter Ameen Muhammad. The crevasse left by his absence needed filling. With a home base of Chicago and close ties to the AACM a new recruit wasn’t too difficult to tap. The surprise arises in the caliber of candidate Dawkins was able to draft.

Maurice Brown’s first sizeable recording ripple came as a member of Fred Anderson’s Quartet on Back at the Velvet Lounge (also on Delmark). While I had misgivings about that album, the young trumpeter’s contributions to it weren’t among them. His phrasing felt a bit brash, his tone a shade too overwrought in places, but a liquid fire undercut these excesses and left an indelible mark. Here he retains that same spitfire intensity coupled with an even more advanced control of the spigot that regulates its release. His command of pitch is positively stunning and there are numerous spots where his gliding smears, jumbles of notes that congeal into a single gelid mass, sketch arching swathes across all registers of his horn. The degree of discipline balanced with flexing muscle reminds me of a young Freddie Hubbard with freer leanings. As a player still just in his early Twenties, Brown has the makings of an exemplary career ahead of him.

But enough of Ameen’s successor and secret weapon. Also on hand to realize this tribute to the dearly departed trumpeter is NHE linchpin Steve Berry on trombone, who provides his usual blend of nuanced brass. Bassist Darius Savage turns in his sophomore session with the band and his plump, Wilbur Ware-worthy lines are even better articulated this time out. Lastly, another new face by the name of Isaiah Spencer holds down the drum chair, replacing former percussion stalwart Avreeayl Ra. Dawkins’ directs the band on alto and tenor saxophones, delving deep into his formidable technique and coming up with bracing statements on both. Regular guitarist Jeff Parker has the day off, but receives representation by way of a through-composed ballad penned in his honor.

The album’s six tunes follow a fairly typical the NHE songbook. Four are long blowing vehicles that supply broad palettes for the soloists. Each one employs the somewhat counter-intuitive emphasis on individual improvisation that guides Dawkins’ philosophy for the ensemble. Malleable vamps are the frequent foundation with Savage carving out thick ostinato lines and the horns working off of punchy riffs. The title track rips along on solos from the leader and Brown, each man devouring his share. Berry’s first extended extemporization comes with “3-D” and it’s a beaut, voiced in a richly rounded dialect with the aid of well-lubricated slide work. Dawkins follows on tenor, blasting through a chain of choruses with a tone tensile enough to cleave down to the emotional quick. The sum of numerous rehearsals and gigs as a working band pays off directly through an enviably tight assemblage.

“The Messenger” shares striking similarities to a funky Bobby Timmons march piece, the unstated dedicatee being Buhaina Blakey. Once again the horns rip and snort leaving the sign-off to solos by Savage and Spencer. “Haiti,” a short tone poem for ‘little instruments’ and percussion of various stripes registers as the one piece where the band’s AACM’s roots feel a bit weathered and worn. Ameen will certainly be missed, but Maurice points to a promising future for the NHE. Here’s hoping Dawkins can persuade him to stay on the payroll.

~ Derek Taylor

Steeplechase Jam Session, Volume 12

Steeplechase 31567

Question: what’s better than a two-tenor team-up? Well, a tenor troika, of course. Three-pronged tenor trade-offs are scarcer than their tandem counterparts, but the results can be often even more excitement-prone if the chemistry clicks. Some of my favorites include: Tenor Conclave (Von Freeman, Buck Hill & Teddy Edwards), Soul Battle (Oliver Nelson, King Curtis & Jimmy Forrest) and A Blowing Session (Griffin, Coltrane and Mobley). This new Steeplechase set, which conveniently brings the label’s Jam Session series to an even dozen, is gradually slipping into a coveted spot on the above list and lies firmly ensconced in the same lineage.

The game plan here is a simple one. Tap two of the label’s most prominent post-hardbop tenors- Rich Perry and Larry Schneider- and add a wild card in the personage of Soviet saxophone celebrity Igor Butman to their already promising tête-à-tête. Steeplechase house pianist Andy LaVerne (who now has over forty dates to his name) leads the rhythm section and supplies the arrangements. Bassist Steve LaSpina and drummer Billy Drummond, also longstanding peacock feathers in the Danish label’s cap, complete the package. Neither man seems the least bit bothered by the strictly supportive role assigned him. Solo space resides solely with the horns and LaVerne until the fireworks of the final track.

Wayne Shorter’s “Witch Hunt” weighs in as the first of seven tracks. All are standards, save a grand finale scripted by LaVerne. With the unorthodox reading of Kenny Dorham’s “Blue Bossa,” the three horns reverse their solo order starting with Butman’s buttery vibrato-iced extrapolations and moving on through the statements of Perry and Schneider as the three explore the composition at a slower almost somber tempo than common. The pliable nature of LaVerne’s arrangements as each man is allowed to steer the band in whatever direction he chooses in relation to pace and mood. Lest listeners peg them in terms of tone and phrasing all three men evince chameleonic powers across solos, though the argots of Shorter and Trane are the most consistently referenced. The variability leads to a playful game of impersonation foiled by the traycard’s printed schematic of pecking positions.

Breaking from the typical decorum of a jam, each of the saxophonist’s also has his own brief solitary feature on a medley of three evergreen ballads. Schneider steps up first with “These Foolish Things” followed in short order by Perry’s rendering of “Once in a While” and Butman’s tender take on “When I Fall In Love.” At roughly two minutes a piece they’re refreshingly concise distillations that contrast well with the longer-form safaris endemic to the other tracks. LaVerne’s “Good To Go” caps the session off. At sixteen plus minutes of energy-riddled blowing it serves as the ideal sort of burner to punch out with and offers one of the most viscerally-charged sections of the entire set. In the closing minutes piano and bass drop out leaving Drummond to tussle athletically with the horns in various combinations, each taunting the other to increasingly heated heights.

~ Derek Taylor

O, Mighty Isis

Isis
Panopticon

Ipecac 57

Let’s stop thinking of Isis as just a heavy metal band with ambition. Emerging in the late ‘90s from Boston’s fertile post-hardcore scene, the five piece band (Aaron Turner on guitar and vocals, bassist Jeff Caxide, drummer Aaron Harris, guitarist Mike Gallagher, and utility player B. C. Meyer on electronics, keyboards, etc.) defined its sonic territory at the intersection of post-Melvins drones, doom metal, and dark, Mogwai-indebted soundscapes. Since the chug-chug intensity of early EPs like Mosquito Control and The Red Sea, Isis have steadily developed their sound by incorporating first a very intense focus on layered sound and tempi (heard on their first full-length Celestial) and later a powerful emotional undercurrent (on 2002’s awesome Oceanic). With this new release, they have shifted and moved forward once again.

These dark times are proving rich ones for American art and music, and it’s somewhat refreshing to note that the metal and hardcore subcultures – which of course are nowhere near as neatly contained as the monikers suggest – are becoming overtly political. The new Lamb of God is a blast of fury directed at the Bush administration; Mastodon’s amazing new full-length is an interpretation of Moby Dick, whose parables of madness and obsession seem chillingly apposite these days; and even Neurosis’ gorgeous The Eye of Every Storm suggests, through its world-weary lyricism and heaviness, that dignity is achievable despite all. I namecheck these other bands both because they deserve to be heard and because they get to something fundamental to Isis’ music: the slow harvesting of beauty and resolve from a deadening culture. Indeed, the quintet has always been interested in density and in the sheer force of sound. Beneath the chugging mega-riffs, the howling distortion, and the laminations of sound, there is always a vibrant passion, a desire to break free of confines. With this, it seems significant that Isis is now extending that aesthetic in an exploration of a different kind of density, that of a political culture that continues to choke off expression, dialogue, and dissent. Riffing on Michel Foucault’s popularization of the category of the panopticon, Isis explores the juxtaposition between their sonic density and that of the tightening grip of a surveillance society.

Perhaps tellingly, the album opens with the kind of sweeping crescendi that, on Oceanic, usually resulted from patient, methodical long form jamming. Yet this is a somewhat deceptive beginning for here Isis places its emphasis on undistorted guitars, on glittering textures, on open sonic vistas that combine neo-psychedelic detail with the kind of hypnotic repetition they specialize in. (Oh yes, and Aaron Turner, usually one of the gruffest barkers out there, sings a whole lot on this disc.) One of the best places to sample this mature synthesis is on the long, sweeping “Backlit.” Of course, Turner has long been exploring these ideas in side projects like Old Man Gloom, House of Low Culture, and Lotus Eaters. But it’s brought out wonderfully on Panopticon. The near fragility of “In Fiction” demonstrates a restraint and a lyricism that the band probably couldn’t have pulled off earlier. But thankfully there is still a ton of monster riffage and raw power here, with Turner barking, sounds swirling, and Harris’ sinewy beats the axis mundi of Isis’ universe of heavy syncopation. Over the course of seven songs in an hour, the band patiently build each track (and they have long seemed to me to possess a real architectural sense, a gift for structure, development, and density), with the spooky “Syndic Calls” particularly effective.

Without sacrificing any of their virtues, Isis has shifted around the basic elements of their sound and privileged melody (or, ironically given their album’s image and concerns, they have freed melody up), in a way that somehow undergirds the ubiquitous heaviness. There is more of a reflectiveness here, as compared to the quiet angst of Oceanic, but Panopticon is equally as powerful a record.

~ Jason Bivins

Christy Doran's New Bag

      

http://www.christydoran.ch
http://www.christydoran.ch/nb

The basic formula for Irish/Swiss guitarist Christy Doran’s group New Bag is similar to that of David Fiuczynski’s Screaming Headless Torsos: put a twisted lead guitarist at the center of the group, assemble a lock-tight groove section, and add a highwire vocal specialist for lyrics, dizzy unison lines, and a dash of pop accessibility.

Doran probably doesn’t give a crap if this music is called rock, jazz, or something else. For him it’s always been about the possibilities of his instrument: excited strings, electric sizzle tones, reverberating feedback, or loops that expand into the cosmos. Yet as interested in, and pulled toward, the ethereal as he has consistently been – since his playing in the collective Om with Urs Leimgruber to his partnership with Freddy Studer, the ABD and ADD Trios, Corporate Art, and others – Doran has always had a hard-hitting rhythmic sensibility. With a touch of early, gritty McLaughlin, Doran is always ready with the spiky repetition or the chugging riff; he can fill out a groove with a weirdly angular harmonic shape or a howl on the downbeat. In short: he’s just the player to elevate sessions like these.

The group’s first recording was 1999’s Confusing the Spirit (On Cue Records 001), where the basic lineup of Doran, versatile vocalist Bruno Amstad, electric bassist Wolfgang Zwiauer, and percussionist Fabian Kuratli was introduced. Like much of New Bag’s music, the eight pieces on the debut alternate between long open sections of highly processed textures and dense, interlocking groove sections (though some, like “Oil,” are nothing but texture). The band is tight like a fist, and the Zwiauer/Kuratli team is limber and responsive enough to follow the often unpredictable path of the two lead voices, who exult in crazed unison work just as much as they do trading jabs. Things never get extremely heavy – though there are occasional touches of power, such as on the introduction to “Paros” – but there’s always a sense of the emphatic here. And though the instrumentation and reliance on pulse might suggest otherwise, this band doesn’t rely on pop music conventions; instead, they sometimes recall the version of Tony Williams’ Lifetime with Jack Bruce in tow (though I dig Amstad a fair piece better than Bruce). It’s modern-day fusion, in the best sense of that term.

The second recording, Black Box (Double Moon 71022), adds Muthuswamy Balasubramoniam’s mridangam to the mix, though the basic idiom remains consistent with the first album. The newcomer’s contributions are particularly good on “Structured Clay,” and in studying his playing you get the occasional impression that the general rhythmic complexity of Indian classical music isn’t a bad touchstone for New Bag’s overall conception of structure. The opening “Sugarpie” is as close to a pop song as this band gets – complete with hooks and choruses – even though it contains some exploratory material (such as the vocal and bass tradeoffs in the midsection). Doran’s solo sections on this release are slightly more hard-hitting, and they recall his tough-as-nails work with Bobby Previte, Gary Thomas, and Mark Helias on Corporate Art: he integrates all the elements of his style, from huge echo-drenched loops, to ice-brittle shards of noise, to gnarly runs that lay the voodoo down (hear it all on the long closing track). Other highlights on this disc include “Written in Your Face,” whose slow-burn funk is garlanded by a host of tricky syncopations and shifting time signatures (and the confusing chorus “Tokyo is burning, but still they’re hurting” inspires Amstad to let loose with some of his most throaty hollerin’ of the date). And though some of the pop touches on this disc may seem a bit iffy, long, swirling excursions like “Caviar” make you forgive the band any excesses.

With their most recent full-length, Heaven is Back in the Streets (Double Moon 71031), New Bag has refined their sound and also interjected a lot more silence into their generally slamming compositions. The band linger longer on the pulseless psychedelic passages; they give more space for delicate interplay between Doran’s shifting arpeggios and Amstad’s vocal fancy (as on the atmospheric “Resounding”); and there are more pauses and hesitations written into the actual compositions themselves (even in the thrashiest numbers like “Digressions” and “No Rest for the Wicked”). Across these six tracks, New Bag ranges through a number of styles, from drifting ambience to punishing rock to high-octane fusion. The end result is something dreamier and airier than the previous two releases, coming across as some kind of cinematic travelogue set to music.

This band is a big hit on the European festival circuit, and you can really see why when you listen to these discs back to back. Along with groups such as Lucas Niggli’s Zoom, Doran’s New Bag is a fun combo whose explosions of genre deserve a wider hearing.

~ Jason Bivins

Joe Falcon - Cajun Music Pioneer (Arhoolie)

I live in accordion country. From local VFW halls to neighborhood Polish restaurants like Nye’s Polonaise Room where The World's Most Dangerous Polka Band, led by the dentition-challenged Ruth Adams, holds court three nights a week, squeezebox outfits still speckle the Midwestern topography. But as much as I dig live Polka; my favorite context for the instrument is Cajun and/or Zydeco music. Along with Amédé Ardoin and Boozoo Chavis, Joe Falcon completes a triumvirate of practitioners who never fail to get my feet tapping and my gums flapping. Recorded quite late in Falcon’s storied career- just two or so years before he found his heavenly home- this live date taped at The Triangle Club in Scott, LA still rivals (and in my mind surpasses) his legendary shellac sides cut for the Okeh label in the 30s with his first wife Cleoma. Tunes like “Joe’s Breakdown” cement a simple two-step template built on circular rhythmic motifs that chug along cheerfully. Even the waltzes carry an underlying insouciance. Emphasis rarely strays from loose ensemble interplay with few solos. Joe’s keening vocal style fits felicitously with vacillating tonalities of his accordion, creating an intoxicating harmonic push and pull, especially on songs like “Les Flambes D’Enfer” (“The Flames of Hell”). Theresa Falcon’s (Joe’s second wife) drums are rudimentary, but extremely effective in establishing an anchoring beat. Her crashing cymbal splashes cobble a surprisingly steady cadence around which fiddler Lionel Leleux and Falcon (both amplified) twirl and cavort. Guitarist Allen Richard usually steers the bass pulse, tugging at his bottom strings plugged through a fuzz-cranked amp. The resulting sound arrives unvarnished and raw. The juiced up atmosphere at the Triangle Club is akin to that of a Mississippi juke joint, jubilant and raucous with the audience frequently encroaching on the music. But far from a failing, this audio verité quality only accentuates the experience. Falcon was the real McCoy and this is some of the best his all too scant discography has to offer.

The Jack You Know, And The Jack You Don’t

Election Day may nearly always dawn overcast and cold, and yet no slough of damp leaves or tincture of grey in the sky ever manages to kill the buzz that many Americans feel on November 2nd. And, boy, am I ever cussedly American. So, despite the fact that I had voted (and on an equally crappy day) two weeks ago, I still felt the inspiration to exercise some personal choice yesterday morning.

I'd noticed Jack FM's billboard as far back as August at least, white and pseudo-bland and rising modestly high above a liquor store just across the street from the White Rock Lake spillway. I had even had some friends who have to contend with much more arduous Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex commutes than myself comment to me how much they had instantly fallen in love this station where you could here The Beatles "Can't Buy Me Love" followed by Green Day's "Longview". The reports continued to come in: playlists that were indeed both wide and deep; few and well-spaced commercials; no DJ's foisting their big, generic personalities on you.

I wondered how this could truly be possible. Though I am by no means an industry observer, it seems clear to me that radio, like most commercial media, is not so much in a business cycle as it is on an assembly line. ClearChannel play-lists might as well be technical specifications drafted by engineers and efficiency experts. Formats might as well be standard flavors -- vanilla, chocolate, strawberry -- laminated in a drive-thru menu. AM talk offers "separate but equal" facilities in which any American can satisfy his or her hunger for hatred. Even NPR, for many listeners FM radio's one saving grace, is the dreariest kind of alternative: an elite one. This is most apparent in the NPR interview style, especially if the subject is some ninety year-old salt-of-the-earth type toiling away in one of this country's countless hamlets. The on-air personalities are so bemused, just so damn audibly charmed and to the extent that I can easily imagine them suppressing patrician smiles as they trot out their "you don't say?" questions to these individuals they obviously think of as complete relics. And yet, for all its recent ratings success, both NPR's tone and pace are far out of sync with prevailing American lifestyles. As much as we, citizens all, need to be challenged in our basic assumptions about current events by balanced reporting, we also hardly have the time to spend being condescended to by puzzle-master Will Shortz. The additive-free wholesomeness of NPR's "discerning" discourse is just an old norm that has come to be a new exception.

As I turned off Garland onto scenic, back-roads Winstead (it makes its way around White Rock Lake and through several changes of name before it empties out onto Mockingbird Lane, one of Dallas' major east-west thoroughfares) I was actually, momentarily glad to twiddle off of NPR onto KJKK, 100.3. Time, you see, to take a risk. To change direction. To cast a ballot for a better tomorrow. To express my people's will as honestly as I can. If it didn't work out, I could just call it an experiment, right? I could change my interior regime and the next soonest opportunity. From 7:50 AM to 8:04 AM, representing roughly ten miles of stop-start city driving and 500 feet of taxing into my parking spot at work, I heard the following on the station whose slogan is "playing what we want".

1. Billy Idol, "Dancing[-uh] With My[seh-h]elf."
2. Tone-Loc, "Wild Thing" [and thus, by extension, Van Halen's "Jamie's Cryin'"]
3. Journey, "Any Way You Want It"
4. The Buggles, "Video (Killed The Radio Star)"

It all seems too perfect, I know. The blatant pandering to 80's nostalgia, employing a freak chart-topper whose refrain is "We can't rewind / We've gone too far". And the phony populism of simply mixing and matching several decades worth of Top 40 toonz. I mean, it is not as if I was expecting to tune in and hear a semi-mash-up of DJ Shadow, Mats Gustafsson, The Flatlanders, Death From Above 1979, and Abbey Lincoln, but the absence of anything remotely contemporary (literally or figuratively… that is, prescient) was mighty disheartening. I was also acutely aware of how interminable these pop hits I had not heard in so long seemed. It felt to me as if "Wild Thing" -- another chorus?!?!! -- lasted 10 rather than 4 and a half minutes. To recreate rather than recapture the magically frenetic diversity of old AM radio, simply guaranteeing, as program director Alex Valentine has, that "you won't hear the same song on the station if you listened for a month" is not enough when the songs are themselves, at a fundamental structural level, so groaningly repetitive.

Although Jack seems to want inhabit the personality popularly associated with nickname, a personality that is ill-defined yet anything but staid, Jack seems squarely middlebrow to me. But there's no bird of altruism caged in Jack's soul. However much Jack asseverates that he cares about making you feel safer, really, he doesn't. Yet Jack is no gleeful plunderer of our (American) cultural heritage either. Nor is Jack some rogue Minister of (Dis)Information maneuvering the various segments of our population, no longer identified by demographics but by Arbitron classifications such as "Urban", "Hot AC", "Classic Rock", "Spanish Hits", and "Country", onto collision courses that march forward as slow as entropy itself, so that there is no explosion of violence, only a gradual seeping out of all energy and potential. Jack does not really want to co-opt your sovereignty, and the peculiar doggedness that accompanies it. Like Nurse Ratchet, He can’t stomach the smell of so many individuals, and he knows the work is too back-breaking. Jack just wants you to exhaust your anti-corporate fury. He wants to give you a moving target. Jack is just another partner in the silent majority, a soft cell in the mass of the excluded middle.

Yes, I made myself heard on Election Day 2004. I raised my voice. And I sounded just like Phil Collins.

~ Joe Milazzo

Jimmy Halperin / Dominic Duval / Jay Rosen - Joy & Gravitas (CIMP)

Jazz history is often boiled down to a procession of geniuses and innovators. There's a certain truth to that; but I can't help wondering: what would jazz history look like as a history of mavericks? The answer to that question would probably require a close look at the Cadence/CIMP family of labels, which makes a specialty of figures who don’t fit easily on anyone's map. Though both labels' catalogues contain their fair share of meat'n'potatoes free-jazz blowouts, a high proportion of the list is genuinely one-of-a-kind discs – the kind of quirky musicmaking that most producers try frantically to normalize out of existence. This tolerance of idiosyncrasy doesn’t always pay off (the notorious Braxton-with-standup-comic CIMP comes to mind), but you’re usually guaranteed a few discs in every fresh batch of Cadence/CIMP releases (and they tend to come fast'n'furious) that are not merely worthwhile but genuinely unique musical documents.

Saxophonist Jimmy Halperin's new disc fits this profile pretty well. He's a protégé of Lennie Tristano and Sal Mosca, and his most prominent recorded appearances so far have been on Warne Marsh's Back Home and a duo with Mosca, Psalm. So, latterday Tristano-school –- already the "maverick" tag is firming up. But what’s he doing here with Dominic Duval and Jay Rosen, more usually found behind Joe McPhee in Trio-X? I'm tempted to see this as part of a larger pattern – Connie Crothers has been known to turn up at the Vision Festival, and Liz Gorrill's been doing very strange (and, frankly, terrible) experimental stuff lately under the name Kazzrie Jaxen. To be sure, the program is virtually all familiar standards and jazz classics, which sets it apart from the majority of CIMP sessions. But Halperin's delivery, even on ballads, is hectic and wilfully over-the-top: he blows so hard the notes are perpetually on the verge of cracking; solos are full of fast, angry trills and obsessive downwards flutters that don't go anywhere in particular. The arrangements are again almost wilfully revisionary: Duval's counterlines on "My Funny Valentine" and "Love for Sale", for instance, are virtually at odds with the tunes. Some of this just doesn't come off: the first take of "Don't Explain" ends messily, for instance, and "Witch Hunt" features an excessively harsh soprano solo and is marred by Rosen's overenthusiastic bomb-dropping. But there are some memorably effective pieces here too, including a "Naima" unlike any you’ve heard before (how often do you hear it delivered with a hint of anger?), a demonic "Night in Tunisia", and a bruising cover of Hendrix's "Spanish Castle Magic". A very mixed bag, then -- but sufficiently audacious that it's still worth hearing. There’s nothing else in my record collection quite like it.

~ Nate Dorward