Still fresh in my thoughts is the May 17th Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet gig in Philly. I hope others can chime in with their thoughts in the wake of their sparse North American tour. I don't listen to free jazz very often, but following this group on record and in concert has been something of a habit for so many years that it's the kind of gig I can't seriously consider skipping, especially with Joe McPhee in the group! Once again I was completely blown away and my enthusiasm for these musicians was completely refreshed.
Ever since the early days of the group, I've thought of it more as a collection of small groups—duos, trios, quartets—that play in an overlapping sequence than the ten-piece orchestra it appears to be on paper. It's very rare that they all play at the same time, and they even seem to err on the side of underplaying sometimes, with a certain slavishness to the respectfully-and-sensitively-waiting-for-a-turn-to-solo sectional format of jazz instead of the constant collective interaction of a lot of free improv. This subgrouping-sequence format prevailed again in this concert, with the occasional roof-raising blowout giving the music a classic, old-fashioned feeling of peaks and valleys balancing tenderness and aggression.
While in some ways it's not a very risk-taking or adventurous music—and who cares as long as it's good!—at the level of small group interaction in a given section the content is wide open and extremely exciting. There were literally dozens of moments when the playing got to those rare heights of rapture that justify the whole endeavor. Brötzmann himself delivered exactly the kind of shredding, timbrally miraculous solos one expects, always a revelation to experience anew. I still have vivid memories of the Brötzmann/Vandermark/Gustafsson trio gig I caught last Fall in Philly, which was possibly the most emotionally intense live music experience of the year for me, hearing Brötzmann in such an intimate and concentrated context. There's an equal balance of distinctive personality and a deep wellspring of shared history among these three, the saxophonic core of this large ensemble project for most of its history.
We can always count on Fred Lonberg-Holm to deliver some highlights, and although I thought his solos this evening were somewhat unremarkable, he put his snazzy new indestructible non-wood black cello to good use in some spine-tingling interactive passages, especially one with his long-term partner Michael Zerang that brought back fond memories of a kitchen-sink duo gig I saw about 10 years ago. He is one of the true masters of split-second interaction, delivering that one unexpected note that transforms an entire passage. I must admit a preference for the sort of small-sounds pointillistic improv that was only given one extended realization in this concert, naturally with Zerang, Lonberg-Holm, and Gustafsson grabbing the baton. Zerang did a whole bunch of swell stuff that night that reaffirmed my feeling that among the many percussionists I tremendously admire (including Tatsuya Nakatani, Paul Lovens, Paul Neidhardt, and Sean Meehan to cite a few with special prominence in my current thoughts), it's Zerang and Lê Quan Ninh that get my highest praise above all. I also can't think of anyone who is as equally advanced playing both standard drumkit and idiosyncratic percussion as Zerang.
As is customary for this project, by now a weathered institution in the annals of contemporary music, some new players were brought into the fold. In this case, the Chicago-Scandanavia connection was mined yet further with Magnus Broo (Sweden) on trumpet, Per-Åke Holmlander (Sweden) on tuba, and Paal Nilssen-Love (Norway) on drumkit, all familiar collaborators of Vandermark and Gustafsson. Holmlander seemed left out of the fun for much of the evening and I was beginning to wonder if he had anything to say on his instrument when a passage well into the second set completely reinvented my understanding of the instrument (admittedly based on precious little data). Astonishing sounds entered the mix and I could only fathom they were issuing from a clever sleight of electronic processing by Longberg-Holm when I suddenly realized it was Holmlander revealing some absolutely miraculous techniques on his brass behemoth. Later Zerang quipped to me that he's got a laptop hidden inside that thing! I sure hope to hear more where that came from—hopefully Holmlander's got some non-idiomatic small group improv I can lay my hands on.
Broo was the only player in the group that didn't especially impress me. Granted, he played some excellent stuff, but the other nine musicians all went that extra step. One of the great moments was a trumpet duet between Broo and McPhee; their blending was relaxed and sublime. McPhee dropped out at one point and Broo's extended unaccompanied solo seemed very generic to my ears. McPhee rejoined him with trumpet phrases of such nuance and timbral complexity that the side-by-side contrast with Broo imparted a vivid understanding of the difference between an excellent musician and a singular living treasure. I had seen McPhee do some solo trumpet pieces just a few weeks prior—there's a Bagatellen entry about that—where his playing was mostly very restrained, but here I heard him totally push the limits of his pocket trumpet to create that overwhelming fullness and richness that characterizes what Brötzmann does with a saxophone. But music is not about competition and I cherish the achingly beautiful duet between McPhee and Broo as much as anything else, where they made extremely thoughtful equal contributions that summed way beyond itselves. McPhee has generally focused on his brass instruments in the saxophone-heavy tentet, and it was a rare treat to see him wail and riff on valve trombone, but he also played some amazing soprano sax in this concert.
The only other high-pitched sax of the evening was a new experience for me—Mats Gustafsson whipped out a vintage 1922 slide saxophone and absolutely raised the roof in tandem with some high-energy drumkit playing—by now I've forgotten whether it was Zerang of Nilssen-Love or both, but I remember being pushed to Interstellar Space levels of ecstasy. After the gig I playfully exhorted Gustafsson: "Man, where's your slide sax solo album?!?!". "It's in my bag here" was not the response I was expecting! My disappointment in learning that he didn't actually have copies with him to sell was more than compensated for by this uncanny discovery that, yes, indeed, such an album does exist and was about to hit the market! I'm drooling with anticipation. He mentioned he'd been searching for one of these rare horns for something like 20 years! (Can't remember exactly how long he said, but a really really long time.) As usual, pretty much every sound Gustafsson made in this concert was golden; he continues to play at the highest possible level known for his instruments, technically and conceptually, in a category I could only cite John Butcher, Robert Dick, and Mat Maneri as further examples of.
Taking a totally different approach to his reeds, it was Ken Vandermark that once again probably impressed me more than anyone else in the group. Time after time, he introduced ideas that gave the music its true substance, working equally as a subtle team player and a burning soloist. I was really knocked out by his clarinet playing in the first set—it was a fairly dense section, but suddenly I realized his carefully sculpted long tones were shaping the whole ensemble into a coherent structure, besides the fact his tone is just always so beautiful on clarinet. He's definitely one of the greats of jazz clarinet. On the other hand, I was lukewarm about an aggressive bass clarinet solo he took at another point; it just seemed to lack power, as if the ideas would've been better expressed on tenor sax. Speaking of which, one of the best solos of the evening was a Vandermark tenor sax solo in the second set where he reached that ultra-sublime level of sharp slicing sounds between the notes. It doesn't get much better than that solo—gliding momentum, timbral fireworks, and Vandermark's knack for strong melodies. Another brilliant episode of Vandermark tenor sax came in the first set when the group was roaring at full blast and Vandermark was standing in the far back of the stage deferring to the others. He started gradually introducing a perfect comping riff that a few others picked up on and amplified, building up to a tight and exhilarating passage of classic foot-stomping big band jazz with the rhythmic complexity of great free jazz and incredible solos by the likes of Brötzmann riding atop the pulsing and shifting riffage. This section seamlessly turned into a great Vandermark tenor solo small group section that kept the momentum intact while also rescuing the big band orgasm from crashing into a dead-end. The whole episode affirmed Vandermark's great talent for grasping and shaping the overall musical structure in real-time.
It was also a case study in instant composing for a group that had previously split their time between free improv and charts or directed improvisation, sometimes of a very experimental nature and sometimes just classic head/solo sectionalism. McPhee had told me beforehand that the group was sounding totally different than in the past and they'd dropped the charts and decided to go totally free. He's probably one of the musicians who most prefers it that way. Needless to say, methodology is moot for musicians of this caliber.
After an evening of characteristically airtight throbs, Vandermark's right-hand man on the doublebass, Kent Kessler, made a rare foray into the foreground during one of my favorite passages of the evening. A handful of the guys were nursing some beautiful long-toned harmonic blending that had a special impact in contrast with the preceding passage, and when this movement was about to expire Kessler sustained the metric feeling with an ingenious solo of medium-length notes in a gentle staccato pattern. It was a minor miracle that he took the music on his shoulders and prolonged the delicate beauty with such patience and focus, gradually developing his solo into new, but equally meditative and sublime, territory. It was more evidence that this is a group of incredibly sophisticated listeners who are ready to work with any direction the music might move in. Anything that could've been achieved with the help of charts was effortlessly achieved without them.
I'll wrap up these brief remarks with the single most exciting aspect of this concert for me: beholding Paal Nilssen-Love for the first time. I finally got some visuals to link up with the stupendous playing I'd been hearing on recordings by The Scorch Trio, The Thing, etc. Still a fairly young cat at 30, Nilssen-Love is just FUCKING UNBELIEVABLE. He brings the visceral groove of rock into the realm of free jazz abstraction with an effortless orchestral sensibility that reminded me of Tony Oxley and a ultra-high-velocity precision and lightness of touch that reminded me of Günter Baby Sommer. The matter of velocity deserves special attention in this case; there is something irreducibly great about extreme speed in music and it's pretty rare to hear it combined with the abstraction and nuance of Nilssen-Love. The photo of one of his cymbals above is also my personal tribute to his devastating attack on these perenially underutilized metallophonic discs.
I have to admit that there were a few times when the music felt like a lot of pointless and chaotic huffing and puffing, but this says more about me than the music, as my fire music cognitive grammar has grown rusty from disuse in recent years and I have a bad habit of fantasizing that musicians would stop, make some kind of soft plink and then sit there silently for a while before playing some kind of Raineyesque long tone, but I'm glad to report that in almost every case where my mind drifted into self-doubting about whether I belonged in that audience, I found that the music would suddenly crystallize into something rapturous and sublime, something that can't be predicted or controlled or consciously identified, something that can only come from the honest engagement of certain motor systems with certain instruments, something that pushes the boundaries of density and momentum with a deluge of delicious timbral detail unique to reeds, brass, strings, and percussion. It's a reminder that for all its familiarity and cultural entrenchment, fire music doesn't put itself on a silver platter to be casually plucked as a whim of pleasure; it's a zone the listener needs to do some work to enter, and I'm happy to report the entrance justifies itself resoundingly.
~Michael Anton Parker
Many apologies for waiting almost two weeks to issue this concert report; it's simply the first chance I've had to really sit down at the keyboard since then. There are surely many worthwhile details that have escaped my thoughts.
"While in some ways it's not a very risk-taking or adventurous music—and who cares as long as it's good?" -Olewnik
Posted by: uli at May 30, 2005 1:03 PMI'm confused here—do you mean to say that Brian has written precisely the same sentence before? That's too scary! Surely you can offer some clarification? Wouldn't that be the coolest thing?
Posted by: Michael Anton Parker at May 30, 2005 1:47 PMOlewnik only cares if he percieves the music as adventurous or risk taking. He has panned the NYC concert of the group as "just going thru the motions".
Posted by: uli at May 30, 2005 1:54 PMps you Michael Anton, according to our Ollie, would be a member of a non-discerning audiance.
Posted by: uli at May 30, 2005 2:24 PMOh, I get it now! That's very funny! I can understand the "going through the motions" perspective, but that can be said of pretty much anything a person is simply not enjoying for whatever reason. I saw Jaga Jazzist once and I panned it in a similar way as formulaic, predictable, very little real-time authenticity, etc (but still saying I enjoyed it a good deal), and people jumped all over me for it and praised them to the heavens as a live band. I tend to think the people who enjoyed themselves more are more privy to the truth and that I was probably just feeling cranky or stodgy that day (not that I ever don't feel that way).
Posted by: Michael Anton Parker at May 30, 2005 2:24 PMLOL. Yes, I would agree I'm rather non-discerning! In fact, I can't even tell the difference between death metal and grindcore, and I have taken a liking to Electric Light Orchestra lately. My opinions about music are provided strictly for entertainment value, not to be confused with respectable journalism!
Posted by: Michael Anton Parker at May 30, 2005 2:32 PM"My opinions about music are provided strictly for entertainment value, not to be confused with respectable journalism!"
Reminds me of the fine line being drawn in the Miss America pageant between talent and swimsuit competition.
Posted by: swim at May 30, 2005 3:48 PMHey, Mike. Yeah, I posted on the NYC performance over on Jazz Corner in a Brotz thread if you'd like to check it out. My stalker/girlfriend Uli felt the need to point it out.
Won't rehash it here; glad you enjoyed.
Posted by: Brian Olewnick at May 30, 2005 5:43 PMAh, it's all clear now—I just had a look at that thread—except I thought "Uli" was a male name? I must say the internet is a very entertaining place. I feel like a schmuck for taking so long to post about this gig, but since there wasn't much action on the Bags blog I figured it couldn't hurt and I hope there are some people who can comment on other gigs, like the Victo one, which is still a fresh topic. McPhee told me the two nights in Buffalo were awesome!
By the way, Brian, did Holmlander do anything really freaky and shocking on the tuba at the NYC gig? I don't know how to begin describing that thing he was doing—it was like industrial music or something.
Posted by: Michael Anton Parker at May 30, 2005 6:41 PMBy the way, one factor in my experience of that Brötzmann gig was the fact that I played "Peaches en Regalia" approximately 40 times in a row while driving to the gig and driving about doing errands in the preceding hours. No special reason, but it's something like that Pringles commercial I suppose.
Posted by: Michael Anton Parker at May 30, 2005 6:51 PMThe girlfirend thing is complete nonsense.
Everybody knows Ollie is into dogs.
So is of course the stalking thing. He has that from aebly for whom he shills.
Posted by: uli at May 30, 2005 6:55 PMOh Uli, you sweetheart, you're such a tease.
Michael--no, Holmlander didn't do anything too outlandish that I recall, just played with good imagination. As I mentioned, I thought he, McPhee and Zerang were the outstanding performers that evening.
Posted by: Brian Olewnick at May 30, 2005 7:29 PMWhat the fuck are you lot talking about?
Posted by: Dan Warburton at May 30, 2005 9:40 PMEach other.
Posted by: N.D. at May 30, 2005 10:24 PMBack to Brötz & the boys… the turnover rate in the Tentet is such that I’m having trouble keeping track of who’s in & who’s moved on. Let’s see: Mars & Hamid are out (albeit for very different reasons); Nilssen-Love, Broo & Homlander are in, right? Indicative of the mutability, the band’s recent Okkadisk release documents a different line-up from 11/04, one that integrates poetry of Kenneth Patchen as spoken by Mike Pearson. Clifford Allen, a new Bags voice (but one familiar to many who read PT & AAJ) will likely be sounding off on it soon. I’ve dug what I’ve heard.
And nice piece, Mike! I’m am totally grooving on the enthusiasm pregnant in your prose. Your words on Sonore resonate too. Their Okka release and a live boot are all I’ve heard so far, but both (esp. the former) have impressed me. Hopefully the trio will remain a viable touring vehicle for all three in the months/years to come.
Posted by: derek at May 31, 2005 4:37 AMIf I followed you correctly, you seemed to imply that Nilssen-Love had pounded his cymbals so much that he produced the marks shown in the photo above. Just to clarify: cymbals are manufactured that way, with all of the marks and indentions on them. Each cymbal has different grooves, indentions, markings, etc. which gives them all a different tone.
Thanks for the review though. I haven't heard this particular line up - they haven't played in Chicago yet. I caught their show here in November with the poetry of Kenneth Patchen and some video art screened above the group while they played. Your review made me anxious to hear some material from this tour.
Salut...Joel Wanek
Posted by: Joel Wanek at May 31, 2005 8:35 PMHi Joel, wow, you're lucky to have seen the poetry version! Was Patchen amplified or did the band do the usual quiet sensitive background thing while he spoke? For that matter, what sort of content did he deal in? I'd never heard of him before.
I definitely didn't mean to imply that the pocks on the cymbal were from his playing though! I know that's normal from the manufacturing process... I just thought that cymbal looked cooler than the others in my photos and there's some kind of visuo-conceptual aesthetic behind depicting those sorts of functional inanimate medium-sized objects...
Posted by: Michael Anton Parker at June 1, 2005 3:48 AMSadly, Patchen passed away in ’72. A lot of his work is ardently humanist in scope and very visual in nature, especially during his later years when he crafted his series of “painted poems” after a serious spinal injury left him nearly invalid.
If the gig(s) Joel refers to are the ones at the Chicago Humanities Festival from last year, highlights are included on Be Music, Night, the new Okkadisk mentioned above. Mike Pearson handles the poetry reading part pretty well and the band hardly plays window dressing to his spoken word. One piece employs Lonberg-Holm’s Lightbox contraption & there’s also some fine McPhee alto therein (I’m definitely happy that Joe playing more sax with the band these days).
Posted by: derek at June 1, 2005 4:21 AMJeb Bishop has also left the band (at least temporarily), replaced by Holmlander. I wish we got to see this version of the band here in Chicago. Strange they didn't play here, but we can't win them all.
Posted by: Rrrrrrrrrobbbbbbbbbbbbbb at June 1, 2005 7:50 AMbone replaced by tuba?
Posted by: al at June 1, 2005 8:25 AMMcPhee plays some valve trombone here.
Posted by: Brian Olewnick at June 1, 2005 9:03 AMFrom what I understand Bishop is dealing with an auditory ailment that’s impaired his playing. Here’s hoping his recovery is swift and discomfort-free.
Posted by: derek at June 1, 2005 11:02 AMHe could always go back to his axe-slinging days and join one of the latest over-hyped noise guitar groups, for which use of one's auditory faculty doesn't appear to be customary.
Posted by: Michael Anton Parker at June 2, 2005 8:30 PM"the latest over-hyped noise guitar groups, for which use of one's auditory faculty doesn't appear to be customary."
as opposed to Brotzmann, who when recently asked if he could hear the musicians he's playing with, replied "occasionally the bassist."
and I'd much rather see Wolf Eyes than the Brotzmann Tentet given the choice, no contest, although I'd prefer the seemingly defunct lineup with Dilloway.
Posted by: jon abbey at June 3, 2005 9:44 AMwhat's the source on that Brotz quote, jon? i'd be curious to read the rest of that interview.
and for what it's worth, i don't see it as an either/or proposition. i saw both the Brotz Chicago 10tet (-mars williams) and Wolf Eyes last year here in NOLA and enjoyed both immensely. in fact, i fell asleep during Wolf Eyes' set - though not out of boredom. the gig was at the Spellcaster Lodge (home venue run my Mr.Quintron) which has couches...it was a friday night and i'd had a rather grueling week. 2 beers and the wolfies at full blast had me beautifully relaxed on the musty sofa...kept zoning in-and-out of conciousness as they blasted away, which was an amazing way to experience their set. somewhere in there i couldn't tell if it was dream or not as they were doing an insane cover of The Doors' "Light My Fire" (it wasn't a dream). i found the Brotz 10tet set to have lot more depth and nuance than the first few times i saw them ('99-'00 period). more like a band than an all-star grouping (as they were earlier)...though i wonder how much longer they'll be able to use "Chicago" in the name (only 4 of 'em from Chi, now).
as to jeb bishop - i just spoke to him a couple days before this gig review was posted, and he's having some hearing problems that he wants to have treated. nothing that impairs his playing as far as i could tell, but something he does feel needs addressing.
and michael, it actually takes extremely good auditory facility to play worthwhile noise guitar...(the time i've spent playing with donald miller has certainly sharpened mine) though i wouldn't recommend it to someone who's hearing is damaged!
Enjoyed reading this gig post of yrs and look forward to seeing more.
Uh oh, hope this doesn’t turn into another bash Brötz imbroglio. What constitutes recent? Isn’t that quote at least a couple years old? And in context it’s more of a tongue-in-cheek quip than serious affidavit of fact. Something I think Brötz’s work (esp. the more recent stuff) bears out.
Count me as one who’d rather see Brötz than Wolf Eyes, but I say that having never heard the latter.
Sadly, it sounds like Bishop's condition isn't discriminating when it comes to frets or slide.
Posted by: derek at June 3, 2005 2:17 PMRob, the source is Keith Rowe, who asked him that either just before or after playing a short duo with him in Sweden in the last couple of years sometime.
"Count me as one who’d rather see Brötz than Wolf Eyes, but I say that having never heard the latter. "
there's an informed opinion, thanks for sharing.
I'm not trying to start a fight about Brotzmann, in fact I don't really have any interest in discussing him. that was just one (in my opinion) wildly offbase statement too many for me by Michael, who's making Bruce Gallanter look like a calm voice of reason lately.
I've heard Wolf Eyes and I don't much like Brotz, so I'll take Paul Anka singing from his hip new rock covers record. smelling that teen spirit, baby.
and Mike, your reckless enthusiasm is appreciated in this quarter.
Posted by: Adam Hill at June 3, 2005 2:31 PMyeah, I don't really even like Wolf Eyes that that much myself, that condescending dismissal just rubbed me the wrong way earlier.
elsewhere in that genre, Hair Police-Drawn Dead is a very good record, Hive Mind I'm becoming a pretty big fan of (Sand Beasts is the best I've heard) and Aaron Dilloway solo last week was quite good. I'd personally take a half hour of the best work from any of those three over Joe Maneri's entire career, but maybe that's just me.
Posted by: jon abbey at June 3, 2005 2:37 PM“there's an informed opinion, thanks for sharing.”
Here we go… how about taking the rest of weekend off & draining the bile duct?
Rob, thanks for the true word on Jeb and the anecdote on Wolf Eyes. I definitely plan on checking them out.
Posted by: derek at June 3, 2005 2:42 PMno, seriously, thanks for sharing. any other groups you haven't heard that you want to share opinions about?
Posted by: jon abbey at June 3, 2005 2:42 PMYou’re about as serious as a Keystone Cop. That beer I offered to buy you awhile back is gonna have to be a Pabst :)
What ‘opinion’ did I share about Wolf Eyes? I just stated I’d rather hear Brötz… I’ve never heard Clay Aiken either, but feel safe in saying the same about him. Seriously Jon, put the brickbat down.
Posted by: derek at June 3, 2005 2:52 PMI've seen both the tentet and Wolf Eyes live and I'd much rather see Brotz again. MUCH rather. And I enjoyed Wolf Eyes.
Posted by: Nick at June 3, 2005 3:14 PMI've seen both Wolf Eyes and the tentet live and I enjoyed both shows but I'd much rather see Brotz again. MUCH rather. A Rowe/Brotzmann duet sounds like an unpleasant experience.
Posted by: Nick at June 3, 2005 3:18 PMjon - thanks for the source on that quote. makes it more interesting to me too, as d.miller once related an anecdote to me of a rather lively discussion with rowe over donald/borbeto's use of volume. fwiw i dig keith/amm too, and think that the contrast shows two radically different approaches to tabletop guitar (w/k.drumm embracing elements of both approaches and finding his own way). Did anybody out there in Bag-land get to see Donald's recent (ACOUSTIC) Euro tour with Tetuzi Akiyama? very different side of him. i'd be curious to hear some responses.
i know we're now straying off-topic, but here's two closers i want to get out there:
1. i'm a bit emabarrased at the sloppy writing in my earlier post: it should be "whose" not "who's" in that last sentence. Duhr.
2. On wolf eyes, is there any truth to the chatter of Braxton being a huge fan? or is it all just kooky Coley-spiel? especially this wild post on JazzCorner:
"from thirstin@HN_AM "victo fest - friday - braxton has intense press conference in hotel - after spending 20 minutes on each question where he goes way off on tri-axioms and jazz history metatheoretics. coley asks last question: "is it true you cleaned out the wolf eyes merch table at a swedish festival last year?" -- braxton leaps up and says wolf eyes are the new universe and he decided right then and there to move to stockholm and become a cook so he could be closer to this music. then he learns they are from michigan and his worldview is shifted and he realizes that there is hope for america with new angels of art existing here like wolf eyes. he claims his friends now refer to him as anthony "wolf eyes" braxton.
no shit. so wolfs and hair po show up and we hit the hotel bar hard and braxton appears after his duo gig with fred frith and connects with wolfs and nate asks braxton if he would like to smoke a joint. "I would be honored to smoke marijuana with the wolf eyes". Again, no shit. Next day braxton is at gig (3 pm) and nate asks braxton if he wants to jam w/ the wolfs and braxton says yes, just let me know when and nate says play the whole gig dude.
So after more weed blowing they hit the stage. the audience is all seated at
round tables in a huge theatre called the Colisee. Hair police already decimated this crowd, they were awesome. But now we're tripping. this is too unreal. Braxton swoops in and out of the jams, at one point doing killer long sax tone duets w/ olson. Nate announces stabbed in the face. and then olson asks braxton what jam they should do next. "Black Vomit" sez Braxton. seriously, no shit. unbelievable sickness.
that night dead machines/double leopards jammed together till 1 am then back to hotel bar for extreme wind down
canada dudes, the fuck..
listened to new Greg Kelly cd on Gameboy on ride down -- incredible.
hint : you wanna cruise through canuck border w/ no problem, have flaherty at the wheel - customs agents love the guy."
I dunno, even if that's not true i sure enjoyed reading it. given braxton's catholic tastes it's even plausible. maybe muhal can sit in with double leopards...
Posted by: Rob Cambre at June 3, 2005 3:19 PMall I wanted to do was not let Michael's initial, unprovoked snide comment pass unanswered. I've done that with a series of my own snide unprovoked comments, so now I'm done.
Posted by: jon abbey at June 3, 2005 3:19 PMyes, the Braxton/Wolf Eyes story is true (that post was written by Thurston Moore).
Posted by: jon abbey at June 3, 2005 4:22 PMHi Jon, I wasn't referring to Wolf Eyes (who I've never heard but am becoming increasingly anxious to hear, especially with Braxton's endorsement) or any other group in particular. I'm sure there is great noise guitar music just like any other genre has great music (I can cite Gate The Dew Line as my personal favorite in my limited sampling), but I think there's a fat grain of truth in my stab at wit there.
The bit about Brötzmann's hearing is very interesting though. Thanks for sharing that. If it were the case that someone was suffering a lot of hearing loss (extremely plausible in his case, even without considering the Last Exit era!), it would make sense for them to shift their creative work towards soloing instead of group interaction because, in principle at least, a person could play great solos (which Brötzmann certainly still does) without registering the specific group context. Such a soloing-in-turn format is precisely what I identified for the group above, and while some of the players gravitate towards exceptions, Brötzmann is definitely not one of them. It is the great cliche of improv culture to speak of "listening", but for many cases it registers as facile prescriptivism and not an accurate assessment of the total physiological process, the similarly profound role of the motor system in which being greatly overlooked in my view. Inversely, we see that motor capacity can be more than adequately compensated for by intensified audition and conceptualization in the case of Derek's new work (his fingers are now partially disabled).
Posted by: Michael Anton Parker at June 4, 2005 1:46 AMok, so who were you referring to then? I perceived your statement as jazz/improv snobbery, that's what peeved me.
as for Gate-The Dew Line, one of my few actual achievements in a decade at Time Magazine was that I got them to run a picture of this CD, in an early pictorial essay of art on CDs. I also got one of the Sun Ra Evidence titles in there, can't remember the third.
Posted by: jon abbey at June 4, 2005 9:28 AM"..Did anybody out there in Bag-land get to see Donald's recent (ACOUSTIC) Euro tour with Tetuzi Akiyama? very different side of him. i'd be curious to hear some responses..."
Yes I did.
Each one first played in solo. Tetuzi's one was played like in "The return of the boogie" (IDA LP, reissued on Headz CD). Very good stuff. And Donald played 12 string guitar. Same kind of feeling as on 'Wooden guitar'. Very good too.
But the duo didn't work for me. Donald played e-bows on his guitar. I already forgot this duo...
I was referring to the unnamed, faceless, abstract sado-masochistic primadonna noise wank strawman...
:-)
"The return of the boogie"
It's DON'T FORGET TO BOOGIE
"(IDA LP, reissued on Headz CD)."
It was Idea, not Ida. And the Headz CD is NOT a reissue of Boogie - half the album features "songs" from that album but it's not a straight reissue.
"Very good stuff."
I thought you said you didn't like Boogie, Jacques.. sorry you missed Tetuzi's concert last Friday; he did that shit live and it was awesome.
"The return of the boogie"
It's DON'T FORGET TO BOOGIE
Yes...
I know the origin of my lapsus: Obsession...
"(IDA LP, reissued on Headz CD)."
It was Idea, not Ida. "
Sorry it was a mistake..
And the Headz CD is NOT a reissue of Boogie - half the album features "songs" from that album but it's not a straight reissue.
Yes you are right once more.
But very close to the studio recording anyway.
"Very good stuff."
I thought you said you didn't like Boogie, Jacques..
Oh! no ! When a kid I was a fan of Meade Lux Lewis, Pete Johnson, Sammy Price, Alber Ammons...
"sorry you missed Tetuzi's concert last Friday; he did that shit live and it was awesome. "
I was not in Paris. I wished I could have come...
PS : always the same problem on my computer screen with Paristransatlantic website...
Wolf Eyes/Anthony Braxton's gig fom this year's Victoriaville is now as a bootleg circulating on slsk if anyone is interesting. Not a good recording thou ..
Posted by: lukaz at June 6, 2005 7:28 AM.................................................. © 2003 - 2006 bagatellen ..................................................