Overemphasizing the electronic aspects in a mixed source composition can result in a tragic error sometimes, the major risk factor being an excessive similarity to other pieces and, on the contrary, the danger of transforming the whole into some sort of mutation of a Playstation game soundtrack. The alternative is usually a release based on pure or slightly treated field recordings; but that method, too, has predictably begun to include big-time commonplaces, albeit pleasurable ones (pouring rain, forest birds, people’s chat in the streets and the sea’s wash are often a great listen but – come on – how long have we been hearing them now?). Speaking of fairly enlightened post-precursors, Jos Smolders’ late 80s debut - Freebasing A For Is Me - was, in the author’s reminiscence, “built as an abstract expressionism sound sculpture”. After twenty years or so - and various records dedicated to the full exploitation of a single idea down to the bare minimum - Smolders decided to go back to the origins.
At over 67 minutes, Gaussian Transient is a long album even for this genre, requiring patience to investigate its most secluded corners. Yet it is also easily describable as a concurrence of environmental situations and more atypical inspections (including what the composer calls “the intestines of a harmonium”). I tried it in several occasions - same setting, different hours of the day - varying the reproduction level and taking into account dissimilar external features joining the music. The dynamic range explored by Smolders, which goes from the almost inaudible to the reasonably consistent, makes sure that we’re forced to actively contribute to the experience, either via the intuition of what’s happening in the remote background of a quasi-silence or by feeling sheltered by a sense of familiarity: that, for example, materializing when the classic whooshed clangor of a distant train revived the memory of characteristic nocturnal occurrences at some stage in my adolescence’s sleepless nights, spent in a summer house not far from a railway.
This means that, as it often happens in this type of outing, the success of the record mainly depends on the fulfillment attainable by listening to a largely recognizable “something” for the umpteenth time. The small amount of processing applied to the material is, mostly, only a complement in this case; the work remains, again in the words of its creator, “just what it is”. From this observation angle, a definitely well-crafted, functional sonic artifact.
~ Massimo Ricci
By listening to this joint effort by Will Montgomery and Heribert Friedl one realizes that the act of creating a certain kind of music doesn’t differ too much from taking a deep breath in the silence of a forest during a solitary walk, and – eyes closed – determining what’s heard in that very moment, and from where those manifestations arrive. These gentlemen are definitely interested in the same musical areas, the ones where improvisation and structural definition meet; exactly in that territory they tried to mingle talents, starting a collaboration in the spring of 2006. Friedl recorded himself playing his hackbrett (essentially, a cimbalom), then sent the files to Montgomery for opportune treatment and addition of electronic sources, and vice versa. After a while the composer realized that things weren’t working, consequently deciding of “absorbing Heribert’s material into his own”.
Montgomery’s style is informed by a Feldmanesque penchant for giving each occurrence an almost perfect position in an ample space, the latter usually coincident with something approaching total quietness. Not one of his sounds seems to expand further than the strict necessary, yet – when the composition requires it – he’s ready to elongate and stretch the raw matter until it resembles a series of blurry apparitions, isolated events in a somewhat introverted aural landscape where peripheral, but not extraneous factors are positively welcome in delineating the listener’s background, both physically and psychologically. The amalgamation of Friedl’s mutated strings and Montgomery’s electronics works just fine in that sense, the acoustic quintessence of the hackbrett swallowed and regurgitated, appearing as a fluid entity designed to measure a room’s width through refraction and echoing shapelessness rather than represent a sonic item per se.
Not necessarily revolutionary, Non-Collaboration is an album whose neat chilliness and inflexible logic hide several instants of concentrated, unpolluted beauty, provided that we’re paying special attention. Although these artists are well conscious of how an installation soundscape should work, ambient music it ain’t – you’ll have to wear Spock’s ears this time.
~ Massimo Ricci
England’s JSP label, with John Steadman at the helm, has long been heralded as a great reissue label, sporting a fine catalog of expertly remastered reissues at budget prices. Their Louis Armstrong Hot Fives and Sevens box, transferred by the late lamented John R.T. Davies, is second to none for sound quality at just above the cost of a normally priced single disc.
JSP is now in the process of outdoing itself by issuing the complete published sides by Fats Waller. If anyone is due such a project, it’s Fats. Long remembered as a supremely gifted entertainer and songwriter, his skills as a pianist have been somewhat eclipsed, relatively speaking. His prowess on the organ is all but forgotten, cited in reverential whispers by those in the know who also lament the fact that such a multitalented musician and composer has been so short-changed by revisionist history. His catalog fared no better in the reissue market; spread out over several labels but chiefly on RCA, several reissue programs of varying repute and legitimacy have treated his legacy sloppily indeed. Even the best of these, undertaken by Orrin Keepnews in the 1990s, was far from complete. Now, we have these fantastic box sets, each one containing four discs and sporting fantastic sound.
Volume 1 opens with Waller’s first recordings, made for the Okeh label in 1922 under infamous but legendary producer Ralph Peer. These first piano solos show the eighteen-year-old already having mastered the stride piano techniques associated with his teacher, James P. Johnson. We then follow Fats through a series of accompanist roles, supporting everyone from blues singers such as Alberta Hunter to odd forgottens—witness the humorously bizarre Jamaica Jazzers sides. He even belies his background in the church on a few sides with the reverend JC Burnett! Fame ultimately finds Waller, and his pipe organ work, as in an early version of the Fletcher Henderson orchestra, he is placed alongside a young Coleman Hawkins in some exuberantly hot jazz. Solo organ sides abound, and his earliest associations with musical theater are also represented, making this first box indispensable in charting Waller’s apprenticeship and maturation.
Volume 2 sees Waller hitting his stride as a composer; it contains the first version of what is perhaps Waller’s best known composition, “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” Written for a review called “Hot Chocolates,” it appears here in a swinging solo piano version recorded in 1929. The rendition bears all the hallmarks of late 1920s gaiety, a trait that would pervade Wallers’ performances in the coming years as he began to sing, evolving from somewhat stereotypical crooner to the performer that could subvert trite pop material while always endearing himself to his audience. The two earliest versions of “Crazy ‘bout my baby” tell the tale. Both recorded in early 1931, the first with the Ted Louis Orchestra is one of Fats’ early vocal performances, and he’s straight-laced until the final verse. Not so when he revisits the tune a few weeks later, and we get a bit of the humorous patter he perfected throughout the 1930s.
In 1934, Fats finally received a regular recording contract from RCA Victor, for whom he’d recorded sporadically for some time. Also in that year, his regular band, Fats Waller’s Rhythm was formed, staying together until Waller’s death in 1943.
Volume 3 sees that solidification, taking us through a good part of 1936. Through much of this set, the classic Gene Sedrick/Herman Autrey/Al Casey lineup can be heard in fine form. We hear the first recordings of Waller staples like “It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie,” and “I’m gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter,” and while the latter is a bit more straight-laced than other versions, it is certainly replete with Walleresque charm. The 1934 piano solos that open the first disc of the set constitute a highlight, especially this rendering of “Viper’s Drag,” in which Waller takes a pot-shot (pun intended) at Grieg.
Ted Kendall’s remastering is worth particular note. Often overcoming sub par sources, especially in the earlier volumes, he is able to perform miracles, demonstrating just how dynamic these recordings can really be if treated with affection and care. Mr. Davies once said that Kendall, his protégé, actually restored better than he did, and while that remains a matter of taste, his work here gives us the finest versions of these seminal recordings currently available. As with most JSP titles, the notes are a bit cursory but serviceable and certainly entertaining, biographical information abounding and full discographies included.
Volumes 4 and 5 are now available, and I will comment on these when the final set is released. Suffice it to say that this series is not only absolutely welcome, it is essential; sound alone makes it indispensable, but the inclusion of alternates, usually on the final disc of each set, will appease researchers and fans alike. Hats off, again, to JSP for what is shaping up to be a remarkable achievement.
~ Marc Medwin
Even though the association to Phill Niblock, Eliane Radigue and Iannis Xenakis on the press release sounds a little disproportionate, there’s no doubt that Commonwealth stands among the finest drone-based records landed on this desk in recent times. Brendan Murray has been active in Boston’s sound art scene for a long time now, also as a partner of renowned individuals in the same field (Sillage, with Seth Nehil on Sedimental, a quasi-milestone in that logic). His creativity orbits around the meticulous modification of various sorts of instrumental radiation until the matter becomes just about unrecognizable, a process whose perfection can require years (in this particular occasion more than fifteen drafts were created before Murray OK’d the definitive version). Basic factors in this hymn to pseudo-stillness were guitars, analog synthesis and “plenty of digital manipulation”: what emerges is an outright cycle of unplumbed depths, gravelly frequencies and wobbly tremors determining hundreds of subtle shifts. A sonic craft made of slow progress, overlaid sources, buried hues.
After a few seconds of silence, an awe-inspiring mass of almost motionless waves arises, soon reaching a next-to-saturation pinnacle, like a thousand shortwave radios tuned to a single frequency. The ominous-yet-harmonious growl lying beneath signifies the impending disaster suggested by the music, as well as a much-desired refuge against marginal noises and voices. Little by little the whole stabilizes into a rather regular flow of inconspicuous events, the unremitting gradualness of the original wall of spurious resonance inexorably wrapping us, preventing our concentration from focussing elsewhere; distraction is not even contemplated. It goes on and on without dramatic changes, the piece finally reaching its natural demise, slowly, inescapably. Not once we’re able to determine the existence of a truly affirmed “chord”, despite clear-cut compositional attitude and painstaking care for the accurate setting up of what, in point of fact, is entirely incogitable. Rare qualities in today’s analogous offerings. I’d be delighted of listening to an orchestral ensemble - Zeitkratzer, anyone? - extrapolating additional energy from this material.
A great album and, despite the substantial consequences on the psyche, a lesson in restraint for the innumerable drone-concocting, Zen-ish phonies populating the globe. By giving it a rigorous try at night, maybe with the windows open, one hopes to get in synch with this moribund earth’s pulse at last.
~ Massimo Ricci
I have to confess a bit of personal history with Wadada Leo Smith. My uncle Philip, at one time a reedman and composer, studied with Smith in New Haven in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, eventually becoming part of the Creative Musicians Improvisers Forum (CMIF). Phil went to a workshop that Smith was teaching, and ended up being one of two attendees. Rather than the “introduction to freedom” that he was expecting, Smith played Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues” solo note-for-note, with perfect pitch and similar attack, enough so that one might be hard pressed to differentiate between the recording of Satch and what Smith was doing. The AACM-schooled trumpeter whose Kabell recordings were micro yet far more expansive than any Art Ensemble recordings was, at heart, a traditionalist.
Of course, Smith’s name is rarely—if ever—mentioned alongside the new traditionalists coming up in the ‘80s, and he’s not characterized as part of the Wynton, Nicholas Payton, etc. (wonder if they even know who he is?) crew. Yet Smith’s participation in groups like Yo Miles! and his own Golden Quartet place him in line with those who are directly addressing and expanding upon the post-bop language vis-à-vis Miles Davis. The latest incarnation of Smith’s Golden Quartet features regular cohort, bassist John Lindberg, as well as recent additions in pianist Vijay Iyer and drummer Shannon Jackson. After recording for Pi and Tzadik, Tabligh is the first disc by the group on Cuneiform.
Thinking of Smith’s music microcosmically—and especially as I was exposed to it from a lineage of free improvisation—seems antithetical to tradition, even if it’s aesthetic. Smith’s philosophy of rhythm units seems atomistic, but being able to encapsulate and reference an entire composition (or an entire tradition) in phrases and the spaces between gives largeness to the very small. Miles’ sound might be more condensed, even as the music was often very open. It’s an interesting dichotomy that he was able to play with, and that tension seems most pronounced on his mid-Sixties recordings. Armstrong’s sound was, by comparison, huge and full-bore, yet his Hot Fives and Sevens seemed utterly wound-up (partially due to the exigencies of recording).
On “Rosa Parks,” the image conjured—courtesy Iyer’s electric piano and synthesizers—is that of Miles’ languid late-Sixties pulse, yet with Smith skittering over the top in brittle explosions often in tandem with Jackson’s martial Sunny Murray-esque allover thrum. Smith is at times like crumpled paper and wisp, but never is he indirect, even at his most terse. It’s interesting to think of him as a rhythm player, as he’s frequently trading volleys with the drummer as piano and bass create a swirling sound-field below and around them. Smith’s homage to the group’s previous percussionist, “DeJohnette,” begins with a terse brass sketch as Iyer engages acoustic cascades and tosses bricks in erudite surges. Smith, like Miles, knows how to use a group and is able to adjust his prominence or sit back and watch others create in a framework he may direct, but whose impulses are collective. This collectivity is often dense, constant cymbal chatter, arco glisses and clanging blocks filling in while Smith’s pointed shots and simple extrapolations sometimes sail of a separate, sketched motor.
Midway through “DeJohnette,” a wistful blues etude erupts into growls and blurred high-register swaths, Smith encapsulating a full-band density in nearly unaccompanied space. It is these moments where the rhythm section mostly lays out, prodding on occasion, that the trumpeter steps out into the open and his range—sonic and historical—cuts through the air. Tabligh is an album that should be on the shelf of anyone with an interest in the past eighty-odd years of trumpet improvisation.
~ Clifford Allen
Ideal Bread is a quartet consisting of baritone saxophonist Josh Sinton (a former Chicagoan who studied with Allan Chase, Ari Brown, and Ken Vandermark), trumpeter Kirk Knuffke, bassist Reuben Radding and Boston-based drummer Tomas Fujiwara. Their modus operandi is to explore the compositions of Steve Lacy, though unlike other Lacy tributes – such as those by straight-hornmen Joe Giardullo and Jurg Wickihalder – there is no soprano saxophone present. After all, there’s a tendency to compare soprano saxophonists to Lacy when inhabiting the same musical territory, even when they sound very little like the elder statesman. The inclusion of baritone does separate Ideal Bread a bit, but only superficially, as Lacy used baritone players like Charles Davis and Charles Tyler in his bands (and even Jimmy Giuffre reportedly worked the low horn alongside Lacy at one point). Lacy’s compositions are also tremendously orchestrated and often have a more pronounced bottom end than might at first be apparent.
Sinton states in the liners how Ideal Bread intend to do for Lacy what Lacy did for Monk’s music in the early ‘60s; namely, work with the tunes to show the possibilities that lay beyond their basic structures. Here, they’re using tunes mostly from the mid- to late-70s as springboards, including cuts from Trickles (Black Saint, 1976) and the underrated NY Capers & Quirks (Hat Hut, 1981). The earliest piece here is “Esteem,” first recorded in 1972 on The Gap (America), which its composer dedicated to Johnny Hodges. Whereas the original was a poem of piercing tones, Ideal Bread moves the piece into an elegiac melody of orchestral weight – massive in unison yet microcosmic from bar to bar.
Radding takes the first solo spot into a mini-concerto, his arco thick and trailed by throaty whispers of horsehairs and Fujiwara’s mallets. Sinton’s baritone is smoke and slippery cadences, building into growls and slurs but harping on delicacy of digits. Likewise, Knuffke’s stately pathos tells one more about “Esteem” in a few held half-valves than most trumpeters could in a lifetime. Sinton and Knuffke make an interesting front-line pair, hard-charging baritone panning sound while the trumpeter’s self-assured assimilation of the postbop language into free playing is extraordinarily fresh and gimmick-free.
“Bud’s Brother” was written for Richie Powell, like all of Lacy’s tunes having a curious dedicatee whose connection to the theme might seem spurious. After all, one of the most raucous lines on The Gap, “La Motte Piquet,” was appended with the composer’s statement that “Sonny Clark always liked this sort of tune.” Uh huh. The head of “Bud’s Brother” is a deft trip of ascending and descending flicks, singsong and blur. Sinton takes the first solo, worrying thematic fragments and toying with them like a dog shaking a stuffed toy as Radding and Fujiwara skip the tempo like stones. Soon, a baritone pyramid is built and the trio is far from anything Lacy could’ve imagined. Knuffke is steely cry, working threads over a massive ensemble drone until he and Fujiwara take the reins as a duo, brassy particulates assembled in clear lines atop a blur of gong-and-tom motion.
The only unfortunate thing about The Ideal Bread is the fact that it is a limited edition CDR release, and will probably be long gone by the time the jazz world catches up. It’s a shame because not only is the playing extraordinary, but the germinating ideas and the conviction with which the group approaches them is something that a lot of people in this music could learn from.
~ Clifford Allen
A visionary ability in the assemblage of concrete and electronic sources can take you a long way, the constrictions of low budgets notwithstanding. Greek label Triple Bath, run by Themis Pantelopoulos, published only 96 copies of Red Rose For The Sinking Ship by Jeff Gburek, a 45-year old guitarist and composer who uses extended guitar techniques, signal processing, open source applications and field recordings to engender a unique electroacoustic brand. The man collaborates with Michael Vorfeld and Michael Walz in the ZYGOMA trio, has played with the likes of Keith Rowe, Tetuzi Akiyama, Kyle Bruckmann and - in 2006 - was a student of Helmut Lachenmann in Darmstadt. Recent releases appeared on A Question Of Re_Entry (the excellent Virtuous Circles), Con-V and on the Mattin website. Additional info about earlier works can be found via an attentive search through this very website.
The album’s title is impenetrably arcane, considering that “...Red is a kind of sympathetic individual who loves people” and that “rose” is pronounced as, and exchangeable with, “rows”. In Gburek’s words, “…the sinking ship will leave behind survivors, more appreciative of simple human care”. The overall plot emphasizes “revolutionary nostalgia” and “the naivety of utopianism”, as this five-part composition should be considered a sonic essay about the figure of Mao Zhedong. Quite sincerely, I couldn’t think of a farther connection after having heard the music, dynamically variable and often very intense, the representation of a physiochemical complex rather than a reminder of revolution.
Each setting is fairly incomparable, featuring a comprehensive gamut of protuberances and radiations - mildly synthetic to shortwave to ear-biting noise. The originator depicts his fantasies through processed carillons, modified guitars, birdsongs and - utterly baffling for this writer - tapings of ongoing activities at the main railway station in Milan, the incessant hubbub interspersed with computerized announcements of delayed arrivals and upcoming departures appearing like illusions in a haze of humming presences and altered ambiences. Beyond the studio treatment, there is substance in this music’s backbone: Gburek is seriously endowed with architectural talent, allowing the single scenes to maintain a logic of “anomalous occurrence” while functioning coherently as a whole. Their consecutiveness is almost visible, the changes expected yet disconcerting, the listener embraced by a pale-skinned gratification throughout, until a softly unsettling finale (which will be left unrevealed).
A work that grows with every listen, definitely recommended.
~ Massimo Ricci
In a business where top billing recording gigs aren’t usually elusive to deserving musicians, drummer Joe Chamber’s path to the driver’s seat was oddly fraught with delays and detours. He kept busy during the Sixties with sideman dates, mainly in the employ of Bobby Hutcherson. Hutch’s Components could rightly be claimed as a joint venture given that Chambers’ compositions occupy the entire B-side of the record. Still, no offer circulated down from the Lion and Wolff front office and Chambers had to wait until 1998 to ink a deal with Blue Note. Fortunately, other labels were listening and responsive, among them the presciently-titled Finite Records which financed this date in the middle of the following decade.
The project is very much of its time and shares common ground with another of Chambers’ loosely contemporaneous efforts, The Almoravid. Eastern, Latin and African elements combine in a populist leaning bent that also plies a predictable emphasis on percussion and sacrifices some of the compositional complexity of the drummer’s earlier work. Omar Clay and Ray Mantilla each employ their own batteries of drums alongside Chambers’ core kit and marimba. Vamps and riffs serve as the primary structural adhesives on the album’s five pieces. The title track sounds like a kissing cousin to the Charlie’s Angels theme, heavy on funky atmospherics that arise from fuzz bass and guitar and an answering amalgam of keening soprano saxophone and electric piano. Chambers and his percussive partners percolate around and beneath, building a vacillating array of beats with hands and sticks.
Clay’s “Chung Dynasty” works off a spiraling progression advanced by vibes and guitar. Dick Meza’s flute and flotilla of bells and shakers supplies added color and texture to create a mystic-minded mood piece. “Rio” and “Blow-Up” are borrowings from Chambers’ Blue Note colleagues Shorter and Hancock respectively, smoothed out and almost loungified through plush electric arrangements. Meza’s tenor competes with Paul Metzke’s guitar for the prize of most sugary solo on the first while Herb Bushler’s bass bubbles away as the anchor of an undulating groove on the second. Meza’s tenor sprouts some welcome spines, riding Chambers’ sturdy backbeat. Metzke sets off his own series of miniature flameouts on the Billy Cobham-worthy closer “Rock Pile”. Though the program length clocks at an EP-sized thirty-odd minutes, the brevity actually works in the album’s favor. Initial spins may leave a pungent impression of patchouli and Thai stick, but Chambers’ stylish and strenuous sticking keeps the disc from tipping totally into full fusion fission.
~ Derek Taylor
RéR
The fact that Biota release an album every seven years or so certainly hasn’t helped in generating the attention that their work fully deserves. Half A True Day - published quite a while ago, but only recently arrived in my hands - stands proudly amidst the corporation’s absolute best. Yet the same destiny of its predecessors seems to be awaiting. It’s called virtual obscurity.
Ever since the very first records under the Biota/Mnemonists marks (the latter used today for the collective’s visual counterpart, which adorns covers and booklets with splendidly imaginative artwork) the group has been dealing with cross-pollinations of genres, improvisation, folk-ish song forms and studio manipulation - an absolute point of strength. Over the last two decades, the reports from the musical research department have been signed by Biota which, starting from the 1989 masterpiece Tumble (RéR), progressively shifted the weight of the compositions towards a limited access zone where knowledgeable tampering of raw materials and memories of declining beauty secretly meet. The anarchic unpredictability of earlier albums like Horde or Tinct (both on RéR) has finally left room to a world of treated acoustic sources, taped ghosts and recollections of non-existing stories that William Sharp’s masterful editing and processing elevates to rarely found levels of awareness.
Similarly to other fruits of Biota’s creativity Half A True Day is a suite of sorts, seventeen tracks seamed in a 70-minute flow, almost no time for a listener to memorize a scene, just the glimpse of a few basic concepts appearing somewhere in the mix and instantly fading away. The problem is that this usually happens in parallel with four, five additional frames, all equally uncatchable. Peculiarly gripping themes intersect amidst amorphous reverberations and unstable chords apparently generated from detuned machines; that’s not the case - the superimposition of aural planes and ever-mutating colours is actually doing the work. We follow an allegedly regular figure or pattern, soon finding ourselves catapulted into a whirlwind of contrary-motion tapes and extraneous themes, then avalanched by strata of hissing phonemes and looped layers, each of the constituents contributing to a displacement that can’t be fought but, strangely enough, feels like a most welcome sensation. This goes on for the whole program, the music gifted with a graceful poignancy able to literally prick the proverbial cynic’s detachment.
Mixing normal instruments such as guitars, piano, violin, flugelhorn, accordion and exotic percussion with the likes of “biomellodrone keyboard” and “small battery-powered devices”, adding a charming vocal ingredient with Kristianne Gale (“Where No One Knows” is maybe the album’s top in terms of pure aesthetics) and Rolf Goranson, Biota manage to subvert the rules of expectation while remaining in proximity of an accessible method of expression. There lies their unacknowledged artistry, the ability of setting people’s mind in a comfortable position to let them enjoy music that for sure couldn’t be described as “comfortable”. The incomprehensible invisibility that accompanies this ensemble is a veritable puzzling issue. Still I wouldn’t be surprised if, all things considered, Katsimpalis, Whitlow, Sharp & co. revealed a preference for this status. After all, the purest form of art is necessarily incorruptible.
~ Massimo Ricci
Reuniting after nearly a quarter-century of absence in 2005, the pairing of reedman Peter Brötzmann and drummer Han Bennink was long a formidable one in European free improvisation. A listing of their appearances from 1968 through 1980 casts light on a staggering number of fascinating sides, many among them hideously rare (say what you will about the music, not too many originals of Haazz and Company float around the ether). But as their paths diverged in ensuing years, Brötzmann becoming a master of his very own small house and Bennink engaging swing and bebop proclivities more readily on a pared-down kit, it might have been no surprise that Still Quite Popular After All Those Years (BRO-4, 2005) was a sight more introspective than their duos on FMP and GUA-Bunge. Indeed, a set at the Vision Festival around that time was characterized by a critic friend of mine as “English” (whatever that means). Their approaches refined separately, In Amherst 2006 tames the beast of forty years while still letting it roar when necessary.
A blistering combination of tarogato, drums, the stage and Bennink’s sticks, “Every Man Is Me” starts the set right where they left off years before, the drummer’s kitchen sink of kinetic junk-sculpture replaced by a similar array of sounds/rhythms on a traditional kit. On the Romanian single-reed horn, Brötzmann occupies a narrow range of sinewy, dervish-like lines and terse multiphonics as everything from free-time to shuffles to near breaks to a drum choir give the engine a major shove. The dadaist gesture is part of what made the pair’s music (and in trio with pianist Fred Van Hove) in the Sixties and Seventies so uniquely powerful – irreverent, insane and as serious as a blow to the head. That requires, in many ways, a visual actualization and it’s hard not to think of Bennink with a foot on a snare and a drumstick in his mouth, even today. But without that visualization on record, one is left with something else and equal – a kaleidoscopic drummer and an extraordinarily nuanced reedman in an exchange, willful destruction and growth of ideas. An Ayler-to-klezmer clarinet digs at “I Am His Brother,” prodded and subsumed by hot floes of brushwork, while intricate percussive minutiae open “No Man Is My Enemy,” before hearkening back to the whoops, hollers and Milford-falling-down-the-stairs of old. Here, Brötzmann’s alto is dripping with bluesy pathos, kindling for future squalls. This is one hell of a pairing, even without the Black Forest, a brook and a broken clarinet.
~ Clifford Allen
The debut disc of Lisbon guitarist Luis Lopes continues in the Clean Feed tradition of Portuguese-American freebop combos, something that is fast becoming a hallmark of the label’s aesthetic. Lopes is joined by tenor saxophonist Rodrigo Amado, a fast-rising star of European improvisation, and the rhythm team of bassist Aaron Gonzalez and drummer Stefan Gonzalez, sons of Dallas-based trumpeter Dennis who has already ensconced himself in the Lisbon scene. It’s ambitious for a leader debut to be a program entirely original tunes, even in a seemingly post-everything milieu such as we have today, but the guitarist’s written lines acquit themselves well, not least of which because of the chosen supporting cast.
It’s apt that the brothers Gonzalez were chosen as the rhythm team – after all, Lopes has a rock pedigree (whatever that means anymore), which fits well with the punk-weaned pair of Yells At Eels fame. Their “rock” rhythms are dissective, acoustic tides on the parallel slink of the opening “Cristadingo,” a brilliant minor-key call of gruff tenor and gauzy plectra bells. As Amado digs in his heels, the band becomes a power trio, Lopes laying out as a plastic three-way volley is tossed. If Amado is a searcher in the keening vein of a saxophone preacher, the muted, behind-the-beat and wholly introspective worrying plucks and dissociative blues that the guitarist spins out is of a different quest altogether. They’re both inward, but by nature Lopes is far less exuberant than Amado – McLaughlin and Ray Russell he is not. Rather, he appears like a ghostly Moorish apparition in the middle of a blues-rock solo as minimalist arpeggios appear, only to be broken into long-legged chunks and faded away. Alternately, the grungy slabs he churns out in agitated drops nearly suspends time on "4 Small Steps." Rarely does he comp behind the soloist as would a traditional guitarist; if he doesn’t lay out completely, swirls of subtle feedback accent Amado’s tenor, as on “Paso,” drawing out the reedman’s phrases into, alternately, long tones or the contrast of sputtering staccato. Of course, it’s never that simple – there’s a constant give and take, a constant play of form between smooth and sharp, long and short, a constellation that’s always in motion.
“Big Love” is an homage to Joe Giardullo, a line that would sound interesting translated to it’s dedicatee’s sinewy unaccompanied soprano, but with Amado in charge of solo duties, it’s a series of muscular, brusque blats and lofty false-fingering. It’s a curious thing that Lopes doesn’t always choose to solo on his compositions, that he takes a backseat to democracy, and at times I wished for more obvious solo entreaties despite his surreal presence being felt. By virtue of his compositions and the tack he takes when he’s in the spotlight, unaccompanied Luis Lopes would be a treat. But he’s brought heavy company, and this is an intriguing and meaty debut.
~ Clifford Allen
Unassumingly ambitious is one way to characterize the debut disc on Clean Feed of trumpeter Kirk Knuffke’s quartet. Knuffke is a relative newcomer to New York, who has worked in the ensembles of Butch Morris and drummer Kenny Wolleson in addition to his own small groups. For his first leader date Knuffke’s joined by bassist Reuben Radding, drummer Jeff Davis and trombonist Brian Drye on twelve originals. The leader hails from Denver, Colorado and cut his teeth in bands around the state in recent years, while also studying with contemporary hardbop players like Ron Miles and Hugh Ragin. The music is deft freebop deployed with strength and facility, and for a pianoless quartet the instrumentation is rather unique.
There’s a poised fleetness to Knuffke’s lines that gives away expert music school training, and that’s not a slight – one need only to listen to players like Warren Gale or Kelly Rossum to know that what one does with “technique” in service of the music is key. Knuffke employs a range of the history of his instrument – hardboppers like Freddie, Lee and Woody as well as the scree of Don Ayler, not to mention a significant amount of steely heft. Though his assembly of phrases is very clean, his bravura is unequivocally democratic, always in support of Drye’s fat purrs and the tenuous push-pull of Radding and Davis.
The title track has a little bit of Rudd’s “Yankee No-How” in the head, dense singsong flurries in stop-time that open up into chortles and whinnies, a conversation of insects and horses atop glinting percussion and pliant thrum. It doesn’t hurt that Drye has that slushy tailgate down pat, brothel-ready in the closing “Truck” as well as throughout. Those bouncy heads are something that draws a line back several decades toward something not taught in the average music school – thematic material derived from Shepp, Rudd, Lacy and their kin. There’s actually a swinging of poles between tendencies of “New Thing” classicists and an opening up of those tendencies toward sonic exploration. But exploring space without tempo seems like a tool here rather than an ineffable outgrowth of the structure, a deliberate contrast to the lickety-split engine that keeps trying to rear in “Enough,” for example. Eventually, though, Knuffke will find a way to balance his ideas, and for that it’s worth keeping a finger on his player’s pulse.
~ Clifford Allen
There is something tremendously fitting about Barry Guy engaging the piano-trio format, as he has for three releases with pianist Marilyn Crispell and drummer Paul Lytton. After all, the bassist was at the forefront of European free deconstruction of the format forty years ago, in a group with pianist Howard Riley and a succession of drummers. From disassembling Miles and Bill Evans toward poised mini-suites of the members’ own pens, to electro-acoustic improvisation, that trio did it all. Though it might be something of a misnomer to label Riley the British Paul Bley, there was an affinity for that music early on, something to which Crispell is no stranger to – delving into the songbook of Annette Peacock, for example, on Nothing Ever Was, Anyway (ECM, 1997). Phases of the Night follows Guy’s fascination with surrealist painting in title over four meaty, directed improvisations.
The reason that Riley wasn’t a European Bley was because he replaced tonal ambiguity with directness and poise, even within what are otherwise loose structures. Even as Crispell places herself spatially behind other instrumentalists in a group she’s still a guiding force, displaying an affinity for Riley’s approach. She colors the angles at wide intervals behind and around Guy’s five-string hammered fullness, spinning atonal ellipses in jarring cycles. It’s a strange facet of this music that one feels holes in her lines – even where they are dense – and wants to fill them in, thereby creating extreme tension (but not ambiguity). From this, a rondo form emerges at nearly the seven-minute mark of the title track, Crispell off at a foreground run but still pockmarking her phrases as the jitter of knitting needles, brushes and bass thwack spray the ground behind her. The pace then slackens to fractured points of light, Crispell replaying her egg-like clusters and flecks toward a tumbling group obsession with minutae. To a degree, density and sparse detail are the main poles by which the trio structures its music, slabs of sonic ground worked over until most of the paint falls away and leaves a curious residue of unfamiliar objects. Though “Nardis” might appear distant, one must keep in mind that the history in such pieces imbues every brushstroke this trio makes.
~ Clifford Allen
Childhood friends, the two Chicagoan principals on this date followed similar paths through jazz. Touff was arguably the better known of the two, primarily because of the relative exoticism of his chosen axe and Pacific Jazz date he waxed as a leader (reissued back in ’01 by Blue Note as part of their short-lived West Coast Classics series). The pair led a quintet in their home town, but eventually drifted apart. Mosse expatriated to Amsterdam in the late 70s though a return visit to the Windy City in 1981 resulted in a studio reunion with his old pal. For reasons explicated only vaguely in the album’s liners, the seven swing-to-bop standards taped by the quintet never received a commercial release date until now. Touff’s bass trumpet isn’t as radical as it sounds on paper, usually liming register territory somewhere between regular trumpet and trombone. Both horns blend swing and bop vernaculars in fluid fashion. A local rhythm section led by pianist John Campbell lends support while eking out its own territory within the extended track durations.
Touff and Mosse fall back on arranger abilities no doubt gleaned during their joint apprenticeship in Woody Herman’s road bands. Head-solos structures alternate with more challenging chase sequences, some of which are pretty impressive in terms of evinced agility and incisiveness. The studio sound is warm and faithful to the instruments and it’s a treat to hear Touff, in particular, operate under such capacious circumstances. Mosse wears his Lestorian lapels conspicuously with an aerated tone and gliding delivery that jibes well in concert with Touff’s weightier, but still spry, brass lines. Bassist Kelly Sill and drummer Jerry Coleman, the latter of whom also contributes reminiscences about the session, are able but not revelatory. Digesting the mostly unflappable music it’s difficult to refrain from wondering how many more of these sorts of vintage dust-collecting dates Delmark has waiting in its queue. Regardless of that number, the label’s usual standard of quality control is upheld with this enjoyable and historic entry.
~ Derek Taylor
What do Neil Peart and Milford Graves have in common? Not much, but there is the shared and seemingly unquenchable propensity for populating their kits with a panoply of pieces. In the years since this early ESP effort, dubiously dubbed the Percussion Ensemble though more accurately a duo, Graves’ kit has continued to grow to epic proportions encompassing implements indigenous to nearly every corner of the globe. For better and worse, the date has an informal jam session feel about it, akin to the kind of drum clinics Graves was officiating up in Harlem around the same time and after. Sunny Morgan serves as a competent if sometimes undistinguished foil in the effort, the two drummers having served in the percussion section of populist-minded Montego Joe’s band a year prior. These pieces are decidedly more abstract in intent and structure. Numbered and each carrying the Zen-like signifier “Nothing”, the logic behind their sequencing isn’t readily apparent.
Rhythms overlap in near continuous frequency with both men switching up between what sounds like a sizeable collection of percussive devices. Cowbells, batas, congas, shakers, scrapers, and Graves’ signature gong bombs are all audible within the recording space alongside the core kits. The duo’s interplay isn’t always on point and several of the tracks have a tendency to meander into ideational cul de sacs, but these minor foibles are part of the charm of the date. The effect is that of eavesdropping on a pair of colleagues in the process of woodshedding. The album has engendered a number of negative reviews over the years with the consistently terse Scott Yanow concluding that “the songs largely live up to their titles”. Clever, but a clear case of missing the point in my opinion. There are moments where the presence of Morgan feels more like an obfuscating element than an advantage, but considering the context of the conversations and when they were recorded, the resulting music has more to offer than mere historical interest.
~ Derek Taylor
Career rebirths usually serve as manna for the receptive jazz press. Few, if any, are as remarkable as that achieved by bassist Henry Grimes: More than three decades spent in anonymity practically erased by a prodigal return. This ESP reissue gives a composite idea of how he originally went out, on the top of his game and poised to take the logical step to influential leader status. Sadly, that career trajectory wasn’t in the cards. Despite a number of auspicious sideman appearances in the following year Grimes eventually succumbed to personal demons and an ensuing life off the grid.
Perry Robinson practically deserves credit as co-leader on the date. The pair had previously appeared together on the clarinetist’s Funk Dumpling session for Savoy in 1962 and their creative rapport is even stronger in this free-leaning setting from late ‘65. Nods to the earlier meeting include the Grimes tune “Son of Alfalfa”. Robinson brings a battery of extended techniques previously largely the province of the saxophone, from chirrups and hiccups to split tones and judiciously deployed shrieks. These tactics lack artifice and instead feel wholly integrated into the music, something not easily said of certain other contemporaneous albums by peers. “Walk On” and “Saturday Night What Th’” promote the trio’s freebop interests with Robinson and Grimes engaging in some bracing exchanges and the bassist’s scuttling spider legs strums particularly memorable.
As the bluntest point of the triangle, drummer Tom Price is a bit heavy-handed, particularly on snare, and not quite on par with his colleagues. He builds up quite a vertical barrage on “Fish Story”, but there’s little in the way of horizontal movement in the resulting cascade. The suite-like “For Django” asks more from his sticks and he manages to respond with enhanced color and nuance around Robinson’s chalumeau explorations. Grimes is brilliant throughout, his bone dry sawing on the opening of the first piece contrasting with richer harmonic shades in the final minutes of the second. Robust pizzicato patterns shoot forth like gossamer webs and the newly scrubbed sound aids in discerning their complexities. The stereo mix parcels him cleanly into the left channel leaving Robinson and Price plenty of space in the right. Grimes appears busier than ever these days though debate about his abilities lingers. This set harkens to a time when the contingent of doubters was substantially slimmer and as such seems a slice of required listening.
~ Derek Taylor
Perhaps in an effort to avoid confusion with the 16th century German composer/organist who shares his name, the Hassler under scrutiny herein attaches his instrument as an instructive postscript. Common ground still exists in the occasional pipe organ parallels of his sound and the Baroque patina that tints some of his compositions. Hassler’s bushy facial foliage and ruddy features also work as handy hints to his solo accordion approach. There’s high drama in his musical musings, as on the tellingly-titled “Akkordplosion”, but cheap bombast never factors in. Call and response colloquies and a full array of split tones and effects thread through his improvisations. The percussive rattle of buttons, bellows-born drones and self contained counterpoint, even Hassler’s raspy voice, itself imbued with an endearing Joe Maneri-like quality- all are employed in the service of erecting an immersive musical environment that effectively shuts out distractions. The understanding that at no point is Hassler taking himself too seriously aids in this regard. The music, though highly personalized, also serves as a means of audience identification and stress release.
Tracks tick by in steady procession, many of them merging together to create a medley-like structure to the set. They range from interstitial snippets to the extended title suite which occupies over a quarter of an hour. Tango and other melodic and rhythmic fragments regularly roll by. Polka is fair game too, along with revolving mutations of other folk forms that bubble up and recede amidst more texture-oriented stretches. Hassler manages to braid everything together into a convincing whole, encircling a spectrum that runs from beer hall to recital hall. He proves that two need not be all that removed and that the accordion is the ideal emissary between them. In the final sum, consideration of larger context seems largely incidental to Hassler’s world. Even so, the past couple years have been unusually generous in terms of solo accordion recitals with innovators like Guy Kluscevsek and Ute Völker embracing the format. Hassler’s entry certainly deserves consideration and inclusion within that esteemed congress.
~ Derek Taylor
Perhaps in an effort to avoid confusion with the 16th century German composer/organist who shares his name, the Hassler under scrutiny herein attaches his instrument as an instructive postscript. Common ground still exists in the occasional pipe organ parallels of his sound and the Baroque patina that tints some of his compositions. Hassler’s bushy facial foliage and ruddy features also work as handy hints to his solo accordion approach. There’s high drama in his musical musings, as on the tellingly-titled “Akkordplosion”, but cheap bombast never factors in. Call and response colloquies and a full array of split tones and effects thread through his improvisations. The percussive rattle of buttons, bellows-born drones and self contained counterpoint, even Hassler’s raspy voice, itself imbued with an endearing Joe Maneri-like quality- all are employed in the service of erecting an immersive musical environment that effectively shuts out distractions. The understanding that at no point is Hassler taking himself too seriously aids in this regard. The music, though highly personalized, also serves as a means of audience identification and stress release.
Tracks tick by in steady procession, many of them merging together to create a medley-like structure to the set. They range from interstitial snippets to the extended title suite which occupies over a quarter of an hour. Tango and other melodic and rhythmic fragments regularly roll by. Polka is fair game too, along with revolving mutations of other folk forms that bubble up and recede amidst more texture-oriented stretches. Hassler manages to braid everything together into a convincing whole, encircling a spectrum that runs from beer hall to recital hall. He proves that two need not be all that removed and that the accordion is the ideal emissary between them. In the final sum, consideration of larger context seems largely incidental to Hassler’s world. Even so, the past couple years have been unusually generous in terms of solo accordion recitals with innovators like Guy Kluscevsek and Ute Völker embracing the format. Hassler’s entry certainly deserves consideration and inclusion within that esteemed congress.
~ Derek Taylor
Photoshopped as a face-off, the merger of visages on the cover of this new Delmark disc hints at a potential caveat to the project. The danger inherent with tandem piano settings comes in the tendency on the part of the principals to devolve into combative duels. In other words, a few drops of donnybrook tend to go a long way. The Lion was known for his aggressive touch and rambunctious wit. He wasn’t one to suffer fools and pretenders lightly. While those facets of his mien are present and even prominent here, Ewell’s presence and even-keel demeanor work as a reliable tempering agent. Ewell idolized Smith and when the elder sought to engage in ivory fisticuffs the younger man usually demurred. That’s not to suggest a negation of sparks or playful collisions in the interplay -plenty of each abound- but it’s definitely Smith in the driver’s seat much of the time, a differential Ewell seems to accept as a given.
The program, taped at Toronto tavern in front of a receptive crowd in ’66, corrals a decent cross-section of hoary stride-ready tunes. Smith and Ewell converge and diverge in amicable fashion, only rarely stepping on the other’s toes and pausing periodically to banter with the audience and each other. Chases are a regular part of the aural scenery as well, as during the breakneck digital sprints of “I Found a New Baby” where the two run jocular rhythmic circles from the safety of their respective stools. To their mutual credit, numbers are kept relatively free of ballast and the set trundles right along. Smith even finds inspiration for a pair of passable vocals on the medley “Linger Awhile/Shine” and “If I Could Be with You”, neither of which lacks in either humor or enthusiasm. The sound throughout is surprisingly sharp and faithful with both pianos cleanly preserved along with the vocal incidentals. Stride as a musical tradition is closing in on the century mark. As minted and disseminated by these two resourceful doyens it hardly shows any inkling of such advanced age.
~ Derek Taylor
In previous review of a Peter Zak platter, I cracked wise about his alphabetically-challenged surname and its potential relationship to compromised sales. This latest effort from the pianist puts such conjecture to rest by providing another strong entry in his burgeoning catalog. Bassist Paul Gill is back for another round and this time the capable Quincy Davis (a new name to me) fills the drum chair. Zak responds to earlier observations of his affinity for other pianists by opening the program up to tunes borrowed from saxophonists. Additionally, he doesn’t go for the well known, preferring instead to pull dusty but promising heirlooms like Harold Land’s “Poor People’s March” and the Wayne Shorter-penned title piece. His approach to the keys offers an intriguing blend of detail and propulsion. Each keystroke is audible even at blistering tempos and it’s that precision that sustains interest even when Zak’s improvisations limn stock territory.
Zak’s own pianistic pantheon is audible in shards and slivers. On Jackie McLean’s “Minor Apprehension” he filters in piquant flavors of Bud Powell and George Wallington, favoring a breakneck delivery of complex stacked chords. The original “Horace’s Dream” also carries heavy Bud overtones in its darting harmonic progression, even moreso than the obvious Silverian dedicatee named by the title. Odd for a Steeplechase recording, Gill is a bit underserved by the stereo mix, his ensemble contributions less prominent, particularly when Davis is running at full steam on snare. Bird’s “Perhaps” extends a consolation as Zak leaves the lion’s share to the bassist’s supple pizzicato. All but three of the tracks time in at over six minutes, but only the leader-scripted bossa nova “Propinquity” feels over-long at nine-plus. Herbie Hancock’s “King Cobra” makes for an inspired outro, its layered modal structure effectively creating a mood anticipatory of the Zak’s next recording move. Access to the results may not be that far off as consumers appear more than willing to take those extra necessary steps to the terminus of the brick and mortar jazz racks.
[Steeplechase titles are available direct through Stateside AT prodigy.net]
~ Derek Taylor
As a pupil of Elvin Jones, Alvin Queen earned an advanced degree in propulsive drumming at an early age, even sharing the stage with Coltrane on the occasion of the saxophonist’s seminal Birdland date in 1963. Years later as an expatriate musician still struggling to be heard on his own terms, he followed the path of several of his peers in starting his own label. The Justin Time reissue subsidiary Just a Memory has recently returned a pair of albums to circulation that serves as a reminder of his talents as leader and sideman. Queen’s style presents an assemblage of influences, but the most prominent facet is his dedication to not overplaying or eclipsing his band mates.
Comprised of young and aging lions, Queen’s Jammin’ Uptown from 1985 takes the scene described by its title seriously. The roll call includes trumpeter Terence Blanchard and trombonist Robin Eubanks, two players loosely associated with the Marsalis dynasty of the time. Near contemporaries of Queen, pianist John Hicks and bassist Ray Drummond have a number of years on their colleagues but lack none of the brio or skill. Saxophonist Manny Boyd, a former sideman of Bobby Hutcherson, handles his duties via the three principal emissaries of his instrument family and also contributes two tunes among them the swaggering title track. Hardbop typical to late Sixties Blue Note is order of the hour with the opening Blanchard-scripted “Europia” feeding off a tight horns-driven head and Queen’s stop time pivots. Direct parallels to the Jazz Messengers band are no accident and though tracks appear resequenced from the source vinyl the program still holds a cohesive feel.
Eubanks’ “After Liberation” and Hicks’ “Mind Wine” work of similarly parceled arrangements with the focus again on up-tempo soloing and steady swinging rhythmic support. Queen revels in the structured ebullience, his sticks churning out a crisp beats and finely tuned fills alongside the occasional solo sortie. “Resolution of Love” represents the lone ballad turn with lush horn harmonies before a return to full band sprint on the finale “Hassan”. Sandwiched into the original album program, “Hear Me Drummin’” offers a non-contemporaneous interlude from a 2002 Croatian gig with Queen sparring enthusiastically with a conguero Hrvoje Rupcic. Though the sequencing is a shade suspect, the conversation comes off well. The session proper relies a bit too much on convention for my tastes, but the perspiration that peppers Queen’s countenance on the cover ends up well earned.
Queen has participated in numerous organ dates throughout his career. Soul Connection falls under the able helm of organist John Patton and stands out in the sideman side of Queen’s catalog both for the caliber of employer and the winsome manner in which the drummer responds in kind. Though originally released in 1983, the session is a direct extension of Patton’s late Sixties work for Blue Note on such platters as Accent on the Blues and Memphis to New York Spirit. The five tunes pull in strong elements of hardbop alongside the expected titular ingredients. Instrumentation deviates from the usual soul jazz format with the presence of Grachan Moncur III’s trombone. Tenor saxophonist Grant Reed, a Booker Ervin disciple with reed colored liberally by post-Coltrane effects, and funk jazz guitar icon Melvin Sparks complete the crew.
The opening title cut works off a deep modal groove and finds the five establishing their collective footing. Patton rolls out a cascade of swirling sustains and staccato accents, the epitome of confidence. Queen keeps a pulsing rhythm alive and well beneath the ensuing solos though Moncur III inexplicably sits the order out. The sun-dappled “Pinto” sounds dated and slightly perfunctory by comparison. Patton still manages to thread in some menace through rich indigo comping under the robust tandem horn play. Sparks assumes the early lead on the nursery rhyme-structured “Extensions”, channeling Grant Green through a spate of twangy single note runs. Two classic selections from the Moncur III songbook occupy the entirety of Side B and the trombonist doesn’t disappoint on either one. Sparks is also effective on both spinning out densely picked statements that once again draw direct comparisons to Green. Fans of Patton will want to snap this set up, but the merits of the other band members make it equally worthy of consideration. The royal treatment accorded Queen by these reissues is certainly warranted.
~ Derek Taylor
Nearly half a century on, it’s hard to overstate the influence of Wes Montgomery on jazz guitar. No, make that guitar in general, irrespective of genre. That historical reach immediately registers the signifier in title of this Riverside studio date as far from a hollow superlative. It’s the rare instance where probable hyperbole translates instead into an accurate appraisal. The whole situation becomes even more ‘incredible’ considering the manner in which the guitarist came under the wing of the Riverside mantle. To hear Orrin Keepnews tell it, if not for the keen ear of A&R scout Cannonball Adderely, Montgomery might have languished in the Indianapolis club scene for years. A spate of sessions for Pacific Jazz prior seems to suggest otherwise but whatever the case, Montgomery truly hit his professional stride with this one.
The album’s eight cuts split evenly between standards and originals, constituting the sort of program that would come to embody textbook hardbop guitar fare. Pianist Tommy Flanagan heads the rhythm section with the Heath brothers Percy and Albert in close tow, devising tasteful accompaniment and mainly staying out of Montgomery’s way. Octave-shaded guitar lines color nearly ever number almost to the point of excess. Somehow the guitarist succeeds in making each and every solo a paragon of scintillating beauty. His “Four on Six” contains some exemplary single note picking for variety’s sake, but those persistently mesmerizing octave runs aren’t far behind. With the release and reception of this record, Montgomery found himself on the fast track to dominance on his instrument. Offers followed and he was eventually wooed away by more lucrative contracts first with Verve and then A&M. The sad trade-off on the latter deal arrived with increasing pressure to toe a pop-oriented line. That decline was still years away at the time of this set, one that distills Wes’ art into a readily digestible digest.
~ Derek Taylor
In the late Fifties, Sonny Rollins was practically impervious to bum notes or bad records. Nearly all that he played during the period garnered accolades and adulation and rightfully so. Improvisatory acumen of his caliber is still far from commonplace. A deep-seated streak of self-deprecation kept his ego in check and his person in the high graces of his peers.
Of the five titles tapped as latest entries in the Keepnews Collection, this one feels the most negligible in terms of necessity. The album has been readily available in various formats since its original ’58 release, part of a triumvirate of pioneering trio recordings that also includes A Night at the Village Vanguard and Way Out West. The Freedom Suite has always been my least favorite of the three, but that ranking is relative given the platinum standard to which they each qualify. Listening to the latest pressing in 24-bit sound, a reordering of that hierarchy becomes a tempting proposition; though one I ultimately opt not to succumb to.
Bassist Oscar Pettiford and drummer Max Roach are ideal foils for Rollins’ extended flight through the title suite. Timing at just under twenty-minutes, the piece is a model of melodic improvisation across several episodic cells linked together by cerulean saxophonic threads. Roach and Pettiford provide the most active kind of support possible to the leader’s vibrantly resonant lines. Nothing gets past them. The socio-political connotations of the project aren’t lost either, though Keepnews new notes do little to further elucidate Rollins’ reasonings at the time.
The LP’s B-side, broken into four significantly shorter snapshots of standards, reads as something of an anti-climax on traycard. The actual sounds abolish such assumptions in swift order with Rollins’ taking his time and opening up space for his partners to shine just as brightly as his burnished tenor bell. Two alternate takes of “’Til There Was You” and a duo reading of “There Will Never Be Another You” cut by Pettiford and Roach prior to Rollins’ tardy studio arrival bookend the set. Jazz fans familiar with the album won’t need to spring for this upgrade, but listeners who have yet to hear it should consider purchase an imperative.
~ Derek Taylor
Never a poll-winner or spotlight magnet, Nat Adderley played second fiddle to his older brother Julian for much of his early career. There’s even an amusing quote from him elucidating the job security inherent to his post in his brother’s band: “the contract was made with mom.” Despite Nat’s apparent satisfaction with sideman status, producer Orrin Keepnews had faith in his talents. Nat parlayed that confidence into a clutch of Riverside sessions that placed his cornet in a number of unexpected settings. This Keepnews Collection reissue presents one of the best. Adderley’s program emphasizes instrumental variety without sounding gimmicky or slight on ideas. The album’s nine cuts pack in six different ensemble configurations, varying from trio to quintet in size. Besides the leader, guitarist Wes Montgomery is the only other constant and he easily meets the subtle challenges posed by the shifting palette. His signature and celebrated octave style is in evidence, but tempered by a greater reliance on single note improvisations that add to the openness of the pieces.
“I’ve Got a Crush on You” and “Violets for Your Furs” presage later ballad experiments by Chet Baker and Ruby Braff with only guitar and bass backing Adderley’s smooth melodic musings. “Mean to Me” places his puckish cornet in the company of a pianoless trio of guitar, bass and drums. “My Heart Stood Still” finds Sam Jones taking over on bass while Keter Betts switches to cello, a change-up that occurs repeatedly throughout the date. The braiding of high to low pizzicato patterns suggests chamber sonorities without sacrificing soul jazz credentials. Pianist Bobby Timmons assists in this regard as well, his funky comping augmenting the action on the opening rundown of Adderley’s crowning title composition and two other cuts. Drummer Louis Hayes shows comparable versatility on the fast tempo “Fallout”, punctuating a plucked thicket of strings with a sturdy snare barrage. Keepnews’ confidence was well justified in this case Nat’s inventive work here stands up well against the higher profile projects his brother was putting out in his company at the time. Admiration for the Adderley name wasn’t solely directed at an island of one.
~ Derek Taylor
It’s somewhat bittersweet that in the last year or so of English altoist Mike Osborne’s life, he finally got a bit of renaissance-due from the jazz world, following almost a quarter-century of absence from the scene. Ogun has reissued some of his finest commercially available LPs, and the Cuneiform tape archive has produced a number of appearances with trans-continental big band the Brotherhood of Breath. Now, leave it up to Reel Recordings, a young label documenting British jazz and progressive music, to make available some of Osborne’s last recordings with trumpeter Dave Holdsworth and two rhythm sections comprised of either Marcio Mattos or Paul Bridge on bass and Brian Abrahams or Tony Marsh on percussion.
The centerpiece of this hour-long set is a forty-minute performance from Koln in 1980 entitled “Ducking & Diving.” It’s a piece that’s emblematic of the fiery and continuous freebop suites that make up his small-group work. The initial theme is out of the Ornette Atlantic mode, Holdsworth and Osborne intertwined at breakneck speed, though Mattos and Abrahams are decidedly different rhythmic accompaniment than anything Coleman would’ve utilized. One can cite his vocal “cry” and sour repetition/abstraction, the absoluteness of his tone and the clarity of his expansion on simple rhythmic motifs as bridge built from early ‘60s Ornette, albeit in an entirely personal and non-derivative mode. Sure, Osborne gets lost a couple of times in his first salvo (of several), but his commitment to exploration is unwavering. Holdsworth is the erudite bebopper to Osborne’s feral youthfulness, shining cleanliness a mode of contrast even as growls and slurs enter his vocabulary. The rhythm section isn’t as frantically disassembling as Harry Miller and Louis Moholo in Osborne’s previous group, but there’s no reason for them to be – Mattos drops bombs of physicality as time is on the edge of pulling apart, and what more could be the essence of free-bop than that?
Holdsworth discusses in the liner notes how Osborne never gave any directions to the tunes, let alone spoke much, probably a result of the emotional demons he exorcised through his horn. But in some ways, his difficulty in verbal expression allowed a profound level of artistic communication to develop with his band mates. Collectiveness could be achieved apart from “normal” channels, and in artistic interaction Osborne fostered something peerless. That is a fact which comes through in all of his work, and it’s thankful that much of his oeuvre is in print for the digital age.
~ Clifford Allen
Bassist Steve LaSpina enjoys a long and lasting relationship with the Steeplechase label, some 34 sessions to date. With such a history in place, a green light usually arrives with each new project of his devising. This latest entry leads to the conclusion that such relative cart blanche might not always be a good thing. The finger of blame points primarily at guitarist Vic Juris, his amplified frets routinely caulking the harmonic cracks and smoothing over the compositional edges with a shimmery reverb sheen. The overarching effect of his contributions is often akin to the more syrupy solipsistic side of Bill Frisell. Even turns to unadorned acoustic guitar on “You” and “Why” do little to sharpen his sound, though the warbling harmonics of “Tuesday Too” and “In Place Of” are captivating exceptions. Trumpeter Dave Ballou and saxophonist Billy Drewes are similarly sedate for much of the date and it’s hard not to pine for more biting grit and provocation on their parts as well.
The prevailing dulcifying mood is a chief reason why LaSpina’s terse solo feature “It’s Just a Riff in G” acts like such a shot of aural black coffee. Brazenly funky and free from drowsy sentimentality, it’s an all too anomalous respite from the surrounding decorum and parity. His ensemble bracketed solos, while frequent, don’t convey the same heft or potency. Other pieces in the program are reminiscent of Herbie Hancock’s modal investigations on Speak Like a Child, echoing both the bad and the good in such a comparison. Technique-wise, these five players have a stockpile to squander. It’s the material and their polished approach to it that leads the ears in a maddening state of stasis. LaSpina unintentionally intimates this outcome in his observations: "It turned out to be one of those dates where all goes smoothly" and “This was a fun session, without tension”. If only an infusion of the musical caffeine so prominent in his solo piece could’ve infiltrated various of the album’s other tracks. As it stands, the bulk is simply too mannered and soporific to unreservedly recommend.
[Steeplechase titles are available direct through Stateside AT prodigy DOT net]
~ Derek Taylor
Apparently far from empty, the Steeplechase Jam Session archive unveils another pair of multiple-horn conclaves, one familiar in instrumentation the other singular. Triple trumpet team-ups aren’t a new development in the series, though Marcus Printup and Joe Magnarelli are fresh recruits to the format. Ryan Kisor has a slight edge having participated in the highly felicitous meeting released as Volume 17, but the rhythm section comprises the true veterans of the session, chalking up the following counts: pianist Andy Laverne (15), bassist Steve LaSpina (8), and drummer Billy Drummond (13). All three brass men are distinctive stylists, but the back-to-back solo structures of four out of the seven numbers tends to undermine the differences. An obligatory ballad medley does a decent job delineating each player’s sound in neutral standards settings, though the readings of the tunes are cursory in comparison to the ensemble cuts.
The session includes tribute to past trumpet greats by encompassing selections from the songbooks of Thad Jones, Kenny Dorham and Lee Morgan. The three principals attack each one with audible ardor, though the biggest creative returns come through a lengthy reading of Laverne’s “Impromptu”. As arranger he makes sure to annex shares of the solo space for himself and LaSpina. By comparison, Drummond’s role is fairly circumscript but he does an admirable job putting a personal stamp on each piece through nuanced accents and the occasional drum break. Dates like this one seem to dare the listener to entertain the question of what qualifies as too much trumpet. Unlike, say, a session of multiple saxophonists, the limitations of valved brass en mass can lead to occasional homogeneity in terms of timbre and range. Printup, Magnarelli and Kisor wage a valiant battle, but ultimately end up arriving at stalemate with these strictures as often as they vanquish them. Trumpet buffs probably won’t take pause at such perceived trivialities. Other listeners may not be as forgiving when faced with the revolving wall of brass.
Steeplechase liner staple Mark Gardner references Coltrane’s Dakar date in his comments for Volume 26 and the comparison isn’t off-base as Conrad Herwig harbors a heavy Prestige-period Trane fascination. J.J. factors in too, though Herwig has lighter in tone with a phrasing as lubricious as olive oil. The double-barreled baritone attack in the frontline is the other obvious analogue. Ed Xiques and Jay Brandford are easy to tell apart on the big horns, the former sounding a bit like latter-day Cecil Payne in his textured cautious attack while the latter moves effortlessly between brusque Pepper Adams speak and a more velvety Mulliganesque manner. The arrangements aid in differentiation by inserting solos by either Herwig or Laverne between baritone statements on every track.
The session sat on the shelf for eight years and the sextet’s slightly rickety run through of “Alone Together” points to probable reasons why. Xiques, in particular, has trouble in his spotlight and seems to do better at slower speeds, such as his ballad feature “In a Sentimental Mood”, but even there Herwig can be heard lending a helping hand with subtle fills. The relative disparity between the two reeds is made all the more puzzling considering Xiques consistent positioning ahead of Brandford in the solo order. Brandford trumps his colleague’s primacy only on the closing two numbers. Laverne assumes his usual Mal Waldron-mantle as arranger and erstwhile ringleader, contributing serviceable solos alongside LaSpina. Drummer Darren Beckett’s lot is much the same as Drummond’s though his steady time is instrumental on the string of unisons and exchanges that galvanize “The Blues Walk” and he does get in a series of spirited breaks on a Latinized “You Stepped Out of a Dream”. As with Volume 25, the rote head-solos format favored for most of the session wears thin by the time the closer “It’s You or No One” hits, but the unusual instrumentation coupled with the quality contributions of Herwig and Brandford make this set worth a gander.
[Steeplechase titles are available direct through Stateside AT prodigy DOT net]
~ Derek Taylor
In appraising latter-day tenor tandems, reviewers (myself included) tend to heavily reference the past as context. Each saxophone pair gets compared to a string of predecessors: Player X is the Ammons to Player Y’s Stitt while Player A is Pres to Player Z’s Herschel Evans, and so on. Such shorthand name-checking makes for colorful copy, but it rarely leaves an accurate or lasting impression on the music described. Dave Liebman and Ellery Eskelin face plenty of precedent with their team-up. That they manage to at once embrace and supplant historical potential referents is a chief reason why this second outing hits on every cylinder for nearly the entire duration.
Granted, the game is stacked in their favor from the start given the rhythm section on hand, the sensible amalgam of one colleague apiece from each man’s working band. It’s also no coincidence that bassist Tony Marino and drummer Jim Black occupy positions on the marquee. Reason number one hits like a pallet of bricks on the opener “Cha”, a high energy groove number scripted by the drummer that sounds vaguely Masada-ish. Liebman doesn’t even pause for a theme, flipping the vertical launch switch in a rocket fuel solo that has Marino and Black working overtime beneath him. The duo have their revenge in the tune’s pipeline-riding coda, accelerating full speed into punk Surfaris territory with snapping slap bass and precision pummeling drums and leading to the natural listener affirmation- Kowabunga, dude!
So many times the facing off of like instruments, especially saxophones, leads to a simplification of strategy and emphasis. Outright combat, in the case of the aforementioned Ammons and Stitt, or dapper congeniality as was the frequent repartee of Zoot Sims and Al Cohn are the usual options. In either scenario heads often become disposable obstacles to solos. Eskelin and Liebman sense this skew and go out of their way to ensure the music maintains high standards of intrigue no matter what. Two takes of Dolphy’s “Out There” delve deep into the tune’s bop roots and revolve around a string of incendiary breaks. Again, Marino and Black personify that rare sort of rhythm section, one that risks ruin repeatedly by constantly inviting implosion and ratcheting the adrenaline output as a result. It’s not all fireworks, as the title piece tacks into chamber territory in its investigation of overlapping horn textures and commensurate rhythmic ambiguity. The nine pieces fly by, engendering an immediate desire to repeat the trip. Listeners with a sweet tooth for top-tier tenor shouldn't hesitate in taking this one home.
~ Derek Taylor
Despite semi-regular stops to the CIMP Spirit Room over the past decade, Odean Pope’s small group documentation remains relatively slim. Flip the calendar back further and sessions become more even more infrequent with much of his activity in the vein resigned to sideman work with Max Roach or in the fusion group Catalyst. In light of that history the appearance of this Porter compilation is a little alarming. The disc’s eight tracks appear to be pulled from a pair of previously released Pope sessions. Five come from Ninety-Six on Enja and three others from Ebioto, originally released on the Knitting Factory imprint. Both sources are apparently out of print, a troubling occurrence given their comparatively short shelf lives. Pope fronts two trios, the difference being the drum chair occupant, either Craig McIver or Mickey Roker, each of whom owes palpable debt to Pope’s former employer. Roker, a veteran session player and participant in classic Blue Note dates like Lee Morgan’s Live at the Lighthouse and Herbie Hancock’s Speak Like a Child fits well with Pope’s proclivities though his drumming is a shade more conventional than his younger counterpart. Longtime confrere Tyrone Brown handles bass in both cases.
Pope himself has a habit of worrying similar scalar phrases and licks across pieces. It’s a stylistic tick in common with Fred Anderson and like the elder Chicagoan, Pope makes it work through sheer soulfulness of delivery. “You Remind Me” and “Good Question”, for instance, are close cousins in terms of traveled terrain, but Pope still sows each with a sprinkling of fresh emotive soil. The usual Coltrane corollaries are present with Pope personalizing his inspiration’s “sheets-of-sound” vernacular and producing harmonic gold. Melody is central to the improvisatory schema as well with the sturdy heads coming swift and providing fertile grist for elaboration. Even the ballad “Cis”, penned in honor of Pope’s wife, exude a buoyant muscularity. The saxophonist’s lines are long and ropy but rarely ponderous, buttressed by the attentive accompaniment of Brown and the drummers. “WL” shows off his facility for vocalized effects and features some striking solo extemporization bracketed by Roker’s tensile press rolls and liquid cymbal splashes. Bass and drums are prominent actors in the aural drama, Brown's preamble to “For All We Know” paving a propitious path for Pope’s burnished entry. Points tally up too for the new packaging and what sounds like refurbished fidelity. Pre-existing Pope fans will probably find this Porter release redundant, but listeners new to the Odean omniverse are well advised to pick this set up in the event that the original albums are out of reach.
~ Derek Taylor
Though mostly known (if at all stateside) today for his jazz-choral and operatic persuasions, Finnish pianist-composer Heikki Sarmanto spent 1968-1971 in Boston studying at Berklee and engaging the cream of the local musicians’ crop in what would be the Serious Music Ensemble. In between dates for Finnish EMI (which Porter Records will also be reissuing), Sarmanto cut over an hour’s worth of improvisation with soon-to-be cohorts in Boston in December 1970. He’s joined here by regular foil, saxophonist Juhani Aaltonen, local drummer Craig Herndon and guitarist Lance Gunderson (who would also form the nucleus of the SME), and Czech bassist George Mraz, who was at the time also at Berkelee. The set is comprised of six originals, mostly segued from one to the next.
After a series of brief tenor-piano flourishes on “Top of the Prude” that allow Aaltonen’s throaty howl to get a little room, Sarmanto is off at a run atop the rhythm section’s loose clip. Sarmanto is a little hard to figure in terms of where he’s coming from, though Paul Bley and fellow Berklee-ite Keith Jarrett wouldn’t be unapt comparisons for how he mates floridness with bluesy turnarounds. Lush arpeggios and clanging ziggurats of instantaneous sacredness characterize his approach with a keen sense of architecture. As Herndon and Mraz shade around them, Sarmanto and Gunderson develop a curious dialogue of scumbled blues and erudite chords. There’s a brief tenor spot before Mraz’ engine gets to stretch amid rattles and plinks. A restatement of the theme leads into the pensive ballad “A Different Kind of Smile,” Aaltonen rough-hewn and skronky with multiphonics at the ready, imbuing the ensemble's languid glassiness with a high degree of tension.
In addition to Sarmanto, Aaltonen’s horns have graced heavy free platters by Peter Brötzmann (the infamous 1972 date Hot Lotta, on Blue Master) and countryman, drummer Edward Vesala. While his tone isn’t exactly reigned in anywhere on this disc, the introspective openness provided by Sarmanto’s compositions clearly gives his sandblasted muse another quality. Though the set weighs heavily on the leader's romantic postbop and interplay with Gunderson, Aaltonen's unbridled tenor is used much the way as Gato Barbieri was on Alan Shorter's Orgasm (Verve, 1968) - as a short-burst textural foil. Aaltonen is spotlighted on "Run" and the centerpiece "Ibiza," where his raw, reedy howls purify unaccompanied around the eleven-minute mark. His solo follows the guitarist’s blues-rock fuel as Gunderson upends and invigorates pianistic poise with crystalline fretwork.
Though sketchily outlined here, one can make out the symphonic framework that has been the basis for Sarmanto’s work since, the gospelized odes and light-filled masses at this early stage couched in dusky small-group angles. While the group continued on in Finland, A Boston Date provides a valuable window into the beginnings of their inter-continental and highly ordered collaboration.
~ Clifford Allen
Originally circulated on Byard Lancaster’s Concert Artists label in an extremely finite pressing, this 1979 solo manifesto is among the rarer Philly ‘free jazz’ artifacts. Filing it under that loose genre heading feels slightly suspect as jazz is only one of the stylistic kegs tapped in its creation. Lancaster folds in African, Asian and Native American elements as well as healthy of blues and soul. The Porter records reissue adds six tracks to the original vinyl nine, the new pieces having been cut in 2007 and sitting well with their antecedents. Lancaster hedges a bit on the album’s solo credentials, regularly employing overdubbing to couple and layer instruments from his arsenal. The plaintive “Miss Nikki” sounds more like a Terry Callier song with its cascading piano chords and soulfully sung entreaties. “In Lovingkindness” and “Dogtown” are the first of several flute numbers, the former piece adopting a meditative cast through twining trills while the latter aims for velocity and vigor via aerial acrobatics nearly on par with those of Rashaan Roland Kirk.
Accentuating the personal parameters of the project, each piece carries a postscript providing brief clues to its import and origins. “Brotherman” blends breathy bass clarinets. “Hoodoo” for alto and “What Friend We Have in Jesus” for soprano draw immediate comparisons to Joe McPhee in their spiritual mellifluousness. The two reeds voice in tandem on the lush ballad “Marianne and Alicia” while “Mind Exercise” pares back down to alto in a barrage of harsh upper register shrieks. Fast forwarding nearly two decades, the ’07 pieces find Lancaster expanding his palette and engaging in a curious avuncular commentary. “Prayer Cry” and “Tribalize Lancaster” play to the directives of their titles, mixing playful vocal effects, chanting and piquant flute with what Lancaster terms “percussion spiriting”. The first even weaves in sampled African tribal field recordings to explicate its case.
“Afro-Ville” and “Free Mumia” bring the afrocentric funk through further convergences of jousting flutes and recitations. Keyboard explorations power “Global Key” and “Loving You”, the former moving from modest beginnings to a full-scale piano and percussion avalanche while the latter threads in pliant flute. Heard as a chapbook of snapshots and musings, the disc delivers a great deal of listening pleasure. Lancaster isn’t preoccupied with chops and instead directs his energies toward sketching aural moods and pictures with digressions intact. Through the conveyance of such intensely personal cartography the veracity of the project’s title holds fast.
~ Derek Taylor
Manuel Mengis is probably tiring of the superficial Miles comparisons. Such shoehorn corollaries are only the tip of his trumpet, so to speak. His personal pastiche also probes Zorn, Vandermark and a host of others, pulling away choice bits and making them his own. The borrowings rarely feel forced and with a crack band at his disposal ruts are readily avoided. Mengis’ Hat debut dropped almost three years ago and he’s used the interim to assiduously plan and execute a second outing for his Gruppe 6. The role of rhythm is central to his constructions with ensemble voices arranged in lattice-like intricacy. That stacked and interlocking quality also brings to mind to the grid-guided interplay of M-Base. Drummer Lionel Friedli and bassist Marcel Stalder field a fluctuating series of trampoline grooves alongside the guitar of Flo Stoffner. The horns frequently sail atop, dovetailing and diverging through richly rendered lines.
The disc’s four pieces reflect a process of repeatedly shaving off and lathering up as players recede from and return to the action in episodic fashion. Altoist Achim Escher unloads a barrage of squawks and squeals atop burbling bass and mutating drum beats on “Tomorrow Will Be Colder”. The piece abruptly opens up into tightly channeled horn polyphony and ends on a tick-tocking shuffle. “Furry Buddy” relies on a similarly eventful schematic of intersecting and overlapping instrument combinations. Mengis shifts his own playing from wistful to sharply staccato, his brass threading through a range of moods and miens. Foland von Flüe’s subsequent tenor statement is almost anomalous in its relative simplicity and straightforwardness.
“Hide and Seek” builds from a madrigal-like opening of contrapuntal layers. The ensemble briefly explores an airy chamber trajectory before grounding on another elastic groove. Several minutes later all that remains of the formerly lush conversation is a skeletal semblance of a beat upon which the players once again build from the base up. After a series of ensemble explorations “Song for Violet” switches into an extended foray for Stoffner’s frets. After a strong start, his solo slips over into Satriani-style schmaltz, technically sturdy, but ultimately overwrought. Mengis’ authoritative but nuanced sortie in the final third registers as a potent counteragent. Though slightly less striking that its predecessor, this long-gestating session still carries plenty to recommend it. Miles may be an easy to peg antecedent, but Mengis is definitely his own man. Gruppe 6 will hopefully be making a return recording engagement under Hat auspices sooner rather than later.
~ Derek Taylor
Much of the emerging press regarding Michael Adkins stresses the singularity of his sound. Stuart Broomer writes in his liners of possible listener shock arising from the assumption of his arrival fully formed, such are Adkins' formidable powers with his horn. Summary judgment, while complimentary, excludes the years of study and scuffling undertaken prior to the “arrival”. To whit, this Hat album postdates his actual recording debut by a good six years. The vagaries of the industry and marketplace are partially to blame, but it’s also a function of sheer numbers. It’s certainly not the result of suspect talent. Joe Lovano is a prominent influence, coming through in Adkins aerated tone and often warmly oblique delivery. The saxophonist has a gently obfuscating habit of granulating his tone at unexpected intervals and subsequently revealing a spectral facsimile of his former self. It’s an effective tactic noticeable early on with the ballad “Their May Be Wings” that invests his lines with uncertainty and keeps his accomplished colleagues from getting to comfortable in their respective roles. Pianist Russ Lossing is another one of the Hat labels leading lights, possessive of an intuitive style of play that places reflexivity at a premium. Bassist John Hebert and drummer Paul Motian have fielded several sideman gigs from Hat and each is in his element here.
Adkins confidence carries over into a program comprised completely of original pieces. The opening title track trades on a cyclic motif ripe for dissection by his prodding reed. Motian keeps the rhythm fluid and free of anchoring weight while Hebert’s throbbing fills thread between Lossing’s darkly gilded chords. The pianist’s solo seems to slow down and open things up at once, an effective contrast to the leader’s earlier harmonic legerdemain. Other pieces present a comparable dynamic and the album as a whole has a bit of the flavor of some of Motian’s past projects with Lovano, particularly those done under the aegis of ECM. The four manage to generate a sizeable density and volume without sounding overly ornate or bombastic. “Silent Screen” walks the tightrope between optimism and melancholy, Adkins sounding effusive at one turn and contemplative at another. Once again, the rhythm section rises well beyond the role of support and the piece becomes a breeding pool for subtle and spontaneous interplay. “Pearl 21” follows in short order with roiling activity that periodically limns the fringes of free improvisation. Adkin’s fleeting Jekyll to Hyde transformation enhances the engrossing piebald flavor of the piece. The elegant “Forena” tacks in a more circumscript emotional direction, spreading a calming cool to its companion’s brazen burn. In the aftermath of an audience with this album, the hype machine seems for once to be right on target with the truth.
~ Derek Taylor
As much as the reissue market is saturated with re-packagings, often for the umpteenth time, of previously issued material to encourage followers of the music to purchase the same thing twice, there are those rare birds that render the original obsolete. Tenorman Frank Lowe’s debut LP as a leader, Black Beings, issued in 1973, was never a record that left one wanting for more. Sure, the recording was a bit muddy and the original vinyl pressing not that hot, but the music contained therein always felt prime, either a last gasp of post-Coltrane fire music or the first sweaty exhortations of “loft jazz.” Joined by Joseph Jarman on alto and sopranino saxophones, violinist The Wizard (Raymond Cheng), and the rhythm section of bassist William Parker and drummer Rashid Sinan, it offered something between movements and utterly sedimental on two full band cuts and one solo tenor piece. ESP sourced the original concert tapes, adding over fifteen minutes of material to what was originally issued. Not only that, but the remastering job is first-rate, lending the date an auditory power that goes beyond its creative significance.
The opening “In Trane’s Name” is a throaty call to arms from buzzing, gruff tenor and acrid, tart alto, violin clawing at the reaches of the upper register. As Lowe blows in contorted squeals and fire-and-brimstone blasts from the pit of his horn, Sinan is a many-limbed storm of bricks and pavement keeping tenor afloat in a dialogue that seems fit to lift an entire city. There’s an entirely different urban structure to Jarman’s alto, as he begins his solo in delicate sprawl and builds to obsessive repetition and extroverted peals over a crashing field of gongs, toms, wood and strings. Jarman moved to New York in the early ‘70s, and though he was far less the stereotypical Chicagoan in the architecture of his improvisations than Roscoe Mitchell, it’s clear that his feral-ness found a home in the lower Manhattan of Lowe’s band.
Part of Jarman’s solo was cut out of the original LP release to fit a side; more importantly, all of Cheng’s electric violin madness was excised. To say it’s a revelation is an understatement – less Leroy Jenkins and more Masayuki Takayanagi by way of Ornette, as his wide-interval leaps, seasick multiple-stops and torqued tones reach a frenzy that even Sinan’s stew can’t match. This is free string playing for the ages, and it’s a shame that more people didn’t experience it when the record was released. Cheng and Parker spar fiercely, the bassist’s levitational harmonics already in full force (this was his first appearance on record). Parker’s thrum is audible throughout the disc, though, and the newfound crispness of Sinan’s tubwork makes their tandem truly glorious. The drum choir that pipes up at around the twenty-minute mark is a perfect upping and altering of the ante from string solos (Sinan and Parker also hold court on Seikatsu Kojyo Iinkai, a corker of a session led by Japanese altoist “Kappo” Umezu for the SKI imprint). The front line engages in a high-register cutting contest of sorts over mallets and toms before the theme’s incantational blues takes the tune home.
There’s something to be said for vinyl, though – after a set this intense, a rest before flipping the side is important. Unfortunately, ESP didn’t figure out a way to give the disc a little mid-performance breather.
~ Clifford Allen
In historically criticizing the international breadth of improvised music, we’re still often quite apt to pigeonhole certain countries and regions as having a specific approach to sound. There’s the “Cleveland sound” exemplified by Albert Ayler and his cohorts, and the Instant Composers’ Pool defines jazz in Holland. The Germans blow their heads off and we all know what the English do. Of course, this is a patent fiction and thankfully there are records like the debut slab of Synopsis, first issued by FMP in 1974 and now in digital form on Intakt. The group consists of pianist Ulrich Gumpert, drummer Günter Sommer, trombonist Conny Bauer and alto/soprano saxophonist Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky. Apart from two LPs in the ‘70s, they have recorded under the Zentralquartett moniker over the past two decades.
Being from the East of Germany and operating under the Iron Curtain, the appropriation of influences was a little different – sure, they could learn from records and from their local peers, but few other European (let alone American) improvisers made their way past the wall during the music’s infancy. Yet the East doesn't really factor into the idea of a uniquely "German" approach to free music, though the overblown paint peeling of Petrowsky’s alto may grant him kinship with Brötzmann. Such frantic pyrotechnics aren’t the basis for the group’s improvisations. But talking about what Synopsis is not doesn’t make much room for what defines them.
The set begins with “Krisis Eines Krokodils,” a poised counterpoint to the group’s immediate pan-continental kin as Gumpert’s delicate Monkian fancies jibe with trombone multiphonics and Sommer’s detailed, rattling propulsion. The fact that one is not waiting for a primed Bennink yell to break the silence enables one to relax and take in breath, coiled and tart sounds, upper-register plinks and massaging brushes. The piece ebbs and flows gradually in punctuated waves, Sommer’s tide a singular rhythm yet not indifferent to the circularity of African heartbeats. As Petrowsky screams and Bauer chortles, there’s an ease akin to rested breathing that makes their crescendos seem ever so natural. Sommer and Gumpert are a gorgeous tandem, symphonic arpeggios and a crystalline lushness, and their well-practiced duets offer a solid foundation for collectivity. Jaki Byard-esque rolling rings out from underneath Petrowsky’s alto whinnies, providing an introduction to a stately and unified head that closes out the piece amidst percussive thrash.
There are kwela-inspired folksy moments in “Take IV,” a transposition of Chris McGregor onto something of a parlor melody before racket ensues. “Mehr Aus Teutschen Landen” is a German folk song, winsome romance stomped on by Sommer’s toms before a trio of trombone, piano and drums take on the anthemic call as Petrowsky’s frantic skree hurtles over the top. A synopsis of exactly “what” might be the question to ask, for this quartet’s approach to improvisation is the antithesis of summation. Rather clearly, Synopsis/Zentralquartett are a musical launching pad.
~Clifford Allen
Taking their name from a Tolkien monster, the bass-and-reeds duo Ballrogg are far less fearsome than their rancorous moniker would suggest. A Norwegian pairing of altoist/clarinetist Klaus Ellerhusen Holm and bassist Roger Arntzen, Ballrogg’s debut features ten brief vignettes, most of which are from the books of Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman and Jimmy Giuffre. In addition, there is one duo improvisation and two pieces penned by Holm.
The set begins with a pensive and wistful reading of Ornette’s “Sex Spy” (not an obvious choice from his book), Holm’s alto cleanly eliding and harping notes in concentrated forms, building soft yet tensile structures far from the folksy melodies that the tune’s progenitor would’ve put together. And of course, there’s no reason to think of Holm or of Ballrogg as “required” to stick to the formulae.
“Out To Lunch” begins with a coda of harmonics from clarinet and arco bass before the melody creeps in, briefly, and is toyed with in engaging woody slaps and flights. Giuffre might seem like a model, minus the piano of his early sixties trio (indeed, they bouncily cover “Emphasis”), but the chamber dissection here moves from an apparently more direct, freer model – immediate and perhaps looking toward the jugular. In a context such as this, one might look for obvious connections between Holm’s alto playing and that of Ornette, Dolphy, or for that matter Konitz and Lacy’s soprano (which has influenced a huge amount of players). Clearly, he’s out of this tradition of wide interval leaps and curious, chirpy repetition, likewise smoothness and ebullient swing, but Holm is quite an individual voice. That’s crucial when approaching such a solidified repertoire such as this.
On clarinet, Holm is microscopic and winnowing as one might think, but again he somehow turns the theme of “Lorraine” into something klezmer-esque against the Garrison-like walls of Arntzen’s bass. It’s as though Ornette’s bluesy twang became transplanted into a filmic Jewish neighborhood in New York or eastern Europe, even as Holm’s solo plods, spirals and plots other sonic areas before returning to the dusky hovel of its theme. This is an excellent debut from a pair who have clearly not only set the bar high for themselves, but for the music as a whole.
~ Clifford Allen
This piece was the biggest surprise of last year’s Vision festival. It boiled with excitement and raw power that spread throughout the space in waves as the music rose and fell. Even the quietest moments were suffused with energy, and at climaxes, the volume and multihued textures were overpowering.
The studio recording of Mitchell’s tribute to a profoundly important African-American woman author does not convey the same sense of unbridled vitality as its concert performance. That said, the studio environment also brings advantages; the consistently rewarding Firehouse 12 label has released a finely detailed reading of the work, one in which Mitchell’s fine orchestration is even more clearly evident than it was at the premier. From the opening upward flourish of the first movement, the recording is imbued with a sense of purpose that underlies every phrase of the beautiful scoring. Yet, there is a sense of transcendent stillness, most likely engendered by the relative serenity of the studio. These ruminative moments are juxtaposed with the busy bass, drums and percussion work of Josh Abrams, Marcus Evans and Avreeayl Ra respectively, their numerous and varied exchanges heard to full effect in the crisp recording.
As “Smell of Fear” moves from a similarly anticipatory calm to the menacing pulse that underpins it, the slightest microtonal motion becomes apparent as Mitchell’s flute melds effortlessly with David Boykins’ tenor and David Young’s trumpet. The clarity and presence of each instrumentalist is amazingly evident even on a track like “Adrenalin,” where Tomika Reed’s expert cello work graces the increasingly hectic mix.
The composition certainly invokes Mitchell’s associations with the AACM, the multimovement work clearly rooted in the multicultural conventions birthed by improvisational practices of the 1960s; however, Mitchell’s harmonies owe a large debt to contemporary classical music, and her effective blending of stylistic traits becomes more apparent upon repeated listening. Her playing is second to none, scaling heights of register and virtuosity and making the suite’s conclusion the powerful statement it is.
In concert, vocalist Mankwe Ndosi’s contributions provided the axis on which the piece turned, and she remains pivotal on disc. Even when her voice is buried during ensemble passages, it is an integral part of the textural, bespeaking and enhancing the many psychological states captured in Mitchell’s composition. Often though, that unmistakable voice rises, phoenix-like, to propel the music forward, her pitch range matched perfectly by the myriad vocal subtleties of which she is in command. Watch as her sobs, or is it nervous laughter, emerges from the multi-pulsed counterpoint of “Sequence Shadows,” to cite only one brilliant moment.
This is a finely detailed rendering of a wonderful piece of music, and the playing is first rate. I hope that the Xenogenesis Suite is only one of many such works to be penned by this talented composer and performer.
~ Marc Medwin
Trumpeter-composer Don Cherry’s multinational mid-sixties quintet created a body of work with an influence localized to the period that is still being unpacked. With itinerant tenorman Gato Barbieri, vibraphonist Karl Berger, drummer Aldo Romano and a rotating cast of bassists, the group ping-ponged between Scandinavia, France and the United States throughout their short existence. This second volume of recordings captured live at Copenhagen’s Café Montmartre with bassist Bo Stief is particularly interesting, for its contents go beyond the usual renditions of the “Complete Communion” suite and gives one a clearer picture of the breadth of their repertoire.
One of the crucial aspects of this recording is the inclusion of a suite of Albert Ayler tunes, brought from the Ayler-Cherry quartet of two years earlier. The mutual influence isn’t sufficiently talked about, for not only were Cherry’s pieces recorded by the quartet and at least one in Ayler’s later bands (“D.C.,” on Spirits Rejoice, ESP 1020), but the long form suite format of thematic elements heralded from improvisational quotes is something that both composers used heavily in their work of the period. One has only to place Bells alongside Complete Communion to see how forms occur from ragtag energy. Of course, Barbieri is sufficiently different from Ayler as a front line partner; rather than folksy Swedish and blues melodies, he’s bubbling with buzzing explosions, unbridled Pharoah-isms and a Latin edge. Still, it’s enchanting to hear him approach “Ghosts” and “Mothers” with clean and terse verbiage, skimming over the top where Ayler would’ve dug in deep.
The samba “Orfeu Negro” is given a reading in keeping with the quintet’s muse, Barbieri’s splitting growls braced with candlelit keen as Cherry and Berger take brittle potshots, picking the tune apart. Cherry’s solo is Moorish in its ken, brief and leading into one of the “Togetherness” fragments, coiled horn song firing aloft for Berger’s metallic droplets. The stories are legion of Cherry’s walks around European cities with a transistor radio in his hand, listening to everything he could get his ears on. Thus, it’s no surprise that a piece from Black Orpheus would make its way into the band’s wooly and all-encompassing suites. For followers of 1960s improvised music and of Don Cherry’s art, the Montmartre recordings are essential.
~ Clifford Allen
Phil Minton’s music practically mandates first person response. Burying the “I” in a review is a hard thing to do from the onset. Reaction to his work is frequently polemical with one person’s vocal abuses occupying the same aural space as another’s expansions. Minton doesn’t appear to be especially bothered either way by potential controversy. His laconic liner notes on this third entry in his solo series endearingly lay out his up-to-the-minute reasoning: “I know things aren’t getting better, but I hope this cheers you up a bit.”
As with the earlier volumes, Minton leaves laryngeal censors and shackles at the figurative door. Thirty-seven “songs” zip by in just over fifty minutes, though their relative brevity doesn’t necessarily lead to easy consumption. The collected sounds on many of the pieces superficially resemble a taxonomy of ethnic caricatures and speech impediments. The closer Minton comes to coherent speech, the less convincing and startling his creations. My favorite aspect is the array of imaginative imagery engendered by the sounds. The opener sounds like a prayer circle of asthmatic Gyuto monks. Title pieces “5” and “7” resemble the mush-mouthed mumblings of the Swedish Chef capped by Ricola-worthy yodels. “Para five” makes me think of Donald Duck’s nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie, if throttled by piano wire. Self-inflicted strangulation factors into several other pieces.
Pure sound ventures are relatively few. The whirring drone on title piece “6” resembles wind gusting steadily through a ventilation pipe while “22” consists mainly of avuncular hums. “8” assembles a string of tea kettle whistles and screams. Minton’s irrepressible humor bleeds through even on the more controlled pieces where he’ll occasionally punctuate a concluding stretch of silence with one final gasp or sputter. “Vo be dayish” presents a Minton improvisation based on a Veryan Weston transcription of a Minton improvisation and curiously ends up the most conventionally “song-like” in structure. Weston also handles recording chores. The last piece, an improvised collection of strained sighs and eructation, layers in barbed political commentary with the admonition “i have given this much more thought than blair did when he decided to invade iraq.”
Most of the tracks are ones I probably won’t put in regular rotation, but my admiration for Minton’s art remains steadfast. Many of his oral expulsions require extraordinary muscular and respiratory control. Last year’s Blur is an easier sell as it features Minton’s voice mixed with other instruments. This disc is for the truly brave souls able to embrace his improvisations sans such collaborative filters. One question though: what happened to those doughnuts?
~ Derek Taylor
Intakt
This recent Schlippenbach Trio recording comes close on the heels of the last, at least in comparison to the lengthy gaps between their previous meetings of past decades. A natural question rests in whether it stands out substantially in the group’s existing corpus? Arguable metaphors abound, but one that keeps cropping up in my cranium is that of a miniature Zen garden. The rake and sandbox are the same. It’s the furrows and patterns amongst assembled grains that reflect the difference. Annotator Ben Young dubs the trio the Three Wise Men and explicates on the near-telepathy that exists between them. Both the ascription and the posited collective extrasensory ability are evident from the opening “Z.D.W.A.”, an improvised piece that harkens back to the ensemble’s free jazz roots in its rapid deployment of controlled explosions. So too does the closer “The Bells of St. K”, credited to Schlippenbach and thick with slow rising tension. Other tracks carry the semblance of individual composer credits, the overlap with spur-of-the-moment improvisation in seamless.
Parker speaks solely through tenor and the focus is a boon for those who prefer his granular vernacular on the larger horn. Sharply serrated blowing interchanges with a feathery phraseology that finds him ferreting at melodic fragments. Dry and cottony, tonal comparisons to Getz and Marsh aren’t so confabulatory, though in Parker’s case the abrasiveness of steel wool is within easy reach. His solo opening on “Three in One” avoids circular breathing in favor of finite phrase lengths and it’s another winsome deviation from the standard playbook. Schlippenbach’s piano resounds with roiling rhythms and decaying chord structures, balancing vigor with chamber detail. His strings plus keys manipulations on the title piece create a cascading percussive climate in collusion with Lovens. The drummer is his usual dynamics-driven self, spending as much time on carefully-constructed texture as velocity. Sequenced back to back, his “Slightly Flapping” and “Amorpha” stack percussive minutiae into terse time spans. The mix of short bagatelles and lengthier pieces mirrors some of their work for FMP though the sounds here have a definite advantage thanks to state-of-the-art studio clarity. The disc’s title suggests a simple, but accurate reduction of the trio’s chemistry, a quantity both conscious and unconscious catalyzed by a confidence in the longevity of their particular context.
~ Derek Taylor
Philly colleagues with associations that date back to early 90s, Khan Jamal and Dylan Taylor share something of a mentor and student relationship. The notes to this CIMP detail what seems a somewhat tumultuous history between the two, but Taylor’s words of respect reveal a friendship that transcends such growing pains. This set follows in the proud if slim tradition of bass and mallet conclaves, most notably those undertaken by Walt Dickerson and Richard Davis for Steeplechase in the Seventies. Divorced of any band support the duo is well-suited to the spare Spirit Room surroundings. Jamal’s take on the session is similarly succinct, his notes consisting solely of the statement: “I say the music speaks for itself.” Speak it does, though acclimatizing to their language may take some time. A first trip through the program left me on the fence. Subsequent spins pushed me firmly into the
Coltrane’s “Bessie’s Blues” gets things off to a bit of a stiff start as Jamal sounds slightly mechanical during several laps through the theme. “Global Warming” is the first indication of the album’s singularity. Jamal cranks his vibraphone motor and uses the room acoustics to create echoic loops of aural white phosphorous around Taylor’s steady pizzicato throb. The startling effect is almost like an electric keyboard in resulting tonal intensity and texture. It’s a tactic he takes to even greater extremes on “Bells of Copenhagen”, shaping similar rings against Taylor’s arco bass counterpoint. Cello and marimba meet on two takes of the Oscar Pettiford classic “Bohemia After Dark”. Taylor saws through the theme as Jamal creates a luminous rhythmic cushion beneath him, switching to taut plucking for added contrast. Jamal’s melancholic ballad “Whisper Sweet” pairs cello with vibes for a muted discussion in delicate melodic terms. “Your Guest is as Good as Mine”, scripted by the dearly departed Tyrone Hill, a fellow Philadelphian, celebrates the more animated side of the combination.
Balafon makes memorable appearance “The African American”, a jointly composed venture that delves into the funk with some athletic pizzicato by Taylor against another rhythmic-melodic loop from Jamal. Clever castings of “Blue Monk” and “Equinox” give additional evidence of the duo’s deep connection to jazz tradition, the latter tune also bringing the set full circle. Jamal’s solo “How Low Can You Go” is also of note, a generous ten-minute slice of what might have been had the original plans for the session come to fruition instead. For a complexity of reasons Jamal records far less than his talent would suggest. It’s a pleasure to hear his mallets rendered under the no frills auspices of the CIMP sound and in the company of a partner like Taylor who gets what he’s about and where he’s coming from.
~ Derek Taylor
Throughout its existence, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers held a reputation as a repository for journeyman jazz talent. Commentators commonly center on the steady stream that poured forth from the band in its first decade through the surnames of Morgan, Shorter, Hubbard, Walton, etc. Later young lions weaned under the Blakey wing tend to garner short shrift. Saxophonist David Schnitter is among this latter cohort, having served with the drum doyen in several Seventies incarnations of the Messengers. This CIMP date sets him up with two receptive partners and marks his first recording in a trio format. His relationship with bassist Dominic Duval dates back to a 1990 jam session. Drummer Newman Taylor Baker is a far more recent acquaintance, but the three establish an easy rapport from the outset. Schnitter’s style is a loose amalgam of Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson tempered with lots of personalized touches. His phrasing is frequently long and lanky, with a dry warm tone that he occasionally atomizes into fuzzy striations. “Jitterbug Waltz” highlights a healthy sense of humor as Schnitter parses the familiar descending theme with a pursed staccato delivery above whisking brushes and percolating bass.
Baker is a minor wonder on the cans, measuring finesse with a frequent funkiness. His succession of break beats on an irreverently syncopated rendering of “Criss Cross” carry enough rhythmic juice to make most club DJs salivate. On a lush and tender “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” his sticks apply just the right amount of texture around the tenor’s drawling lines. “Sampson” exposes Schnitter’s Henderson roots and even finds him quoting from the elder’s “Inner Urge”. “Blues for John” is a blowing vehicle redolent with simmering Ear of Newk. Duval doesn’t overplay or intrude, eschewing heavy amplification and aligning with Baker in a number of vibrant conversations. He’s well attuned to Schnitter too and the pair’s sly reading of “In a Sentimental Mood” is intimate and nuanced enough to cause Baker to sheath his sticks and simply listen in silence. The closer “Bright Mississippi Georgia” points again to that aforementioned comedic streak as an alchemical amalgam of “Georgia Brown” and Monk’s “Bright Mississippi”. As with most latter day Blakey alums, Schnitter’s profile is eclipsed by those who came prior. This overdue outing suggests that reappraisals are in order.
~ Derek Taylor
The ESP-Disk annals are rife with shadowy figures, musicians on the free jazz fringes who recorded little beyond what they left behind on the label (The Wizard, anyone?). Drummer James Zitro and several members of the ensemble on his self-titled ESP fit that distinction. Recorded in April of 1967, the studio date encompasses free and postbop forms, opening with the slightly shambolic but galvanizing “Freeken”, which occupies the entire A-side of the LP. A “Night in Tunisia” style vamp serves as the grist for a string of solos starting with Zitro’s rolling thunder drums, which blend elements of Blakey with Indian-influenced complexity. Warren Gale’s granulated trumpet follows in a heated display of geysering glissandos. Bassist Bruce Cale approaches his spotlight in a manner akin to Jimmy Garrison, the amplification of his strings giving the strummed statement greater gravitas. Michael Cohen, a San Francisco lawyer by day, provides the piano meat between explosive horn solos by Allan Praskin and Bert Wilson. Wilson would go on to further obscurity in the company of fellow lesser knowns like Smiley Winters and Sonny Simmons. His work here on tenor substantiates the shame of such a fate, particularly on his own “Happy Pretty”, an anodyne number which opens Side B and bridges structured postbop with fire music ferocity. Praskin also shines on the piece, his alto leaving a jet trail as he soars atop the rhythm section. Zitro shapes another persuasive percussion salvo toward the close, this time in the company of Cale’s responsive strings. The album ends with Cohen’s delicately designed “Sweet”, a nocturne that summarily grows teeth. Zitro’s discography is pitifully small with only a handful of sessions to his name. He’s reportedly still semi-active on the Santa Cruz scene, but as is so often the case, a return to active recording may only be wishful thinking.
~ Derek Taylor
Critical reception toward Byard Lancaster has waxed and waned over his five decade career in creative music. There are those who argue that he has yet to wax an album worthy of his talents. First released on the Philly Dogtown imprint in 1972, this live collection isn’t certain to solve the polemic, but it does provide some prime and vintage free jazz as consolation. It also documents an earlier stage in the still flourishing creative partnership between Lancaster and percussionist J.R. Mitchell. The pair most recently recorded a deuce for CIMP in 2006. Despite album’s location specific title, the first cut “1324” comes from a 1970 Boston gig. Lancaster fronts an ensemble buoyed by both upright and electric bass. Paul Morrison’s percolating performance on the latter axe braids with the conga accents of Lester Lumley, but it’s Mitchell’s sturdy sticking that supplies the principle rhythmic drive. Lancaster cycles through a small arsenal of horns starting with alto and moving on to soprano, trumpet and bass clarinet. His brief, but potent improvisation on the last recalls John Gilmore’s famous “Adventure Equation” foray. There are moments were a spectral second horn line creeps into the left stereo channel, but my money is on mic echo/bleed rather than an uncredited colleague. Sound quality is in par with Joe McPhee’s CJR titles from the same period.
The Macalester cuts are a mixed bag starting with the flute reverie “Last Summer” and moving on to the heated urgency “War World” dominated by charging tenor and churning drums. Pianist Sid Simmons is a bit of leavening presence, his warm dancing chords suggesting early Keith Jarrett. The title track is an ebullient vamp piece in a Noah Howard vein with Lancaster’s alto closely miked and in a loquacious mood. A switch to flute opens the piece up into more meditative territory before scalding tenor takes it out on an ecstatic note. The St Paul audience in attendane returns the band’s efforts with appreciative applause. The disc concludes with two bonus cuts by the J.R. Mitchell Experimental Unit culled from another Boston gig, this time dating to 1973 and totaling 24 minutes. Band specifics are sketchy as is fidelity, but the two pieces are still a welcome addition. Lancaster is part of a larger horn section though the exact number is hard to pinpoint given the density of the interplay, which rises and recedes in writhing polyphonous slabs. Mitchell joins bassist Calvin Hill and an unidentified pianist/keyboardist in balancing the reeds and the roughly hewn music is often bracing in its intensity. This set is just the start of a reissue campaign on the part of Porter Records. Future titles will include new and archival material from Odean Pope, more from Lancaster, and a new release by the duo of Henry Grimes and Rashied Ali. I, for one, can’t wait.
~ Derek Taylor
A fine line separates eccentricity and error in improvised music. Saxophonist Kalaparush McIntyre, surreptitiously having dropped Maurice, is a personification of the subjective tightrope between the two. McIntyre rightly holds elder statesman status as an aged member of the AACM, though his four decade plus career is comparatively slight in the discographical department. His last ensemble, The Light, cut a handful of records but now appears kaput. This new group reunites him with bassist Michael Logan who served on his first CIMP session back in 1998. Will Connell, doubling on expressive bass clarinet and alto, is another CIMP veteran having served under trombonist Steve Swell’s leadership on several occasions. Warren Smith needs no preamble and his presence at the drum kit is an unqualified boon for the session, lending a sense of order to proceedings when the leader seems otherwise preoccupied.
McIntyre’s music also embodies the blurred boundaries between accident and mistake, the latter connoting the possibility of volition. Some of his choices on the record sound like mistakes, as when his tenor intrudes on Connell’s heated alto solo on ‘What do you see…” and is summarily parried back. Such a flub could be construed as indication of failing faculties and the album notes do make mention of befuddlement on the part of McIntyre’s band mates in reaction to certain of his moves, humorously dubbed “senior moments”. The logic behind them, however internal, does appear intact and intentional, as on the ballad “Closeness” where McIntyre jumps ranks and travels his own tenor trajectory independent of the support proffered by Logan and Smith. His ironclad rationale in the aftermath: “That’s the way it’s supposed to be. It’s between me and my old lady- closeness”. The “little instruments” segments that bracket a rangy bout of horn harmonizing on the prolix “Early Morning” are also of arguable merit, as are various peculiar pauses and asides.
To some, such insularity of expression will no doubt breed annoyance and even ire. Taken on its own terms, McIntyre’s music evinces ample charms through its idiosyncrasies. He’s an original and always has been. This new cache of music is as undiluted as anything he’s done previous and well worth hearing on those grounds alone.
~ Derek Taylor
While not nearly as prevalent in parlance as its Coltrane counterpart, post-Ornette is an umbrella term that covers a significant swathe of saxophonists. Philly-based altoist Bobby Zankel certainly fits under the mantle with a quicksilver phrasing that stresses concentrated melodic bursts, a reflexive rhythmic sense, and a blues saturated cry among his calling cards. In these respects he also shares stylistic kinship with Jemeel Moondoc and the two share further distinction in having played in Cecil Taylor’s big bands. This Spirit Room session, Zankel’s first in seven years, holds the added draw of bringing drummer Edgar Bateman back into recording circulation. Bateman’s cans were a pivotal component on several of Walt Dickerson’s 60s dates and it’s joy to hear him hitting them with comparable skill as septuagenarian. Bassist Dylan Taylor completes the trio with an elastic articulation that contrasts the often more aggressive delivery of his colleagues.
Zankel’s tunes are fairly boilerplate freebop at first blush, bridging knotted heads with extended ensemble and solo digressions. Their strength lies in an abiding capaciousness toward improvisation and Zankel uses them readily as launching pads for lengthy extemporizations. Several fray slightly under the strain and end up relying on flash in lieu of heat in their later minutes. Such is the case on the quarter-hour opener “One in Mind” where ideational steam eventually starts to evaporate near the close. The comparatively concise “Spirit Mirror” suffers no such obstacle with an incisive lead alto line and effectively lean accompaniment from arco bass and snare-dominant drums. Bateman sounds a bit rigid in places, occasionally butting heads with Taylor, but he also brings a welcome informality to his rhythmic constructions as with the funky second line fragments that rumple the final minutes of “Revealing True Identity”. His own “Journey to Life”, the only non-Zankel number of the set, also reveals some of his facility with open-ended grooves. Zankel operates in habitual form here, but not at the expense of turning in a involving and invigorating album. Better still, Bateman’s back and will hopefully be recording with renewed frequency.
~ Derek Taylor
Academic intimations abound in this ensemble's name and sound. An immersive element exists in their music borne from an omnivorous approach to folding in influences. It’s reminiscent of the trained anthropologist who dives into a disparate cultural setting in order to glean new insights about his or her own. From the opening track “Of”, it’s clear that these three are working out a complex communal lexicon, at once familiar and fresh. Saxophonist Steve Lehman studied under Braxton at Wesleyan. His solo projects since have emphasized a similar praxis-directed approach with an alto voice that recalls the puckered-tone punch of Jackie McLean among others. Pianist Vijay Iyer favors a comparable systems-minded approach on his albums, merging layered motivic parcels into mutable frameworks. Drummer Tyshawn Sorey, the relative new recruit for this release, is a human tool and die dynamo, his stuttering polyrhythms referencing facets of electronica and hip-hop and sounding almost machine-sequenced in their speed and precision. His command of complex metrics matches the Iyer’s rhythmic and harmonic dexterity and together they create an impressively waterproof weave. Lehman is just as astute on alto, threading sharp melodic hooks into a mathematical interplay that stresses collective construction over individual primacy.
The puzzle-piece congruity of the ensemble processes is often startling, recalling the experiments of Greg Osby and Steve Coleman, at least in spirit if not absolute letter. In the context of such demanding structures, there’s a very real danger of coming off as overly insular or stylized, but the three largely circumvent such constrictive concerns. Lehman moves freely from instigator to leavening agent, firing off staccato bursts or tempering into porous legato drawls. The absence of bass amplifies the music’s angularity and despite Sorey’s dazzling technique the starkness of the interplay is sometimes jarring. Loop-drawn rhythms replace any kind of conventional linear momentum. Sorey’s patterns resemble a casino wheel spinning at high velocity, his accents approximating the metallic ball jumping between number slots. Iyer varies the weight and direction of his own contributions through adroitly textured pedal sustains. The moody ballad “Cycle I” slows the action down to a crawl and consequently opens it up, revealing the model’s viability at any speed. The academic trappings of the trio are hard to miss, but Fieldwork is far from an armchair enterprise. These three players are all about getting its hands dirty in the service of risky in-the-moment music.
~ Derek Taylor
Ragtime revivals are reliably recurrent events in the chronology of jazz. The most recent renaissance arrived under the auspices of Chicagoan Reginald Robinson, whose MacArthur “genius” coup a few years ago raised a few eyebrows, not the least because of the seemingly antiquated nature of his chosen musical vernacular. Pianist Wally Rose predates him in the capacity of reparatory revivalist/interpreter by a good six decades. Rose was a member of the Lu Watters Yerba Buena Jazz band. He also took part in the splinter groups founded by band mates Bob Scobey and Turk Murphy in the wake of Yerba’s initial demise. The two solo albums coupled on this Delmark reissue date from twenty years after those associations and were originally released on the specialty Blackbird label.
Rose devours a total of 21 tunes, all of them variations on the venerable rag form with syncopated rhythms and jaunty genteel melodies working in familiar congruence. Exotically tagged tracks like “The Lion Tamer Rag” and “Jamaica Jinger Rag” vie with more conventionally christened pieces, among them “Ragtime Dance” and “Scott Joplin’s New Rag”. The reliance on rags makes the music innately circumscriptive and programmatic variety suffers from the relative parity of tempo and design. Rose combats any encroaching malaise through the easy ardor expounded in his performances. His fingers dance and cavort, expressing both elegance and vitality in their repeated interlocking runs up and down the keyboard. Modern recording technology captures each stair-stepping dash and somersaulting aside with clarity and immediacy. Rose’s discography numbers well over one hundred records, but these solitary sides no doubt retain a special slot within that relative surplus. The playful slang of the album title accurately reflects the high energy, low calorie approach.
~ Derek Taylor
Last week, a select cadre of improvisers assembled in London to honor the memory of Mike Osborne, among them Evan Parker, Alan Skidmore, Stan Tracey and Tony Levin, all former colleagues. The event is part of a larger commemorative effort this year to celebrate the life and legacy of the saxophonist and this opportune Ogun reissue is part of the same. Osborne passed away last year from lung cancer, but he had struggled with schizophrenia for much of his adult life. This set, winnowed largely from a concert at Willisau, Switzerland in 1975, visits him in happier, healthier times and in the company of a rhythm section for the ages. These days, much pixilated ink gets devoted to the supposed supremacy of William Parker and Hamid Drake, but Harry Miller and Louis Moholo truly do hold the crown. Evidence of their primacy is all over this disc and as engaging as Osborne’s alto flights are, it’s the bracing flash fire interplay of bass and drums that repeatedly transfixes. The opening medley of the title piece and another motif “Rivers” finds them wasting no time in demonstrating the depth of their rapport, rising to a fever pitch that almost immediately seems hard to top. But top it they do through a rousing three-prong conversation that rarely flags or founders.
Osborne recorded a stellar studio date, Border Crossing, with the pair but there’s an urgency and intensity here that hits with twofold force. Miller rubberizes his strings with amplification, but rather than succumb to murkiness he makes adroit use of the enhanced girth sounding at once massive and meticulous whether felling a forest of trees with bow or pummeling with clawed strums. Moholo is comparably adept at combining stentorian beats with a supple delivery and the two together are masterful at summoning intricate visceral grooves. Their repeated rhythmic pile-ups somehow manage to maintain structural unity despite the periodic mic-overloading din. Osborne sounds in awe as well, sometimes resorting to cyclic riffs as if mesmerized by the creative magnitude of his partners. A playfully tweaked “’Round Midnight” reflects recognition for repertory and Osborne occasionally quotes other bop fragments throughout the remainder of the set. His own tunes also receive representation including two forays through the Aylerish “Scotch Pearl” and a sprawling previously unreleased “Now & Then, Here and Now” from another European gig that unfolds as a medley unto itself. Early influences of Coleman and McLean are traceable, but only in fractious form and Miller and Moholo rarely let him rest on such comfortable referents anyway.
The trio recorded three full sets at Willisau of uniform quality. Six of the selections here represent but the partial of one. Here's hoping the remainder sees commercial circulation sooner rather than later right alongside with the results of the aforementioned tribute of more timely vintage.
~ Derek Taylor
Commercial sheet music courtesy the Djll family library.
“At the very bottom of the process of musical development are the howls of the savage; shrill, piercing, and with indefinite pitch. ... Like all folk music, neither boogie woogie nor the blues was created by any one individual. Seemingly, both styles developed from the tribal music of the African savage.”– Sharon Pease, “Boogie Woogie Piano Styles,” 1940. Forster Music Publisher, Inc. (Chicago)
Of the many charming and half-forgotten love-children of the musical genre mixing that emerged during the fertile era of the 1930’s, when jazz music and American popular culture briefly shared the same bed, none had the eventual impact of boogie woogie. Christened with a name that fairly reeked of the world of chippies, cribs, honky-tonks and sporting houses, the boogie woogie style nevertheless enjoyed a brief rage in the early 1940s, faded from national attention and then was reborn, lusty and screaming, in the stomping ivories and honking saxophones under the command of Fats Domino, Little Richard and countless other rock ‘n’ rollers who followed them. It was still showing up decades later, although slowly losing its genetic thread among fuzzbox mutations by the 1970s. Then, during the 1990s, boogie woogie was reanimated and stitched onto that pop music Frankenstein known as “swing and jive,” unwittingly caricatured by pudgy sheiks in goatees and zoot suits, who didn’t seem to know the difference between a Sing, Sing, Sing and a Rocket 88. There’s a special place in Hell on MySpace for them now. But I digress.
The three-disc set Mosaic presents here collects a representative garland of boogie-woogie pianists and small bands recorded between 1935 and 1941, on labels associated with Victor and Columbia. The producers make plain their wish to avoid inclusion of the million-selling big band hits that capitalized on the boogie-woogie craze, such as Tommy Dorsey’s Boogie Woogie and that crushing collision of flag-waving and white hipsteria, The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. An impressive selection of important records in the eight-to-the-bar style is included, although completists must search elsewhere for some key omissions. Notable Decca recordings such as Meade Lux Lewis’ Yancey Special fall outside of the producer’s boundaries. And although Lewis laid down the pioneering boogie wax with Honky Tonk Train Blues in 1927, it is the re-recorded 1936 version that’s here; other progenitors such as Pinetop Smith, Champion Jack Dupree, and Wesley Wallace are unrepresented.
The eccentric style of a pianist like Wallace would be valuable in rounding out a collection like this. Not much is known about him, but his 1929 Chicago recording, No. 29 (included in the Riverside History of Classic Jazz) is a fascinating 6/8 train piece with humorously evocative narration and erratically-timed modulations between just tonic and subdominant keys. It’s unlike any other boogie or blues piano piece I’ve ever heard, and hints at the murky origins of the style as reportedly practiced by long-forgotten itinerant musicians who predated the recording age. Like Wallace, the origins of boogie woogie are obscure, probably stretching back into the ragtime era or possibly earlier. In Blesh & Janis’ They All Played Ragtime, Eubie Blake describes a 300-lb character from Baltimore named William Turk who “had a left hand like God…He could play the ragtime stride bass, but it bothered him because his stomach got in the way of his arm, so he used a walking bass instead. I can remember when I was thirteen – this was 1896 – how Turk would play one note with his right hand and at the same time four with his left. We called it ‘sixteen’ – they call it boogie woogie now.” Blake is probably speaking of a steady 8th-note bass in his description of Turk’s style. Turk, who reportedly played in all keys and sometimes in multiple keys (“and the chords still jelled,” recalled Blake), died in 1911. Blake also told of a Boston pianist from the same generation, One-Leg Willie Joseph, who grabbed a national ragtime prize for his rendition of The Stars and Stripes Forever in march, rag, and ‘sixteen’-time. Blake no doubt carried some of this musical DNA into his own work, evidenced by a 1922 recording of Charleston Rag (not the famous Charleston, by James P. Johnson), which sports tricky reverse-boogie walking bass-anchored themes sandwiched between hard-striding ragtime syncopations. I call it “reverse” because Blake shifts the pattern by an 8th note, and all the accents go with it, making the pattern sound backwards.
Practically all jazz and blues pianists of that era were acquainted with boogie woogie, even if they themselves didn’t play it. When the craze took off, many bands and pianists featured at least one boogie woogie number to please the patrons. Jelly Roll Morton, of all people, though such blues styles were too low down to be taken seriously; Earl Hines scored big with Boogie Woogie On St. Louis Blues but otherwise never touched the stuff; Fats Waller reportedly refused requests to play it altogether (although one listen to his 1942 Up Jumped You With Love proves he did play the style at least once). All this discursion is meant to illustrate that genres, then as now, are fluid melting-pot things, at least in the hands of American musicians. And it provides an introduction to the earliest recordings on the Mosaic boogie woogie set, by Cripple Clarence Lofton, made in 1935 (but presented last in the anthology). Lofton, like Cow Cow Davenport and doubtless others forever lost to time, wasn’t too particular about keeping the rag out of his boogie, and vice versa. He had an interesting half-time bass, heard on Strut That Thing, consisting of one bass quarter note on the root of the chord followed by a quarter note on the remainder of the triad, walking this pattern up and down. The result is as much oompah as boogie. Lofton’s five pieces are all vocal blues numbers, tastefully embellished by Big Bill Broonzy’s guitar. Brown Skin Gal features some charming whistling as well. Lofton’s are really proto-boogie pieces, more in the standard blues idiom of the day.
An acknowledged father of boogie woogie is Jimmy Yancey, whose story illustrates the all too common difficulties faced by many African-American musicians. For much of his life he didn’t own a piano, practicing only occasionally at his sister’s house. He lived in Chicago all his life; after early success traveling in vaudeville as a singer and dancer, he went home to a near-invisible musical existence ground out in rent-parties and seedy bar gigs. Yancey’s day job was groundskeeper at Comiskey Park. But with the help of Meade Lux, who recorded Yancey Special (which was then picked up by the Bob Crosby band and made a hit), in 1939 Moe Asch and Victor both tracked down Yancey and brought him into their studios. All the Victors are included in the Mosaic set, along with four sides for Vocalion for a total of seventeen. It’s great to finally have them all in one place and mastered well for CD, for they are stone classics of American music of any era or genre. It’s hard to know where to start digging – every piece is varied in rhythm, key, and mood, offering multitudes of pianistic pleasures. Yancey’s style was pure 12-bar blues with a strong beat, spare and no-nonsense. He didn’t announce his pieces with flashy introductions – on the contrary, many of his records start off seemingly in mid-sentence, catching the listener off-guard. State Street Special is a supreme example of his art. It starts out light and breezy but quickly gets down and funky. Yancey’s bass keeps shifting between about six different figurations, with a fluidity that would be astonishing if it weren’t so fully integrated with the right-hand syncopations, and therefore not attention-calling. For the last couple of choruses Yancey slyly segues into a steady boogie beat, using plenty of space and keeping the dynamics down for the initial chorus before hammering out strident blue-note octaves on top in the second (a variation of an earlier chorus) – suddenly ending with his standard tag-line stop. It’s one perfect performance. Yancey Stomp is a fast rocker with a couple of dazzling breaks in the middle. Five O’Clock Blues delivers a deeply felt meditation (although it doesn’t reach the level of enlightenment of Yancey’s 1951 Atlantic re-recording of the same set of variations under the name Mournful Blues. Like many great musicians, Yancey recycled material as he pleased – 35th And Dearborn and Cryin’ In My Sleep also contain variations of the same choruses.). A couple of times Yancey stumbles momentarily, generating some creative tension, as on Yancey’s Bugle Call, with its skin-of-my-teeth breaks (especially the unissued take). The Vocalions and three of the Victor sides feature Yancey’s vocals, which on the Vocalions are rather oddly formal. Yancey’s enunciation sounds professionally coached, defying our expectations of what low-down blues is “supposed to sound like.” The Victor Cryin’ In My Sleep and Death Letter Blues offer Yancey vocals that sound more “authentic.” (Which brings up a perplexing question: which was indeed the authentic sound of Jimmy Yancey’s voice? Was it the producer at Vocalion who specified a “more legitimate” (i.e., white) vocal sound, or someone at Victor who urged the artist to “black it up?” One could imagine either scenario as a scheme to boost sales, albeit to differently-pigmented audiences. Or, less conspiratorially, is the stilted singing on the Vocalion date – Yancey’s debut on records – the result of opening-night jitters, or a flashback to his vaudeville days?) (Another aside: Yancey had a brother Alonzo, also a pianist, who recorded a few sides in the 1940s. They show him to be solidly in the ragtime school, with scant blues touches.)
Yancey remained clear of the limelight practically all his life. On the other hand, at the crest of the boogie craze, three other black pianists brought authentic boogie woogie to concert halls and high-class clubs in New York. One should not be surprised to see the name John Hammond come into the discussion at this point, for it was he who first presented Meade Lux Lewis, Albert Ammons, and Pete Johnson in New York, opening the 1938 Spirituals To Swing concert at Carnegie Hall (Dan Morgenstern, who wrote the jolly liner notes for the Mosaic package, calls Hammond the “deus ex machina of boogie woogie.” He might well have said “of American popular music in the 20th century.) All three of these “discoveries” of Hammond’s were much more schooled and comprehensive piano players than itinerant bluesmen like Yancey and Lofton. But that didn’t guarantee steady gigs for them – Hammond found Lewis working at a car wash in Chicago, and Ammons and Johnson had been cab-drivers on and off to bring in the bread. After their debut at Carnegie, though, that changed – for a while, anyway. Soon Ammons and Johnson had a duo going at the very democratic Café Society (integrated bandstand and audience) and recordings on big-time labels. Albert Ammons (father of saxophonist Gene) was the earthier and more rhythmically solid of the two – he’s another guy with “a left hand like God.” Ammons has just one solo recording in the set, Shout For Joy (in two takes), which is a peerless example of the boogie woogie style. After a Big Ben chiming intro, the God-hand digs into a timeless boogie figure – anyone acquainted with Dizzy Miss Lizzy will recognize it. Like Lewis and to a lesser extent Pete Johnson, Ammons gives over the last eight bars of each chorus to a standardized cadence that doesn’t vary much on repeats. It’s a common blues form. Contrast this with the “primitive” Yancey, who was less prone to this habit.
Lewis, Johnson and Ammons are all on hand for the two-part Boogie Woogie Prayer, presumably a reprise of the music they had created together just days before at Hammond’s Carnegie Hall concert. It’s a thick, roiling stew of blue pianistics, not terribly varied in texture, locked into three-chord harmony and 12-bar cycling, but one can imagine the impact this relentlessly rhythmic music must have had on your average white audient in 1938. Certainly record producers felt a new kind of freedom, the kind that would soon tool up the dreadful assembly line of Bumble Boogies and Bugle Boys and the rest of that sour ilk. And the public was there to lap it up, along with the fables about African savages and so forth. Whites could enjoy the thrill of being “hip to the jive” while their received notions of Afro-primitivism remained intact.
Eight performances from 1941 by the Ammons-Johnson duo (with discreet drumming) finish out disc one, and they offer seamless, mildly commercialized boogie for the downtown trade. Worth singling out is Cuttin’ the Boogie, an easy-going ramble that showcases the kind of contrapuntal extravaganza the duo could produce. It’s not possible to fully disentangle the two pianists for a who-did-what, but it’s a good bet Ammons is doing most of the bass work. Johnson, a more versatile jazz pianist, handles at least some of the fancy high-register filigrees. In the middle, a thicket of riffs spills from the keys. The duo would gig with dual pianos, but in practice just used one, thus enabling them to work on keeping out of each other’s way. On the records, we get intertwining lines, which, like relay runners, pass the melodic lead off to each other as they cross. It can all get pretty frenetic, as on a fast-tempo number like Boogie Woogie Man. Towards the climax, the groove doubles up as the walking basses run up and down the lower keyboard registers and the riffs pile up like a ten-layer double chocolate cake, thick, rich and bewitching.
Johnson and Ammons get to show a jazzier side on a few sides with swing trumpeter Harry James. On the boogie numbers, James sounds fenced in by the eight-to-the-bar rhythm – his ideas are less adventurous than usual and at times the excitement sounds forced. Things lighten up considerably for the non-boogie pieces; Home James has Johnson fingering in the Teddy Wilson mode in his solos and exchanges with trumpet. The previously unreleased Jesse has Ammons striding forcefully in a minor thing reminiscent of Dark Eyes (as Morgenstern points out; but his pianist attributions for this session don’t agree with the discography. My ears say the latter is correct.).
Pete Johnson’s work with the monumental blues shouter Joe Turner is more representative, and these are essential sides in both their catalogs. Turner worked as a singing bartender in Kansas City, where he and Johnson often performed together in the 1930s. The duo has two pieces on disc one: Goin’ Away Blues has Pete serving up a stride bounce and virtuosic tremolos. Roll ‘Em Pete was their showpiece, and Turner was still belting out “You’re so beautiful baby, but you’ve got to die someday” in 1977 in Chicago (although by that time you could hardly understand the words – as he aged, Big Joe gradually excised consonants from his delivery). Disc two of the Mosaic set opens with Pete Johnson And His Boogie Woogie Boys, a sextet offering sublime slices of Kaycee swinging the blues. Hot Lips Page and Buster Smith (Charlie Parker’s elusive mentor on one of his rare recording dates) make the front line backing Big Joe on four numbers. Cherry Red is a relaxed blues with a delicious ensemble opening and clear, forthright choruses from the singer, while Baby, Look At You again limns the “you’re so beautiful” refrain, at a jumping tempo. Smith breaks out with smooth alto and Page – one of the all-time hot blues instrumentalists – boils away behind a tight mute. Then Johnson takes over and demonstrates bear-like tenacity in his solo, carrying the whole band in the out-choruses. On Jump For Joy, at a similar brisk tempo, Pete gets three stride choruses and demonstrates he could hold his own against any piano player of the day (the magisterial Tatum excepted). Lips sounds especially nasty in the opening to Lovin’ Mama Blues, while Smith backs Turner’s vocal with a natty obbligato. Despite the band’s name, the session doesn’t offer a lot of boogie, but it’s wonderful small-group jazz nonetheless. From the same date comes a curiosity, Café Society Rag (Morgenstern calls it “not a rag, not a blues, but a boogie-flavored romp on jazz changes”). Johnson, Ammons and Lewis are back as a piano trio while Turner calls out the switch-hitters (“Donald Duck swing…better known as Lux!”).
Turner gets in more soulful vocalizing on a couple of pick-up dates from 1940, led by Joe Sullivan and Benny Carter. On Low Down Dirty Shame with the Sullivan group, he’s ably answered by Benny Morton’s trombone and Edmond Hall’s clarinet. Also in the frontline was trumpeter Ed Anderson; little-known now, he gets well-met exposure on two takes of I Can’t Give You Anything But Love. The leader was not known as a boogie pianist but as an effective stride player of the vanilla persuasion; in the event, Sullivan doesn’t shame himself on Low Down Dirty. Carter’s group sounds lush, not surprising given the leader’s silky demeanor as well as the presence of two more horns. Morton is back on trombone, along with Bill Coleman, that most insinuating trumpeter (he deserves more recognition, if anyone does), Georgie Auld on tenor, sounding as always like Ben Webster with a lung removed, and Benny Carter himself on clarinet. Other members of the group were drawn from Carter’s working big band, making it a comfortable, well-balanced session. Mosaic gives us two takes of two tunes each. As Morgenstern notes, Turner doesn’t sound all too comfortable on Beale Street Blues, experimenting on both takes with mic proximity and timbre, clipping off his phrases in an un-swinging way, and getting words scrambled. But then the high-flying Coleman takes wing and all is well again for the nonce.
The rest of disc two is taken up with a grab-bag of small group recordings generated by the boogie woogie craze, mostly performed by superior jazz groups led by Teddy Wilson, Lionel Hampton, and Henry “Red” Allen. Wilson seems an unlikely acolyte to the cause, and A Touch Of Boogie gives a hint as to how much boogie the buyer will get. But after several exemplary swing solos, a full-band flourish announces the plunge into that low-down groove. Lionel Hampton doesn’t waste any time in Munson Street Breakdown (October 1939), a boogie blues with a diminished release à la Air Mail Special. Hampton plays piano and vibes in turn, opening with driving walking-bass on the ivories. Central Avenue Breakdown takes off similarly, but this time Hamp shares the keyboard with Nat “King” Cole, flitting around in the (mostly out of tune) upper register using his patented two-finger technique. This gambit may have represented little more than a vaudevillian trick, but it didn’t sound like anybody else’s piano playing, either, and Hampton managed in similar showpieces to prefigure some bop clichés by several years. (Another Hampton small-group recording from 1939, Sweethearts On Parade, is more profoundly prophetic: In it, Hamp and his men manage to conjure up the kind of perfect in-the-pocket shuffle that practically defined the early rhythm & blues era, complete with booting tenor saxophone (courtesy of Chu Berry).) The third and last Hampton entry, Bouncing At The Beacon, features Hamp’s working LA combo featuring Marshall Royal on alto and Lester Young’s brother Lee on drums. Sir Charles Thompson is given the bass-piano duties while once more the leader tinkles all over the top of the keyboard (with his two fingers, mind you); Royal contributes a not-ready-for-prime-time solo, bristling with odd notes. The two takes of K.K. Boogie from “Red” Allen shows the direction his band was taking in ‘41, from a kind of advanced Dixieland towards a jump band like that of Louis Jordan’s. Kenny Kersey is the pianist here (Yep! – same guy as on Cootie Williams’ 1942 recording of Thelonious Monk’s Epistrophy), jumping in on a galloping bass; when he solos, he drops the boogie in favor of fleet Wilsonian figures.
Finally, Mosaic offers several cuts from the Will Bradley-Freddie Slack-Ray McKinley nexus, and they’re the most blandly commercial sides in the set. Bradley and McKinley waxed a boogie woogie hit early in the craze, Beat Me Daddy (Eight To The Bar) that led to these sides. To be fair, they are very well played, and perhaps it’s unfair to dis them for commercialism, since the music’s equally as far from the kind of sonic oatmeal cooked up by the Kay Kysers and Sammy Kayes of the day as it is from “real” boogie woogie. It’s just that this listener finds nothing so cringe-worthy as white folks doing blackface, or in this instance, blackvoice. Ray McKinley’s singing is especially unfortunate in this regard. The man seemed to have no inhibitions; but then, they tell me he hailed from Texas (and no doubt was raised in Tennessee, as the song goes). He not only does the blackvoice but in falsetto on the first take of Southpaw Serenade. Thankfully, Columbia released the other take. (Right after the war, Ray McKinley hired Eddie Sauter as arranger for his big band and recorded a suite of Sauter’s forward-looking compositions, so I guess I forgive him. Will Bradley, for his part, later became a “serious” composer in thrall to the works of Alban Berg. Who’da thunk it?) Trombonist Bradley takes the interlocutor role to McKinley’s Mista Bones (well, not quite literally) on the novelty Down The Road A-Piece, and the two old boys blithely traffic their “Man, Ise a-goin’s” and “I sho would lak dat’s” while Slack keeps up the rhythm in acceptable fashion. During the bass solo, Slack splashes a few notes on a celesta, followed by McKinley’s whistling (and all that while he plays the drums! Heavens to Betsy!). The listener is treated to three takes of this three-ring circus. I’m not well acquainted with Freddie Slack’s work, but Mosaic’s producers hold him in some regard, having already released a Mosaic Select three-disker of his band from the early 1940s. The guest list looks pretty decent.
There’s one remaining pianist in Mosaic’s anthology I want to mention as a kind of icing on this rich, chocolaty cake, and that is Mary Lou Williams. She arranged a piece for Andy Kirk’s band called Little Joe From Chicago, and subsequently recorded another, entirely different, solo piano piece by the same name, which opens disc three. It’s an enchanting walking-bass boogie all the way, conceived as only Mary Lou Williams could, i.e., far out. For one thing, her walking bass covers more pianistic ground than most, venturing into the middle of the keyboard by the end of chorus three, with descending chromatic thirds on top emphasizing a diminished scale, producing a momentary bitonal crunch. She uses and extends blues changes but ignores any set form – she’s improvising like a jazz player, not a blues player. Then she switches to minor blues changes and confines the bass to a narrower, deeper range, giving the music an evil face. All the way through, her touch, dynamics and figurations are tightly controlled yet swinging and propulsive. The music stays at the same level of rhythmic intensity throughout, never getting too hot or showy. Mary Lou was always cool – and comfortably ahead of the times. Even more than Hampton, she was playing bop-like music when bop was yet to be. Kudos to Mosaic for including this overlooked orphan in this musical family reunion. And let the good times roll.
~ Tom Djll
misafridal
imperial brick
whoresonin the wilderness
Music Appreciation
mus001-003
One of the pleasures of following new music is when someone springs up out of the blue (at least, to you), almost fully formed, with no particular connection to any musicians or musical scene of which you were aware, if anything known only as an avatar on a discussion board. For this listener, that happy circumstance occurred in the case of Vanessa Rossetto, a violinist/violist/electronicist from Austin, Texas. These three discs were all recorded in 2007and, though not intended as a triptych of any sort, can easily be heard as such, and a mighty impressive one at that.
“misafridal” opens with some almost idle sounding flicking, presumably of a stringed instrument but abstracted enough to suggest almost any taut pieces of material, from plastic to paper. One of the first magical moments in this music occurs subsequently as rich, dark bowing from the viola enters quite unexpectedly, soon overlaid by field recording atmospherics, either out in the wind or inside some large enclosure, among which plaintive violin pluckings are briefly heard. It’s quite evocative and mysterious and sets the table perfectly for what follows as the music caroms between the impassioned string playing and the tapes. While she’ll occasionally, as near the beginning of the second track here, play rough-edged quasi-melodies, more often Rossetto fluctuates between freer playing inspired by musicians such as Polly Bradfield and Phil Wachsmann and low drones that recall Tony Conrad but with perhaps a greater emotive range. These drones constitute one of the deeper elements at play throughout the discs, often anchoring farther flung sounds though Rossetto is quite content to abide in a given area for an extended time, wringing out variation upon subtle variation. The third cut here, “eohippus” (Rossetto also has a way with titles), is gorgeous, all slightly splintered but relatively tonal, high-ish drones, one lapping at the heels of the next, with a soft rumble of something, perhaps a rogue field recording, maybe just ambient sound in the studio, beneath. As an album-length suite of sorts, it’s not perfect—the fourth track throws in a bit of a wrench with some accordion-like wheezing and disjointed, scrabbling string attacks, but on the whole it holds together beautifully, Rossetto varying both sound and structure within a seemingly narrow plane but achieving great breadth. The closing string piece (three or four overlaid, I think), returns to a fairly tonal character, a wonderful rumination that recalls, just a bit, the bluesy keening of the late Leroy Jenkins while also making reference to early minimalism.
The “middle” disc (they were in fact recorded in the order issued), “imperial brick”, consists of seven improvisations on the viola, all laid down on the same day. (One can sometimes make out ambient sound from outside the room, traffic and such, a very nice effect). Here, the connection with earlier free improvising string players is the strongest and this set can be heard as part of the entire tradition of solo performances in that vein, though still the strongest attractor seems to be that of the ornamented drone. As ever, it’s a difficult feat to pull off consistently and Rossetto wavers here and there but by and large holds matters together with a sure hand. Not that it’s technically flashy, but I admit to being a bit wowed every so often, unable to quite believe that a mere single viola was in use; I get the feeling she has chops to spare. My favorite cut is “The Girlhood of Baba Yaga”, once again a drone-centered improvisation, with coiling, smoky tendrils unfurling off the central spine. Though I don’t know his work terribly well, I was reminded a good bit of a fine solo concert I saw in Nancy several years ago by Malcolm Goldstein. There’s a similar latent romanticism in Rossetto’s playing, not woozy at all, but clear-eyed with a dash of harshness and possessed of a striking vocal quality. While I can’t say I’m the most knowledgeable fan of the genre (solo string improv), I do have very fond memories of seeing Jenkins playing alone at Washington Square Church in the late 70s, an amazing performance. This session, at its best, isn’t far short of that or the Goldstein.
But Rossetto saves the best for “last” with “whoreson in the wilderness”, a title out of Cormac McCarthy. It opens with a thrilling quartet (? I actually have no idea how many violins and violas are involved) that spirals up into a dizzying column of sound complete with what sounds like feedback. Indeed, that feedback initiates the next track, “myself with water”, in my opinion the finest track from these three discs and one of the single strongest pieces of music I’ve heard over the last year, period. An eruption of clatter ensues, soon embedded in that recurrent low, creamy drone, pulsing along at a relatively rapid pace. These, in turn, subside into a crystalline, delicate mesh of high arco and electronic tones, with metal scrapes weaving through, morphing into keening, birdlike wails. Specific sounds aside, the structure of pieces like this one is hugely convincing; more than once, in this respect, I was reminded of Olivia Block’s constructions, heady company to be sure. “stale cream moon” is more composed, a lovely mix of groaned low tones and march-like middle ones with a sorrowful, chorded middle plaint. The sawing grows more and more frantic on “impending shark music”, verging on derailment, Rossetto in full maximalist mode. She takes things out with a marvelous funnel of taped sounds and strings, an intense eddy of echoic, metallic swirls, those deep string drones and insectile chirps.
As I said above, very impressive work, beautifully conceived. It held my attention throughout and provided more than a few thrilling moments. Highly recommended.
Also available from erstdist
Blame it on Bill Evans if you must, but few ensemble combinations are as pervasive in jazz as the piano trio. Saying something fresh with the format is frequently an exercise in futility. So much so that many outfits content themselves with safely regurgitating the past. George Dulin and his colleagues in Disband appear acutely aware of the conundrum. Influenced indirectly by the Tristano School, their tack is decidedly deconstructionist. Dulin wryly refers to the cobbled creations as “de-rangements”. Titles like “Ella’s Night Light” and “I Forgot April” give easy clues to the identities of source tunes, the second piece featuring a hilarious instance of title echoing the band’s fallibility. As engaging as these retoolings are, it’s the musicianship of the three that truly carries the album. Producer Bob Rusch likens Dulin’s keyboard attack to an amalgam of Bud Powell and Don Pullen and it strikes me as an apt one. There’s energy to burn in his bright and dancing patterns that reflects academic encounters with George Garzone and Cecil Taylor. Bassist Danny Zanker and drummer Take Toriyama have similar perspiration-producing relationships with their instruments. The resulting interplay between the three is often thrillingly fleet and free of stasis.
In a roundabout way, Dulin’s work here reminds me of Bobby Timmons, not in sound, but in strategy. On mid-60s Prestige sides like Little Barefoot Soul and Chun-King, Timmons sought to integrate populist elements of gospel, blues and soul into his music and devised an earthy rhythmic hybrid that sadly ended up failing to sell the requisite units. Dulin and his crew take a similar boundary-dissolving approach. “Stingray Road” works off a tight groove and rock-inflected backbeat while “Cerebral Dongnosh” threads in a tone-row and Klezmer motif. The solo “’Round Midnight” and trio-rendered “Seawatch” are flush with romantic expressionism that finds Dulin acknowledging the Evans monolith, but not bowing beneath its shadow. “F.M. Downward Spiral” radically revamps “Softly As in a Morning Sunrise” with a downhill racer’s tempo and rich grist for improvisation, particularly in the combustive cross-rhythms that cascade from Toriyama’s corner. The session carries a posthumous dedication to the drummer who passed away in the spring of 2007. Jordan Perlson replaces him on several pieces that constitute Dulin’s demo for the 2006 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition, a contest that earned him a semifinalist standing. Dulin’s abilities are still developing, but this debut effort denotes a talent definitely deserving of wider recognition.
Stanley Jordan’s career has covered a curiously incongruous course. A meteoric ascendancy in the Eighties via a series of strong-selling albums on Blue Note put him in a position rivaling Pat Metheny. That status as guitar wunderkind hinged mainly on his method of playing multiple melodic and chordal parts simultaneously, a system modestly called “tapping”. The arrival of the Nineties saw his celebrity wane somewhat and then he inexplicably pulled a Tal Farlow, dropping off the scene for the much of the next decade. The whys and wherefores of that decision are still largely a mystery, but it appears that parts of the hiatus included time spent teaching, owning and managing a bookstore in Sedona, Arizona, and attending the ASU Master’s in Music Therapy program.
Mack Avenue is banking on a full blown resurgence with this record and it seems like a good bet assuming they hit the right markets. Jordan’s prodigious chops are intact and the nearly 80-minute program provides ample opportunity for him to show them off. Bassist Charnett Moffett (christened “charismatic” in the press copy, who am I to argue?) and drummers David Haynes and Kenwood Dennard, all seasoned veterans of the sort of fusion-leaning fare that Jordan favors, supply able sidemen support, but the spotlight is almost always on Jordan’s frets. The opening “A Place in Space” leaves no doubt as to Jordan’s plectral credentials and he sounds like an über-Wes Montgomery, voicing octaves and tightly braided note patterns with a velocity and precision that is almost machine-like. The program is wantonly eclectic encompassing an expected contingent of jazz tunes along with variable stabs at world music, pop classical and bread and butter fusion.
“All Blues” is the first of several tracks that finds him doubling on piano, and purportedly playing it concurrently with guitar and coming at the familiar modal progression from several angles. Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father” receives a similar-minded treatment with more dazzling fret play. Three interstitial pieces in the set’s second half, numbered “Mind Games”, feel more like filler. “Forest Garden”, “Adante from Mozart’s Piano Concerto” and “Healing Waves” make use of gilded guitar chords, soothing piano and arco strings, often to unfortunate treacly effect. “Insensatez” and “Ocean Breeze” explore Brazilian and Indian ethnicities, respectively. Jordan saves the real fusion popcorn fare for the final third and while the kernels fail to pop with my sensibilities the slowed down Satriani-style wailing that suffuses “Shadow Dance” is still strangely sort of endearing. He even revisits Joe Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out”, second cousin to the equally then-ubiquitous “Axel F”. In sum, it’s a blend of stellar playing and often sub par material, a stumbling point not coincidentally indicative of his past work as well.
~ Derek Taylor
Is Barkingside an ensemble name or simply an album title? The distinction ends up of little consequence as fine print reveals that none of the four improvisers who comprise the group “have ever been to the outer London suburb”. At just under an hour, the disc collects three performances, two from a Cambridge gig and the third from a London set at the 2007 Freedom of the City Festival. The instrumentation is that of a conventional jazz quartet, reed plus rhythm section, but the ensemble directs its focus toward transposing that familiar template to the format of free improvisation.
Alex Ward’s clarinet is a bit unusual for the context and he brings to the straight horn a bevy of extended techniques, some of which parallel the vernacular of Canadian Francois Houle. Reed pops, mouth-puckered expulsions, coarse-grain multiphonics and relatively straightforward melodic phrasing all come into play on his palette. Drummer Paul May evinces influence from another Paul, this one answering to the surname Lytton, in his preference for kit accoutrements, abstracted clatter, and textured noise. In the closing minutes of the opening “Alopekis” his rubbed cymbals sound vaguely like a tamboura with their web of resultant drones. In the final third of “Carnauzer” there’s a segment where it sound like he’s repeatedly lobbing quarters into an ashtray balanced on snare head. Later, it’s possibly either bicycle crank or hand mixer, I’m not sure.
For pianist Alexander Hawkins the imperfect analogue seems to be Veryan Weston, as he applies gesture-laden dissonance to fragmentary chords and clusters. Bassist Dominic Lash divides time productively between pizzicato and bow, channeling strident energy through either means of sound production. Communication is a near constant and the two longer pieces unfold in episodic fashion with various combinations undertaking ideas collectively or in intentional opposition. The music is heavily percussive in places, not the least because of May’s contributions, but the four also accord close attention to dynamics, receding from stentorian tumult to near silence on numerous occasions. At roughly a third the length of its bookends, “Basenji” begins with in an almost chamber jazz vein before crumpling into more carefully-timed collisions and explosions.
Like the institutions of state government and private medicine, the improvised music community doesn’t spend much time pondering succession planning. Groups like Barkingside and labels like the indefatigable Emanem are doing the heavy lifting in that regard, ensuring that as older improvisers regrettably retire and expire the art form continues unabated.
~ Derek Taylor
Pianist Marian McPartland has been an understated but indispensable member of the jazz community for much of her 70+ years career. A nonagenarian at the time of this new album’s release (her 21st for Concord!), her abilities at the keys still ring steady alongside a near encyclopedic command of standards repertory. An intact mental acuity exonerates any slowing of attack. Her tune choices here are hardly radical, but still cover an inclusive gamut of classics starting with her own title composition, a piece first Ornette’s “Turnaround” and “Lonely Woman” initially seem the outliers, but even they have been in circulation for nearly half a century. McPartland’s never been that interested in pushing the creative envelope herself. She’s more a chronicler of piano jazz, most prominently on her program of the same name that’s been broadcasting on public radio for three decades. Hundreds of interviews with luminaries of the instrument both major and minor Bassist Gary Mazzaroppi and drummer Glenn Davis abet the action from secondary positions that leave the spotlight comfortably on the leader’s uniformly elegant statements. Their animated interplay on the aforementioned Coleman tunes demonstrates that it was far from an autopilot gig. McPartland’s calmly declarative liberties on the tunes suggest a readiness to upend expectations as well, but as always, she does it from a perspective of modesty and relative restraint. Some might safely call this music “cocktail jazz” and it certainly has the outward feel of a relaxed bourbon and cigars club set. Such a loaded qualifier misses the quiet magnitude of McPartland’s achievements. It might seem a trite observation, but we should all be so lucky to be doing what we love and doing it so well.
~ Derek Taylor
Chicago continues to constitute a hothouse for creative improvised music. Musicians a generation younger than Ken Vandermark, an erstwhile figurehead of the scene, are currently making their marks and the activity doesn’t appear to be diminishing in terms of quantity or quality. 482 Music remains a prolific documentarians of this younger breed. Enter vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz who has already made a malleted splash on several projects for the label. He’s among a pool of musicians previously known as sidemen (at least on disc) who are gradually gaining their own opportunities to record as leaders. Adasiewicz’s compositions and arrangements immediately bring Blue Note-era Jackie McLean and Eric Dolphy to mind, but the sourcing, while obvious, doesn’t feel slavish or hackneyed. The instrumentation of two-horn frontline, vibes, bass and drums also engendrs instant comparison, but again it’s hardly evidence of plagiarism. Adasiewicz and his colleagues absorb the basic tenets put forth on those Sixties vinyl classics and place a 21st century personal spin on them.
Fanfare-style heads disperse into freer interplay and soloing on pieces such as “Good Looking Android”, which sounds a close cousin to Dolphy’s “Straight Up and Down”. Aram Shelton’s dry and flinty phrasing echoes the aforementioned alto elders while Josh Berman’s cornet comes from starting point of brass counterparts like Hubbard and Cherry. Bassist Jason Roebke and drummer Frank Rosaly develop just the right rapport, dividing their time between supporting solos, like Adasiewicz’s cascading affair on “Small Potatoes”, and stepping up for their own assertive statements on the breaks. Shelton’s clarinet glides gracefully into chalumeau territory on the low-key ballad “Valerie”, backed initially by sparse, but expressive commentary from the rhythm pair. A resonant pizzicato plus brushes blend on “Nearby” offers another example of their ability to enhance the action through a relatively economical presence as the horns voice sibilant textured tones. Adasiewicz’s oscillating spatially-attuned sustains turn up the tension without compromising the prevailing melody-minded mood.
“Creep” personifies its title, unfolding in staggered increments on another stutter-stop head before a loose string of solos, among them a stinging turn by Shelton’s clarinet quite different from his earlier balladry. “Gather” goes forth at a similarly laggard clip with the band’s chamber side on bold display. As a bonus, visual augments audio with an appended video file of another piece, “Hide”, filmed in the studio. Vibraphonists seeking to extend the pioneering work accomplished by doyens like Hutcherson and Dickerson are relatively few. Adasiewicz is certainly countable among that modest number and this debut will hopefully mean the first of many more albums to follow.
~ Derek Taylor
Shift Coordinate Points
entr’acte
30
Esther Venrooy is a Dutch-born composer working out of Belgium who, at least judging by these two releases, tends to operate in an area midway between electronic drones with minimalist overtones and found sounds, and in doing so produces some of the most striking music I’ve heard in recent months. “Shift Coordinate Points”, recorded in 2005, uses as its starting point material documented on the fabled Conet Project (to which Venrooy contributed). As you may recall (I’ve never managed to snag a copy of this difficult to come by item) that venture involved the capture of coded shortwave transmissions of the type immortalized in AMM’s extraordinary concert in London in 1982, when Rowe’s radio picked up the sultry East German voice steadily articulating five-digit numeric sequences, over and over in a mesmeric pattern. Here, the first of two pieces, “Brussel”, begins with a repeated melody, quite a fetching one, played in organ-like tones, under which appears a threatening, low drone as though some exterior force is seeping through the walls. After several minutes, this unsettling atmosphere abruptly halts and the listener is plunged into the world of coded transmissions, staticky swatches of “eines”, “fünfs”, “siebens”, etc. swirled into a froth of electronica. The section that ends the piece comes close to capturing the eerie, otherworldly aspect heard in the AMM performance, a dire throb underlying a distorted female voice reciting numbers, in English, in sets of four. “Arthur”, on the flip side (both this and the following release are issued on vinyl LP only), is a more relaxed collage, the overlaid voices melding with electronics in a rather stately dance, almost as adjacent lines in a fugue, a peaceful resolution. The choice Venrooy makes in weighting the various elements seem quite carefully considered and the resulting balance lifts the music above tangentially similar work as found, say, in early Scanner. This music has heft.
The Spiral Staircase
entr’acte
50
“The Spiral Staircase” is quite different, comprised largely of modulated drones amidst other electronic detritus but no disembodied voices. As with the melodic segment that began “Brussel”, the impression is less one of detecting something “new”—indeed, many of the sounds have a familiar aspect—but more with the grace and thoughtfulness with which the sounds are aligned and juxtaposed. The ringing throb that begins side one here, waxing every four or five seconds, is, in a sense, a recognizable enough element but Venrooy manages to invest it with something, some combination of frequencies, that endows it with a unique and weighty presence that focuses one’s attention sharply and immediately. Various other sounds are gradually layered in, “above” and “below” the initial pulse, generally possessing a harsher, more granular character, each enhancing the disquiet. It wells to a climax then subsides into a growling, steadier drone which, in turn, is encased in a multitude of others, fashioning a complex matrix wherein the listener can discern at his or her will a vast number of patterns, reflections and relationships. Gears are shifted several times throughout the piece, though it remains drone-centered for the duration and the changes straddle that giddy territory between initial awkwardness and retrospective naturalness.
Side Two (it seems to be an entirely different piece, though no titles are supplied) remains in the general area of dronage but over in the part of the yard with all the crackling and static. Again, Venrooy weaves together countless strands, each clear enough to focus on individually if one desires but better to hear in a relational manner, something that will doubtless vary upon each listen. I was often reminded of the “standard” result of Cageian listening in a given environment: at first you might think there’s only two or three sound sources in play; listening more attentively inevitably serves to uncover many more. This construction includes a mélange of massively deep tolling with wonderfully quirky, almost cuckoo-y chittering and blooping atop, sending the piece momentarily reeling off into the middle distance. The disc fades out in a series of ringing tones not too far from those that opened it, a bit icier but less foreboding.
Both albums are fine recordings from a composer previously unfamiliar to me but one from whom I anticipate hearing a great deal more. They’re available in limited editions of 300 from entr’acte, so if you have a working turntable, I strongly advise checking ‘em out. Very good work.
Familiar to most fans of free jazz, these four musicians have been friends and colleagues for over two decades. That depth of association makes this session something of a reunion though the creative synergy between them has hardly grown stale since their initial collaborations. Shipp and Brown recorded Sonic Explorations together for Cadence back in ’87, having hit the New York scene several years prior. Dickey joined the circle with Shipp’s Points for Silkheart in ’90. Dates for Homestead, AUM Fidelity and other labels followed with the four men matching up and breaking off in various aggregations. Oddly enough though, this disc is the first where they have recorded as a quartet.
The music has indelible roots in earlier encounters, but the players have matured as well. Morris handles bass and it’s both invigorating and enlightening to hear him interact with Shipp and Dickey in that capacity rather than on guitar. Over the years, Dickey spent several hiatuses honing his compositional skills. That personal productivity pays off here with his usual power and vitality present, but enhanced by an attention to detail and shading not always fully present on past efforts. Shipp’s approach comes across as less constrictive too, his hands gliding across the keys and generating precision pedal-weighted patterns both forceful and lyrical. Of the four, Brown sounds the least altered by age and ensuing experience, his tart alto voicing in reliably adroit leaps and dives, from pinched nasalized cries to soothing legato sighs.
Aiding in the program’s listenability are the track lengths, which largely remain lean and to the point. Two lengthier excursions are reserved for the album’s final stretch. Three out of the eleven pieces explore trio configurations with either piano or alto backed by bass and drums. “The Sweet Science” naturally features Shipp solo, but its brevity makes it little more than a loose passel of ideas. In addition to commentary by Steve Dalachinsky, the notes contain written reflections from the players, though Morris is conspicuously absent. The words offer a refreshing corollary to the sounds, suggesting that even with twenty-odd years of projects in the can these four are far from finished making stimulating music together. This particular branch of free jazz sometimes draws derision for purported derivation. However one comes down on that contentious debate, it’s hard to dismiss these players’ skills and deserved standing within the idiom.
~ Derek Taylor
This set picks up right where its precursor left off, pairing Flaherty with Edwards in a series of intimate duets that angle off in unexpected directions. Even the liner notes, authored by the saxophonist, continue from the cliffhanger left by those of the earlier disc. Edwards is quoted as calling himself a “power drummer” and that characterization certainly fits portions of his work here. Surprise comes with the sizeable segments of the sectional conversation that find him in more restrained, even ruminative moods. The starting salvo “Kundalini Awakening” commences from a skeletal cadence sculpted by malleted toms. Flaherty’s alto buzzes and keens like circling hornet, initially sounding more like a musette than a member of the saxophone family. Edwards sustains the processional pulse as a torrent of textured multiphonics vies for space alongside melody-minded interludes. A supple backbeat on “Samadi” taps similarly spartan stores, suggesting a koan-like simplicity and serving as an undulating constant for his colleague’s super-heated alto flights, which once again veer between the extremes of near-noise and lyricism.
“No one gets out alive” offers an even more extended tour of the pair’s old school fire music proclivities by building from a slow burn to a full roar. Edwards opens with a preamble of cascading cymbals, scaling back to near silence prior to Flaherty’s somber declaration on tenor. Acceleration into squealing multiphonics and militant percussion soon follows, but even during the most potently kinetic passages Edwards keeps tight command on his overlapping cross rhythms. The pliability and power behind his tom rolls recalls something of Denis Charles’ spirit. While flailing on a bit too long, the track is still and exhilarating and edifying ride. “Pot Belly Stove” brings more volcanic oratory, starting with a telegraphing drum sortie and moving on to another tenor conflagration. A Blindfold Test involving this track might very well yield manifold mistaken attributions to Brötzmann. Flaherty looses a torrent of tortured tones and bullhorn honks while Edwards keeps the percussive froth churning at a maximum. Again, no matter how ardent and audacious the interplay, the rhythms retain their structural stability. Flaherty’s melodic vapor trail ending carries over into dynamics-rich “Where no one is at home”, a piece that gradually intensifies from meditative mantra to cacophonous catharsis. Edwards adheres to brushes the whole time but loses next to nothing in pummeling force with the choice. Flaherty makes a case in his written commentary that free music players are born, not made. That adage plays out perspicaciously here, as does the perception that a parallel serendipity is at play in the felicitous pairing of these two.
~ Derek Taylor
Significantly younger than the genre umbrella it falls under, Latin jazz has still been a relatively static art form for decades. Pianist Bill O’Connell recognizes the inherent circumscription and opts to work creatively within it. The approach and feel of the date is akin to Herbie Hancock’s classic Inventions & Dimensions album, where syncopated rhythmic patterns fall into the service of more porous melodic and harmonic forms. O’Connell splits the set almost evenly between covers and originals, the latter indigenous category blending easily with the former and open-ended enough for productive improvisation. Flautist Dave Valentin and conguero Richie Flores are instrumental in bringing both brio and seasoning to the pieces. Valentin is the pianist’s regular employer and their professional relationship dates back over two decades and eleven albums. His funky acrobatic style recalls facets Bobbi Humphrey’s mellifluousness and Roland Kirk’s temerity. No cloying mood music here and the vibrant melodic streak in his improvisations gives the trio an aerated insouciance that’s instantly appealing. Peppering trills, intervallic swoops and forceful vocalizations are all part of the encompassing palette, but he also knows when to play it cool as during the eloquent ballad “A Call for Sanity”. “Machu Picchu” finds him pulling in audible Andean elements while “Cravo e Canela” touches inventively on Brazilian aspects. From his corner, Flores palms vibrantly percolating polyrhythms on his principal set of skins, but also turns to cajon and timbales on a few cuts for added color. O’Connell alternates deftly between responsive comping and enthusiastic soloing, evincing particular sensitivity on two duet encounters with his colleagues. The absence of bass is noticeable, but hardly a problem given the degree to which the three cover the ensemble bases. I have to confess to having felt less than optimistic prior spinning the disc. Nuanced but also direct, the music pulls the plug on such prejudices in short order.
~ Derek Taylor
Besides the common denominator of Hamid Drake, the second incarnation of Bindu bears little resemblance to its predecessor. The first ensemble attached to the moniker featured the drummer in the company of a formidable phalanx of horns. This time out the sounding board is a battery of strings, along with vocalist Dee Alexander who sings lyrics lifted from translated Indian Ramprasad poems. Rhythm in myriad guises predictably frames each of the pieces and Drake sounds his usual supple and reflexive self whether working off kit, tabla, bata or peripheral percussion. Guitarists Joe Morris and Jeff Parker join the bass team of William Parker and Josh Abrams. Morris also handles banjo, his brittle cyclic riffing sounding almost oud-like on the invocational “My Blissful Mother”. Parker hoists shenai in lieu of bass, leaving Abrams to ably handle the bottom end. As with much of the music here, the sum feels at least partially undercooked in its discursive path from onset to end. The effect is sometimes akin to that of a celebrity “drum circle” where the talent isn’t commensurate with the relative tenuousness of the chosen material.
The dancing plectrums of Morris and Parker dominate “Playful Dance at Soma” and make for a promising start. Drake joins in with a slinky reggae groove flanked by the bassists’ fat pizzicato braid. Parker and Abrams coax control for a brief interlude of their own, but it’s largely the guitarists who court the spark of Drake’s attention. “Visions of Ma” couples Alexander’s soulful wordless cooing with Drake’s frame drum undulations. “Supreme Lady Victorious in Battle” echoes some of the ungainliness of its title. The overlapping rhythms jibe precariously with Alexander’s spoken-sung text of Eastern religious imagery. Awash in a shambolic rhythmic stew of shenai, guimbri, banjo and bata, “Only Longing of My Soul” is another chancy enterprise that yields mixed outcomes. “There is Nothing Left But You” centers on another prayer this time colored by Parker’s doson ngoni, which settles on a repeating riff that enhances the meditative mood. At nearly a quarter of an hour it clocks a bit long and Alexander’s litany of African American luminaries in the closing minutes makes for particularly axiomatic gruel.
Earnestness and good vibrations are present in abundance, but neither element is enough to counter the perception that the project could’ve benefited from a bit more prep time and ambition. Tuneful, delicate and instantly charming, Drake’s “The Beautiful Names” suggests a promising template alternative of brevity and focus, but sadly it’s the album’s final cut. There’s interplay of interest here, but compared to the consistency of the first Bindu conclave the album consequently comes in second.
~ Derek Taylor
Self-released
The exciting electro-acoustic improvised music scene in South Korea, with its roots as much in noise music as traditional improv influences has stood out as one of the most compelling regional developments in the music for a while now. However despite the recent slew of releases from labels like Manual or Balloon and Needle there hasn’t really been any one single release that has shone about above all others as the one disc to recommend to interested ears. Now there definitely is, albeit the work of two ex-pat Americans now living in Seoul.
Ipsi sibi somnia fingunt is an emotional tour de force. Across its four tracks it covers a lot of ground, from the brooding tremors of the opening Centralia, Pennsylvania, through the up close intensity of Torso, the almost wistful landscapes of Derinkuyu, to the final cathartic release of Takers Profs. Throughout the album there is a bristling vibrancy present, something hard to describe that leaves the hairs standing up on the back of your neck. There is a freshness portrayed, not just in the musician’s willingness to utilise a wide variety of sounds, many of which seem unfamiliar to this area of music, but also in the way they are used. The individual contributions of the musicians seem to challenge each other’s choices as much as compliment them, with right-angled changes of direction and jolting shifts in dynamics common throughout.
Who plays what on this release isn’t always clear to me though. Foster is certainly responsible for the sounds that clearly come from a trumpet, Parks likewise a guitar, but there is much room in between. The usual crackle and hum of broken electronics mixes with odd synth-like sounds and tightly miked percussive rattles of some kind. It matters not which musician makes which sound or how they do this however. The music itself seems to render these questions irrelevant, engaging the listener on its own terms.
There is an angry, agitated undercurrent to this music. The closing track Takers Profs seems to roar with a release of the angst that had been just about bottled up in the earlier pieces. The opening track layers persistent lines of urgent, demanding sound over each other, swelling up to the point of bursting yet never quite allowing the pressure to be released.
The second track, Torso takes a step back, as the intensity of the opener gives way to a more spacious exploration. This piece highlights how well recorded and mastered the album is. As electronics bubble and exhale behind, percussive chatter and snippets of noteless trumpet leap into the foreground, giving the music an incredible presence, as if planting the listener right between the two. Over Torso’s captivating seventeen minutes the more unfamiliar sounds come to the attention. Yelps of phased electronics and doorbell like chimes and buzzes mix it with the more familiar hum of guitar feedback and the closely miked percussive clatter. The pacing of the track is perfect, slower than the piece preceding it yet never resting on its laurels, and on occasion dropping away into unexpected cavernous silences.
Parks’ guitar grabs the attention right from the start of the third track Derinkuyu. Forlorn wails of feedback slide through, dissipating slowly to create a distant, mournful atmosphere not present anywhere else on the disc. Subtle, restrained electronic chatter is then woven into the folds, presumably by Foster, sometimes allowed to grow in intensity before being cut short, allowing Parks’ next note to rise out of the silence.
As the twenty-eight minute piece moves on the feedback cries are sometimes replaced by chiming strikes to the guitar strings, Foster’s electronics become more varied and the silences less frequent, but the calm, steady pace remains. The listener is pulled along, lured into the jaws of the closing piece that begins with a similar level of restraint but soon collapses into a seething cauldron of bubbling squawks, blasts and scribbles. Even here though the music remains unpredictable and yet completely under control, the high volumes merely accentuating sudden drops into near silence and eerie sounds left hanging in the space.
The album ends with twenty seconds of loud electronic abrasion before coming to an abrupt halt that suddenly leaves the listener with a heightened awareness of the sounds left in the room. Ipsi sibi somnia fingunt is a great record, as vibrant and alive as anything I’ve heard in many months. If you’ve not heard anything from the recent Korean improv scene, start here.
Few, if any, large scale ensembles of recent memory can claim the antiquated but still apposite designation “All-Star” like this one can. Roscoe Mitchell’s recent Transatlantic Art Ensemble comes close and shares slight overlap, but as an assemblage of cross-generational European and American improvisers the latest incarnation of the venerable GUO takes the prize. Essentially an expansion of the 2002 re-launch group (also documented by Intakt), Brötzmann is no longer on board, but the trade-off is more than worth it. The trumpet teaming of Kenny Wheeler, Manfred Schoof and Axel Dörner alone is enough to make savvy improv listeners salivate profusely at the prospect of the sounds ensconced on disc. Brass outnumbers reeds two to one. Jeb Bishop and George Lewis are the American emissaries, an intriguing made practically transcendental by the addition of Paul Rutherford and Johannes Bauer to the ranks. The gatefold photo-op of all fifteen men in performance formation is an awesome sight. But enough fawning over the roster… even the most infallible orchestra can find itself compromised the source material isn’t up to snuff.
Fortunately, there’s no danger of that as bandleader Schlippenbach hand picks several of the finest numbers from the GUO archives. Dictated primarily by collective free improvisation, the title piece employs Schlippenbach Trio as catalyst and more specifically Evan Parker’s indefatigable and unmistakable tenor, which rides the rising and falling troughs generated by the orchestra en mass. These fanfare-shaped waves reach Kentonian magnitudes in the piece’s second half, eventually falling off into a largely unaccompanied solo for Lewis and closing on a pedal weighted rumble from the composer. Borrowed from GUO colleague Willem Breuker, “Out of the Burtons Songbooks” is more conventionally structured and relies on wildly shifting dynamics as well as almost comedic application of folk march forms. Grand anthemic gestures punctuate solo passages from several band members, which in turn lead to a bracing exchange between Mahall and Bauer. A circular Parker soprano sortie primes the audience for a tension-thick slow simmer close.
“Bavarian Calypso” and the Wheeler-derived “Nodago” join Schlippenbach’s “The Forge” as the shorter forays into variegated song forms. The first brings the cultural collision of its title to practice in humorous fashion and once again Breuker comes to mind as Bishop and Perowsky compete for woolliest, most unhinged improvisation. Wheeler and Rutherford devise diametric solos on the second, trumpet dealing in soaring ballad elegance while trombone doles out a nail-studded retort flanked by the drummers. Lacy’s “The Dumps” receives a rousing reading as well. Gerd Dudek leads the ensemble in an exploration of the highly hummable theme before slipping into several interludes of raucous polyphony and rounding off with one of Dörner’s raspberries meet broken air duct and tea kettle statements. It’s hard not to imagine the composer pleased by the tribute were he around to hear it. Four decades in the can for the GUO, if only we might be privy to four more!
~ Derek Taylor
The trio of saxophonist Hans Ulrik, bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Jonas Johansen tips the scales in favor of standards on this latest outing. Their last date delved into Tin Pan Alley-inspired originals and to terrific effect, but the turn to more familiar fare ends up an opportune one. Pianist Bobo Stenson and guitarist Ulf Wakenius guest separately on six of the eleven cuts. Their presence, particularly in the case of Stenson, emphasizes a softer, more lyrical bent in the trio, as on the opening reading of the title standard. Wakenius’ lightly amplified chords above Johansen’s gently staggered rhythm and the effect is akin to that of Paul Motian’s trio with Lovano and Frisell in its subdued style of expression. Stenson’s polished playing on Mal Waldron’s “Soul Eyes” sands away much of the melancholy edge from the tune, but Ulrik’s warmly nuanced tenor phrasing recalls Coltrane on the classic Prestige version. In tandem with cloying soprano on “A Child is Born” the pianist almost errs into outright treacle. With“Get Happy” the saxophonist tips his horn naturally in Rollins’ direction, sprinting through the theme before deferring to bright single note solo from Wakenius bracketed by frothing drums. Swallow is as sure-fingered and sagacious as ever on his fretted bass, whether building flexible harmonic bulwarks or boldly moving to the foreground for nimble funk-inflected solos as on the Ulrik-scripted “Falling Grace”. All the heat he’s absorbed over the years for doggedly holding fast to the electric instrument appears hardly warranted in the wake of the supple and responsive playing on display here. The three, Johansen in particular, seem to hang back a bit on the pieces with guests. It’s that slight deference to decorum that actually gives the trio tracks a leg up starting with “I’ll Remember April” where the Newk feeling is heavy again and the drummer takes the gloves off in an explosive break. “Broadway” also embodies the differential with Ulrik hitting the theme hard and Johansen building pounding rhythmic surf around him as Swallow percolates energetically beneath. Opening the enterprise up to company was a good idea on paper, but in the end it’s still the trio that plays best together.
~ Derek Taylor
The untimely death of bassist Dennis Irwin offers yet another sobering lesson in jazz musician mortality. Drummer Eliot Zigmund had his own brush with the hereafter several years ago, the victim of kidney failure. He’s since made a full recovery and this Steeplechase date, delayed in release due to his illness, illustrates what the jazz community might have lost had he not been so fortuitous. Zigmund’s music is very much rooted in what could safely be called the “mainstream”. He got his start in the company of Bill Evans and went on to gig in the bands of Gary Peacock, Michel Petrucciani and others. His apprenticeship also included dates with the likes of Stan Getz, Lee Konitz and Pepper Adams. As influences go, it’s Philly Joe Jones at the forefront and his crisp lean attack definitely owes much to the elder drummer. He exhibits taste and wisdom throughout the set, avoiding bombast and leading from a position of sensitivity and receptive self-restraint.
Zigmund surrounds a solitary standard, a supple spin “I Wish I Knew”, with eight originals. Three from the leader, two apiece from saxophonist Mike Lee and bassist Phil Palombi, and a single entry by pianist Gary Versace. None of the tunes stand out all that much, but collectively provide plenty of room for the quartet to state a strong case within their chosen stylistic parameters. The date as a whole has the pervading feel of a late to mid-60s Blue Note session. Soprano surfaces for Zigmund’s billowy bossa “Breeze”, but Lee speaks mainly through tenor with a round dry tone that suggests a fair amount of Joe Henderson in his listening past. Versace is his usual impeccable self, comping and soloing with a clean geometric precision and contributing the lush snail-paced ballad “Homeland”. As for the bassist, Palombi expresses palpable LaFaro love on “For Scott”. Surprises are few in terms of songbook and execution, but within the album’s relatively narrow idiomatic niche this is perfectly acceptable effort. Zigmund’s health tribulations bring the pleasures of the album into heightened focus with a reminder that the opportunity to express oneself musically is, in a very real sense, a gift.
~ Derek Taylor
[Steeplechase titles are available direct through Stateside AT prodigy DOT net]
Bags had ten solid years on Wes as a jazz professional, but their admiration was no less mutual. This date, the first in Jackson’s then freshly-minted contract for Riverside, finds him in fine company and a cathartic mood. Meant as a means to momentarily escape the more formalized repertoire of the MJQ, the album allows him to revel in melody-minded blues. Montgomery had a similar interests and their stylistic commonality is in evidence throughout the album.
Producer Orrin Keepnews secured funds for a superlative rhythm section, two-parts Miles quintet and one part Cannonball. Drummer Philly Joe Jones holds his more heavy-handed tendencies in check while maintaining a rousing amount of rhythmic assertiveness. Elevated slightly in the new mix, Sam Jones generates stout walking bass lines that limn the action of the principals beautifully. Wynton Kelly handles the piano duties and also rises to the rigors of third soloist. The songbook isn’t all that notable, a handful of blues and ballads mainly, but it serves the quintet’s purposes and provides plenty of melodic grist for memorable solos. The session sustains the relaxed and congenial demeanor of a blowing session while delivering a degree of musicianship at odds with the stereotype.
Montgomery swiftly rose to the top tier on his instrument within the jazz sphere. That mercurial ascendancy brought with it the temptation to dismiss his popularity, at least in part, as the product of a well-oiled hype machine. Doubts of that nature are summarily dashed here. His crisp, thumb-dictated attack and easy articulation in octaves catapults the relatively simple tunes to higher levels of improvisatory art. Jackson’s mallets accomplish a comparable level of alchemy, blending canny tonal choices with seamless melodic runs. “Jingles” and “Delilah” certainly fit the scenario of turning pedestrian into priceless. Both are relatively middling compositions that achieve resplendence when translated by quintet’s collective talents. Four alternate takes expand the disc to an little over an hour, but differ only slightly from the original album versions. Again, the value is ensconced in the extended opportunity to simply hear these masters blow.
~ Derek Taylor
Unsquare is the third disc from the Bay Area electro-acoustic improvisation ensemble Maybe Monday, and the first since 2002’s Digital Wildlife (Winter & Winter). Maybe Monday are a trio consisting of saxophonist Larry Ochs, guitarist Fred Frith and koto/electronic artist Miya Masaoka. Here, four guests augment the sax and string core: drummer Gerry Hemingway, violinist Carla Kihlstedt, Zeena Parkins on harp, and Ikue Mori on electronics. This septet evolved from a curatorial gig at New York’s sound gallery the Stone. Unsquare is the studio meeting of these musicians, and a two-disc live set is slated for release this year.
It is quite clear that Maybe Monday treads similar lines as collective improvisation groups such as AMM, the Howard Riley trio with Barry Guy and Tony Oxley, and the New Music Ensemble. The origins of a given sound or combination of sounds are not important, and whether what one is hearing comes from percussion, electronics, reeds, strings or something else entirely matters little. It is a subsuming of the parts to the whole, as well as a redefinition of the possibilities inherent in those very parts.
That isn’t to say there aren’t certain elements that rise to the top – Hemingway’s percussion, in trio with sopranino and violin, create an angular and somewhat lumbering center of accents on “G,” surrounded by a whirlwind of baited indeterminacy. Skittering guitar runs and alien harp plucks make themselves known in tense spaces, and tones do become associated with their origins once one becomes attenuated to the environment. Ochs’ saxophones, especially his tenor, are a commanding presence of near-lineage in a context wholly its own as sounds gel and compel, propel forward, lapse and fail in these five improvisations. He’s somewhat like Lou Gare in AMM, a Coltrane-like keen duetting with Frith’s guitar in a sea of samples and found sounds, almost pregnant with meaning in a struggle for sonic definition. There is grace in this tapestry, too – Ochs’ pensive sopranino chirps and trills open “Nitrogen” alongside subtle percussive accents and long tones, and Kihlstedt is a frequent purveyor of ornate classicism and East European folksiness throughout. But to parse Unsquare would be a disservice to the breadth of its canvas – this is a very rich recording of electro-acoustic improvisation.
~ Clifford Allen
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary year of Ornette Coleman’s breaking onto the recording scene – albeit with pianist Walter Norris in tow on Something Else!!! (Contemporary, 1958). Though he wasn’t the first jazzman to proffer a music liberated from chordal constraints and make the pianoless quartet de rigeur, he was certainly the most notable for it, in a group with trumpeter Don Cherry and a number of bass/drum teams until his first exit from the scene in 1962. By now, however, it’s fair to say that the pianoless quartet can be relatively free from Ornette baggage. From the Ted Curson-Bill Barron unit of the mid-60s to Jeff Arnal’s Transit, there are innumerable ways to approach this format. Los Angeles’ Empty Cage Quartet (formerly known as MTKJ) is yet another variation on the instrumental theme.
A cooperative made up of four of Los Angeles’ busiest young improvisers, reedman Jason Mears, trumpeter Kris Tiner, drummer Paul Kikuchi and bassist Ivan Johnson, their earlier recordings on Nine Winds as MTKJ belied an influence, perhaps regional, of the John Carter-Bobby Bradford Quartet, one of the earliest aesthetically post-Ornette units but made up of two of Ornette’s contemporaries. With 2006’s double-disc release on pfMentum, Hello the Damage!, they were reintroduced as Empty Cage.
Perhaps the name change signified a moving away from earlier influences; “Again a Gun” finds Tiner and Mears stating the onomatopoeic theme over the sharp rat-a-tat of arco bass and percussion. Tiner’s trumpet is hot and brittle, and his phrasing combines fleet, boppish runs with fat smears and Don Ayler-esque multiphonics. Mears enters with his alto in tart keening cries as they collectively declaim – sonically, the horns might be most invigorating in tandem, their unison and collective lines a shattering affinity. They dart and jab in trio with Kikuchi’s towel-dampened chatter, as Johnson’s fingers pluck and shade an essence of forward motion. At other times, their head statements ache with pathos. A simple scalar theme characterizes the tense place-holder of “Feerdom is on the March,” their poise in the face of explosiveness palpable.
In fact, though three of the eleven tracks on Stratostrophic are over the ten minute mark, most of the cuts are rather short, almost programmatic statements of mood that wouldn’t sound out of place in a free-improvisation version of Gelber’s The Connection. Stitched together, rousing freebop and subtonal explorations would surely form an interesting suite. Though much can be made of Tiner and Mears’ brilliantly-paced lines (brassy bravura paired with bent, dervish-like clarinet work), Kikuchi straddles an interesting line between Philly Joe licks and Paul Lovens kitchen-sink, while Johnson’s concentrated propulsion is as much investigative as it is kinetic. Stratostrophic is a powerful statement from what’s clearly one of the West Coast’s foremost ensembles.
~ Clifford Allen
The coastal jazz skirmishes real and imagined were still popular copy in the jazz press at the time of this live date by the Cannonball Adderley Sextet. Adderley revealed himself an unlikely ally to the West in his opening comments, dressing down Eastern audiences in comparison to their California counterparts before slyly paying the Village Vanguard patrons a venue-specific compliment. All in good fun, but counterintuitive just the same and Cannonball’s droll explication on the vagaries of “hip” give his words even greater sting. The set list shows the band sharply cognizant of the changes then circulating through the genre. “Dizzy’s Business” and the set closing “Cannon’s Theme” by bassist Sam Jones are nods back to their earlier hardbop repertoire. Both serve as decent blowing vehicles but sound dated next to the complex arrangements of Yusef Lateef’s “Planet Earth “ and the delicate modal ballad “Syn-anthesia”. Jimmy Heath’s aptly-chosen “Gemini” opens the set and delineates these two sides of the band’s personality. Lateef encircles cool-toned flute statements around a blistering tenor solo, further describing the bridged divide. Even with Cannonball’s built-in first solo advantage, he repeatedly threatens to upstage the leader with the energy and incisiveness behind his statements. Pianist Joe Zawinul also personifies the piebald style, updating and personalizing Horace Silver’s funk vernacular and shifting easily between the earthy and cerebral exposition. His “Scotch and Water”, wryly introduced by Cannonball, expresses that first state in eminently listenable fashion. Though assigned to support duties much of the time, Jones and drummer Louis Hayes benefit from the new Keepnews Collection remastering with the bassist receiving an especially welcome boost. Adderley’s Riverside tenure yielded a stellar run of albums, but this belated New York live date stands out as the recording debut of arguably his finest band.
~ Derek Taylor
There aren’t too many bass clarinetists in jazz who concentrate solely on this instrument – it’s usually part of an arsenal of axes whose language may or may not immediately translate to one another. Adding his name to a very short list of such technicians (Denis Colin, Michel Pilz) is Jason Stein, a Chicagoan by way of New York and Montana who recently came to notoriety through his work in Bridge 61 with Ken Vandermark, drummer Tim Daisy and bassist Nate McBride. On his debut outing leading an ensemble, he’s joined by cellist/sound artist Kevin Davis (who’s worked with avant-garde banjoist Uncle Woody Sullender) and drummer Mike Pride on six varied originals.
Though like many stylists who’ve approached the bass clarinet, Eric Dolphy was a formative influence (it inspired Stein to drop the guitar), what immediately attracted this writer to his work in Bridge 61 was that he really didn’t just string together Dolphy-isms. Rather, Stein is clearly occupying his own sound-world, more approximating a field of isolated blips and worried phrases than a linear thematic extrapolation. His improvisations are clearly less about the power of statements than a personal sonic investigation.
The gritty vamp of “Miss Izzy” might seem like a good place to stretch one’s R&B chops a la Julius Hemphill. However, Stein’s inner dialogue ranges from buzzing, raspy held tones to soft harmonics and burbling squawks out of the most abstract bags of Lacy or Giuffre, before harping on bent, metallic scrapes. The logic of such a construction is clearly an inner one, certainly not beholden to a tune or an obvious exploration of a single idea – Stein is investigating what the instrument can do and the possible areas he can inhabit. That’s not to say Stein shies completely away from themes or phrases – “That’s Not a Closet” is a fast waltz with a short, repetitive figure at its outset. Stein’s woody work is at its most Dolphy-like here, but there is softness to his phrasing, a delicate picking apart of his materials that seems almost “West Coast” in its pensive, concentrated facility.
Davis and Pride are certainly more than able companions, able to outline a rhythm section as well as provide grounding and engagement for the breathiness of a sound-and-space poem like the Town & Country-esque “Caroline and Sam,” on which Pride’s vibes are featured. On the basis of A Calculus of Loss and his work in Bridge 61, Jason Stein is clearly an improviser and composer to watch.
~ Clifford Allen
Round two for the team-up of Ibrahim Electric and American trombonist Ray Anderson continues in the raucous tone of their earlier ’05 meeting. It’s another live album taped in their native Copenhagen and draws in large degree from their last studio release in terms of songbook. Anderson is well-versed in funk-influenced improv and that background serves him well in this context. Ibrahim Electric specializes in retooling familiar Sixties soul rhythms and riffs to suit their jam band-meets-jazz improv needs. The opening “Funkorific” comes across like a close boogaloo cousin to Hendrix’s “Drivin’ South”. Anderson initiates the roundtable with a slippery solo steeped in slides and swoops, leading into a moody improvisation in octaves from guitarist Niclas Knudsen. “Splash” is basically “Green Onions” tweaked and updated.
Knudsen regularly assumes the role of second “horn”, tussling with Anderson in tandem or running down his own riffs. Drummer Stefan Pasborg keeps the party atmosphere percolating with a revolving array of pocket-perpetuating beats. Rounding out the Danish crew, organist Jeppe Tuxen repeatedly travels the continuum connecting Booker T. Jones and Larry Young and augments his Hammond console with a number of external effects to further vary the palette. “Red Room” celebrates the band’s lounge side via a loose organ blues shuffle, slipping slightly over into schmaltz, but ultimately saved by an impassioned brass solo from the guest star. The North African motif at the root of “Lobi” also receives a boost from the New Orleans second line rhythms ingrained in Anderson’s tailgate interjections.
“Skip It” splits the band into pairs, contrasting a dialogue between chicken scratch guitar and guttural trombone with a greasy organ and drums duet. “En Kold Fra Kassen” nods reverently to Seventies cop show themes while “Blue Balls” builds from a simple bar band blues motif and benefits from an Anderson interlude where he runs down a medley of funk fragments backed solely by handclaps. The rowdy audiences eat it all up, hooting and hollering and even getting into the act on the closing groove anthem “Absinthe”. This is a party record, pure and simple, and listeners willing to leave their highbrow improv hang-ups at home will likely find it worth the ride.
~ Derek Taylor
Intentional or not, the title of Elliott Sharp’s latest Clean Feed entry shares striking similarity to that of a Mick Barr disc released last year on Tzadik. The common ground turns out more than just titular as the two guitarists, though quite different in mien, also share highly stylized, almost mathematical approaches to composition. In Sharp’s case, the name nods to the specific nature of his axe. He’s rarely contented himself with playing pedestrian sets of frets. This time out the custom-designed musical vehicle is a Koll 8-string electroacoustic guitarbass. Sharp describes a voluminous set of gear particulars in his notes and while most improvisers reveal too little about their preparations and intent, he nearly ends up revealing too much. The disc’s eight tracks move well beyond the shop talk and reveal their secrets solely through sound.
Sharp’s musical personality has long been resistant to reduction. His interests are wide-ranging, but like peers Henry Kaiser and Marc Ribot he also harbors a healthy preoccupation with the blues. That elemental reservoir offers ample inspiration here as well. “Through the Wormhole” references Fahey with its fast picking and knotted loping lines that falter a little through relentless repetition. “Symmetree” brings the drones, Sharp’s strings abuzz with a translucent coating of amplification and sustain. A sharply arpeggiated motif at the piece’s center curiously reminds me of Angus Young’s immortal preamble to AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck”. The folksy “Modulant” is even more arpeggio-infested as his fingers race across strings to create a tangle of divergently pitched tones orbited by slowly decaying harmonics. On “Intrinsic Spin” the patterns are so brittle and tightly wound that it sounds as if he’s playing a banjo.
The e-bow, one of Sharp’s signature tools, makes an appearance on “Strange Attractor” turning his hollow body instrument into a resonating chamber of overlapping drones. Again, the blues feeling is heavy amidst the ferrous fret buzz. He makes brilliant use of the bass strings on “Antitop and Charm”, generating a repeating helix of slapped and picked structures that reminds me of Cooper-Moore on diddley-bow. The piece chugs along a bit too long, but it’s still an impressive display of digital dexterity and rhythmic directness. “Quaternion” unsheathes the e-bow again in a bifurcated slide drone that sounds like a 21st century answer to Eddie “One String” Jones. Sharp may share certain superficial similarities to Barr, but there’s no danger of plagiarism here.
~ Derek Taylor
Jean-Luc Guionnet / Seijiro Murayama - Le Bruit du Toit
Eric Brochard / Jean-Luc Guionnet / Edward Perraud – [on]
Jean-Luc Guionnet / Toshimaru Nakamura - Map
For over a decade, Jean-Luc Guionnet has been an important if discreet presence in French new music, creating musique concrète (he studied with Xenakis), radiophonic projects and site-specific installations (often in the company of Eric La Casa), and improvising on alto saxophone in a variety of fields from high-octane free jazz to ultra-minimalism. [on], the latest offering on the bijou improv label In Situ, was recorded back in 2002 in Poitiers, and features local bassist Eric Brochard with Guionnet and frequent playing partner, percussionist Edward Perraud, in two extended tracks – entitled "Lithe" and "Néolithe" (abstruse track titles are a Guionnet speciality) – which find and follow a fine line between "traditional" improv's turn-on-a-dime development of individual musicians' motivic input and the stratified, laminal ensemble sound typical of post-AMM free music, best exemplified perhaps by Hubbub, Guionnet's quintet with Perraud, Bertrand Denzler, Frédéric Blondy and Jean-Sébastien Mariage. Events unfold at a leisurely pace, but there's an underlying tension from Brochard's lugubrious bass and Perraud's skillfully placed drumhead scrapes. He's also arguably the finest exponent of bowed metal since Eddie Prévost, and Brochard and Guionnet both pick up on the pitches of his crotales and cymbals, giving the music remarkable coherence and inner strength.
Le Bruit du Toit finds Guionnet in the company of another percussionist, Seijiro Murayama, on a windy afternoon in a temple in Mishima, Japan, in February 2007 – empty but for the occasional creaks of the roof, as the title implies – in a breathtaking study of sound and space. Unlike Perraud, Murayama is an exceptionally spare percussionist, often limiting his contributions to judiciously timed isolated hits on snare drum and cymbal. Along with Guionnet's exploration of single sustained pitches, gently inflected by multiphonics and subtle microtonal shifts, the music is as intense and uncompromising as Scelsi.
The first three tracks on Map were recorded just over a month later back in Paris, with another post-onkyo Japanese grandmaster, Toshimaru Nakamura on his customary no input mixing board. Nakamura's more abrasive sound world – he's come a long way since the almost danceable loops and pulses of a decade ago – pushes Guionnet further out into the world of so-called extended technique, which he's always been familiar with but has studiously avoided exploiting for its own sake, and the tension is palpable throughout. In addition to the alto sax, the Guionnet discography has on a number of occasions (Pentes, Tirets, Sion) explored the outer reaches of the venerable pipe organ, and the final track on Map finds him in the organ loft of a church in Parthenay, trading spine-chilling blasts of clusters with vicious screes of noise from Nakamura. Anyone who believes latter-day EAI lacks excitement and danger should be strapped down and forced to listen to this on repeat play for the rest of the year.
~ Dan Warburton
Pianist Mary Lou Williams prided herself in the assertion that she played jazz of all eras. Jaki Byard plied a similar time-traveling approach, but Williams had an edge in that she was actually alive to witness the emergence of most of the source seeds. The two also differed in how they translated the lineage to performance. Byard was prone to rampant eclecticism and mercurial leaps in technique, his solo sorties often following stream-of-conscious trajectories that sometimes sacrificed coherence in pursuit of spontaneity. By comparison, Williams was often more measured and convention-minded in her improvisations, pausing to read from each stylistic page before flipping to the next, while keeping creative momentum intact.
This concert set recorded in Buffalo, New York during the winter of ’76 visits her in a gregarious mood. Sound quality is praiseworthy with some slight tape hiss audible, but hardly intrusive. Bassist Ronnie Boykins and drummer Roy Haynes may seem like left field sideman choices on paper, particularly the former with his long tenure under the avant-oriented aegis of the Sun Ra. But that duty actually works in Boykins’ favor considering Ra’s celebratory attitude toward older jazz forms. Oddly enough, it turns out that he was Williams’ regular bassist at the time. Both men work well together, responding to Williams’ regular forays back to stride and swing forms and pushing back with vernaculars of more recent vintage. “Baby Man”, a blues borrowed from saxophonist John Stubblefield’s songbook, even finds the three dipping into freeish territory.
Two rollicking versions of the Billy Taylor-scripted title tune bracket the set. Haynes hits hard with brushes on the first and sticks on the second, swinging the beat alongside Boykins’ striding bass line in support of Williams’ staccato investigations of the theme. “I Can’t Get Started” and “My Funny Valentine” scale back speed for detail, the first awash in rhapsodic rolls while the second limns a melancholic conversation between the two ends of the keyboard. Williams deploys jaunty block chords and barrelhouse flourishes on “Bag’s Blues” and “St. Louis Blues”, jovially goading Haynes on the former piece to the point that he falters slightly in their closing volley of exchanges. It’s those minor mistakes made in the service of upping the energy ante that make the date so replete with risk and vibrancy. Besides, the percussion-centric reading of “Caravan” redeems any of the drummer’s lost pride and accomplishes the near impossible of presenting a fresh spin on the mothball-scented tune. Williams’ audible declaration of “Greatest Drummer in the World” doesn’t hurt Haynes’ ego either.
High Note’s last Williams archival release found the pianist stopping just past the bop marker. Thanks in large part to the proclivities of her sidemen, she pushes past that boundary here, validating her vaunted claim of inclusiveness and delivering an exemplary program of music in the process.
~ Derek Taylor
A tale of two Omers: Klein and Avital, pianist and bassist, protégé and mentor. Both men are products of the fertile Israeli-New York jazz nexus. Both possess deep affinities for Middle Eastern folk forms alongside abiding jazz interests. Conservatory trained, Klein mixes pragmatism and lyricism in his agile pianistics. An immediately evident facet of his style is the architectural interdependence of his hands, the digits of the nimble right delineating colorful melodic leads while the left builds richly textured rolling harmonies. Nothing new there, but the degree to which Klein differentiates the activity of the two is nonetheless memorable. It’s a soloist’s strategy and confidence and there are moments when the presence of his partners seems almost superfluous, almost.
Avital comes from a position of greater experience and assurance, but he refrains from impinging on Klein’s post as principal and plays a supportive role beautifully. Ziv Ravitz on drum kit and Itamar Doari on assorted hand percussion naturally concern themselves with enhancing the rhythmic aspects of the pieces. They too defer to Klein’s able leadership, braiding beats around his light-and-shadow patterns and giving the tunes a consistent propulsive push. “Oud Song” is absent the titular instrument, but Avital does pluck the Arabic lute on “Netanya”, alternating with robust bass interjections. Klein’s wordless vocal turn on “Malchut” threatens to tip the track into sugary sentimentality, but there’s something about the spacious theme that intervenes. The closing “Kavana” is similarly ornamental on the surface with improvisational complexity gradually unveiled beneath. The music may come off as a bit pat in places, and there’s certainly polish in the pianist’s presentation, but the creative passion behind it also comes through with repeat exposure. Klein’s career as a leader is just getting off the ground. This set seems an early bellwether of an extended flight.
~ Derek Taylor
German reedman Peter Brötzmann has probably received the most attention stateside for his ongoing Chicago Tentet, which at about a dozen records in almost as many years, has certainly steeled itself as one of the longest-running and prolific creative large ensembles in recent memory. As much as regular working groups provide insight into an artist’s process, it can be hard to keep the muse’s momentum going – side projects and rare meetings offer freshness and, sometimes, respite from a catalog that borders on the expected.
Gothenburg-based drummer Peeter Uuskyla has collaborated with Brötzmann in various groups over the past decade, and came into his own working with Swedish enfant terrible, altoist Bengt “Frippe” Nordstrom, and his own Acoustic Sculpture unit. The two-disc Born Broke is the intercontinental pair’s first duo recording. Though stylistically worlds apart, the most apt comparison for Uuskyla might be Sven-Åke Johansson, for both percussionists have uniquely pared-down styles rooted in subtle variations of form and increasing density of attack. Though the carpet he provides may not be an ornate rug a la Louis Moholo or Hamid Drake, it’s a resolute launching pad for Brötzmann’s gruff pyrotechnics. There’s certainly something to be said for the fact that the drummer’s unaccompanied section on the title track isn’t part of a “kitchen sink” aesthetic – it’s a simple extrapolation on basic rhythmic principles, crisp and unadorned variation.
The reedman sticks mostly to tenor on this set, though the title track has a bit of his deep and delicate clarinet in its second half, adorned with snare, brushes and the occasional metronomic kick. Uuskyla provides something of a resting pulse, steadily but slowly increasing to a light jog as Brötzmann roils in winnowing wood. It’s easy to forget that the elder statesman of full-bore reed skronk has an affinity for the liquid purr of big-toned swing saxophonists as much as he approaches nerve-wracking frequencies. His clarinet work on the title track is imbued with as much softness as “Beautiful But Stupid” is with edgy, false-fingered saxophone blurs. He's balanced between the two poles on "Dead and Useless," a nearly forty-minute take on the Wuppertal hard blues. Borne Broke may not afford one a lot of spare change, but it doesn’t need to – it’s a limber, fat-free session of hard-driving jazz.
Steve Lacy’s recordings of small-group open improvisation are few, despite the importance that jumping in with both feet (albeit after a steady process of dips) held in his musical evolution. While taking part in fantasias by composer-pianist Giorgio Gaslini and working in an expat small group with Carla Bley and Mike Mantler (Jazz Realities, Fontana, 1966), Lacy’s own music from the mid-60s is harder to come by. In Rome, he and trumpeter Enrico Rava (a holdover from the fantastic Sortie, GTA, 1966) hooked up with the South African rhythm section of bassist Johnny Dyani and drummer Louis Moholo and shortly thereafter the quartet got a gig in Buenos Aires at a happening/festival for the Centro de Artes y Ciencias, one which infamously left them stranded in Argentina for several months with no bread and little other work.
The Forest and The Zoo is Lacy’s lone effort for ESP, recorded in concert in Buenos Aires shortly before the group disbanded and returned to Europe (Moholo, Dyani and Rava) and New York (Lacy). The set consists of two sidelong free improvisations hinging on relentless percussive expansion and contraction, Dyani’s thrum felt more than heard as Moholo’s patterns of cross-rhythms provide a buoyant rhythm field. “The Forest” begins with long held tones in unison that splinter into collective ducking and diving, Rava’s bright and ringing approach in direct contrast to Lacy’s pensive warbling, dervish-like squeals and lengthy quotes from “Let’s Call This.” “The Zoo” is slightly more tuneful at the outset, a Monkish cadenza soon erupting into collective playing. Lacy’s transitional phraseology is universally evident in these improvisations, shifting from deft singsong airs to clicks, growls and subtonal whirrs. He’s still at the point where two thematic devices – song and sound – are divided and don’t obviously grow from one another. Soon, of course, he’ll reconcile them, but at this point the “other side” is not without glances backwards.
It’s entirely appropriate that a detail from a Bob Thompson painting is Lacy’s chosen cover image. Thompson’s oeuvre combines fauvist colors and primeval imagery with color-field swaths and rhythms derived from jazz and African music. Looking backward and forward at the same time, it’s no wonder that he and Lacy were expatriate kin.
Mordant wit and caustic self-deprecation have always been reliable elements in Scott Fields’ creative expression. From the pithy brickbats of semi-fictional critic Hugh Jarrid to the admirable, if puzzling, practice of publishing pans right alongside praises on his website, the guitarist has never shied away presenting the whole package of his persona, prickly pear portions and all. Even by Fields’ archly candid standards this new Clean Feed outing stands out. His liners read as a suite-like screed, pillorying a succession of unnamed assailants to his temper and patience. He saves the strongest recriminations for last, directing black roses and dead rat vitriol at those who have wronged him in love. Track titles wryly embellish on the conceit, my personal favorite being “Your parents must be ecstatic now”. Despite the dour and potentially distracting emotional context, the set stays sharply on point throughout, though it’s hard to tell exactly how much of the acrimony is genuine and how much is amplified for show.
The music curiously recalls the early Nineties work of Joe Morris in its preference for pared down frills-free interplay. Jagged single note runs race regularly atop undulating bass and drums rhythms. Think Flip and Spike, and more specifically “Itan” and “Mombaccus”, and your close to the aural mark. Fields’ tone is often a bit rounder and cleaner than JoMo’s and that may be a function of the recording, but there’s a comparable frequency of densely knotted note clusters, spit out at staccato intervals. Bassist Sebastian Gramss and drummer João Lobo traffic in comparable agitation and irascibility, shading in the cracks around Fields’ chattery plectrum pings while still keeping the pieces intentionally off-kilter. It’s a dynamic intended to ape the disquieting feeling just prior to when one’s heart goes under the knife of betrayal and scorn. The pieces follow similar schemas until “I was good enough for you until your friends butted in” when the seething clouds break a bit into more spacious variation of melancholy. This is easily Fields most jazz-oriented album in many moons and a welcome fang-fringed spin on familiar forms.
~ Derek Taylor
Paul Bley’s brief residency on the ESP roster yielded a pair of stylistically disparate vinyl platters. Bolstered by the aggressive horn tandem of Marshall Allen and Dewey Johnson Barrage was firmly in fire music territory in its focus on volcanic interplay. Closer followed a more impressionistic course borne in part out of the pianist’s earlier tenure with Jimmy Giuffre. Bassist Steve Swallow shared a deep rapport built from that association as well. The broad dynamics of Barry Altschul’s traps play worked as a sturdy and flexible bridge between the two Bley ESP styles. The drummer plays forcefully and free-minded, but also with temperance and detail depending on the dictates of a given piece. The tracks, ten in all combining to just under a half hour, evince another difference. Bley’s two muses Carla and Annette contribute all but two, one of which is the interpretation-friendly Coleman ditty “Crossroads”. Even in that beautifully stacked deck, the pianist’s own “Figfoot” stands out.
Bley’s ruminative piano work mixes ripe melodicism with rhythmic flourishes and fractures. Altschul keeps loose syncopated time on the opening piece “Ida Lupino” while Swallow practically strums his string to sustain a warmly capitulating pulse. “Start” hits like a thunderclap in its sudden dissonance with all three players cranking tension from their respective corners. The title piece slides back into calmer currents, piano and bass limning minimalist lines. “Sideways in Mexico” works off a jagged string of knotted chords, dropping out for a zeroing in on the tight communication between bass and drums before a curt coda. Subsequent compositions cycle by in short order and the semblance of an overarching suite begins to solidify. As with Bley’s ECM album coupling material from a few years prior and after, the only possible complaint to levy is the brevity of the program. Then again, that economy also works in the trio’s favor with the lean pieces leaving nothing in the way of filler to weigh the album down. A word too on the fresh mastering, which gives all three instrumentations clean presentation and presence in a manner past editions haven’t. Bley had a discography numbering well into the double digits ahead of him, but this relatively early effort still ranks highly in the sum.
~ Derek Taylor
This three-LPs-on-two-CDs issue of bassist-composer Graham Collier’s second, third and fourth leader dates will hopefully garner his catalog the attention and the treatment that it deserves. Originally released on Philips (Mosaics) and Fontana (the other two), these scarce documents of British jazz briefly saw light again under license from Disconforme, but business difficulties fit for another discussion soon caused Collier’s catalog to languish. Thankfully, British progressive music label BGO is on the case with reissues straight from the master tapes. Just as Mingus’ music was a workshop not only for fleshing out and expanding upon compositional ideas but also for sidemen to grow in the spotlight, so Collier’s music helped several of England’s prominent jazz voices to shape their sounds. Trumpeter Harry Beckett is Collier’s most long-term foil, and appears on all three of these dates; other familiar names here include saxophonists Stan Sulzmann, Tony Roberts and Alan Skidmore, pianist John Taylor, and drummers John Marshall and John Webb.
Maybe it’s because it was the first of Collier’s records that I heard, but Down Another Road has always struck me as one of his most enduring statements committed to tape. Joined by Beckett, Marshall, Sulzmann, trombonist Nick Evans and pianist/reedman Karl Jenkins on five of the leader’s compositions (and Jenkins’ excellent fantasia “Lullaby for a Lonely Child”), Down Another Road is a rowdy follow-up to the gauzy openness of Deep Dark Blue Centre (Deram, 1967, also slated for BGO reissue). Sure, there is something of the boogaloo in the breakbeat-backed title tune and its churchy chords, but the unison theme is characterized by an entirely different weight – stately, lush, and out of phase with the expected Horace Silver-esque vibrations. Evans and Sulzmann are both excellently muscular soloists, and comparisons with gruff-toned modernists on this side of the pond may be apt (as if they needed it), but what’s interesting is how unquantifiable the tonal shifts are as riffs develop behind them.
“Danish Blue” is the date’s lengthiest – and perhaps strongest – statement, a multipart tone poem texturally having much in common with Gil Evans, albeit freer. A languid pastoral quickly gives way to collective improvisation, Jenkins’ classical filigree at once rhapsodic and clamorous. Central here is the mostly unaccompanied Harry Beckett solo, deft and lyrical, resoundingly physical while engaged in an ephemeral self-dialogue. An exposition of this kind of breadth leaves no wonder at why he flowered in the context of Collier’s music, and certainly what he brought to the band’s table. Jenkins’ oboe is in full force, adding pinched exoticism to lush brass and reed textures before exploding in dervish-like tongue speak in a fierce duo with John Marshall. Once the rhythm section kicks in, it’s probably one of the hippest oboe solos this side of Sonny Simmons’ cor anglais. Though starting off the second side of the LP, “The Barley Mow” seems segued in real time, an evenly paced character shift with flugelhorn and oboe trading webbed volleys over bass and bamboo-rods. While not as straight-to-the-gut as some of Collier’s later sides, Down Another Road presents a tipping point between overt structure and the freer forms that have characterized his work since.
Songs For My Father debuts the core of Graham Collier Music, with Beckett, Taylor, Webb, and saxophonists Alan Wakeman and Bob Sydor at the helm. They’re variously joined by Skidmore, Roberts, trombonist Derek Wadsworth, and guitarist Phil Lee on a suite of seven compositions. The presence of a four-saxophone line necessarily gives this set a woollier feel, but Collier’s deep anchor is perhaps clearer and an insistent bottom keeps things afloat no matter how jostled the improvisations get. “Song One (Seven-Four)” is like a bat out of hell, massive sonic bricks placed atop fleet rhythm and around the rangy choruses of Lee, Beckett and Wakeman. Wakeman’s soprano carries into “Song Two (Ballad),” a minor-key processional that finds the ensemble’s color fields spreading wide under his straight-horn wailing. It’s true that Collier’s third date is his loosest so far, in that the heads are brief and soloists get a harmonically wide berth, driven as well as bolstered by riffs and maddeningly knotty rhythms.
A smaller unit, the same as the base of Songs but with Geoff Castle replacing John Taylor, graces the live recording of Mosaics, a series of directed improvisations on thematic cues and outlines. Recorded in December 1970, a scant few months after its predecessor, the ground tread by the sextet is similar in concept. “Theme 1” contains a vamp nearly oppressive in its duskiness, Castle’s pedal point anchoring dissonant horn sketches and Webb’s broken juggernaut. Beckett’s assemblage of broken brass tiles segues into a dialogue with Wakeman’s chirps and trills in the introduction to “Part Two,” which starts as a brightly-toned ballad with a murky undertow and includes a lengthy solo percussion piece. Webb builds thematic jabs piece by piece, from isolated side notes to calypso-inflected tub work.
“Part Three” begins with unaccompanied flugelhorn chortles, neighs and sighs that remind one of a mellow-toned Bill Dixon. Though Collier has said he’s not much of a bass soloist, the way he draws lines around Beckett shows his instrumental mettle – even if it doubles as a compositional cue for the ensemble. Mosaics is a fitting name for an approach that interlocks fragments befitting a larger whole, isolated in-themselves. Collier’s own record label also took this name, begun shortly after this LP was waxed and the British majors had scuttled their jazz programming. Thankfully, there’s an effort to keep this music available to a wider jazz public.
Ethnic music fusions have been the soups de jour of the Downtown Music scene for decades. In that sense, trumpeter David Buchbinder’s collaborations with pianist Hilario Duran as co-composer and bassist Roberto Occhipinti on board as band member and producer aren’t bringing much new to the menu. Neither is their specific blend of Old World and Third World sources sifted through a fine mesh jazz sieve (cf. Marc Ribot, Steve Bernstein, etc.) The nonet assembled for this set features players skilled in all three settings as well as their instruments.
A marketing tagline boasts an “explosive Jewish/Cuban musical mash-up”, but the music exploits the rhythmic and melodic similarities of those styles to produce an amalgam that sounds far less incongruous or combative. The charts of both composers rely on surprisingly lubricious transitions, banking from majestic and melancholic Klezmer themes to percolating island beats and back again. The horns of Buchbinder and multi-reedist Quinsin Nachoff along with violinist Aleksander Gajic usually handle the former elements while a formidable four-prong percussion section covers the latter base, though trade-ups between the two occur on occasion. “Cadiz” is arguably the most seamless example of merging forms, starting out as a somber desert dirge and opening up into a tropically-tinted groove punctuated by solo flourishes. Duran’s piano plants bright chordal pinions on the opening Buchbinder-penned “Lailadance” with a parlor touch akin to Ruben Gonzalez as the horns voice Klezmer-inflected counterpoint. “Impresiones”, from Duran’s compositional corner, stitches another tight weave from the two principal stylistic threads and centers more attention on the pianist’s rhapsodic prowess.
Nachoff’s bass clarinet steals the klieg light on “Next One Rising”, phrasing in throaty drawl across an undulating backdrop of bass and hand percussion. Percussion heavy and propulsive, “Rumba Judia” almost sounds like a Jazz Messengers joint and shows off the group’s potent hardbop interests amidst the typical piebald blend of Judaic and Caribbean patterns. The only piece that falters measurably in its fusing of forms is the finale, “Freylekhs Tumbao” where the band sounds a bit like a rebel oompah ensemble forced to gig at a starch collar ice cream social, its delivery stiff, bombastic and oddly anachronistic. Buchbinder and his colleagues may be pulling from a well-sampled soup pot but the pleasure comes with how they bring the familiar ingredients to a consistently savory boil.
~ Derek Taylor
An onion analogy is especially apt when describing the New York jazz scene. Layers exist within layers with players routinely moving between them as collaborative ventures expand and ebb. Drummer Eric McPherson is a member of the Smalls circle, that loose cadre of creative musicians that operated out of the eponymous club in the Nineties. His musical activities also included a 15-year apprenticeship with Jackie McLean and a briefer tenure with Andrew Hill just prior to the pianist’s passing. McPherson also helps run MPI Studio, a performance/recording space owned by Nasheet Waits that also serves as the disc’s birthing place. MPI stands for Multi-Percussion Instrumentalist and it doubles as a fitting encapsulation of McPherson’s approach to the drumkit, polyrhythmic, with a fluid touch that consistently merges power and grace. His rhythms and fills feel full without miring in uncessary clutter or resorting to attention-grabbing bashing. All of the aforementioned experiences funnel positively into this debut disc as a leader and suggest that the date was well past due.
McPherson sequences the program like a lean LP, keeping the music corraled to the span of two vinyl sides. The relative economy still leaves time enough to pack in a manifold summary of his interests starting with the two-part “3rio Suite” in the company of saxophonist and childhood friend Abraham Burton and bassist John Hebert. Burton’s soprano almost sounds like a musette voicing slithery modal patterns against the surging oceanic backdrop built by Hebert and McPherson. Hebert seizes on a deep groove in the piece’s second part, the gritty snap of his strings heightening to intensity of the interplay. “Misako” nods to Hill in its dark chordal structure and the addition of second bassist Dezron Douglas. The tandem makes a second appearance on the disc closing “De Javu Monk” stoking a fair bit of pizzicato steam beneath Burton’s slowly boiling Wayne Shorter-inspired phrasings. Rounding out the program are “Black Pearl”, which teams McPherson’s kit with Trevor Todd’s yirdaki (didjeridu) as accompaniment for an anecdotal spoken recitation in memory of the drummer’s mother, and a rundown of the McLean tune “The Collective Expression” that carries fusionary touches in the presence of Rhodes and a patina of electronic echo around Burton’s alto. A lengthy gestation period makes for fully mature work and McPherson’s album certainly proves such to be so.
~ Derek Taylor
Postbop is about as nebulous a genre tag available, yet writers (myself included) continue to use it as a convenient categorization device. From Geri Allen to Denny Zeitlin, its pervasiveness is directly proportional to the ease of its application. With parameters that bend without much resistance the “I know it when I hear it” adage often applies. Pianist John Chin’s new disc certainly slots within the overused/underdefined rubric, but what’s most surprising is how seamlessly it fits. Subjectively speaking, the music epitomizes my conception of the genre, almost uncannily so.
Chin’s keyboard style is assertive and polished, suggesting strong ties to the populous and popular Evans school. Tenor saxophonist Mark Turner is a practically a poster child of postbop, and consequently his presence on four cuts makes perfect sense. Bassist Alexis Cuadrado handles all but two of the pieces, leaving those to his understudy Chris Higgins. Drummer Bill Campbell completes the quartet. Chin’s taste in borrowed tunes passes muster with entries from the songbooks of Strayhorn and Kenny Barron, the latter another noticeable influence. He likes to stretch out, which occasionally leads to stretching thin as on the rhythmically boxed in Barron number “Joanne Julia”. The ballad “I Won’t Argue With You” is comparably discursive, but Chin’s emotion-rich left hand chords and Campbell’s whisking brushes bring a heightened degree of feeling.
Radio, water jug, candle and canned goods- all are items handy in the event of the disc’s titular event. Chin includes piano keys in his personal list of essentials and considering the level of commitment to the instrument heard here, his reasoning is clear. His website makes mention of electronics and a Rhodes track on his MySpace page further hints at other avenues of expression. The presence of either on this session could have served as a source of welcome variance to a program that already feels convention-prone. Difficult to champion, but also hard to decry, the album is my new litmus for applying the postbop tag to others. Perhaps inadvertently, Chin has assembled a useful tool for writers and listeners alike in salvaging the belabored descriptor from the scrap heap of inconsequence.
~ Derek Taylor
Truth in adverstising definitely applies here --guitarists Marzan and Smith are indeed playing Spanish models of their instruments, unamplified and at length—but the pithy album title does little to describe the sheer diversity of sounds they unleash and that’s probably the point. Smith seems partial to the pleasures of home, at least when it comes to recording material for albums. As with earlier Emanem collections of his work, the eleven tracks were birthed within the confines of his London flat. Marzan is a new name to me. Martin Davidson’s helpful liners describe his classical training and past collaborations with Steve Beresford and Keith Rowe among others. He’s certainly on the same page with Smith, though not the same paragraph. Even with the aid of stereo separation, both men are usually easy to distinguish. The illusion of amplification frequently cloaks their constructions, with brittle and scintillating tones hanging and decaying in the air. Miking is close and encompassing, even capturing exhalations of breath and the occasional ambient noises from within and without the recording space.
Both men bring a full battery of extended techniques to bear on the bodies and strings of their guitars. The stacked rolls of tape pictured on a table in front of Marzan on the booklet back cover aren’t coincidental though fingers handle the majority of manipulations. Percussive movements also play a prominent part with one or both knocking and rubbing fractured rhythms on what sounds like all available surfaces, from wood to strings, to frets, and exploiting the natural resonances of both instrument interiors and room. Even at their most aggressive and discordant the duo sustain a surprising degree of confluence, echoing the old truism that the best improv circumstances usually arise through attentive and responsive listening. They also play disarmingly pretty on occasion as with the dulcet picked latticework that drapes “Freezing Water” Parceling the various pieces by titles and individualized sounds eventually becomes a largely incidental endeavor and the whole has the feel of interconnected suite of sorts despite having been captured at several different sessions. Emanem’s customary “bang for buck” sequencing assures that there’s plenty to digest.
~ Derek Taylor
The trappings on this classic album practically scream avant garde pretentiousness, from the ensemble name, to the charcoal drawn cover portrait, to the advertised guest appearance by beat poet Amiri Baraka reciting his militant manifesto “Black Dada Nihilismus”. The spacious, improv-friendly compositions of Roswell Rudd, the lone Caucasian in a color-conscious crew, go a long way toward counterweighing them. Rudd’s brazen trombone pops the buttons off the band’s pictured suit jackets, simultaneously tapping the visceral tailgate vernacular while striking in bold new directions informed by 20th century chamber music and the then nascent New Thing. His underlying jocularity proves a valuable leavening agent, particularly on the rambunctiously funky “Rosmosis”. Tchicai’s dry alto comes on like a lysergic variant of Desmond’s shot through with Dolphy, twining with and peeling off from Rudd in graceful swoops and arcs that also carry bite. Teamed with the powerful dervish drumming of Milford Graves, bassist Lewis Worrell fares a bit like Jimmy Garrison in the Coltrane quartet, recessed and somewhat embattled, but still integral to the group dynamics. His arco solo on the opening “Rudd” and extended pizz statements on “Untitled” and Tchicai’s “No. 6” give evidence of a near parity with his subsequently more storied partners. Points tally too for ESP’s new slim-line cardstock packaging, which artfully reproduces all the album’s essentials without adding any dross. The rep of this LP as a touchstone in any respectable library of free jazz remains ironclad. Now, as at the time of its pressing, the music looks beyond such celebratory canonization and stands on its own terms. It’s a short jaunt, but one with lots of aural scenery to take in.
~ Derek Taylor
RAR
Over recent years there have been a good few attempts to combine the musical vocabularies of EAI and modern noise music. Whilst at first they may seem to have quite a bit in common; similar uses of electronics, some crossover in audiences, there are also fundamental differences between the two genres that have lead to the failure of the majority of attempts at fusion.
If an over-arching statement can possibly be made about the vague area of music known as EAI it is that careful attention is paid to the choice and placement of the sounds used. Decisions made about what not to play are also often as important as the reverse. Contemporary noise music on the other hand mainly utilises the adrenalin created from the steady growth of volume and intensity as its central theme. Whilst many of the sounds used in each style of playing may be related, the way they are used is usually very different.
Intaglio, the debut release by Tandem Electrics, a young New York duo of Richard Kamerman (amplified laptop circuits) and Reed Evan Rosenberg (programming) utilises elements of both genres to create music that goes some way to successfully finding some common ground. If the truth be told though the attention to form and space more prevalent in EAI rather than the sheer physicality of noise wins through on this release.
Whilst Rosenberg can often be found performing in harsh noise collaborations and Kamerman is no stranger to loud music, volume never becomes a key factor in this music. The sounds involved lean heavily towards a cement-mixer ugliness. Rough electronic splatter and dirty splurges often revolving in small loops form much of the raw material, yet despite these rough qualities they are not allowed to slip into droning layers. There is a control and precision to this recording that lets the music breathe, and allows the interplay between the musicians to take front stage, a feature often less obvious in the car-crash pile-ups of noise music collaborations.
I use the word carefully, not wishing to cast aside the energy rush of noise as merely the output of a modern youth, but there is a real sense of maturity to Intaglio, a strong focus on the overall composition and how each moment contributes to the whole. At the same time the music retains an edge, threatening to tip over it on several occasions but never succeeding. On my first listen my hand regularly hovered over the volume dial preparing to protect myself from the wrath of my neighbours, but such action is never necessary and the tension is admirably left to brood rather than explode into an obvious release.
Intaglio isn’t easy on the ears, the rough edges of the raw materials used can be tough going. Kamerman’s amplifications of the internal workings of a laptop and Rosenberg’s digital squall aren’t the most inviting of sounds, often severe and jarring, the sound of modern electronics we aren’t meant to hear. Whilst it is not uncommon for me to enjoy music that utilises a limited palette of sounds I cannot help but feel that a wider range here would bring an additional warmth and colour that would benefit the music overall. I’d like to hear the duo play with a third, perhaps even acoustic musician too to extend the depth of the sound even further. For now though Intaglio is a strong release from two very promising musicians.
Rosenberg MySpace
Kamerman MySpace
The meaning attached to hatOLOGY album covers can sometimes be a mystery, but the hourglass slab of eroded desert rock pictured here is a pithy analogy for pianist Steve Lantner’s music. Naturalistic in design and deployment, a lot of time and trouble goes in to its creation and it has a tendency of creeping up on the unsuspecting listener. The overall effect is like a time-lapse film reel with countless hours of preparation and practice condensed into a fraction of the temporal space. Lantner enlists the same crew as on his 2005 Skycap release Blue Yonder. Comparison of the two records reveal a continuing maturation in the latest one. Good as the earlier effort was and is, intervening years have allowed the trio to truly gel.
Four out of the disc’s five tracks stretch past ten-minutes, but none of them feels over-long. The extended durations allow for close scrutiny of each of the players solo abilities and all rise ably to the challenge. Case in point, Joe Morris has really come into his own as a bassist. His handling of the bull fiddle is almost antipodal to his more celebrated work on frets with phrasing often slowed down and carefully parceled out. Atention to articulation and tone is similarly focused, the weighty snap of his strings echoing older workhorses like Wilbur Ware rather than the fleet-fingered filigree of some of his peers. He pens the opener “New Routine”, a piece possessive of the perfect oxymoronic title, one that also reflects the stoop-shouldered bass shuffle at its core. Drummer Luther Gray conveys a near ideal union of propulsion and finesse. A lithe and attentive touch combined with an equal-opportunity opinion toward brushes reveals kinship with Paul Motian and the two have a comparably idiosyncratic approach toward beat construction.
Lantner’s lines communicate a fascinating chronology, roping in and refracting the bop stylings of Powell and Clark but also echoing early Cecil in terms of rhythmic transience and staccato repetition. These traits bring to mind Connie Crothers, not so much in overt approach, but in the way he internalizes whole branches of the jazz piano family tree and grinds them into his own highly personalized pulp. The two covers, Braxton’s “23J” and Ornette’s “Broken Shadows”, reveal his roots in more recent developments. Both renderings sustain the spirit of the originals while also catering fully to the new context. Even when the trio traffics in turbulent interplay as with the roiling collisions of the title piece, underlying structure and symmetry pervades. It’s long been fashionable to favorably describe piano trio discs as breaking the stolid mold that’s been in place at least since Bill Evans had his epochal Vanguard stand. Lantner doesn’t so much break the mold as recognize its malleable possibilities and shape it with his own catalytic perspective. It’s an important lesson, again resonant in that geological cover shot: new need not come at the complete eradication of the old.
~ Derek Taylor
The “X” can now do double duty as a Roman numeral in reflecting this improvising trio’s decade together as a unit. On this latest offering, they cop a page from the Vandermark playbook. Four out of the seven pieces carry dedications to fellow musicians. The extended opener “Fried Grapefruit” celebrates Henry Threadgill, starting as a porous chamber music dialogue between drums and bass. The mood turns heated with the entry of McPhee’s tenor (fitted with a bass clarinet reed), but eventually scales back again with another turn into somber balladry. The closing minutes settle on a sliding funk groove as underpinning for honking and bleating tenor, several facets of Hemphill’s irrepressible personality translated into sound. “Jump Spring” for William Parker, sketches a similarly apt aural portrait, pivoting on Duval and building from the sort of soulful ostinato so often the province of the bassist honoree. “2128 ½ Indiana”, commemorates an address that perceptive jazz fans will recognize as the former digs of the Velvet Lounge. Fred Anderson is the figure of adulation at that storied establishment and McPhee pays homage with a wooly extemporization that is as melodically astute as it is rhythmic on the tail of Rosen drum preface that mixes similarly compatible properties.
A Trio X outing wouldn’t be complete without at least one spiritual. “Close Up” covers that base in the combination of Duval’s grainy arco and McPhee’s raspy tenor. Rosen holds silent, eventually returning with restrained brushwork to bracket McPhee’s Ayler-informed musings. The drummer also sidelines himself for “Here’s that Rainy Day” and the ensuing tenor and bass duo points to the remaining pair’s concert the previous day (also released as a CIMPoL set). Ellington is the recipient of the last aural encomium with the powerful “Give Us This Day”. McPhee bites hard on his reed to create another spate of sustained gravely cries that periodically venture over into vocalized polyphonics. His colleagues cobble a comparably impassioned context around him. “A Valentine in the Fog of War” finds McPhee in oratory mode, his words muffled, but his ensuing tenor line speaking with audible force before tapering into a melancholic interpolation of “My Funny Valentine”, another Trio X staple.
The last track illustrates a deviation from past albums in their catalog in the session particulars. Engineer Marc Rusch adapts the CIMP aesthetic of minimal inference to concert settings for the newly christened CIMPoL imprint. Expanding his recording field to the world writ large will offer him a renewable resource in terms of liner comments (after several hundred essays on the relatively static environment of the Spirit Room, the space yields few new surprises), but it also presents a new slate of ever-changing challenges. From a listener standpoint, application of ear goggles might be a good bet as the dynamic range requires a bit of concentration on the quieter end. All in all, it’s memorable set and a fitting precursor to an even more momentous offering rumored for release later this year.
~ Derek Taylor
Dave, Tim, Kent, Fred and Ken: common and colloquial first names that could easily be those of your drinking buddies down at the corner pub. The Vandermark 5 have been around long enough, have logged enough tour miles, have put out enough albums to engender a certain degree of familiarity. Plunk ducats down on one of their records and the buyer can be reasonably sure of what they’re getting in return. The fun and value comes in what Vandermark does with the familiar components, a variability and atypicality reflected in the band’s beyond-the-ordinary surnames.
This latest set has much in common with past ones. Bob Weston is once again at the board as engineer. The nine Vandermark compositions advertise their usual honorees, among them: Andreas Gursky, Max Roach and Paul Rutherford. Most of the pieces work from collage style schemas that shoehorn elements and instruments into swiftly-shifting studies in opposition and reconciliation. Tautly wound tension and release and hairpin shifts in mood and tempo are present in abundance. There’s also plenty of the group’s signature action jazz energy. They hit fast and hit hard with only a few chamber jazz detours like those contained in “Further From the Truth”. Even when the disparate interlocking elements of the charts collide rather than complement, as on the kitchen-sink slugfest “Acrylic”, the shared enthusiasm behind their execution keeps the music on even keel.
Vandermark breaks with usual band decorum by claiming first solo order on the Ligeti-dedicated opener “Friction”, his burry bass clarinet huffing and puffing over a dense weave of cymbals and strings. As in the recent past, his division of reeds with Rempis leaves for no overlap or mistaken identity. Rempis doles out acrobatic barrages of notes in blistering runs with an emblematic improv facility. Vandermark works from a more pragmatic perspective, particularly on baritone where he revels in the brawn and bluster of the big horn and plays from the gut. Together, the two achieve some terrific tonal juxtaposition, the closing tenor/bari blowout “Desireless” being but one memorable example.
Lonberg-Holm’s cello serves as the band’s blank Scrabble title, running through a list of possibles that encompasses keening violin to harshly amplified guitar. His solo on “Speedplay” touches down in full-tilt Hendrix territory in its artful yet aggressive application of fulminating feedback. Daisy sounds confident and alert behind his kit, bouncing from tight pocket-playing to brushed textures to floating pulse without faltering. Kessler comes out to tangle with Lonberg-Holm repeatedly as during the string duels that spice up “Signposts” and “Compass Shatters Magnet”, but otherwise largely consigns to his customary role as responsive anchor. The usual detractors probably won’t be won over by this latest dissertation, but those enamored of the V5’s customary game plan will find the game equally well played here.
~ Derek Taylor
Atavistic/UMS 265
Arkestrological excavations continue unabated thanks to the fine folks at Atavistic. This late ’07 release couples sessions by two very different incarnations of the band. Despite the contradictory directive of the title cerulean hues abound. The first seven tracks come from a Philly date in the fall of ’77. Ra leads a nonet augmented by bassist Richard “Radu” Williams on the title cut, but otherwise bass-free. Other than the opener and an untitled tempest, it’s standards all the way. John Gilmore steps to the solo plate repeatedly, spooling out soulful improvisations that suggest he’s slightly zonked on space dust, mind wide open to the pleasures of the ancient-to-the-future jazz continuum. The attention paid his tenor in the pecking order is definitely something to savor, particularly on a 10-minute reading of “My Favorite Things” that echoes his epochal Horo turn on the tune.
Ra, too, gets in some good licks, fingering a stride-dappled statement on “I’ll Get By” that’s ripe with his requisite sense of temporal dissonance. Same drill for “Tenderly” in a prefatory rhapsody that primes the pump for more passionate Gilmore tenor. His preference is for piano though slivers of tinkling electronics do crop up on occasion. Trumpeter Akh Tal Ebah chips in the third major solo voice, moving from open horn to mute and waxing some of the finest solos in his all too finite discography. James Jacson’s bassoon and Eloe Omoe’s bass clarinet mostly contribute background color, but the flutes of Marshall Allen and Danny Davis edge in on the foreground action during “Nature Boy” and the aforementioned “Favorite Things”, prompting oblique comparisons to Dolphy and Trane. Atakatune’s congas percolate through the kit-cobbled rhythms of Luqman Ali and together the pair shores up the rhythmic needs such that a bass isn’t missed.
Sound quality carries the precarious pitch levels typical Saturn sessions, but the commensurate murk is nothing seasoned Ra listeners will object to. Fidelity improves on two alternate rehearsal takes of “I’ll Get By” taped in Philly in ’73 that close out the program and find either Gilmore or Ebah as the sole horn backed only by Ra’s organ and Ronnie Boykins bass. Both takes contain plenty of room for the soloists to limber up and extemporize with Gilmore again taking particular advantage of the whittled down setting. Boykins is miked closely and sounds unusually sharp, though the ghost of an earlier recording on the source tape haunts the Ebah version in the form of a phantom drum track.
As of this writing, Ra’s been traveling the spaceways in noncorporeal form for nearly fifteen earth years. The sound archive he left behind is finite one, but its exact magnitude is still being mapped and ascertained. The upshot is that listeners will likely be privy to releases like this one on a consistent basis for some time to come.
~ Derek Taylor
Over four decades after his demise, Eric Dolphy is still the paragon by which bass clarinetists are judged in jazz. No slight meant to the man’s memorial, but time seems well past due for a fresh standard. Clarinetist Theo Jörgensmann assembles a convincing case for potential consideration on his latest hatOLOGY venture. Recorded in the spring of 2006 at Alchemia, it’s his second commercially released outing with the Olés Brothers. Bassist Marcin and drummer Bartlomiej Brat are something of the defacto rhythm section at the popular Cracow club. They play readily with foreign improvisers that make tour stops in the Polish city among them David Murray, Chris Speed and Ken Vandermark and take a cue from that last in a conspicuous appreciation for bicep-flexing action jazz. While receptive to Jörgensmann’s more ruminative forays on “Perrata” and “Giuffree”, they respond most favorably to the full bore gallops of “Direction” and the latter half the nearly 20-minute chamber-to-freebop “Menace”. The extended avalanche drum-break on that last piece is practically bubbling over with percussive ebullience and the bassist’s string-abrading solo that follows is similarly bathed in aural rivulets of sweat. The crowd eats it up, whistling, clapping and audibly galvanized by the aggressively velocious interplay.
Jörgensmann is a bit harder to parcel out and doesn’t shackle himself to any one bag. His sound on the licorice pipe-shaped reed is an oblique admixture of old and new. “Giuffree” contains ad hoc quotes from several tunes associative with its namesake including “Jesus Maria”. An attention to moody articulation and finely etched detail pervades. The weave of the Olés is textured and elastic, adding appreciable depth and color to Jörgensmann’s melody-rich musings. On the harder charging numbers surnames like DeFranco and Mahall aren’t out of bounds. Jörgensmann’s preference for middle-register corkscrews and topspins in his phrasing especially echo the latter comparison, but again any allegiance to existing nomenclature is only fleeting. Jörgensmann and his colleagues aim for ambulatory swing on the closing “4x4”, strutting and side-stepping like a trio of Pied Pipers lighting out of Bremen with an audience of enraptured mice in tow before breaking into another bristling sprint and threatening to leave them behind. The piece carries on a bit too long, losing steam in its final third, but considering the caliber of what’s come prior it’s hardly grounds for complaint. Dolphy’s spirit still clings to the crown, but players like Jörgensmann are far from content with rote supplication to his memory.
~ Derek Taylor
As with previous Adam Rudolph projects, rhythm lies at the root of this new outing. Stacked and often percolating profusely with polymetric complexity, the disc’s fourteen tracks pull from a plentitude of ethnic sources and instruments. Rudolph’s percussive arsenal alone includes thumb pianos, gourds, caxixi (basket shakers), carcaba (metal castanets), naccara (Turkish drum) and tarija (goblet drum). The mighty Hamid Drake, no newcomer to Rudolph’s rhythmic peregrinations, joins him on drum kit and frame drum and the result is a match made in drum maven heaven.
Where the session deviates from some past efforts is in the strength of the other participants, particularly the horn section of Graham Haynes, Ned Rothenberg and Steve Gorn. The latter two players divide much of their time between Asian wind instruments like shakuhachi and bansuri flutes and Western reeds, mainly clarinets. Haynes’ brass brings another authoritative edge and it’s apparent from the onset that horns are not intimidated by the assemblage of powerful. A third ensemble contingent consists of strings with Ken Wessel asserting a voluble presence on electric and acoustic guitars and Brahim Fribgane, the former acoustic and electric guitar Brahim Fribgane plucking oud and doubling on additional percussion.
Rudolph divides the program into longer tunes and shorter interstitial pieces. “Oshogbo” exudes a heavy African vibe via shakers, talking drums, pulsing bass and hard riffing horns and winds. Wessel weaves through the resulting thicket leaving behind a trail of metallic amplified strums. Barely over a minute in length, “Violet Hour” exchanges percussion for the chamber blend of harmonizing horns and strings while the more expansive “Twilight Lake” serves as a framework for Fribgane’s fibrillating oud blues. The snippet “Scintilla” sounds like an ideation forcibly extricated from the mind of Chadbourne in its blend of prickly string riffing, bent thumb piano pecking and restless clarinet interlocutions. The mbiras of the street band sounding “Happiness Road” are more inviting, braiding with flute and shakers in a syncopated shuffle that skillfully bridges melodic and rhythmic concerns. It’s territory trampled in even greater garrulous fashion on the raucously polyphonous track “The Sphinx”.
Parts of other pieces are equally deserving of explication, particularly Rothenberg’s stunning shakuhachi improvisation on “Cousin of the Moon” answered in kind by a blistering cornet solo from Haynes and a drum deluge by Drake. In the interest of preserving a sense of surprise though, perhaps its best to skip to set’s conclusion. “Walking the Curve” brings the band gloriously full circle, coupling Fribgane’s dancing oud with sintir, frame drum, bass clarinet, cornet, bansuri and guitar in a funky North African strut that serves as fitting capper to what just might be the finest album of Rudolph’s career.
~ Derek Taylor
Boxholder 054
Though pianist Bobby Few came to notoriety as part of the Frank Wright Quartet and Steve Lacy’s ensembles in the 1970s and 80s, respectively, and worked with saxophonists as diverse as Booker Ervin, Albert Ayler and Marzette Watts, his work as a lead instrumental voice is less-regularly documented and not very well known. But his solo and duo recordings (with tenorman Avram Feffer) in recent years are not to be missed, much less the kaleidoscopic trio sides on Center of the World, Vogue and Black Lion. Lights and Shadows is Few’s second solo disc for Boxholder, and fifth overall for the label. He’s featured here on six original compositions and a cover of Lacy’s “Flakes.”
Few was the linchpin for a number of powerful, freewheeling ensembles precisely because of his diverse approach to the keyboard, bringing in heavy gospel chords alongside Wright and Noah Howard or rhapsodic classicism in Lacy’s band. Indeed, Few was trained as a classical pianist early on in his Cleveland childhood and led a locally-respected trio with bassist Cevera Jeffries. A solo Few recital is therefore not unlike entering the sound-worlds of Jaki Byard, Ran Blake, Howard Riley or Mal Waldron.
The session starts with the aptly-titled incantation “Bells,” with shakers, finger cymbals and other devices rattling and fleshing out the motivic roiling in Few’s fingers (it’s safe to assume the other instruments are overdubbed). Few’s left hand is paced by the surrealist waltzes of his tenure with Lacy, his right in deft filigree. “Flakes” is an apt follow-up, a whimsical sashay at the upper end of the keyboard, telescoping outward into glassy arpeggios and expanded circular motifs, the flakes themselves caught in a series of whirlpools. “Enomis” is a new take on “Simone,” Few’s dedication to his wife that first appeared on More or Less Few (COTW, 1975), a steady and simple extrapolation on the feeling of a popular tune. Indeed, Few was at one time a vocalist, and it’s easy to imagine the theme with a set of his characteristically whimsical lyrics. His ringing right hand clusters, dissonant and tart, are the weighty opening for “Lights and Shadows,” chugging ahead and arcing into the synapses you never knew you had (one doesn’t miss bass and drums, Few’s pulse is so strong). Churchy chords and crisp upper-register explorations intertwine in this swirling and dense, nearly twenty-minute improvisation. There’s even a heady modal-jazz anthem or two surreptitiously creeping in before the tune’s end. Forget the languidness that imbues the “average” solo piano date – here, the piano has more than just “guts.”
- Clifford Allen
B-boim
Radu Malfatti’s composed music over the past few years has explored a closely focussed, somewhat minimal vein. Many (though certainly not all) of the releases on his uncharacteristically prolific B-boim label have been similar in form and basic structure, varying only in colour, texture and other details. Each one is subtly different and yet distinctly familiar, and this feature to some degree forms one of the central themes of his ongoing work.
Having arrived at this point after years of developing as a musician and composer Malfatti has followed a similar trajectory to the likes of Rothko, Newman and to some degree even Feldman, all artists who in the later stages of their career produced large amounts of highly evolved, yet increasingly similar work.
Its rare that anyone ever looks back at those names and accuses them of stagnation however, as has often been the case with Malfatti’s recent work. Maybe only the sense of proportion that comes with time will allow his music to be addressed in a similar manner, and also without the relentless pining for the type of music that he made in the past and has since turned away from.
Kid Ailack 5 and Claude Lorrain 1 are two new additions to Mafatti’s home made CDR label catalogue, the thirteenth and fourteenth to appear in the last eighteen months. (I reviewed the first twelve here) Both of these recordings were made towards the end of 2007 and portray many of the characteristics familiar to much of Malfatti’s recent work. Long, dry single tones spaced apart by extended silences of varying lengths are common to both releases.
Recorded in Tokyo at the concert hall of the same name, Kid Ailack 5 (the numeral indicates that it is the fifth piece composed for that particular occasion) features Malfatti’s trombone alongside a quartet of other musicians. Fellow visiting Wandelweiser associates Antoine Beuger and Manfred Werder play baroque flute and mouth organ respectively, alongside the two Takus Unami (laptop) and Sugimoto (guitar).
The five musicians play extended notes for varied lengths of time together as a group. They begin playing as closely together as possible, presumably on a visual cue, and each note is abruptly cut short by all of the players simultaneously. What results then is a rich, layered tone made up of the contributions of all of the players that coalesces into one thick, syrupy hum and holds together consistently for most of the time. The occasional unintended flutter and falter from individual musicians are apparent here and there, infrequent yet enough to continually remind the listener of the human input into the music.
Between the notes the throb of the city can be heard creeping into the hall, and the sound of a remarkably quiet audience gives itself away every so often, but careful listening reveals something unusual about these elements. Here and there early in the recording the hum of the city seems to halt suddenly, leaving almost complete silence for fractions of a second. Its unlikely that these sounds are in fact coming from Unami’s laptop rather than the room itself, the more likely reason may be that the recording has been edited at these points, perhaps to remove uncomplimentary sounds. Certainly this adds a curious element to the recording though, made even more interesting by the quote from Francis Brown that Malfatti places on the sleeve; “What happens in the fraction of a second inbetween musical notes – is it still music?”
This piece plays with typical Malfatti ideas about memory and its role in music. Why after what seems like a semi regular pattern of tones placed within seemingly regular negative spaces do the lengths of the sounds and the gaps between them change in length? Or do they? The music starts to play games with the listener’s mind. The natural urge to find rhythms and patterns in the music is thwarted, and the individual events are too similar to be able to understand the differences between the length of each tone or silence.
On this recording the faint buzz of the background sound provides a far from blank canvas for the musicians to add to, resulting in a continually changing performance that will reward those with the patience to remain closely focussed for its fifty minute duration.
Claude Lorrain 1 is quite different to the Kid Ailack recording. To begin with it is put together on a computer by Malfatti using recordings of his muted trombone alongside computer generated sinetones. The two tones exist independently of each other, shifting over one another to leave less silence than is common in Malfatti compositions. There are subtle adjustments in pitch again that take place often after extended silences, and here as the composition has been built on a computer the negative spaces are cold digital silences. This leaves the listener with nothing to focus on but the relationship between the two notes and the spaces between them.
Claude Lorrain seems to feature a further element that I am not aware of having occurred in previous Malfatti works however. As the piece progresses the sounds we hear also seem to drop in volume, or at least give the impression of doing so. In his previous works whilst the pitch of tones vary the dynamic has always remained the same so it may be that even after seven listens through I am imagining this. There are possible hints in the sleeve quotation again though; “What happens to music when it breaks the sound barrier?”
So two more thoughtful releases from Malfatti that will delight those that enjoy trying to find answers to the questions he poses and bore those that require something else from music before they can start enjoying it. Personally I stand firmly in the former camp, and I look forward to the day he is perceived as one of avant garde music’s most original explorers.
Smalls CEO Luke Kaven has talent for artist discovery and recovery that many in the jazz industry could use as a yardstick. His modest label is home to a stable of sterling musicians, the latest unveiling being altoist Zaid Nasser. Like most of his Smalls colleagues, Nasser toiled away on the New York City scene far longer than this debut would seem to imply. Son of bassist Jamil Nasser, a sideman on classic dates by Coltrane, Pres and others, Nasser’s been playing and shedding since his early teens, almost totally outside the awareness of the jazz press. The disc’s title is in part a play on the ghettoization of certain musicians in the city and the tendency for some among them to subsequently pass without notice, a sobering situation that Kaven’s been working rigorously to reverse. The phrase also speaks to Nasser’s travels beyond the Big Apple’s borders, which have included tours on the Southern juke tour circuit with organist Bill Doggett and several expatriate years spent in Armenia.
What’s initially most striking about Nasser’s phrasing is his intrinsic ability to play blindingly fast and accurate. He takes the bop policy of velocity pioneered by Dizzy and Bird to dizzying extremes. There’s also a surprising passel of Dolphy in his sound, present in swirling glissandos and acrobatic harmonic choices. His alto tone is bright and immediate, recalling hues of McLean-ish piquancy, but from a warmer, more effusive perspective. He also has habit of plumbing timbral regions akin to tenor within the otherwise tarter pitch range of his horn. Most importantly, Nasser sounds distinctly like himself with a refreshing measure of individuality that comes through loud and clear.
Further stock in Nasser’s talent comes through in the caliber of the sidemen assembled, a roll call of some of Smalls’ finest regulars. Bassist Ari Roland continues his mission to revive arco primacy through a superficial semblance to Paul Chambers. His patterns with bow are more idiosyncratic and truthfully a tad indulgent to point where more fingers and less horsehair might have been a prudent move. Pianist Sascha Perry plays a bit pat in places, but works as an active agent for the altoist’s flights. Drummer Phil Stewart has fluid touch and spends a welcome amount of time wielding whisks, his choice according the several tunes heightened elasticity and texture.
Kaven continues to steward a small army of singular saxophone voices among them Chris Byars and Ned Goold. Nasser can definitely hang in that heavy company. His aural credentials are all over this disc, one of the most satisfying bop-grounded albums I heard in 2007. Tangentially, he’s yet another artist who corroborates my lacquerless sax theory. Sadly, it seems he’s taken the album title as directive and departed New York for Dubai. Here’s hoping that he opts to return soon and give things another go stateside.
~ Derek Taylor
[apologies to Luke Kaven for the belated nature of this review]
The minting of fresh David “Fathead” Newman records has been an annual HighNote event for seven years straight. This latest entry continues the streak and is meant as a celebration of the saxophonist’s impending seventy-fifth year on the planet. Newman’s spent a good portion of that lifespan immersed in the jazz life. He gigged with Ornette as a teenager in Dallas before helping make music history as prominent sideman in the bands of Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin in later years. Forays into pop, blues, funk and orchestral settings proved lucrative moves, but in every situation he wore his Texas tenor roots proudly and still does. In light of such protracted productivity, he’s an easy player to take for granted. This session as much as any other in his voluminous catalog demonstrates the folly of assigning him placement on the periphery.
Band instrumentation for the date recalls the Jazz Crusaders and the program limns a songbook similar to the one favored by that venerable ensemble. Boogaloo tunes like the title track and “My Full House” are somewhat staid in construction, but from the start the session’s more about how the musicians play rather than what they play. Pianist Cedar Walton and trombonist Curtis Fuller are old friends of Newman as well as contemporaries. Fuller sounds a shade slowed by age, but his lubricous slurs and slides are still an effective frontline foil. Walton betrays some subtle Silverisms from the piano bench, but he’s long past aping anyone and certifiable hardbop royalty in his own right. Bassist Peter Washington and drummer Yoron Israel are younger in years, but just as amenable to the saxophonist’s unequivocally populist designs. Sax peer Houston Person occupies a behind the scenes position as producer and his presence further cement’s the session’s adherence to accessibility.
Newman cycles deftly between tenor, alto and flute evincing authoritative voices on each. His sound on the large horn is full and buttery on the ballad “Skylark”, hard and soulful on “Cedar’s Blues”, while alto naturally encompasses a more lissome approach on “Can’t We Be Friends”. The crisp and nimble flute work on “Mama Lou” references the kind of whistling vocalized intensity of Roland Kirk with Newman engaging in some hair-raising chases with Walton’s keys. The first and third axes factor into an effective reading of Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” and bring surprise jazz tenability to that slushy slice of Seventies pop pap. Newman’s pretty much seen it all in a musical sense and the switch from corpulence to precious stone in sobriquet, at least for the purposes of this record, feels more than warranted.
~ Derek Taylor
Alto saxophonist Steve Lehman is a familiar name among new jazz aficionados, mostly for his pedigree of studying the instrument with Anthony Braxton and Jackie McLean, and composition (currently) with George Lewis. He’s worked in more commercial settings as well as – where these ears first heard him – with pianist Dave Burrell and drummer William Hooker in the Echo/Peace Continuum group. On Manifold, his second date for Clean Feed (recorded live in Coimbra, Portugal), he’s joined by trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, drummer Nasheet Waits and bassist John Hebert on a series of compositions and ostensible group improvisations as well as Andrew Hill’s “Dusk” and Finlayson’s “Berceuse.”
So much is made of the presence of a “concept” behind Lehman’s work that the freshness of his playing and arrangements, not to mention his consistently excellent choice of sidemen (his first on Clean Feed featured drummer Pheeroan Ak Laff and bassist Mark Dresser), seem a bit scuttled. The pretense of M-base this and Braxton/Lewis that, shouldn’t get in the way of as landmark a performance as listeners here have of “Dusk.” A more recent entry in the late pianist-composer’s catalog, it was featured prominently on 2000’s Dusk (Palmetto) with then up-and-coming saxophonists Greg Tardy and Marty Ehrlich. Hill’s music is rarely covered, and much in the way Steve Lacy approached Monk, it’s interesting to hear a piano-less unit interpret his work. Hebert’s tone is impeccable, reminiscent here of Barry Guy or Dave Holland, and sketches the pensive vamp perfectly. Finlayson and Lehman, presented up to this point in darting counterpoint, catch the rays of the tune’s Latin lilt in knotty unison. Waits and Hebert set up a an insistent but fragmented outline beneath the trumpeter’s flits and contortions, hardbop phrases played as whiffs through Don Cherry’s battered pocket horn. Lehman’s got a puckery tone and bone-worries his phrases; there’s a bit of Braxton’s speed and McLean’s power, but I’m mostly reminded of John Tchicai. As Waits steps up the density of his dry whirlwind, Lehman’s resoluteness in developing a very small phrase area is rather astounding, and accounts for much of the tension driving the piece. “Dusk” is as consummate a performance of “inside-outside” jazz as one’s likely to hear. Manifold is lean, hungry creative music, and is highly recommended to both old-soul Lehman converts and new ears alike.
- Clifford Allen
Trumpeter and composer Dennis González’ latest release on Clean Feed comes from what’s probably a rather sizeable archive of tapes in his closet. A little over half of Dance of the Soothsayer’s Tongue captures a gig recorded at Tonic four years ago with tenorman Ellery Eskelin, bassist Mark Helias and drummer Michael T.A. Thompson. The remainder of the disc was recorded in a New York studio in 2004 with the same quartet. It’s sort of a requiem for the club, which closed its doors last year in the face of rising rents and business problems we’ll never quite understand; though its jazz policy had long been curtailed, the venue was still one of the few options for independent and creative music in Downtown Manhattan.
González always has a knack for bringing together interesting groups, and this latest release is no exception. Helias is, of course, a stalwart of vanguard New York jazz, and Thompson has long cut his teeth working with Sabir Matteen, Steve Swell, and other free improvisation heavies. Eskelin might be the outlier here – his trio with accordionist Andrea Parkins and drummer Jim Black has cut a unique chunk out of jazz’s history and served it up on a darkly irreverent platter, but it’s rare to see him working as a sideman. Here, his mastery of postbop tenor and his strong rhythmic guise are welcomed.
The leader starts the set unaccompanied with a repeating and almost calypso-like figure; he’s quickly joined in duo by Thompson’s tumbling polyrhythmics, as González varies the length and charge of his brittle brass bits. The pair enters into a slinky rhumba, long, thick and sure lines recalling some of Don Ellis’ Moorish figures. González, like Ellis and Ted Curson, is an expert at fattening up in the absence of a front-line partner, and his duet with Thompson is a fantastic example of this. “The Matter At Hand” is a stately unison line over limber accompaniment, and is the first “live” track of the disc. The piano-less arrangement echoes the robustness of a post-Mingus language rather than Ornette and Don Cherry. Helias’ solo is an aberration of slapping pizzicato into dense, percussive filigree, a fullness of notes that contrasts the leader’s fullness of tone.
Eskelin follows with an amazing extrapolation, working from the velvety bowels of phrase up to a polished, straight-arrow keen and back down into Ike Quebec’s candle-lit grave. Thompson works backwards into the bassist’s hyperactive plucks, slaps and jabs, segueing into the arid rhythms of the title track with the leader’s wide-vibrato bray in full view. Well-placed is Thompson’s solo feature “Soundrhythium,” a streetwise minimalism of bells, rimshots, thunder-sheet and kalimba that updates Amadeo Roldán and Cage for the new-jazz set.
Dance of the Soothsayer’s Tongue is yet another fascinating entry in Dennis Gonzalez’ catalog and proof that he and his cohorts find ways to express something you’ve never heard, even in a timeworn context.
- Clifford Allen
One of the most promising aspects of the Lisbon-based Clean Feed label is their penchant for bringing together hometown heroes and improvisers from elsewhere, notably the United States. Brazil-born tenorman Alipio C. Neto, also of the IMI Kollektief, joins forces with Downtown New Yorkers, drummer Michael T.A. Thompson, tubaist Ben Stapp and trumpeter Herb Robertson, and globetrotting bassist Ken Filiano for a set of hard-driving freebop and rangy group improvisations.
The first cut brings together what are ostensibly two different tunes, “The Perfume Comes Before” and “Early News.” The first part of that equation has Neto and Filiano providing a husky and delicate bottom figure while Robertson skates atop, his own fat sound broken into pulpit-pounding shards. There’s a brief unison rejoinder before Filiano’s furious horsehairs coax Neto into grounding his boot heels and stitching together a solo of heady contrasts. He has a soft, breathy tone and an introverted sense of pacing, mostly holding back the fireworks despite the ensemble’s tendency to splay out. One doesn’t really think of “caution” coupled with a big, fat tenor sound and meaty group improvisation, but Neto’s working of phrases in “Early News” is not unlike the delicacy out of the gate you’d hear from Marzette Watts or a young Joe McPhee. When he does stretch out, as on "The Pure Experience," his merger of tuneful phrases and burnished yawp has an uncanny resemblance to Sam Rivers.
“The Will/Nissarama” starts with a pizzicato bass recital before the front line enters with a multipart nursery rhyme, turned dark with Robertson’s nasty chortle and snide growls. Neto’s choice of frontline partner is interesting, for Robertson’s brashness and frequent extroverted smears are in direct contrast to the pensive ferocity of the leader’s tenor. Goaded into calculated yelps and false-fingered buzz, one feels like Neto’s just barely keeping his exuberance corked. Neto's writing isn't merely of blowing vehicles; approaching territory explored by Dewey Redman, “The Flower” is texturally diverse (Robertson doubles here on a musette-like instrument). Stapp fleshes out the low end, marching in tandem with Filiano as pinched reed exhortations bubble up from the depths. The trumpeter is at his most stately here, his bravura in neat opposition to the dusky landscape Neto has formed. “Aboio” grows naturally out of “Flower,” delineated by brighter colors and a more pronounced rhythm – yet still indebted to its free seed. It’ll be interesting to see how Neto grows as a composer and soloist; a power-trio and its unfettered view of the helm is my vote for the latter.
- Clifford Allen
Free Software Series
Since I first heard his music almost a decade ago now the Basque laptop improviser Mattin has intrigued, excited, annoyed, confused, irritated, delighted, inspired, stunned, challenged and bored me in roughly equal amounts. One thing I can say for sure about the man and his music however is that he always grabs my attention.
The Free Software Series label has been set up by Mattin to promote the free distribution of music creation freeware and to showcase music created with it. Broken Subject is the fourth in the series, and the only one of the four releases so far to feature Mattin. If his music over the past few years may have seemed to focus as much on the conceptual as the inherently musical, Broken Subject feels like a move back in the other direction, however temporary. The ten tracks on this CDR bristle with a muscular vitality and directness that feels like the work of a musician engaging tightly, almost physically with the music, like a potter behind his wheel wrestling with his creation.
Whilst retaining this sense of energy throughout, the assorted tracks here range from the relatively loud and violent through to the barely audible, utilising quite a range of dynamics, from the forceful blasts that open the album to the fine slithers elsewhere. Each of the tracks seems to focus on a small set of sounds, always digital in nature, but somehow sounding different to the usual squawks and drones of the solo laptopper. Perhaps the absence of Max/MSP filters makes all the difference, but those throttled, glitchy sounds that sounded so fresh in the early days of Mego Records but now feel so dated are not present here.
If anything the sounds Mattin produces on Broken Subject seem closer to the stark rigour of the new Korean improvisers documented of late by the Manual and Balloon and Needle labels and with whom Mattin has played and recorded. The album has a feel of malfunctioning technology to it, the sound of modern digital media tripping over itself, a wild uncertainty as if to a degree the sounds shaped by Mattin are pulled from the software by chance.
The one element of the album that hints at some level of predetermination is the length of the tracks, as all of them last exactly three minutes. Its not clear if Broken Subject is composed to any degree, whether the exact time limits are the result of editing after the fact or if limitations were set on the recording of the pieces. The way that the tracks each focus one area of sound for their brief duration works very nicely though, allowing the distinct dynamics of each of the separate pieces to offset one another. This provides the album with an overall sense of symmetrical construction that would suggest that the track order was carefully chosen if nothing else.
So no pithy conversations with the listener, no dreadful singing, nothing that is likely to offend, but instead Broken Subject is a challenging, abrasive album that seems to capture raw energy and place it into a precise framework. An intriguing and somewhat original work that goes some way further than merely promoting the potential of music freeware.
Available to buy as a CDR or download free from
An alternate title for this new Odean Pope project could be “The Umbrellas of Redwood”. And while the lovely Catherine Deneuve isn’t even an afterthought, there’s still plenty of beauty to be found. The actual title is apposite enough, reflecting both Pope’s demeanor and the probable effects of the music on listener. The inspiration for the date came from a quartet session a month earlier when producer Bob Rusch discovered Pope communing in the company of birds in the pre-dawn twilight. That naturalistic impulse governs the saxophonist’s approach here as well.
The “oL” in the new CIMP label offshoot stands for “on Location”, basically modifying the much discussed Spirit Room aesthetic to remote settings. For his part, Pope roamed around the Cadence/North Country grounds playing his tenor, a small contingent of parasols following his perambulations to shield him from the rain. The program is comprised almost completely of spirituals, among them a thirteen-and-a-half minute exposition on Ellington’s “Come Sunday”. The black sheep is a brief and partly atonal rendering of “The Star-Spangled Banner”, though an argument could easily be made for that tune’s inclusion in the “spiritual” category as well.
Pope takes his time with the pieces, paying close attention to tone and phrasing and opening with an affecting invocation of “The Lord’s Prayer”. Engineer Marc Rusch’s mobile mics capture everything, even the sounds of passing cars on a roadway some distance away and the light patter of precipitation. Pope seems at once rapt and calmly convivial and that alloy creates a meditative air in the music. He reminds me a bit of Joe McPhee in his ability to communicate deep soul with an almost Brahmin-like temperance. The affinity for “Come Sunday” makes for another obvious commonality. “Where We’ll Never Grow Old” spools out in plush ribbons of melody that reflect both optimism and playfulness. A second incarnation of the song increases intensity via a shouted sermon snippet, but burns out after just over a minute. “Go Down Moses” also receives two treatments, each one parsing the familiar motif with bluesy purposefulness.
Some may find the absence of sidemen as sounding boards a little off-putting, but Pope uses his surroundings for those purposes. He ekes audible inspiration from the environment. No pressures of by-the-hour studio rates or opinionated production teams to intrude or trammel, just those domes of stretched nylon doing their best to keep him dry.
~ Derek Taylor
Engraved Glass
Its far from an original analogy, but I tend to think of field recording in a similar manner to photography. A good recording can capture a familiar moment with skilful clarity, presenting the natural beauty of what surrounds us as an object to admire. However it can also reveal hidden detail, a moment captured and framed that maybe we hadn’t previously noticed, or something out of the normal reach of the human ear.
Along with his contemporaries, the likes of Toshiya Tsunoda, Lee Patterson and Jeph Jerman, Jez riley French’s recent work has focussed on the latter category, amplifying tiny vibrations and uncovering small details often found at the point where natural forces meet man-made objects.
The subject matter of the recordings on Field Recordings Vol.21 ticks many of the appropriate boxes for this area of music. The wire fences, hydrophone recordings and working marinas and jetties presented here are all current favourites of the modern field recordist, and so some of these recordings do sound vaguely familiar if, like me, you listen to a lot of this kind of material. Despite this however, the majority of the other-worldly sounds still grab the attention, and their capture and presentation is very well executed. Peculiarly, their form and shape occasionally resembles the familiar patterns of improvised music, drones intercepted by sharp sounds, and prickly little details nestling amongst distant, repetitious echoes. In general these recordings portray a sense of unsettling awkwardness, a feeling of slight removal from our normal perception of everyday hearing. The naturally occurring beauty of the sounds suggests we should be more comfortable with them, but their alien qualities make that difficult.
riley French can often be found improvising live with field recordings forming a part of his music alongside closely-miked objects. Here though all of the material comes straight from untreated field recordings, and it is his ability to track down sites to make recordings of such intriguing detail that transfers into the key feature of this release, the continuous state of wonder at the sounds found out there just beyond our normal listening threshold.
Generator Pieces 2727807 is a quite different album. Described by riley French as “intuitive / improvised compositions” the three compositions here were constructed during his residency at a Dundee, Scotland art gallery entitled Generator Projects from recordings he made in and around the space.
The sounds used on Onsite One the first of the three pieces vary from rain on the roof of the building to the electronic emissions of the gallery’s office equipment. Roughly speaking we are presented with a series of vaguely industrial sounding layers, mostly extended droning tracks that are brought in and out of the piece as it progresses. The way riley French builds the sounds to a considerable roar, only to peel them back slowly, revealing the details beneath is nice, like stripping wallpaper down through its various layers of colour and texture. As the track progresses on through its twenty seven minutes however this technique wears a little thin, and the basic structure of the piece doesn’t evolve enough to retain my interest.
Although beginning in a similar manner the second piece recorded onsite at the gallery is given an extra dimension as riley French added direct human input to the recordings, tapping on poles on the roof that were hooked up to microphones to bring a distant, echoing percussion to the composition. The most interesting part of the piece however comes around halfway in as a recording of external sounds from the roof begins to drift up from the lower reaches of the mix, briefly coming into the foreground as the cry of seagulls can be heard. The juxtaposition of this familiar intrusion with the abstraction of the other sounds works well, reminding the listener of the origin of the material used at the same time as reconfiguring it into new forms.
The final, much shorter track on the album blends four field recordings made away from the gallery at watery sites, local rivers and the beach at Dundee, where the crashing of waves are captured by a mic placed under the sand. Plant and animal life mix with the sounds of rushing water into a nice little piece that somehow manages to take a different, refreshing slant on what might on paper not seem the most original of subject matter. The sparkling details within this last track, Offsite kept me captivated, and ironically on this occasion I wanted the piece to last longer.
So two interesting albums of varying material that beg to be listened to carefully. These should definitely be on the shopping list of those interested in the creative use of field recordings, and probably a few other people too.
Obfuscation isn’t an issue when it comes to the catchy music of Grupo los Santos. From the bright hues of their debut disc’s packaging to the resplendency of its rhythms and rapport, the four-piece Afro-Cuban influenced ensemble speaks and interacts in bold primary colors. Along with that collective directness comes an unexpected absence of bombast or obviousness, two traits prone to marring others that operate out of the blended idiom that is Latin jazz. Rather than take the path of least resistance and target audience hips and feet, the band opts to work out of a less predictable bag. The flavor of the dance floor is still palpable, but shaded with a challenging succession of metric and harmonic complexities that keep the players and potential listeners from slipping into autopilot.
Saxophonist Paul Carlon shows a marked Joe Henderson influence with a dry rounded tone and a darting phraseology that easily negotiates the switchback changes and staircased rhythms that propel the tunes. There’s also a bit of Wayne Shorter’s wry humor in the manner with which he shapes a line. He and drummer William “Beaver” Bausch share composer credits, tooling a variety of Latin song forms from the familiar (son, rumba and samba) to the less so (yambu, choro and bulerias) to their designs. Guitarist Pete Smith alternates between electric and nine-string acoustic and shows a strong affinity with Carlon for baton-passing in the frontline. His nimble work on the latter axe also opens up an entire side pocket of chordal possibilities. He strolls along the precipice of classical preciousness, leaving behind a gilded trail of notes. Bassist David Ambrose has the least glamorous role, laying the anchor much of the time with a steady touch. His vibrant 11th inning solo on “Pedrito La Vaca” reveals a welcome interlude for scrutiny.
Highlighting that aforementioned humor, “Boogie Down Broder” is a tune where the famously facetious directive “More cowbell!” feels distinctly apropos. Elsewhere, a guest appearance by dancer Max Pollak provides two convincing case studies in rhumba-calibrated tap accompaniment. Notes hint at regular stands at the Brooklyn watering hole Barbes. Based on the sounds captured here it’s a gig locals should strongly consider penciling in on the calendar.
~ Derek Taylor
Music’s value resides in its ability to be heard. A simple axiomatic statement, but one at the crux of this release by drummer Paul Murphy and pianist Larry Willis. The two first circulated the fruits of their partnership under the auspices of a recording contract for Mapleshade. Funds for a follow-up to their two volume duo project weren’t forthcoming so five years later the pair has taken it upon themselves to bring one to light. Willis has a fifty-year career in jazz, his talents at the ivories having graced sessions by a cross-section of jazz dignitaries among them Jackie McLean, Woody Shaw and Clifford Jordan. Murphy was the firing piston behind several of altoist Jimmy Lyons bands and more recently the likes of Glenn Spearman and Marco Eneidi. He’s also among the more melodically astute drummers practicing today with a talent for combining muscle with finesse, a compound on full display on the disc’s solo percussion title piece.
As Willis asserts in his brief notes, his and Murphy’s chosen jazz tributaries aren’t so far removed. Their rapport is evident from the opening “A Prayer for All Ages”, a meditative modal piece with a gospelish overtones. The largely improvised program follows a subtle, but noticeable narrative arc with early pieces hewing more to structured designs and later ones dipping into a freer interaction. Willis’ digital dexterity is formidable throughout, his fingers telegraphing cross patterns that express rich lyricism with slipping into languor. There are several passages where his playing errs into the overly ornate, but more often he tempers sentiment with an abiding pragmatism. Stern block chords advance the dialogue on “Night Fall”, rising and falling against the foundation of his partner’s steady stick play. An arch colorist and master of percussive texture, Murphy responds with tumbling polyrhythms that roll and crest like waves on an eddying tide and fill in the cracks in the pianist’s constructions. “Dance of the Sun Sisters” and “Sonny’s Quantum Leap” sound like slabs of early Cecil blended with shards of Byard as strident chords ride out over a shifting cymbal and snare spray. Murphy and Willis are really on to something here and while the package may be bare bones in appearance, the transparently recorded music within is anything but.
~ Derek Taylor
Another Timbre
Violinist Angharad Davies has been one of the most consistently interesting improvisers performing regularly on the UK scene over the past few years, although CD releases that do her playing real justice are few and far between. Likewise Copenhagen based inside-pianist Tisha Mukarji, whose music has always held me captivated in live situations, is previously represented by only a single CD release, the solo D is for Din on Creative Sources. So this, their first recording as a duo is a very welcome and extremely satisfying arrival.
Endspace is an entirely acoustic affair, and it is impossible to ignore the heritage that goes before such a recording of piano and violin. At least one of the musicians is classically trained, (Davies continues to perform contemporary composition as part of new music ensembles such as Apartment House) and both the slow pace of Feldman and the New York School and the grey austerity of the Wandelweiser collective can be heard echoing through these five improvisations.
Indeed, listening to this delicately constructed album you could even be forgiven for forgetting that it is an album of improvised music. Its simple, fragile forms put together from only the most essential elements have a sense of precision about them more commonly found in modern composition. However whilst restrained in its construction Endspace contains very little silence, gaining its sense of fragility more from the slow pace of the music and its use of decaying sounds than any concept of “reductionism”
Above all this is a beautiful, enchanting album. Both musicians use preparations to their instruments to create a softened, muted feel to the sounds they make. Davies’ violin work ranges from small high pitch bowed whispers somehow pulled from the upper register of the strings to dry, rasping sounds as the entire body of the violin is investigated. She often uses a circular bowing technique to create a rhythmic, sustained pattern. Mukarji’s smaller, more percussive sounds often provide counterpoint to these deadened textures, although it frequently becomes difficult to separate the sounds of the two musicians from each other.
Mukarji works exclusively within the piano, addressing the simply prepared strings and also the body of the instrument with beaters, and what sounds like a bow. She summons up a range of sounds, from the distinctly piano-like chimes that bring the still beauty of the fourth track to a close to the rasping wooden vibrations that appear elsewhere. The two musicians work superbly together, their patience with the music and impeccable timing combine together with the obvious compatibility of each other’s sounds to create music that is deserving of the listener’s careful attention.
Endspace is quite stunningly gorgeous. A thoroughly engrossing meditation on what can still be achieved with these two most traditional of instruments, this is chamber-improv of the highest order.
Another Timbre
Angharad Davies
In an ever-constricting small venue economy, long standing residencies for working jazz ensembles continue to dwindle. It’s a sobering state of affairs not lost on Sabertooth, whose own name echoes that of a long extinct beast. Thus far, they’ve managed to survive, primarily through a weekly Saturday night sustenance at Chicago’s venerable Green Mill. The club owner claims they have a lock on the gig in perpetuity and listening to this live document, some fifteen years in the offing, the reasons are readily apparent. Sabertooth plays jazz that caters but does not condescend to its audience. Fun and frivolity are of paramount concern, but not at the cost of creative stimulation.
The instrumentation recalls the soul jazz sax-plus-organ outfits that were the rage in the Windy City three decades previous, but front men Cameron Pfiffner and Pat Mallinger aren’t so easy to tag and bag. Pfiffner takes his core tenor cues from Byas and Hawkins, slipping in slivers of Rollins on the sly. Mallinger culls liberally from Coltrane, but I also hear striking shades of Booker Ervin in the keening cry that colors numerous of his lines, as on the set opener “Blues for C Piff” penned in his partner’s honor. Alto, soprano and small cache of flutes further expand the band’s tonal crayon box. Organist Pete Benson cribs from the process books of both Don Patterson and Larry Young, his snaking patterns exuding an oily fluidity and a propensity for playfully unpredictable turns. Sabertooth’s ace in the deck is drummer Ted Sirota, a staple on the scene through his own band Rebel Souls, who puts on a convincing Blakey mien, ornamenting and propelling the action without overwhelming it. His press roll showpiece on “It’s Surely Gonna Flop If It Ain’t Got That Bop” evinces but one crowd-rousing case.
The disc’s title is something of a mystery prior to the appearance of the title piece mid-set. Is it a celebration of the DC Comics superhero of the same name or a coy reference to the band’s standard start time? Taking into account the geeky erudition and humor of the saxophonists it could easily be either, but the answer ends up closer to the former as Pfiffner runs down a prefatory ode to a shadowy personage to establish a spooky mood. The rest of the program is comparably precocious. Rollins and George Braith earn nods with the contrapuntal calypso “Mary Anne” and the left field cover of “The Odd Couple,” itself an assignation apropos of the saxophonists, receives a lounge-friendly reading. The set closes with an affable capitulation to any Deadheads in the house as “China Cat Sunflower” blooms under a steady irrigation of backbeat funk. In the end there’s not much left to do but hoist a frothy beer in salute to Sabertooth’s next fifteen years!
~ Derek Taylor
Saxophonist Tony Malaby spent a significant portion of his formative years as a resident of Tucson, Arizona. That early history colors his new Clean Feed effort from the Latino Catholic iconography of the cover to the searchingly theistic mood of various pieces. The compositions pivot mainly on porous riffs: the sort of territory well-suited to his heavyweight partners, bassist William Parker and drummer Nasheet Waits. Parker defers often to muscular, if somewhat easily mappable, vamps and ostinatos. That preference sometimes strays toward the methodical, but there’s no denying the brawn and breadth of his delivery. A penchant for snapping slackened strings stridently against bridge is also in prevalent effect. His arco work is surprisingly raw and he rakes his bow across strings like a chipped straight razor hiccupping across a leather sharpening strap. It’s a bit disconcerting, particularly on the somber “Floral and Herbacious[sic]”, but sounds purely intentional. Waits approximates a hydroelectric dynamo, scaring up surging polyrhythms with a surety that recalls Elvin Jones.
Malaby, while receptive to the bridled energy, relinquishes little in terms of positioning or clout. His textured tenor play balances tenderness with authority. On the title piece the outcome is like a blending of Ayler and Jim Pepper, repeating trills soaring and falling atop a tumbling avalanche of rhythm. As galvanizing as his work is on the larger horn, it’s his incisive soprano that truly commands attention, particularly on the moody “Mariposa”. The clarity and liquidity of tone on “Mother’s Love” approximates that of a Native American flute as Parker plucks clipped harmonics and Waits ranges over his kit with whispering brushes. Parker’s switch to bow finds much of the grit and bite of his earlier sawing replaced with a disarming beauty. “Floating Head” carries the album out in a manner akin to how it opens with the three sprinting forward on another flexing vamp and syncopated beat.
Malaby continues to shoulder hits from certain circles that deem him a player prone to passivity. The music on this disc, while checkered with a few rough spots, refutes that contention summarily though it certainly helps having improv athletes of the caliber of Parker and Waits on the team.
~ Derek Taylor
When Nils Winther taps an artist for his Steeplechase roster, odds are favorable that the resulting partnership will weather the long haul. In this respect Winther has much in common with Alfred Lion. Both men cobbled together cottage label industries by virtue of close attention to their respective talent pools, Steeplechase musicians have a collective habit of quietly building careers through reciprocal consistency. Take pianist Michael Cochrane: not a name likely to rattle many craniums amongst casual jazz listeners. Winther’s resilient faith in his abilities has thus far led to seven albums as a leader, this being the latest. Cochrane takes that abiding confidence to heart, setting himself to the task of coming up with a personal portfolio of tunes that wears its idiomatic constituents prominently, though not presumptuously. The setting and trappings may be instinctively routine, but the pianist hardly sees that as a problem, as evidenced by the disc’s irony-free title.
Cochrane toggles easily between bop and postbop pedigrees on the disc’s nine original pieces. “Sit and Wait” and “Early Bird” sound like vintage Duke Jordan numbers, both culminating in a brisk, if predictable exchanges between piano and drums. Again, cases of familiar parts pulled into a shape that still has personality and verve. “The Seeker” plays off an early Jarrett vibe, with healthy spoonfuls of Milestone-era McCoy mixed in. Cochrane kneads a propulsive vamp with the purposefulness of a brooding baker forcefully preparing a mound of dough. Bassist Calvin Hill and drummer Jeff Hirshfield first observe, then accompany and then comment, a pattern that continues through much of the program. “New Samba” and “Convergence” plug progressive Latin rhythms into the template and while neither tune dazzles, both are still highly competent outings that accord decent improvisatory fodder for the three instruments. Cochrane isn’t likely to convert any amongst those who view the conventional jazz piano trio as a creative cul de sac. But for those consumers receptive to the Steeplechase rubric of new traditionalism this elegantly crafted set will likely massage the sweet spot.
[Steeplechase titles are available through Stateside AT prodigy DOT net]
~ Derek Taylor
A no-drum zone by design, Stephen Gauci’s latest disc is still hardly devoid of percussive presence. Saxophone and trumpet take a voluntary backseat to dual basses on the opening piece, a counter-intuitive dynamic that recurs throughout the program. Michael Bisio and Ingebrigt Haker Flaten are both resourceful players with highly physical approaches. The interplay is high density and the tandem pizzicato mazes are at once daunting and immediately inviting, a crosshatch of thrums and percolations that prove conversational grist for the horns. Gauci uses Indian classical forms as an indirect source of inspiration in terms of composition titles and content.
“Nididhyasana” gains shape and weight over the expanse of a third of an hour. Its manifold tendrils undulate and intertwine at an accelerated pace, the bassists striking both the strings and the bodies of their instruments in a blend that is aggressively rhythmic. Bucking the historical positioning and decorum of their instruments, Gauci and Nate Wooley apply texture and color before returning to more note-based expression, the basses once again supplying a springy bulwark with which to bounce off of. Abruptly, it’s Gauci solo, his expressive trills and flutters soon replaced by the hooked needlepoint plucks of Bisio. Flaten’s arco takes over shortly thereafter, seesawing great tonal swathes that exude harmonic richness before diving into a cacophony of dissonance. A sustained collective drone signs the piece off with a meditative signature.
Occupying less than half the temporal space, “Dhriti” ramps up the intensity even further, culminating in a concentrated conflagration of pummeling string snaps and skirling horns. Gauci and Flaten monopolize the opening minutes of the sectional “Chitta Vilasa”, another excursion into extended and concentrated improvisation that turns attentions to several sub-groupings. Wooley and Bisio assert themselves roughly five minutes in for their own dialogue of pursed brass and scything classical-tinged bass. The full ensemble follows with Wooley generating a textured mosaic of abstract sounds on brass. The disc’s finale “Turyaga” clocks at a mere fraction of its predecessors but feels just as forceful. Continuing the streak first set by Gauci earlier trio outings, this new set establishes a propitious new context for his restless tenor in balancing intellect and muscle.
~ Derek Taylor
Rowe/Fuhler
Conundrom
3
Recorded in Amsterdam in December of 2003, this strong duo performance provides interesting contrasts as well as similarities when compared with the Duos for Doris session done in January of that year. In addition to the instrumentation, Fuhler is in a kind of Tilbury mode, largely keeping to acoustic piano, inside and out (with substantial use of ebow as well) and remaining in a fairly dark tonal area. It opens with an ebow/handheld fan section, a captivating dronal combination, swiftly splaying out into a denser range and becoming subtly agitated. The sense of itchy discomfort provides the initial structural aspect of the performance, one that moves over the course of its 30 minutes from that point to a more serene one. Fuhler doesn’t cast off melodic tendrils á la Tilbury but does adorn the otherwise harsh atmosphere with silvery single notes up high and pensive, rich low ones, pinning the haze to the earth. While maintaining the agitated drone character throughout, there are plenty of different textures employed and some juicy combinations thereof, including one playing strummed piano strings off a vague radio capture. On one level it’s a narrow focus but, befitting a concert in the land of van Leeuwenhoek, if you aurally shift to a higher magnification lens, much greater detail becomes apparent. As with the Doris session, it’s Rowe who’s argumentative and prodding with the pianist adopting the role or conciliator and as on that recording, the results are exceedingly fine. Eventually, the calm wins out and the pair stroll away, arm in arm. A beautiful set.
Cor Fuhler
Slee
Conundrom
4
From my fairly limited knowledge of Fuhler’s music, I take it that his approach can vary widely, from an ICP-ish kind of scalawaggery to a far more severe minimalism, from 60s tape collage influences to tinges of kitschy exotica. On this lovely recording he takes yet another tack. The main track, “Sleep”, (about 90% of the disc) is a solo piano performance with no electronic or mechanical modification that I can discern. My first impression is of a very languid, dreamy version of Paul Bley, containing a similar ruminative sense but allowing more pure sensuality into the mix than one normally associates with the older master. Fuhler stays consistently in this one area, churning the cloudy water, allowing motifs to swirl to the surface and re-submerge, always with a soft edge but with enough psychic turmoil and slightly bitter melancholy so as to easily avoid mere ambient noodling. A brief coda, “REM”, appears to subject parts of the previous track (or another piano piece?) to CD abuse, something of a rude awakening. Aside from greatly enjoying “Slee” on its own merits, I also find it encouraging that a musician nominally involved with “difficult” music feels free to investigate what might be considered a more conservative form and to do so with incisiveness and probity. It’s a wonderfully submersive disc, a fine companion to the duo with Rowe and entirely different!
Previously only available from Cor at shows, the Conundrom catalog can now be found at erstdist
Whatever one thinks of the “Paisley Underground” of psychedelic bands emanating from Los Angeles in the early 80s (Dream Syndicate, Green On Red, etc.), the first four tracks on the Hollywood Holiday EP (Bring Out Your Dead Records) from True West are an exercise in glorious schizophrenia. Somehow, through the wisdom of programming, the band moves from jangle and ringing clamor over a lockstep beat, to a collage of percussion befitting Animal Collective, to stark balladry and austere pop. It’s a hallmark, evidently, of True West to be at odds – their personnel changes mirrored a profound aesthetic push-pull in their brief life, and the scarce EP, single and LP that existed until now as their only recorded output didn’t lend much to a clear history. Thankfully, Atavistic has collected and resurrected the True West catalog, fleshed out with a few Tom Verlaine-produced demos and detailed notes, to satisfy the appetites of the curious and the diehards.
The band comes like a bat out of hell on “Steps To The Door,” matching the dusty range of ragtag power from bands like the Dream Syndicate to a nearly compulsive urgency, lockstep and contained whilst guitarists Russ Tolman and Richard McGrath spin out like uncoiled wire. It’s an auspicious beginning that is echoed in the utterly weird howl of feedback and PVC on “I’m Not Here,” but which morphs into twangy stratospherics on the title track. Their cover of “Lucifer Sam” (originally on a rare self-released single) is a fitting occasion for the twin motors to get some stretching room, yet vocalist Gavin Blair’s urbane disaffection is a far cry from the wry madness of Syd Barrett. Still, this stripped-down affair brings about the tune’s blueprint distorted yawp in spades.
Drifters, the band’s only proper LP, was criticized by some for its highly crisp production, leaving the caterwauling guitars for clean stereo separation and a top-heavy drum sound. Yet the impulse toward pop song craft of a less elliptical bent, allowing Tolman’s lyrics a fighting chance for equal visibility alongside feedback and distortion, is even apparent on earlyish tunes like “You” and “It’s About Time.” There is a charm to overdriven guitars eclipsing even a well-recorded drummer, Blair’s clarion vocals just-buried-enough, but the intricacies of Tolman and McGrath can certainly coexist with lyric clarity and precise toe-tapping. Here, the urgency of “Look Around” may not be imbued with paranoia, but rather the crispness of hefty morning coffee. “Speak Easy” is charmingly confusing, its minimal chorus having nothing perceptibly to do with the rest of the tune, but somehow eclipses most of the “get over it”-themed songs I’ve heard in a while. “What About You” is probably the most delicate display of the two guitarists’ work on record and, while not incus-rattling the arpeggiated drifts assembled here are as psychedelic as any jangle one’s likely to hear.
Alongside the Atavistic reissue of the Dream Syndicate’s Out of the Grey, Hollywood Holiday Revisited presents a fine opportunity to experience the evolution of one of the more interesting outfits in West Coast rock of the past two decades. But since the last vinyl copy of Drifters I saw was only $3, hopefully the stratosphere will only remain audible and not soon felt in the pocketbook.
- Clifford Allen
Even the hardiest improv-salted souls can find themselves beset by vocational self doubts. Such demons seem to have finally caught up with Weasel Walter who marked the waning months of this year with several editorials mapping his frustrations with the music industry. Such second guessing hardly factors into the music on the aptly-titled Firestorm, a collection of performances recorded at Tonic, The Stone and a Philly club dubbed Danger Danger House that in Walter’s words attempt “to express highly articulated violence and fury.” Standing stoically next to bassist Damon Smith in a booklet photo, forearms defiantly folded and a sweaty mop of hair hanging across his brow, Walter looks more like a conquering Danzig than some meek-minded quitter. The three small ensembles find him in company heavy enough to support the distinction.
Most mighty in terms of numbers is the quintet on “Ignition” and “Shock Troop”. Drummer Marc Edwards and bassist Lisle Ellis join Smith and Walter in a two-pronged rhythm section bent on stoking blast furnace temperatures from the bandstand. Add to that the saxophones of Marco Eneidi and Elliott Levin, two masters of extended boiling point blowing and the likelihood of a meltdown becomes imminent. On the remainder of the pieces Walter and Smith back the tandem horn teams of Eneidi and Mario Rechters and Levin and Marshall Allen. Rechters and Ellis also double on electronics. Readers versed in the past work of these men can probably imagine the pealing barrages of squeals and skronk that result. Walter keeps up a steady and purposeful racket, an adroit jackhammer solo bubbling up on “Continual Rage”. If there’s fault to be levied at the near continuous fracas it’s in the single-mindedness of much of the interplay. This is free jazz in the Old Testament sense and somewhat hobbled in terms of nuance and diversity as a result. Still, multi-dimensionality doesn’t seem to be what Walter’s shooting for, opting for the punch to the viscera rather than a caress of the senses.
Running the by turns punishing and exhilarating gauntlet of the seven tracks with the holiday season a peripheral consideration in my mind’s craw, I found myself likening the effect to lacing Santa’s milk and cookies with Everclear and capsaicin. The Guardian recently coined the comical phrase “Death Jazz” to describe the melding of metal and free jazz sensibilities. This disc fits that admittedly awkward idiomatic designation fist in studded leather glove.
~ Derek Taylor
Family Vineyard
FV52
Judging from his CV, Jed Speare has led a long and extremely active career since the mid 70s around the Boston area. Nonetheless, this was my first encounter with his music though as a half-decade snapshot, I’ve little idea how representative it is. The five pieces collected here do have enough in common to begin to form a picture, if both an intriguing and frustrating one.
The works are essentially musique concrete and among the myriad sonic elements employed, Speare has a penchant for including some that might induce psychological discomfort in the listener, appropriately or not. One of those problematic elements puts in an appearance right at the beginning of the first composition, “At the Falls” (1982): the slurred voice of a patient in a psychiatric institution. While the bulk of the piece consists of a rich and fascinating evocation of water sounds (all constructed without the use of any actual water-sourced recordings), it’s periodically interrupted by these mutterings which, I’m forced to say, disturb the flow. Not that the main portion sounds like water, exactly, but more the sort of environments that have water as a large component: underground pools, dry docks, maybe even the interior hulls of battleships. Those disturbances are, obviously, intentional and serve the purpose of jolting one back into a different reality from the aqueous oneirics elsewhere, a tough-minded move on the part of Speare and, ultimately, one that I appreciated on relistening more than I did initially. Perhaps even more jarringly, it ends with an excerpt from an earlier chamber work by Speare, the music redolent of a Bryars-esque minimalism.
“Sleep Tight” (1983) begins with a thrilling and brutal series of episodes, all harsh whistles, underground rumbles and metallic scrapes. After about ten minutes of this bracing work, Speare chooses once again to interrupt, this time with a processed female voice, “speaking” in clipped, largely unintelligible phrases. This intrusion of the human voice into an abstract field is almost as disturbing as in the prior work, though its effect may well be different for other listeners. When the voice returns, in a longer, multilayered collage, it still lacks the pull and power of the other music in the composition. This track is followed by the hit single of the 2-disc set, “Taboo Death” (1982), an effective mixing of voices, noise and a catchy beat, marginally reminiscent of Byrne/Eno but enjoyable enough.
The second disc contains two compositions. The main sonic component of “Love Object” (1986) seems to have been quite interesting in the flesh: “The love object in question would have to be the sound-sculpture bouquet…The speakers mounted on copper rods in a white cylindrical vase. Tone generating oscillators were fed through them and unusual distortions resulted. During the performance, the speakers on their stems were seen to sway.” What’s heard on disc is once again episodic in nature and while some of these “scenes” are wonderful, strung together as presented here, they come across as rather arbitrary and unrelated, either overtly or poetically. The introduction of a female operatic voice about two-thirds in doesn’t help matters and it grows stranger still when a plaintively strummed guitar (reminding me for some reason of an old Incredible String Band piece) surfaces immediately thereafter from parts unknown. “Wayside” (1987) is far more successful, originally a collaboration with video artist Wendelien Havemen. The first section is especially strong with a lush weaving of whooshes that seem aeronautical in nature. It eventually slides into instrumental recordings (once again, penned by Speare) including some lovely piano over static which in turn segues into some equally enchanting solo cello. Delightful industrial chaos ensues without a voice in sight. It’s a very strong finish to an inconsistent but generally rewarding set, making me wonder what other work by Speare I’ve missed over the decades.
Available late January from family vineyard
Cellist Daniel Levin is an improviser acutely aware of the inherent intangibility of music: you can’t touch it, but it can touch you. The pieces on his second hatOLOGY project deal in the porous spaces between notes as much as those basic musical building blocks. As with his last effort, Some Trees, the instrumentation is chamber-tilted and somber in cast. Levin and trumpeter Nate Wooley approximate a frontline though Matt Moran’s roving vibes are foregrounded much of the time as well. Rhythm falls mainly to Joe Morris who makes the most of the natural weight and resonance of his bass, plucking frequent vamps and playing in an economical style mostly removed from the more compressed approach sometimes favored on his frets. He makes each note count in terms of resonance and placement and while his lines aren’t as overtly daring as those of his partners, they end up just as integral to the music’s execution as the steady underlying thrum on “209 Willard Street” evinces. Wooley and Moran are both master colorists, the latter using the motor on his rig to generate obliquely pitched sustains that swirl and cascade around the higher sonorities of Wooley’s brass on “Cannery Row”.
Levin structures most of the pieces as lattices, pairing up players and interlocking component parts. The lush rendering of “Law Years” demonstrates the quartet’s strong contrapuntal leanings, bringing out fresh possibilities in Ornette’s wily blues theme. Levin and Wooley handle the horn parts and their abilities in the timbral department are tacitly daring, staying true to their source while subtly striking new ground. Conversely, Bird’s “Relaxin’ With Lee” is barely recognizable, slowed down and ventilated into spacious tone poem that wouldn’t be out of place on a Maneri record.
Oddly enough, there’s little dissonance folded into either the interplay or solos in the program. Wooley’s slurs and gurgles answered by Moran’s clouds of dizzying clusters on “Improvisation II” and the closing title piece offer two instances where instruments dip into discord, but even then the results are relatively reserved. It’s in this respect that the disc’s title becomes so apposite, harmonic edges deliquescing in a manner not sedate, but almost hypnotic. The anchoring vamp on “Untitled” carries audible kinship to William Parker’s “Song of Hope”. Morris diligently repeats the portentous pattern throughout and the others use it as a beacon to return to, Levin etching intersecting lines with unerringly pitched bow strokes. A half dozen spins of varying lengths and circumstances and I’m still pulling succulent meat from the bone on this one, the mark of a good album in my recipe book.
~ Derek Taylor
To many, jazz tuba remains an oxymoron. That most portly member of the brass family has played bit parts in the indigenous American idiom for over a century, but any bids at a lasting frontline position have usually met with failure. There are exceptions: Ray Draper’s hardbop and Howard Johnson’s free jazz among them, and Per-Ake Holmlander continues to make convincing strides with the metal elephant in Ken Vandermark’s Territory Bands. Even with these allowances, it’s a safe claim to assert the tuba’s fringe status as a viable vehicle for jazz improvisation.
Chicagoan Mike Walbridge has more modest aims for the instrument. He’s been filling the tuba chair in Windy City trad bands for the better part of a half-century, most notably as a member of the Original Salty Dogs and his own Chicago Footwarmers. This Delmark collection presents bookends to his career thus far, opening with an eight tune August 2007 session recorded forty-one years to the day after the 1966 session that closes out the disc. Another date from ’67 with pianist Johnny Cooper comprises the program’s sandwich meat. The two sessions sans Cooper earn immediate points for their quirky quartet frameworks that dispense with bull fiddle and leave subsequent space for Walbridge to field his horn in a traditional brass bass capacity, blowing lubricous syncopated lines that complement the choppy rhythms set up by banjo and drums. On the leads, his sound is like that of a trombone in a fat suit. Kim Cusack, also present on all three sessions, serves as a noble foil, doubling on clarinet and alto and huffing hotly on both reeds.
The songbook doesn’t deviate far from the usual house rent fare, but there’s really no reason it should. Regardless of how many times “Nagasaki” or “Darktown Strutter’s Ball” gets rolled out, if the band can muster the courage to make them their own, the wheel tread stays largely intact. Despite the obvious novelty appeal of pianoless dates, it’s the five-song arc with Cooper that wins the prize. His presence gooses Walbridge and Cusack into some particularly tempestuous exchanges and banjoist Eddie Lynch and drummer Glen Koch sound similarly primed by the pianist’s sparkplug stride patterns. Tuba may still be the butterball underachiever of the jazz instrument litter, but in Walbridge’s capable hands it garners an overdue boost of confidence and cachet.
~ Derek Taylor
A doubler on organ and piano for years, Gary Versace professes no preference between them. Similarly, he casts no illusions about the creative springboard for his latest Steeplechase effort. Guitar, organ and drums, and its tenor-fronted variant were the schema by which countless combos plied their trade in the soul jazz heyday of the Sixties. Versace’s interest in exploring the instrumentation might appear like an exercise in redundancy given the wealth of material already available, and truth be told, some parts of the program do feel a bit rote. It certainly helps that he has guitarist Vic Juris and drummer Adam Nussbaum on board. Juris has innumerable dates like this one in his gig history and Nussbaum draws upon his earlier tenure as a member of John Abercrombie’s ECM organ outfit. Both men are tuned in to the underlying grooves that snake through various pieces, but not beholden to them and while Versace holds the marquee, it’s very much an ensemble effort.
All but two of the tunes come from the songbooks of other pianists. An audacious reading of Monk’s “Thelonious” almost sounds blasphemous, the angular theme submerged in a coating of viscous B-3 grease and tempo slowed to a plodding crawl. “Lennie’s Pennies” impresses as an equally odd choice, but there’s an undeniable jolt of pleasure attendant with hearing Tristano translated through organ pedals and stops. Juris in particular revels in the contrapuntal obstacle course alternating between octaves and single notes at a sweat-inducing clip. Carla Bley’s “Floater” finds the trio echoing the intransigence of the title. Nussbaum hangs back with subtle cymbal and tom-tom accompaniment as Juris and Versace overlay tonal swells and sustains that nod to the freer work of Larry Young. Keith Jarrett’s “Prism” and Budd Powell’s “Webb City” further illustrate Versace’s willingness to stray wide of expected material, the latter tune’s intricate bop line working as another satisfying repast for Juris’ hungry plectrum. Versace’s own pieces, titled simply “For Bill” and “For McCoy”, don’t stand up as well and the stroll through the Roland Hanna ballad “Let Me Try” is comparably middleweight. There’s still plenty of substance though, making it easy to suggest the disc to listeners not initially dissuaded by the presence of quotidian components.
[Steeplechase titles are available through Stateside AT prodigy DOT net]
~ Derek Taylor
Rruido
RR09
Performing as simply Grundik + Slava, this pair has released several albums since beginning their partnership in 1994 though this is my first exposure to them. Arriving in one of the more needlessly aggravating packages I’ve seen (more annoying than those old Mort aux Vaches discs!), one is mollified somewhat by the inclusion of some neat little sepia-toned cards drawn by Igor Krutogolov. And the music’s pretty good as well.
Sixteen shortish tracks covering a wide range with portions of the text based on letters by the Russian surrealist poet Daniil Kharms. The opener is quite attractive, featuring some vaguely rhythmic accordion pumpings, Theremin-like wails and other odds and ends behind Slava’s deep but distracted voice, recalling Robert Ashley’s dream monologues. This approach would seem to be fitting for a homage to Kharms and indeed several of the better pieces possess an oneiric quality wherein a tonal element---single piano notes, for example—are played off against rougher, more environmental noises, as though the keyboard sounds are wending their way through a dark, slightly threatening field. A dreamlike, floating feeling accompanies much of the music, a voice wafting in the distance (sometimes Russian, sometimes English), hollow, windy roars, the plinking of a music box hammering out “Lullaby and Goodnight”. The works move in and out of focus, the sharply limned ones contrasting that much more with the blurrier examples, again evoking the pleasant, only mildly troubling feeling of a confused reverie. There’s even sitar! And is that an ocarina I hear? It’s a hodgepodge but an oddly effective one and well worth a listen.
Rruido’s website (www.rruido.com) appears to be nonfunctional at the moment, but interested listeners can probably get more info about the disc from Grundik + Slava’s site
And keep in mind a hopefully upcoming release by Kasyansky and the Argentinean guitarist Leandro Barzabal; it’s a beaut.
CDR
The title of the disc, “Radical Improvisations” overreaches a tad as the music herein isn’t all that extreme, but it’s not bad either. The impression from the first three tracks is a variant of the sort of thing Otomo Yoshihide and Martin Tetreault were engaged in a few years ago—rapid-fire exchanges employing brief bursts of turntable noise and guitarisms. Here it’s de Haan on the guitar and Spruit manning the turntable, spitting out the sounds. Maybe less spitting than excitedly sputtering here, the explosions emerging so quickly that you imagine a puncture in some high-pressure mechanism. It’s an impressive enough display, though I question how much musical consideration is occurring at the expense of pure, visceral movement. Happily, beginning on the fourth cut, the duo shows they’re capable of more, lowering the heat and developing a more substantial dialogue, taking greater care in building a structure as well as expanding their palette and using silences. If anything, that piece, “Take 37” (all tracks are similarly titled) recalls some of the better tape collage work of the 70s—good stuff.
The following piece, “Take 38”, occupies similar territory and is once again quite solid and enjoyable. The remainder of the nine pieces in this short (a bit over 30 minutes) disc more or less combine these attacks, eventually drifting back toward the excitable and frenetic. This latter “style” isn’t a particular favorite of mine but I can say that de Haan and Spruit accomplish such an approach with competence and focus, especially with regard to clarity of sound; each element is jaggedly edged and etched with extraordinary precision. de Haan’s guitar is only occasionally recognizable as such and the general impression one gets is more of a dual turntable outing. Given that, fans of extreme turntablism will find a huge amount to enjoy here. You can get a taste by visiting their myspace page here. In fact, I had a good time simultaneously playing the sounds at the site with the disc.
Noise, noise, noise. When does it work, when doesn’t it? It can be very frustrating trying to quantify it, a thankless task really, and these four releases from the ever more intriguing Korean label, Balloon & Needle, don’t make the task any easier.
“with cartridge/without cartridge” by turntablist Hong Chulki neatly encapsulates the dilemma. Presented on a pair of 3” discs, you have two somewhat different attacks by the same artist, done around the same time and, for this listener, one works very well, the other not so much. It’s the more raucous “with cartridge” portion that leaves me a little cold. Two pieces about ten minutes each, both with a “no spaces allowed” assaultive nature that doesn’t add up to more than its elements; there’s little implied form that I can discern and, consequently, not much to distinguish it from any dozen quasi-similar releases. The disc created without benefit of cartridge is no less intense—arguably its abrasive screeching is even more likely to cause spontaneous divorces—but something about the pacing and layering of sound just feels more substantial, more dense with ideas. It whines with a reason. Thrilling noise, tiresome noise, take your pick. I have few doubts about half of listeners would have the opposite reaction to mine.
Hong Chulki teams up with Choi Joonyong (CD player) on “hum and rattle”, a 6-track, 73 minute excursion. Though somewhat noisy (the title is reasonably descriptive of the contents) it’s not especially loud or strident and does come across as conversational though maybe a little too chatty. And it’s a long, not terribly fascinating conversation, like eavesdropping on a couple’s dinner conversation about what went on at the office that day. It’s a bit too middle ground, an odd assertion to make with this music, but it lacks a real incisiveness, a “need for being”. The inherent, unvarying rhythm of the CD player begins to pall toward the end. Aside from the relative unusualness of the noise generators employed, it’s essentially no different from your average improv session—not bad, not that special. The sleeve packaging’s pretty cool though.
The two solo discs from Joonyong are also rather different from each other. “CDPS 01/02” contains eight tracks (though apparently a continuous performance) of prickly but focused noise, presumably generated via CD player, though no such specific information is given. Rhythmic clicking sequences surface now and then through the gritty haze lending slight patterns to the bands of bitter noise. It’s consistent and fairly engaging though perhaps overstaying its welcome a tad. His “White Disc Ver. 2” is far sparser and that works to its advantage. A brawny cousin (relatively speaking) to Sachiko M’s recent disc, Joonyong arrays brief bursts of static, mild hisses and random pops in a somewhat similar manner, though the stronger noises occasionally appear with a rough regularity, implying a (very) slow tempo. The contrast in sounds and textures is impressive given the supposedly small palette—quite a large set of grays. If I find myself greatly preferring this latter disc, one created by the same artist at approximately the same time, it mostly has to do with the thoughtful consideration that seems to be a bit more in play. “CDPS 01/02” is competent and workmanlike. “White Disc Ver. 2” has something inspired in it, as though Joonyong is discovering something very valuable along the way. When those semi-regular plosives occur late in the pieces, providing a bit of a foothold, they feel earned. Nice work.
[note: This review was originally slated for Paris Transatlantic, but due to various exigencies, is published here for the first time.]
Though the hybridization of punk-rock ethos and free-jazz intensity is a hallmark often granted to Chicago reedman Ken Vandermark, and his pedigree linked to Peter Brötzmann, Mats Gustafsson, and other Northern and Western European saxophonists, it goes back to something instilled by veteran Chicago multi-instrumentalist Hal Russell. Russell’s work stretched back to the 1950s as a drummer in tenorman Joe Daley’s trio, and extended to the free-improvisation collective NRG Ensemble and the squall of the Flying Luttenbachers (with percussionist Weasel Walter). As Vandermark’s groups today hinge more on compositional range, NRG alums saxophonist Mars Williams, bassist Brian Sandstrom and drummer Steve Hunt have honed their freedoms into a nuanced, dedicated vocabulary. Extraordinary Popular Delusions is their latest collaboration, and joins the trio with diversely talented Chicago pianist Jim Baker for nine collectively-improvised pieces.
Russell’s music, fierce as it could be, was often laced with odd juxtapositions and a healthy dose of humor; this quartet avoids irony and saunters forth with unflagging for-itself improvisational energy. Williams’ tenor tone is reminiscent of a young Gato Barbieri, fire-breathing fueled with a nearly romantic longing and a penchant for obsessively wringing poetry from steely phrases. Baker, who is heard on electric piano and synthesizer in addition to concert piano, applies technology tastefully – under tenor skronk and arco flutter, his tones approach preparation more than Wurlitzer. As Hunt’s fleet panoply of gongs clatter the stratosphere, Baker’s patchwork adds a feedback-like bottom, blending with subtonal reed squawks and Sandstrom’s guitar sludge. However, his postbop chops are in evidence, too – ringing modal phrases rear their uncanny heads in “Experiments on Animals in Space,” leading one to believe this quartet has a post-Coltrane yen somewhere in its collective noggin, even if it has yet to be waxed. As rock rhythms appear from out of the grungy stew of “Goat and Adding Machine Ritual,” some of the NRG legacy rises as well, even if the frantic turns have been drawn out in seasick drones.
Hal Russell would’ve been proud to see his ethos expanded upon, as cross-pollination is unified into an individual music. Even if the juxtapositions are more seamless than stitched-together, Extraordinary Popular Delusions is a hell of a statement. It’ll be interesting to see how this quartet continues their own traditions.
hitorri
111
When I reviewed “Bar Sachiko” on these pages, I used a Barnett Newman painting as a visual analogy for how one might read the set of three sine tones presented on that disc. It may be unfortunately symptomatic of the way I approach these things, but while listening to “Salon de Sachiko”, an entirely different sound world, I couldn’t help but think of Cy Twombly. Now to be sure, Twombly’s been in my consciousness much of this year, not only because of the extraordinary MIMEO recording but also due to my having only a month and a half ago experienced the room devoted to him in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in which his “Fifty Days at Ilium” is exhibited. Something that struck me while admiring those paintings was the way he managed to get “white” backgrounds to not look so white, to somehow tinge them enough subtle texture that the scribbles and washes laid atop seemed to float on a bed of some substance, however thin. It was white, but not sterilely so, like a white sneaker after having been randomly scuffed.
While the sounds Sachiko generates here aren’t as “large” as many of the forms found in the Twombly’s, their scratchy calligraphic nature and the way those sounds are placed into that vaguely unsterile space hit something of the same chord in me. In fact, I often thought of these sounds as aural equivalents of the ink spatterings you can obtain with old-fashioned fountain pen nibs, the marks arrayed on fine, subtly textured paper. She uses two oscillators here and while the overall dynamic quality is rather quiet, she fills up much of the space, the silences between squiggles generally lasting only a few seconds or less. The variation in the sounds is minimal, ranging from ticks to sputters, chirps to slightly elongated high tones, about as much as you’d find between densities and lengths of pen scrawls. It clearly comes down to the placement of those sounds on her hour-long canvas, the degree of artlessness she can achieve and I imagine her perceived success will vary widely for individual listeners. It worked for me and actually worked better the more I listened. Whatever logic she’s employing convinced me. Expanding her field from quasi-similar endeavors on earlier discs, including one or two of the 3” releases, actually seems to have enhanced her focus.
I should add that I don’t find it evocative of any sort of bleak metaphysics either. I don’t hear anything Beckettian going on here and never have in Sachiko’s music. More simply a concentrated, calm intelligence simultaneously discovering sounds and placing them in a context that develops as she works. She’s more of a poet, a transcendentalist as far as that goes. When she’s in top form, there’s something about her art that separates it from the pack. Guessing, I’d say it has to do with her willingness to stay with one idea for extended lengths of time, allowing the music to come into being on its own rather than forcing it down a given path and being confidant enough that, at least sometimes, it’s going to blossom. It does on “Salon de Sachiko”, a very beautiful, thoughtful recording.
Available from erstdist
Other Electricities
OE010
You say you’re pining for some hard-driving, thick textured, good ol’ fashioned improv, something bright ‘n’ shiny enough to make your kid brother sit up and take notice? Well, here ya go. Fessenden has released a few discs before this one, but “v1.1” is my first exposure to the trio, having only previously encountered Steven Hess (drums, percussion, vibraphone, electronics) in other ensembles. Rounded out by Joshua Convey (bass, electronics) and Stephen Fiehn (guitar, electronics), Fessenden creates enormously compelling works, music that surges atop small rhythms and large throbs in a manner that recalls both Gunter Muller as well as younger bands like Trapist and Radian.
The opening track, “not sleeping, just resting”, is a brief encapsulation of their approach: iterated sound elements including ratcheting rhythms and what sounds like a distant child’s cry, kneaded into each other and layered into a thick rope, but moving steadily forward. New sounds are added all the time right up to some gentle feedback at the conclusion, others recede and evaporate. “mid-swing” opens with quick, Martin Brandlmayr-esque cymbal work, the pulse maintained throughout, augmented by ringing guitar and a hive full of other noise. Something of the same pattern is followed on the ensuing piece, “diode”, albeit with a touch of synth-like, abrasive washes and you get a wee sense that there might be more surface than substance here. It’s a fine balance to hold though if a suspicion lingers, it’s largely outweighed by the pure aural fun to be had. The last two works play subtle variations on the already established themes, keeping the crisp rhythmic feel but varying the kinds of sounds flying about it. In fact, an aviary wouldn’t be the least apropos visual image to accommodate much of this music. They switch things up for the final piece, something of a skronkfest although, as always, a damned propulsive one. Enjoy.
One of the more engrossing aspects of Stephen Riley’s last record is his intuitive interplay with bassist Neal Caine. The pair balances rarefied levels of confluence with a mutual willingness to go for broke, completely revitalizing shopworn standards along the way. That opinion is meant as no slight to Jason Marsalis, whose traps play is instrumental to the album’s artistry. It’s just a convenient segue into commentary on Riley’s third Steeplechase effort, a series of closely miked duets with bassist John Brown.
A fellow South Carolinian and former sideman of the Marsalises, Brown’s panoptic approach to his instrument contrasts beautifully with the mundanity of his name. His fingers conjure everything from stout walking lines to complex metered grooves to slow drag shuffles, all with formidable physicality sans amp. Comparisons to Wilbur Ware are elementary in his deep harmonic and rhythmic perspicacity, but an even better reference is probably Mingus. Examples of Brown’s arco technique are relatively few in the program, but the perfectly articulated accompaniment to Riley’s opening musings on Ellington’s “In My Solitude” tells doubters all they need know. No jarring string sawing, just limpidly pitched strokes that cushion and complement the tenor’s lead.
Though the program provides plenty of passages of unison play, Riley and Brown also carve copious space for solo exposition. These sections where one or the other drops out are often just as stunning. Brown’s preface to the coquettish Oscar Pettiford classic “Swinging Till the Girls Come Home” is but one example: a two-minute master recital in pizzicato technique that never compromises its vibrant musicality. Stops, slaps, suspensions and a fleshy dollop of funk all factor into the improvisation. Riley’s inevitable entrance almost feels like an intrusion, almost. On “I’m an Old Cowhand”, Brown knocks out the familiar clip clop beat first fashioned by Shelley Manne for Rollins on the body of his bass prior to Riley’s rejuvenating caress of the cornpone theme.
All this praise of Brown should in no way distract from the powers of Riley. He continues to evolve and assay. Few, if any, practicing players come to mind that delve into possibilities of tone variation to the degree he does within his chosen context. Just when it seems his command of his horn couldn’t be more complete, he pulls something new out of thin air. That point for me on this set comes with “Tea for Two” where he striates his line into two streams with the precision of a micrometer, a move hinted at on earlier pieces. One rivulet is almost pure Websterian rasp while the other traces the tune’s melody, sketching it with an aerated texture that suggests Stan Getz at his most lyrical.
The simplicity and directness of the duo’s commnication carries over to the tray card. Beside Riley’s name sits just one word “tenor”, no need to couple it with the obvious elaboration. “John Brown bass” holds a similar poetic lucidity. The eleven tunes on the disc bring the shared purposefulness splendidly to life. Based on Riley’s past work I had high expectations for this outing. Not only does the music meet those standards, it manages to surpass them.
[Steeplechase titles are available through Stateside AT prodigy DOT net]
~ Derek Taylor
Officially a member of the octogenarian club as of this Saturday, saxophonist Ted Brown’s secret to longevity likely has something to do with a steadfast musical philosophy. While others his age rely on regimens of exercise or diet, Brown banks on time spent parsing the possibilities of “Cherokee”. These musical calisthenics have been part of his daily routine for decades and echo pages from the Tristano School lore that he was a part of during his formative years. Colleagues like Marsh and Konitz garnered both admiration and incredulity for their obsessive interpolations of standards. Brown works from a similar revisionist-minded repertory perspective. But where others might see only calcification and fossilization, Brown sees renewable potential for melodic improvisation.
That quietly intrepid outlook on the American songbook guides the music on his new Steeplechase release. Brown dusts off a dozen vintage standards as if to prove that age really has little bearing on relative worth. Each becomes a science project in the best possible sense of the phrase and ready grist for the saxophonist’s eloquent investigations. Guitarist Steve Lamattina and bassist Dennis Irwin adapt fluently to the expressly intimate environs, which judging by the booklet photo, appear to be a modest studio space. The absence of a trap kit also aids in this regard, with Irwin’s supple striding patterns shoring up the trio’s rhythmic needs and Lamattina devising chordal lattices that recall the clean touch of classic plectrists like Raney and Farlow. Palpable patience suffuses each of the pieces. Nothing feels rushed or forced and on the infrequent occasions where either man falls out of step, Brown’s persuasive phrasing pulls them gently back into place.
On the technical side, recording balance feels slightly skewed in spots, particularly early on, with Irwin’s strings booming a bit and Lamattina conversely recessed. It’s a condition largely corrected by the time the trio convenes on “She’s Funny That Way”. Brown’s horn comes through clearly, the patter of his tenor keypads audible as muted percussive accompaniment. His improvisations spool out in imperturbable fashion and succeed in breathing life into tunes as superannuated as “Limehouse Blues” (1935) and “After You’ve Gone” (1917). Even the few faster tempo numbers carry a calmative cast, evidence of an axial Lester Young influence Brown shares in common with his old friend Marsh. Elements of the elder improviser’s lithe attack and harmonic acuity shade many of his lines though the resulting effects are hardly slavish. The wisdom and viability of the Brown’s “if it ain’t broke…” mantra exists in strong practice throughout, leading to the natural question: when exactly will listeners be privy to another fix?
[Steeplechase titles are available through Stateside AT prodigy DOT net]
~ Derek Taylor
Homefront
No. 2
The first release on Homefront, the Krebs/Lacey/Rowe/Vogel, was already one of my favorites of the year and this one ain’t half bad either. “Chip Shop Music” is Erik Carlsson (percussion, electronics), Martin Küchen (saxophone, pocket radio), David Lacey (percussion, electronics) and Paul Vogel (computer, clarinet) and they sail with conviction on the two longish tracks presented here.
It’s one of those recordings, though, about which I can’t think of much to say. I can attest that “21st Century Chip Shop Man” has little to do, that I could discern, with the Crimson classic (then again, listening to it as I type, there’s a reed section some 21 minutes in that might just be akin to the wheezing mellotron at the beginning of that piece. Hmmm…). It’s not quite as catchy and bears no horn riffs. What it does do is beautifully navigate through a shifting field of percussive sounds, field recordings, electronica and reed tones at a very steady pace, like a purposive walk, not meandering but still taking in one’s surroundings. As with much of the best in this field, there’s an ineffable forward momentum at play, tough to pinpoint but clearly felt. The elements are not unusual—scraped metal, fluttered clarinet and saxophone work, subtle electronics—but their sequencing, their deployment is exceptional and not a little hypnotic. Right up to the offset sax/clarinet held notes and the clunking, chainlike percussion, everything works. One of my favorite tracks of this year.
The second cut, “Goodbye Mister”, is a rougher go but perhaps because a more difficult task is attempted, keeping things dark, maintaining a more limited palette and circumscribing a smaller area. It’s claustrophobic as opposed to the first piece, all sputters and lurches, groping its way. It leaves a lot of questions, not a bad thing, making one rather anxious to hear where this quartet travels from here.
Available (soon) from erstdist
Regardless of how grandiose or fantastical Anthony Braxton’s compositional goals, his periodic solo recitals remain sources of reliable solace - dispatches where that fervent and often gloriously impractical imagination boils down to the comforting kernel of a man and his horn(s). Braxton’s recorded work in the format commonly comes in the form of concert dates rather than studio sessions. Following the blueprint of his first double album release on Delmark, alto remains his principal implement in such settings.
This new Intakt set, recorded at the Willisau Jazz Festival in 2003, follows the prescribed mold in presenting eight pieces, all of relatively uniform duration. Colorful ink squiggles distinguish the graphic schema used to codify the compositions. The program opens with the air and force of a Brötzmann record, Braxton blowing shrill split tones and tonguing in lots of gravely vibrato on “No. 328c”. The amplitude of his articulation is striking, ballooning into the space and sounding exponentially larger than the capacity his horn would normally dictate. He explores permutations of “328a” and “d” later in the program, leavening coarse exhalations with surprisingly delicate curlicues of melody. The former piece contains a passage limited to little more than keypad clicks and circulating breath while the latter alights on simple Aylerian repetition.
Sandwiched between the succession of stark numerical compositions sits an eight-minute meditation on “All the Things You Are”. Braxton builds off the mothballed melody, alternating recognizable variations with flurried asides and huffing inhalations of air. The opening minutes of “No. 119m” consist of a comically labored wrestling match with his reed, malformed notes squeaking past his muffled speechifying like those of an orator holding court from the confines of a paper sack. “No. 106p” returns to gently rippling melodic territory with Braxton exploring a suitably serpentine line with a lightly aerated intonation. The pristine recording gives percussive presence to peripheral sounds of his instrument. Even the pursing of saliva-moistened lips is audible. The set winds up as it started with another nod to staccato Brötz-speak through the whinnying flutter tonguing of “No. 191j”.
As with Intakt’s solo Cecil Taylor release from a few years back, this set distills its subject’s art and intentions down to diamond sharp clarity. Braxton’s available solo sets now number into the double digits, but this one still succeeds in illuminating significant insights into the ever-evolving mind behind them.
~ Derek Taylor
CDR-3
Hayward and Krebs have been performing together both as a duo and in larger ensembles like Phosphor for some time now. It’s an interesting reversal of the traditional role-playing dynamic: the male, wielding the massive and potentially macho tuba creates the softer, more minimal sounds while the female generates often awkward and intrusive noise. It has worked well in the past and continues to do so here as part of a CDR-only venture Krebs has created.
Four tracks, three done in studio, the last one live in concert. While it’s not vastly different from what listeners who know these two musicians might expect, it is a solid, imaginative example of their work. If anything, Krebs is a bit more aggressive than usual, more willing to interject an “inappropriate” radio capture or flurry of noise with the confidence that both she and Hayward can deal with it. Her palette is wider here than on other releases from the past few years but she doles out the sounds with a kind of casual coltishness that, for this listener, is quite endearing and refreshingly different from the careful nature of most practitioners in this area. Not that one approach is better than the other, just that it’s good to hear all avenues being used, including those that had been previously deemed unpromising. As always, Hayward’s control and phrasing are a pleasure to experience. Besides, there’s admittedly something quite enjoyable about hearing this large beast played with such facility and restraint as you normally get from the trumpeters in this field. His growled drones are an especially luscious treat.
There’s a fuller sound than one might expect as well as what appears to be some amount of post-production on the studio tracks (backwards tuba, for instance). The structure of the third track seems more event-oriented than your standard smoothly-flowing improv, assembled in the kind of slab-like manner we’ve heard in some Will Guthrie projects like “Spear”. There’s an invigorating feeling regarding the intersection of structure and noise here that’s all too rare even as it’s difficult to pin down. The live piece is particularly impressive, its stop and start, loud and soft sections nestling against each other snugly and proceeding with convincing dream logic. Krebs and Hayward integrate beautifully here, the listener no longer concerned with the origins of a given sound, just bathing in the music. A fine release, very much worth hearing.
Available directly from Annette at: sberk1@web.de
The Radical Jewish Culture Movement doesn’t pull in as much press ink as it once did, but that change in profile hasn’t curtailed Alex Kontorovich’s contributions to the idiom. Adept in both clarinet and alto saxophonone, his credentials also include a blackbelt in martial arts and a doctoral degree in Mathematics. Drummer Aaron Alexander and bassist Reuben Radding gel into a tight rhythm team and the latter man also doubles as the ensemble’s sound engineer to fine effect. Brandon Seabrook earns the wildcard assignation in the group, playing both guitar and banjo and also bringing an array of pre-recorded sounds via tapes to keep both his colleagues and listeners guessing.
Klezmer forms from the page of Zorn factor prominently into the program here, but Kontrovich is far from a clone. His approach shares greater similarity to Thomas Chapin in terms of a flair for the dramatic channeled through a sharply deployed improvisatory intellect. “Transit Strike Blues” opens with the odd, but inviting combination of clarinet and electric banjo before Radding and Alexander join the action with a robust rhythm. It’s a lively composite revisted on the spirited closer “Tzizit”. Seabrook’s brittle and often forceful picking gives the band both bite and character, his teeth-rattling arpeggiations on the hora-derived “Kandels Burning” shearing petulantly through resilient revolving groove set up by Alexander and Radding. “New Orleans Funeral March” ties the titular form to Old World elements in a suite-like structure that builds from somber beginnings to a conflagatory finish. Radding’s fibrillating bass preface sets a heady stage giving way to another extended improvisation from Seabrook slathered in oscillating waves of feedback.
Named after the song form at its root, “Sirba” sounds initially like a fast freilach in the mold of Naftule Brandwein, but soon morphs into a stomping heavy metal dirge thanks to Seabrook’s aggressively amplified guitar. “AfroJewban Suite” bridges Klezmer, funk and Afrocuban rhythms in a manner not dissimilar to that of Steve Bernstein’s Diaspora while a delicately-fashioned Piazolla-style waltz taps a rich nuevo tango vein and serves as springboard for liquid clarinet. Even with the rampant genre-hopping at the crux of his compositons, Kontorovich resists the sort of overkill that has sunk projects of similar design. Each of the pieces sounds secure in its piebald construction and the players make the most of each setting in the audible pursuit of creative expression.
~ Derek Taylor
Topheth Prophet
TP015
A split disc, with one long track by the Swedish trio Moljebka Pvlse, five by the Israeli duo, Seventeen Migs of Spring and one shared.
Moljebka Pvlse is Karin Jacobsen (bells, thunder tubes, walking on leaves, Styrofoam), Mathias Josefson (field recordings, electronics, mix) and Martin Nordin (violin) and their pieces here are fascinating. This whole general area of processed field recordings has become fairly crowded in the last couple of years and even solid works can get lost in the shuffle so hearing something like the opening 27-minute piece, “Ravha”, is a real joy. The “walking on leaves” accreditation above might seem a tad precious but those sounds are major ingredients here, along with transportation hub hubbub (including the recordist explaining himself to a passerby), abstract industrialiana and a huge sense of space. The violin comes lurching, sawing into the scene, eventually carving out a plaintive line amidst the bang of metallic sheets, soft bells and a distant argument. It ends with some whistles and quietly clattered metal; wonderful piece. The collaborative track is a fine, understated rumble, well-molded.
The four participants in Seventeen Migs of Spring gather under the noms K-76, Gurfa, B-74 and Discord, wielding, one presumes, an array of electronics. It sounds as though field recordings are also present, though they’re worked into drones and kneaded into the largely dark, brooding ambience on the first cut featuring only this quartet. Others, like “Alternative Current”, evoke mid 60s tape pioneers like Raaijmakers and Koenig (I’ve encountered a good deal of this sort of sound lately, a reinvestigation of that decade’s electronic avant-garde), complete with blooping swirls, low burbling growls and quasi-metallic clangs, though rather more aggressively than their forebears and lacking much poetry of those earlier works. The pieces are effective enough at what they shoot for, it’s just that I find their somewhat claustrophobic character of less intrinsic interest than the spaciousness created by Moljebka Pvlse. Mileage may vary for different listeners, though; the Migs do what they do well.
Well worth hearing, especially for that fine, fine “Ravha”.
Back in the hoary days of the Depression-era recording industry, records were a bit like toasters: promotional swag given away with consumer purchases. One of the glaring downsides to this practice was that production values were often atrocious. Master copies frequently got lost or tossed and large chunks of the Pre-War music archive survived only in battered and eroded form, if at all. That lamentable legacy led to the necessary, albeit grudging, acceptance of compromised audio quality on the part of collectors. Which brings me to this rousing new Delmark release; a disc that earns “must hear” designation directly out of the gate, but not for entirely expected reasons.
Chicagoan Jimmy Blythe was an accomplished ragtime and boogie-woogie pianist. His talents were such that a variety of labels solicited his services and he ended up taking part prolific array of sessions by everyone from Ma Rainey to Blind Blake as well as dozens under his own name. He found another lucrative sideline recording of piano rolls for nickelodeons, a body of work from which this collection is culled. Blythe succumbed to meningitis several months after the nineteen rolls were recorded in 1931. The tunes are nearly all originals or collaborations and reflect the popular tastes of the day with Blythe deftly blending syncopated left hand rhythms with nimble right hand leads. There’s nothing that deviates far from the norm for the idiom, but Blythe’s playing carries a blithe simplicity that’s downright endearing and many of the ditties go down like gulps from a frothy mug of draft sarsaparilla.
As pleasing as the music is, it’s the recording quality and clarity that really stands out. Restoration is credited to one Frank L. Himpsl and considering the aforementioned industry culture into which these tracks were originally birthed, his work in that area borders on genius. Nary a surface crackle or glitch is audible anywhere and unlike other restorative jobs that end up throwing out the baby with the bathwater in an effort to abolish all signs of age, Himpsl’s ministrations retain a warm depth and natural resonance. Seriously, these rolls sound as if someone like Reginald Robinson could’ve baked them yesterday. Listening to the results it’s hard not to extrapolate what magic Himpsl might work on notoriously gummed up classics like Son House’s Paramount sides. In the meantime, Blythe’s forgotten artistry lives and breathes anew.
~ Derek Taylor
The visage of Steve Lehman is a naturally serious one, lean with stern features and penchant for square spectacles that give him a scholarly bearing. As an avid student of Anthony Braxton that particular portraiture isn’t too far off the mark. Mathematics, and more specifically metrics, plays a pivotal role in Lehman’s music. This new Pi disc is stocked textbook examples of his studied compositional approach; it’s homework, but not in a pejorative sense.
A near-telepathic drummer is key to Lehman’s concepts and Tyshawn Sorey is an inspired choice for the slot, his constantly subdividing and recombinating beats as tight as the tautly stretched skin of a snare drum head. Bassist Drew Gress is less busy and his sparser patterns overlay those of Sorey like cheesecloth, allowing for a porous give and take and constituting a highly textured rhythmic compound. A layered onion effect also carries across to the horns. Lehman works out a devilish array of contrapuntal combinations for his frontline work with trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson. Some of the pieces conform to head arrangements, but the themes are so intricate that the music hardly feels rote. Vibraphonist Chris Dingman alternates between melodic and harmonic targets, taking the lead with blurred mallets one moment and easing back into colorful sustains the next.
Subjective referents for the music assert themselves from start with faint signals from Steve Coleman and Greg Osby coming through in the keenly attenuated rhythmic variations. I also detect elements of Blue Note-era Grachan Moncur III in some of Lehman’s writing through the blend of spaciousness, mild dissonance and repetition, especially on the interstitial piece “Great Plains of Algier”. Lehman keeps things on point and the album ticks by at a brisk pace without indulging in distracting tangents. Several of the pieces sound suspiciously similar in terms of design, but again, with the terse running time it’s hardly a problem. Throughout, Lehman succeeds in blending an intellectual mien with a visceral one, once again proving the fallacy of absolutes when it comes music’s effects on mind and body. In its own peculiar way, this program could easily be considered a dance album.
~ Derek Taylor
Christopher McFall
Four Feels for Fire
E42
McFall hails from Kansas City and this work derives from field recordings capturing his home town during the heat of the summer, 2006. Recorded via analog deck, the tape was then extracted, its contents run through various software for the final result. In his list of “thank you’s”, McFall mentions Asher Thal-Nir and that’s not a bad point of reference. Like Asher, McFall culls essences from his tapes and tends to isolate quasi-tonal drones from among the sounds over which other elements, sometimes recognizable, more often not, mingle. During the third and longest of the five tracks, the mix is especially mysterious, most of the sounds almost recognizable including perhaps even flames. He might not achieve quite the poetic level that Olivia Block manages to do with some regularity, but McFall’s in the same ballpark here. “Four Feels for Fire”, calmly laying out its very wide, rich sonic palette, is a solid addition to the ranks of enhanced soundscapes.
Marc Behrens
Architectural Commentaries 4&5
E45
Behrens also makes use of processed field recording although, as the title implies, there’s a far greater feeling of architectural space, of heavy materials, than in the McFall. There are sounds like stone on stone, for example, large stones. To the extent they offer images of cityscapes, they do so in a De Chirico sense, one of empty concrete canyons and long shadows. There’s a brief bustle or two, a sudden flurry of traffic, but then it’s back to the urban desolation. A short track separates the two main pieces; though it’s entirely of a piece with them, its concision serves to orient the listener with regard to the others. The first half of “Commentary 5” is even emptier than its predecessor, a place of drips, vague, distant echoes of machinery, the occasional low thrum of some subterranean engine. Midway through, an eerie, silvery drone emerges accompanied by quasi-musical pings, backwards tape swatches and gurgles. It’s kind of like coming upon a barely functioning outpost in the ruins. It dissipates after a few minutes, bringing us back into the ozone-tinged vacuum. Behrens has created some evocative work, very effective and accomplished of its kind.
Haptic
Correction
E47/A67 (co-released on Absurd)
A 7” 45rpm release containing two brief but exceedingly dense works by this trio (Steven Hess, Joseph Mills and Adam Sonderberg), post-composed by combining excerpts from live performance with existing music. The brevity is more than a little perverse as both pieces positively beg for further listening and/or development. “sum” has a percussive feel, though the whole is encased in a slightly blurry envelope, bangs and clatter set against soft, high drones at the start. That direction is abruptly dropped in favor of the reverse: low, hugely throbbing pulses with higher-pitched brushwork. This, in turn, falls through a trapdoor, replaced for several fleeting seconds by a crowd of people as heard from behind a wall. All in about four minutes; wonderful stuff. “ybo” is a bit more obscure in that as near as I can determine it consists solely of a steady series of gong sounds, the kind created with heavily padded mallets (or hands). In this case, you almost inevitably read the music as an introduction of sorts. Indeed, it sounds like more than one opening invocation heard on old Art Ensemble records. But it too passes through in just a few minutes. Intriguing and frustrating in equal amounts.
Yôko Higashi
hamaYôko
E48
A collection of thirteen songs, sung and otherwise performed by Higashi, they dwell somewhere between art rock and ritualism with the odd tinge of cabaret here and there. I’ve never seen her perform but I understand, and can see in a couple of videos available on You Tube (one with Lionel Marchetti), that she incorporates drama and dance movement in her performances and these pieces seem to fit into that conception, the vocals especially having something of a theatric, even overwrought aspect. Higashi embeds all this in noise trappings—static, various abstract field recordings, drones of differing textures—but at heart, they’re songs and not terribly attractive ones. For this listener, there was too much fence-straddling; I’d rather have heard pure songs or not. A piece like “Sarasate” comes closest to achieving a kind of warped, effective chanson but might have done better performed “straight”. Aside from that number, little stood out from the routine.
An indelible air of April Fool’s encumbers this album, akin to the vibe you might encounter over at All About Jazz on the first of that month. Closer consideration reveals layers of logic and abiding candor behind the project. Pianist Cyrus Chestnut, one of the chief targets for invective from critics who take it upon themselves to lambaste the so-called “neo-con” movement in jazz, has several things in common with his chosen source. Just as Elvis arguably stole the rudiments of his style and songbook from black bluesmen like Arthur Crudup and Ivory Joe Hunter, so too did Chestnut cop the building blocks of his from older players like Errol Garner and Oscar Peterson. Audience entertainment is a mitigating factor in the music each and Chestnut notes his strong affinity for gospel music, which registers as another convenient corollary between him and The King.
Musically, Chestnut takes pains to refit the quotidian tunes with a variety of embellishments and ornaments that echo his often baroque sensibilities. The opening “Hound Dog” bounces along on an added bossa beat by way of New Orleans. The anemic soprano saxophone of guest Mark Gross quickly derails “Can’t Help Falling in Love” and his alto work on “Don’t” isn’t much better. “Love Me Tender” receives a soufflé-light jazz waltz treatment while the saccharine take on the already sugar-saturated “Suspicious Minds”, but a somber, semi-free form take on “Heartbreak Hotel” takes the trapping of the tune’s title at surprisingly effective face value and ends up the standout track. Chestnut’s regular sidemen, bassist Dezron L. Douglas and drummer Neal Smith work well in each of the contexts, handling the leader’s license on the tunes with relative ease and staying out of his way. Chestnut explicates his reasons for covering the Presley ‘songbook’ in his self-authored liners and it’s hard not to hand over props for his level of conviction. In his eyes, it’s just music, regardless of provenance or past. Still, the session remains suspect on general principle and that subjective appraisal makes it impossible for me to recommend to all but the ardent Chestnut fan. In other words, it has a certain future as a handy stocking stuffer for my dad.
~ Derek Taylor
I’m grouping the following together out of convenience in that there are certain points of similarity between them, not the least a tincture of Mattin. All, I believe, are available for free download from the respective label cites.
Tim Blechmann
Re-reading
Free Software
Free SS 01
Blechmann, using PD software (a Linux program, if I’m not mistaken), generates a fine, tightly channeled performance. The initial sound layer includes one that imitates a muted, metallic alarm buzzer which gradually bores its way into a wider terrain, surrounding itself with fuzz and hums, the alarm splintering into disparate shards. The sounds evolve but the impelling force remains constant, an onrushing of noise that flows for about half the piece’s 40 minutes before dissolving into some luscious crackles with distant wind. The final fifteen or so minutes are spent in more gossamer areas, all the sounds becoming transparent, insect-like, flitting and swarming about.
It’s a straightforward set in a way, like a complex gray shade modulating from dark to light, but its object-like nature is absorbing on its own terms. Good, smart stuff.
Kakofunk
Frutamental
Free Software
Free SS 02
25 tracks spanning a bit over an hour of noise, live and in the studio. Though not explicitly rock-derived, I get a sense that that’s where its ultimate source resides. Though the approaches vary substantially, there’s a uniformity of grain, a sheen that’s flat and dull. During the disc’s first half especially, virtually nothing much stood out as worth hearing a second time (though I dutifully did so). There’s scads of tedious laptopping out there; here’s a good example. The back end improves matters marginally with a track here and there that rises above (or below) the general blah, one including captures of an Arabic song and the longish ensuing quiet piece, but those are far too rare. It concludes with birds.
Mathieu Saladin
Stock Exchange Piece (Gold & Light Sweet Crude Oil)
w.m.o/r
32
Saladin was responsible for a favorite recording of mine from the last couple of years, “Intervalles” on l’Innomable, a penetrating set of processed reed improvisations. This is different. And puzzling. Using a methodology you can read for yourself on the label site, he basically transposes the values of gold and crude oil over a 50-day stretch into corresponding sine wave units. One day equals one minute of disc time, replete with resultant fluctuations as the two sets of waves intertwine. It’s intriguing, not to say provocative, to use a source like this to generate such a pure “object”. It may also be problematic that there’s certainly no way for the listener to have known the source unless informed outside of the sounds themselves. A demonstration of the abstract nature of capital? An illustration of the insubstantiality of the global marketplace? There are, after all, any number of more or less random processes Saladin could have used aside from those he chose. Listened purely as sound (something I find a bit uncomfortable to do, given what I know), the piece quavers mightily (sporting some nice bass) over its course though with little overall change aside from a quickening or slackening of the throb. Indeed, by moving oneself a couple of feet, the listener effects far greater change than is otherwise heard throughout. One can, interestingly, almost eliminate the bass at certain physical points.
Ultimately, I enjoyed it. Art’s been made from gold and oils for a long time now, after all.
Abjector [sic] ([sic] Tim Goldie)
[sic]
w.m.o/r – hibari
h.mo/r 02
A lot of brackets and “sics” here, but essentially this is two lengthy discs of solo percussion and noise by Goldie. The first, “White Peristaltic Interrogations”, is largely percussive and the more successful of the two. The general tone is dark, groaning and chaotic and one has the impression of a musician throwing himself in among his tools. In fact, I was reminded of Z’ev more than once. The second disc is in more of a screaming noise mode and less interesting to me because of that. Both clock in at over 70 minutes and are arbitrarily divided in dozens of two minute tracks. While the first disc varies attacks pretty well, they both linger too long to hold my attention (! Did I say, “Attention?”). It’s a good effort though and Disc 2 (bearing a title that trips off of one’s tongue: “Devocalised Fluchverdächtiger/Blocksperre Refluxur [sic]”) will doubtless provide a goodly amount of enjoyment for the more No Fun oriented listener.
Mattin/Taku Unami
Attention
w.m.o/r – hibari
h.mo/r 03
OK, then. On the one hand, we have Unami playing spare, mostly pure-toned guitar notes, doling them out one at a time in a loose, fairly desultory manner, switching later to fuzzed sounds. On the other, we have Mattin, talking. His first words, several minutes in, are “Turn up the volume.” I didn’t comply. He continues, “I said, ‘Turn up the volume!’” and then proceeds to berate me for not having a good enough stereo system. I chuckle. It becomes swiftly apparent that Mattin has been browsing the sort of fora you’re reading now, collecting the kinds of dopey arguments and discussions that ensue about equipment, listening habits, proper volume, seriousness of listening, environment, etc. and is, rather playfully but not without some sneering, tossing it back into our faces. For about 74 minutes. Goodness knows there’s a wealth of material to be thus lampooned and it’s amusing as far as it goes even if the occasional pinprick irritates by penetrating closer to the bone than one would like. Do I ever need to return to it again? Not likely (though Unami’s playing has a minimal amount of charm). But, like an elbow to the ribs, it makes its point and we can move on. One can, of course, insist on listening to it as pure sound, ignoring its intent. Not easy, but it does give the listener a malicious sense of satisfaction…
n.b. I’m not quite sure if it’s intentional or not, but the typography on the disc itself might be intended as a sly take-off on that found adorning given Lovely Music Ltd. release.
Rogue Art 7
Scott Fields posits a somewhat idiosyncratic attitude toward musical partnerships. He takes his time and isn’t averse to what at first may seem like incongruous collaborations. This new Rogue Art release corroborates that characterization with what might be first in terms of instrumentation. On paper, the combination of electric guitar, tenor saxophone, analog synth and guzheng might seem an oil and water proposition, but Fields balances notation with improvisation over four long pieces and ably proves its viability. Each piece appears to be named after friends and patrons of the four.
The disc title refers indirectly to a phenomena often cited by Fields where bands in which he is involved commonly coalesce under his umbrella ensemble rubric. The shift in this case came not from a domineering sense of self-importance, but a gradual realization of Fields as focal point for the group. Thomas Lehn frequently acts as agent provocateur, his synth set-up the most mutable in terms of accessing taxonomically unfamiliar sounds. At times he swirls and eddies around the fringes, inserting gurgles and blips amidst the others’ more circumscribed interplay. In other spots, as on the opening of “Brad and Laura Winter” he surges into pole position, sounding a bit like Sun Ra behind a phalanx of buttons and keys and building a pump-organ-meets-calliope chorus in concert with Fengxia that in a weird way recalls the darker carny side of Tom Waits.
Mattias Schubert is similarly liberal in his palette on sax, moving from cottony breath sounds to skirling cries and even relatively straight melodic statements. As the strings contingent Fields and Fengxia make for a consistently catalytic pairing, the latter moving from fragments of Chinese melodies to spates of kitchen-utensils-on-iron-grate dissonance while Fields plays everything from faux classical patterns to hook-toothed blues arpeggios. Lulls do occur, but rarely for very long and each of pieces achieves a pleasingly organic tractability. Variety is the spice and the four pack plenty in. A word too to Fields clipped cadence liners which are as clever, whimsical and self-deprecating as ever and an apposite appendix to the music.
~ Derek Taylor
(h)earrings
HR-02
That the title of Mitsuhiro Yoshimura’s debut solo release from earlier this year makes up half of the somewhat curious moniker of this new release perhaps shouldn’t be a surprise. and so on appeared amidst a small flurry of praise in early 2007, the minimal, high pitched feedback waves created via the manual adjustment of a pair of headphones that in turn channelled the output of a mixing board fell somewhere between the disembodied instruments of Toshimaru Nakamura and Sachiko M. The delicately severe slithers of piercing sound resembled the tones of Sachiko’s empty sampler running on low batteries, the lines of feedback wavering in the air both as Yoshimura tweaked the headphones and as the listener moved position in relation to the sound. The methods used to make that recording reappear on this new release.
Whilst it was a strong debut, and so on begged two questions. The first asked how much depth was there to be mined in Yoshimura’s finely honed technique once we had one solid document. What more could be achieved to keep future releases from becoming variations on a theme? The second question asked how Yoshimura’s contribution to collaborative work might sound, particularly as the liner notes to and so on suggested that the amount of control he had over the feedback output was limited, seemingly deliberately so.
Somehow both questions seem spectacularly irrelevant in light of this new release, a recording of a live duo with the ever perplexing Taku Sugimoto. Throughout the fifty-five minutes of the CD Yoshimura allows his icy twines to relentlessly cut through the air, thinning and thickening in places, the pitch staying at a consistently high level though shifting within a small bracket. As with and so on the sounds dance all over the place as you adjust your position whilst listening, but essentially Yoshimura’s contribution here is very similar to his playing on the previous release.
What really makes not BGM and so on for me is Sugimoto’s contribution, or rather his apparent lack of it. After a first cursory listen without reading the sleevenotes I couldn’t pick out anything at all that could be easily identified as his input to the recording. In the notes he is listed as playing “electric fun” (should this be electric fan? Quite possibly not) CD, acoustic guitar and lightsabers. Just to confuse us a little more.
Further, closer listening reveals some clues to the mystery. The first obvious contribution from Sugimoto comes in BGM, the first of the five tracks. As Yoshimura’s shredded tones fill the live space we hear a CD of old jazz standards playing, and conversations taking place in the foreground. On first listen the assumption was that we were hearing the club PA in the background, with audience members talking as the piece began. Clearly though Sugimoto is responsible for these curious intrusions, as both stop abruptly leaving Yoshimura’s feedback hanging, interrupted only by distant traffic sounds. What they are there for though is open to debate. Were these sounds chosen on purpose? Is the cultural baggage that comes with a jazz standard to be considered as part of the music? Why do they appear in the first moments of the album and then not again? The sounds themselves work together very well and result in a rewarding listen yet its hard to listen to this piece without feeling directly challenged by the musicians.
At intervals throughout the first track some shuffling sounds can be heard but little else. The second track not BGM seems to feature only Yoshimura’s sound, drifting gently and slowly until in the last few seconds someone, presumably Sugimoto gets up and walks about, causing subtle shifts in the waves of sound as they make their way to the microphone making the recording.
There are no gaps between the five tracks that make up the album, and according to the sleevenotes it was all recorded at one concert, but another confusing aspect of the release is how these five pieces have been organised. The end of track three not and sees Yoshimura’s whistling sounds feather away into silence and audience applause, only for them to return abruptly at the beginning of the following piece. The same happens at the beginning of track five as applause breaks out and conversations can be heard, doors open and close and as the short track continues it sounds as if the audience depart, yet all along Yoshimura’s tones continue. Were they there in the room or were they overlaid in post-production? I suspect the former, but their presence in the recording seemingly after the concert has ended is another curious development. How did anyone, musicians included know when the performance was over? Perhaps it isn’t and its still going. And so on.
This final track involving the audience departure is mischievously titled not music, the reverse of the piece that precedes it, the longest piece on the disc that seems to contain the most musical elements and is called, logically music. This fourth track features a series of sounds appearing alongside Yoshimura’s output, some that could feasibly be merely variations and fluctuations in his playing, and some that clearly come from another source. A cleaner, pure tone hangs parallel for a while, possibly originating from Sugimoto’s Electric Fun, who knows. Then three quarters through the twenty-five minute piece what must be the lightsaber appears, a buzzing, rasping sound that suits the mood perfectly, despite appearing to be merely switched on and off at seemingly arbitrary points.
So the question of how Yoshimura’s methods can work in a collaborative setting are neatly sidestepped by the somewhat oblique set of circumstances arranged to create this new release. Beyond the fact that it sounds good there is much pleasure to be had from trying to decipher what is going on here. I can’t help but draw links with other recent Sugimoto releases that seem to challenge the listener’s perception of what a recording should consist of. In this case, shouldn’t an improvised duo sound like two people playing? Why do we have to search for the contribution of one of the players? Why when Taku Sugimoto is known as a guitarist and an acoustic guitar is listed amongst his instruments used here do we not hear anything at all that resembles a guitar? At the same time why does the concert appear to finish twice, and why on the second occasion when the concert ends does the music not stop?
These are delightful questions that bring a further level to Yoshimura’s music. It doesn’t really matter that he himself does not appear to do much different here than on his previous release. The company he keeps here throws it all into a new perspective. A fascinating, fine release.
Uptown 27.52
The most successful couplings in jazz describe a canny balance between compatibility and deviation. Trombonists Frank Rosolino and Carl Fontana certainly fit that complicated bill of opposite attraction. Divergent in both temperament and style, the two nevertheless shared a lasting friendship on stage and off. Rosolino’s erratic personality led to severe problems personal and professional and ultimately to a paucity of paying gigs. Fontana’s lackadaisical outlook oddly had an opposite effect and he was frequently one to opt out of offered work. Both men came of musical age in the big bands of Stan Kenton and others with approaches that blended the style points of bop and swing.
This recently minted Uptown release documents their final recorded meeting, a club date taped in the summer of 1978 in Vancouver, British Columbia. A multinational threesome headed by American pianist Elmer Gill handles rhythms section duties. Gill takes a handful of solos to balance things out a bit, but no doubt exists as to whom the audience has paid their shekels to see and the two graying brass men do not disappoint in terms of spontaneous loquaciousness. Danish bassist Torban Oxbol and local drummer George Ursan dutifully leave the jovial fisticuffs and fireworks to the frontline.
In reliable Uptown fashion, there’s a great deal of bang for the buck both in terms of music and expert annotation. Only two of the tracks clock below thirteen minutes and all six serve up separate smorgasbords of trombone to sup on. Monk’s “Well, You Needn’t” and Dizzy’s “Ow” act as rhythmic and harmonic obstacle courses as well as veritable aural textbooks in terms of bop-grounded improvisation. Each is also instructive in limning the differences between the principals’ articulation and attack, with Fontana frequently taking a smoother more overtly eloquent stance and Rosolino just as often going for the audience jugular or funny bone. Lest either be typecast, both also adopt traits associative of the other: Fontana blows fleet furry-edged phrases on “All Blues” and Rosolino reels in his raucous side on a lushly drawn rendering of “Just Friends”. With arrangements largely incidental there are some rough spots in the interplay, but the sporadic missed cues and trampled segues just add to the seat-of-the-pants aura of the set. Fans of full-bodied bop trombone should not pass this one up.
~ Derek Taylor
Blame it on Bertrand Tavenier’s ‘Round Midnight or any other mythologizing bit of media: Expatriate jazz musicians still enjoy a healthy amount of manufactured mystique. Pianist Horace Parlan is among this celebrated cadre and has been for years. A resident of Denmark for decades, he’s quietly been composing and performing music in local clubs to adulatory audiences in a style that strays little from his work as leader and first call sideman in the 1950s and 60s. Recorded in the intimate company of altoist Christina von Bülow and bassist Jesper Lundgaard in Parlan’s home, the program is tilted heavily toward standards. A pair of Parlan originals slips right in beside familiar pieces by Strayhorn and Miles among others. Parlan’s approach is measured, more low flame simmer than blow torch bluster and complementary to the domestic surroundings. The absence of drums also aids in this regard, enhancing the chamber jazz elements of the instrumentation and giving von Bülow a springy, but uncluttered surface with which to etch her watercolor melodic lines. She rarely deviates too drastically from the themes, phrasing in a light aerated caresses that suggests an amalgam of Benny Carter and Bird.
Parlan’s fingers work in careful collusion and at times his patterns feel a shade too premeditated. Lundgaard anchors the bottom, amiable to the occasional solo slot, but seemingly just as happy to amble along beside his colleagues. Highlights of the set include an eloquent rendering of “Everything Happens to Me”, where the playfully pessimistic lyrics are virtually sung via von Bülow’s choruses, and a lengthy concluding stroll through Strayhorn’s beatific ballad “Lotus Blossom”. Parlan’s long since progressed past the point of proving himself. That palpable self-awareness and confidence makes for a performance refreshingly free of ego or agenda. These three are simply playing for the pure joy of it and that admirable, angst free incentive channels beautifully into the music. It also effectively dispels the aura ex-pat mystique surrounding Parlan’s person and reveals a man at peace with himself and his profession.
~ Derek Taylor
Marion Brown survives as one of the few among the New Thing circle to have secured financial solvency in his advanced years. Sadly, the source of his income is not widespread recognition and consumption of his music, but instead a financial settlement in a medical malpractice suit. Brown’s music continues to exist on the fringes, treasured by aficionados, but invisible to the majority of music listeners. The longstanding experimental rock collective His Name is Alive takes important initiative to combat that condition with this new tribute album to Brown. Rather than focus on his Sixties work for Impulse and ESP, the nine piece ensemble taps the altoist/composer’s later Seventies work, a rare and ruminative songbook now generally available only as downloads on music blogs and high-priced vinyl in boutique shops.
Lush rhythm and a rich amount of modal atmosphere factor prominently into the ensemble’s readings of Brown’s already spacious compositions. “Juba Lee Brown” sounds like mid-Impulse period Coltrane, specifically “Alabama”, in its somber dirge structure. The version of “Capricorn Moon” riffs off vintage Fela, a referent not surprising given leader Warn Defever’s decision to populate the band with members of the Michigan-based Afrobeat outfit NOMO. An undulating vamp serves as spinal column for sinewy statements by horns and Defever almost seems to be channeling a more subdued side of his inner Eddie Hazel on guitar. “November Cotton Flower” and “Bismillani ‘Rrahmani ‘Rrahim”, the only non-Brown piece of the set, involve ample use of Rhodes and Wurlizter to drape the music in a cottony incense-scented haze. The second piece also contains one of the rare passages where the group plumbs conventional free jazz territory with keening saxophones and strident guitar.
A percussion section of Jamie Easter, Dan Piccolo and Olman Piedra keep the rhythms porous and enveloping and avoid more rigidly defined beats. The gentle rustle and click of small shakers and hand drums weaves with the plaintive strains of birdcalls on “Geechee Recollections” and “Sweet Earth Flying”. The combination of live and studio settings further varies the surroundings, the applause on the former pieces. If there’s one drawback it falls back to the Fela comparison in that a couple tracks stretch circuitousness to a fault.
It’s difficult to imagine Brown not being intensely pleased by the thoughtful attention accorded his music. A quote included on sticker affixed to the disc confirms it: “It’s beautiful, thank you. You really understand me.” The odds of the affirmation extending to listener impressions appear extremely favorable.
~ Derek Taylor
In recent weeks, there’s been a good bit of conversation at IHM and elsewhere about the virtues, or lack of same, regarding what might be called “conceptual eai”, that is music by that community which takes as its starting point or main feature an idea, generally structural, rather than dealing directly with the interplay and communication between musicians. Indeed, the problem for some is the increasing tendency toward solo recordings, in this vein and others. At least four of the five releases discussed below fall squarely into the “overtly conceptual” category. Richard writes very well and interestingly about three of them in his blog at Learning to Listen, which I strongly suggest checking out for an opinion sometimes at variance with that expressed below.
Toshiya Tsunoda
Low Frequency Observed at Maguchi Bay
hibari
11
The disc consists of four pairs of field recordings. In each instance, the first is a construction of Tsunoda’s that will be roughly familiar to fans of his work and they are beauts, imparting a thrilling sense of space and place. The second is the exact same recording except that one hears only those frequencies below 20Hz. For those of you who, like me, didn’t quite know what to expect at this particular cut-off, it means that pretty much the only surviving sounds are those of the barest, lowest fluttering variety, something like your inner ear might pick up in a soft wind. The “normal” tracks are quiet enough as is; you can make out vaguely watery sounds, night insects, the sound of, possibly, some bay craft knocking gently against an old pier. I have no idea how much or little processing or collaging Tsunoda does on these pieces and don’t really care; they’re lovely as they stand. The alternate cuts might be analogized to extreme solarizations of already delicate photographs, leaving only the faintest outlines. Whereas the first two works are brief (about four and two minutes respectively) and their corresponding reductions easily brooked, the last two measure in at about 13 and 11 minutes. Giving the next-to-nothing tracks one’s full attention requires some patience. For me, the experience was rather rewarding though I don’t hesitate to say that I find the fuller pieces far more fascinating, lovely and deep. I’m not sure of the reasons behind Tsunoda’s strategy here, aside from the almost clinically obvious experimental aspect, but overall, I’d strongly recommend it, even if you skip every other track.
Noid
You’re Not Here
hibari
12
As best I understand it, Noid (Arnold Haberl—I do wish he’d lose this nom) has recorded sound in various empty rooms, emptied these tapes of a certain amount of unwanted noise (which is collected in the one-minute opening track), then layered the results into a laminated void. I love it. “You’re Not Here”, a kind of shadow image of “I Am Sitting In A Room”, with only the “resonant frequencies” left to be heard, sans obvious input. Imagine several photographic transparencies of different interiors laid atop one another. You hear presumably external sounds, vehicles, birds, osmosed through the walls, reverberating faintly within the space, but that’s about all save for the odd bit of clatter and, at one point, some tapping, possibly on a drum, a drip or two. Though the bulk of the disc is comprised of one 65-minute cut, Noid takes a cleaver to it at several points, abruptly and violently lopping off the thrum with a loud shearing sound. This acts to remove any sense of comfort or meditative aspect though as the piece rumbles on, those cuts become less and less abrasive. Around the 45-minute mark, the “rooms” disappear almost entirely for a while and when the sound resurfaces, it’s virtually vibrant, a steady, thick not-quite-hum adorned with a bang now and then. It’s a beautiful piece with a good balance of “real world” and artifice and enough of an edge to keep it from being too soporific. My personal favorite of this bunch as far as pure listening pleasure goes.
Taku Unami
imannengo
hibari
13
Unami’s soundtrack to Isao Okishima’s film “Ichimannen, go…” is the joker in this set of releases, relatively speaking, a 30-minute set divided into eight tracks that wander from style to style in a manner that in some ways is reminiscent of Otomo Yoshihide’s ventures into scoring. The pieces are more internally cohesive than those familiar with Unami’s computer-controlled toys might expect, each standing on its own and consistent within its three or four minutes. The first three cuts occupy noisy electronic territory with some impressively severe spikiness. On the fourth, however, that tendency shares space with sing-songy guitar and spoken voice. It sputters quietly out of existence only to be followed by a bizarre little march with snare, tympani, low brass and calliope-like keyboard; one thinks of those tottering toys again, but in an entirely different manner. Then a half-and-half muted percussion and solo, mournfully romantic violin soliloquy, a staccato, radio-interfered choir intoning an (apparently) traditional, very pretty Japanese song and, to wrap things up, that same song in all it’s unstaticized lushness. Quite a distance traveled from opening to close. My hunch is that the music would work far better in its designated context. On disc, it’s all right though its disjunctive nature is somewhat off-putting.
Taku Sugimoto
doremilogy
Skiti
sk02
A lingering question over the last couple of years in these parts: What’s Sugimoto going to do next after reducing his music to what would seem to be the barest possible minimum? Well, here’s one answer. The first and longest of the three cuts, “doremilogy 1.1” is about 22 minutes of what is apparently (I defer to Richard here) an ebow held against a single guitar string. That’s it (almost). It’s loud enough, especially for a Sugimoto piece, and fluctuates naturally, which is to say not that much but enough if you listen closely at all. You can isolate three or four distinct tones including a faint high one that serves to create a surprising amount of space. It’s totally fine; think pared down Lucier. Ah, but then. Then, in the closing moments, he slides the ebow through a standard scale, hence the do-re-mi of the title. It’s passing strange. It also sets up the ensuing two works, doremilogies nos. 2.13 and 1.21. The first, for three guitars (after a minute of silence) takes those scales via pure plucked tones through their paces, in groups of one, three, five and eight notes, played in solo or unison with two or three guitarists (Unami & Tsunoda, presumably). The guitars seem tuned slightly apart, producing attractive quavers amidst the banal stair step of the scale. It ends with an entirely different scale, a 13-note progression unlike anything that’s preceded it. The finale begins with, I believe, three ebow tones, far more complex therefore, maintained for a few minutes before descending through that same basic scale, ending, and lingering, on the “do” with a huge amount of quiver and thrum, a wonderful sound in and of itself.
I imagine one possible idea was to demonstrate how complex the “simple” can be. Fair enough and effectively done, forcing the listener to deal with that most trite of note series, listening to it in a new context. Still, it seems more of a way station than a destination, so we’ll just have to wait for what comes next.
Taku Unami
Malignitat
skiti
Sk03
Probably the gnarliest of these five offerings, Unami’s excellently titled “Malignitat” comprises three 15-minute compositions wherein a limited number of sound elements are awkwardly juxtaposed alongside one another, a kind of art brut that challenges the listener to understand the rationale behind the placement. The cover of Sugimoto’s “Doremilogy” might be apropos as to the overt blockiness of the compositions here. In the first, a recording of a helicopter engine, a blooping Pong-like sound and some tiny electric clicks appear and disappear among extended silences in what seems like an arbitrary non-pattern, sometimes overlapping, generally not, the engine’s playback speed slowed down here and there. There’s a very alien feel at play as though Unami’s intentionally pushing past the boundaries of human interest with regard to almost any element; rhythmic, structural, tonal, melodic, dramatic—no quarter is given. The second piece uses single, pure guitar notes and high-pitched wood block taps (or their electronic equivalent; hard to tell). There’s a wee bit more “standard” playing here, in brief snatches, but again the structure seems designed to confound. As with the video game sounds on the prior work, sometimes the tapping falls into metronomic sequences; between those and the guitar plucking, Unami appears to be making a very slight concession to the listener; whether that weakens or strengthens the piece is another question. Once staking out the gnomic ground, shouldn’t one stay there resolutely? He does so in fact, again confusingly, bringing back the ‘copter (slowed version) some 11 minutes in where it nestles among the existing elements with opaque aplomb. Malignitat #3 is for solo helicopter (though you hear a car horn on occasion), as before presented in rough chunks, at various speeds, sometimes overlapped, with unpredictable stretches of silence between. This one I could easily imagine as the soundtrack to a film, one that jump cut between superficially unrelated scenes.
All of this, of course, will generate interest and appreciation in at least some listeners while aggravating others as over-aesthetic, effetely intellectual, etc. I was a little put off, and probably puzzled, on first go ‘round though I could appreciate the strategy—at least, what seems to me to be the strategy—on subsequent listens even if I can’t say I enjoyed the listening experience as I did with the Noid and at least half of the Tsunoda. I hold out the option of coming to better grips with it in the future, though.
More generally speaking, count me among those who like to hear new plans of attack. Whether they derive from solitary intellectual activity or direct group interplay (which needn’t omit the intellectual, of course) I don’t think is a crucial matter; people operate on both levels, no reason musicians (most of whom are people) should do any differently. Even if a given effort “fails”, no telling what doors it opens in the process.
Available from erstdist
leerraum
[ ] 3
Ever prolific and consistently engaging, Asher paints yet one more evocative, peaceful-yet-prickly soundscape with “untitled composition (for b)”. Multilayered though with some degree of transparency and lightness, washes of static mix with a chilly tonal iteration that sounds like an old scrap salvaged from Fripp. The strata advance and recede, acquiring varying degrees of depth and translucence. It’s something of a stasis work, shifting within itself but occupying much the same space throughout, though by doing so it allows the listener to pick up elements that have been there all along but possibly escaped notice. A vague industrial undertow, for instance, seems clearer toward the end, a slightly bitter hum, almost like a vacuum sucking away the preceding 25 minutes. A good piece; those who have enjoyed his prior work will certainly like this one.
Another composition by Asher, “In Camera”, is available for free download at the fine homophoni site. It plays soft electric keyboard chimes against insistent static patterns and excellently chosen field recordings. These last have the effect of opening windows into a slightly (though not unpleasantly) stifling room; the aural contrast between the two worlds creates marvelous tension. Mourning doves appear and leave, the bell tones grow more muted under an increasingly thick carpet of haze and the work tumbles forward before evaporating.
Piano, cello and violin constitute the building blocks of countless chamber music ensembles through the ages. Within that tall shadow of history, the chosen name of the trio of Satoko Fukuda, Hannah Marshall and Veryan Weston stands in wry contrast. Weston’s been limning the borderlands between classical and free improv piano for decades with an approach that draws liberally on the customs of both zones. Fukuda and Marshall are far younger in years but more than able to meet him on even ground as conservatory-trained musicians versed in various improv friendly settings. Visited in fragments, much of their interplay here appears to carry the structure and symmetry of carefully considered composition. Fukuda’s violin, in particular, exemplifies a command of pitch and placement that suggest innate talent coupled to countless hours of practice. Marshall’s cello is just a horsehair’s breadth behind, her bow work matching that of her pizzicato for humming bird speed. Weston explicitly avoids tampering with his instrument’s innards, working his keys and pedals in a surprisingly straightforward fashion while still accessing liberal caches of dissonance when called for.
The disc’s ten tracks all come from the same Pinewood Studio session with dry detailed acoustics that enhance the natural resonance of the scraped, plucked and pounded stri
