Mark Weaver & Brassum - Warning Lights

Mark Weaver's Brassum
WARNING LIGHTS
Plutonium PLU 003

Tuba player Mark Weaver is one of a group of fine jazz and improvising musicians who's chosen to settle out in the New Mexico desert, which explains why he pops up quite frequently on Albuquerque poet / raconteur Mark Weber's excellent Zerx label (Weaver also plays in The Bubbadinos, perhaps the best – and most criminally neglected – avant-folk outfit west of the Mississippi). From time to time he heads west into the smog, though, and this quartet date with Dan Clucas (cornet, flute), Michael Vlatkovich (trombone) and Harris Eisenstadt (drums) was recorded in LA in April. It's a tasty set of nine Weaver originals, craftily arranged and powered forward by Eisenstadt's kit. Weaver has a certain fondness for irregular meters, but despite the intricacy of the rhythmics the music is never coolly abstract – Vlatkovich's dirty smears and strong mute work (cf. "Minus") keep things agreeably sweaty. Imagine the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, or half of them, reschooled by Threadgill, Lake and Hemphill. The sedate chorale of "Clear" is a fine example of how to make three instruments sound like twice as many; there's plenty of space for Eisenstadt to stretch out in this and the following uptempo "Movie", and he also slips in some deftly understated funk into "Avenue". The broad, brassy melodic sweeps and occasional voice-like inflections of Clucas' cornet recall Lester Bowie on a number of occasions, and Weaver reveals once again – for anyone who's never heard Joe Daley or Kirk Joseph – that the tuba is just as agile and versatile as a string bass.

Dan Warburton