Potlatch P303
Among free reed improvisers, the soprano sax seems to garner more attention than its relatives, especially among the post-Evan Parker contingent. You have Butcher, Doneda, Rainey, Bosetti, all excellent musicians, all apparently drawn to the extremes afforded by the instrument, perhaps due to the comparatively anonymous, non-personal sound that’s possible to evoke from that smaller horn. While all reed players have a baggage issue to come to grips with, pity the poor young soprano player trying to carve out his own niche in this heavily trodden territory. There are several potential avenues of escape. One might simply play melodically, using lessons learned from the highly abstracted music of one’s forebears to fashion a new sort of “traditional” music; that road is all too rarely followed. Another is obsessiveness, honing in on small slices of one’s sound world, worrying them no end, hopefully transfiguring them into something wonderful. This latter is the approach taken by French saxophonist Stephane Rives and it’s a pretty successful one. Similar in this regard to another young European reed player, Thomas Ankersmit, Rives chooses one precise area to explore per piece then delves into it with single-minded purpose and abandon. There’s something of a tradition in this strategy, dating back to Anthony Braxton’s solo work which was often a catalog of saxophonic attacks: a buzz piece, a trill piece, one imitating dog howls, etc. Here, Rives displays three separate mini-genres, each examined two or three times.
“Larsen et le Roseau”, played in two variations, takes Parker-like arabesques and pushes them out a bit further into a banshee screech zipping in and out of multiphonics. The first time through, Rives contrasts ultra-high whistling with a grainy substratum, occasionally skidding into multiphonics. His second take is lengthier and adds a couple of new elements including key tapping and a ghostly, hollow tone midway between high and low. The “Granulations” series, as the title implies, investigates a quiet realm that integrates breath tones with bubbling action occasioned by spittle. It’s a surprisingly fascinating, even pretty soundscape that, after several minutes, becomes quite immersive. Each subsequent variation adds another sound, first a kind of windswept roar and finally an echoic percolation as though the saxophone is drifting down an underground stream. The two “Ebranlements” investigate drones, the first staying in the lowest ranges of the instrument and casting forth immense slabs of sound. The second is an extremely intense though short piece that contrasts a harsh, high overblowing with equally harsh breath tones.
The closest comparison is probably Michel Doneda who shares an intensity of focus with Rives but this younger player has raised the bar just a bit, venturing into fresh territory and keeping the discoveries viscerally and emotionally interesting enough to result in far more than a science experiment. “Fibres” is a very fine disc and Rives is clearly someone to keep a close ear on.
~Brian Olewnick
Posted by on November 22, 2003 7:33 AMNice review, Brian. Good to see that my pal Jacques Oger's Potlatch label is getting some real attention on the other side of the Atlantic. I can also recommend last year's TRIOLID album (Isabelle Duthoit, Laurent Dailleau, David Chiesa), which slipped under the radar somewhat.
Posted by: dan warburton at November 27, 2003 10:04 PMNice review, but I did note two odd word-collisions:
"the comparatively anonymous, non-personal sound that’s possible to evoke from that smaller horn. While all reed players have a baggage issue to come to grips with, pity the poor young soprano player trying to carve out his own niche in this heavily trodden territory."
If the sound is anonymous, it shouldn't be too difficult (or perhaps, not necessary) to carve one's own niche.
"breath tones with bubbling action occasioned by spittle. It’s a surprisingly fascinating, even pretty soundscape that, after several minutes, becomes quite immersive."
Now I have an image of myself immersed in Rives's spittle.
Posted by: mke at November 28, 2003 3:39 AMmke: surely if you quoted the full extract rather than just the tailend of the review's 2nd sentence, Brian's intention would be clear enough & uncontroversial, as he lists the many soprano specialists who have set precedents for the use of the instrument. Originality isn't merely a matter of "personal sound" or avoiding a "personal sound". -- It seems a perfectly OK opening, except for a minor awkwardness ("that's" should be "that it's" to my ear) & the slightly ambiguous relation between the last couple of clauses in that 2nd sentence which leaves me uncertain of the posited relation between "extremes" of sound & "impersonality" of sound. (So speaks the pernickety editor in me.)
Anyway, it sounds like an interesting disc, from a player I'd not heard of before.
Posted by: nate d at November 28, 2003 11:31 PMHey, if all I get is grammatical corrections to my reviews, I'm happy. Actually, I did enjoy the tenuous connection between "spittle" and "stream"....
More importantly, it's a good recording. Some of us have spent considerable time and thought trying to figure out what's left for reed players to do in this general area of music, why brass players seem able to cope with "baggage" issues more effectively, etc. So it's a pleasant surprise to come across someone (a new name to me, incidentally) who has managed to figure out a slightly new and sometimes beautiful approach.
I'm still a little curious why it's almost always soprano players, not altoists, tenorists (aside from Butcher), baritonists or lower. I realize there are a handful around, but the soprano seems to me to be "over-represented" in this area.
Posted by: Brian Olewnick at November 29, 2003 4:57 AMDunno for sure, BO, but I've seen a number of saxists I know make the shift to soprano in the last 10 years. One thing I know, is that they really like having an easily portable instrument. If you're not requiring the tonal ranges of the big horns (for example, if you spend most of your time blowing spitt-bubbles, as so many reedmen do these days), there's not a whole lot of incentive to lug around a monster. Those big horns are also damn expensive to maintain, to boot.
The size and shape of the soprano have all the harmonic advantages of a saxophone (over a clarinet) in their wave-manipulating conic construction, they can be inverted in the air which aids the downward flow of spit required to blow laser-bubbles, and, as Coltrane discovered, they're super fucking fast. There's a few reasons?
Posted by: pk ripper at November 29, 2003 4:47 PMYeah, try holding a baritone sax over your head and watch the spittle fly :))
FYI Nate (and others) Stéphane is a Paris-based saxophonist whose only other release (to my knowledge) is a CDR (two years old) on the Belle du Quai label with vocalist Agnès Palier. Potlatch head honcho Jacques Oger went bananas over Stéphane's playing at a concert last year and, as he often does, put his money where his heart is by commissioning the disc.
Sounds like an interesting disc.
I've never really been a great fan of soprano - not many players I like who play it in normal jazz settings, nothing particular against it in free-improv.
It's easier to get non-pitched sounds out of a saxophone at higher pitches, so by knocking an octave off compared to the tenor, there's maybe an extra useable octave of saxophone to get multiphonics out of (mainly conjecture, have only messed around with soprano on occasion, and never owned one). Also, you can knee-mute much more easily (saw Tom Chant do a great solo set using knee-mute a while back), and the smaller bell allows more use of makeshift mutes/membranes to be attached/stretched over.
Still prefer tenor.
Posted by: Nat at January 12, 2004 2:31 PM.................................................. © 2003 - 2006 bagatellen ..................................................