D'Agaro/Glerum/Bennink - Strandjutters

Hatology 590

Dutch improvised music hasn’t gotten as much play in recent years as it did in the mid-1990s, but the pleasures of its inside-out cavorting remain strong. This pleasant slice could almost be a lost Clusone 3 session, with Daniele D’Agaro’s sweet sax and clarinet taking wing – and who can forget the bird titles and analogies Clusone so loved? – like Michael Moore above a pliable but still rambunctious rhythmic base. It’s not a copycat recording by any means; it simply has the same playfulness, a similar instrumentation, and a sweet combination of accessibility and experimentalism. To hear this, just listen to the raunchy tenor into to “Old Folks” (shades of Ab Baars!), which otherwise possesses a semi-sweet disposition.

For what it’s worth, I’ve always enjoyed hearing musicians whose primary mode of expression is free improvisation wrestle with canonical or traditional sources. Historians know well that any human tradition – religious, political, musical, whatever – is really constituted as an extended argument across time. So when you hear Ernst Glerum thrumming away in “Old Folks,” Ritalin-deprived Han Bennink barely containing himself with a soft pattering swing, or D’Agaro judiciously using multiphonics on Mercer Ellington’s “The Girl in My Dreams Tries to Look Like You,” what you’re really hearing is the continuation of some kind of musical argument. For some, these particular deliberative moves no longer hold any interest. But while I’ve heard these moves, or ones damn close to them, many times before I still find them artfully done and I take a great deal of joy in their construction and deconstruction. Hell, you might enjoy it too, whether your taste runs to the nimble snap of “Divi-Divi,” the chastened lyricism of “Old Folks,” or the tone poetry of “En Plein Air.” In some ways, the more arch moments on this disc recall not so much the pastiche of New Dutch Swing as the more austere efforts of, say, Francois Raulin and Louis Sclavis. And on “The Prisoner,” D’Agaro proves to skillful at incorporating multiphonics and extended techniques into somewhat conventionally constructed lines; in this, he achieves effects similar to those heard in Ellery Eskelin’s playing, which in my book is really high praise.

So ultimately the playfulness here isn’t as canned as Bennink often was with Clusone or as the Willem Breuker Kollektief is in their lengendary shows. It’s the playfulness of toying with form or romping with technique. Through this, the trio achieves a more sober but still challenging integration of styles. This isn’t a knock-you-out disc, but its pleasures remain nonetheless.