trio x 3

New Jazz Meeting Baden-Baden 2002
Hatology

The Hat label’s occasional recent forays intro electroacoustic improvisation have been of mixed quality, in my opinion. Though Trapist’s Highway My Friend can be singled out as a success, the Radio-Radio twofer was in my opinion a real train wreck. This summit from a couple years back was curated by electronicians Bernhard Lang, who gathered eight other musicians – turntablist Philip Jeck, electronician Christof Kurzmann, pianist Paulo Alvares, flutist Philippe Racine, drummer Wolfgang Reisinger, bassist Peter Herbert, and saxophonists Marcus Weiss and Steve Lacy – and it’s miles better in many respects. Purposefully selecting players from quite different backgrounds, Lang hopes to provoke confusion, dissociation, even confrontation, rather than familiar improvisational strategies. So Lacy’s well-refined scalar approach merges not only with the synaesthetic backgrounds generated by Kurzmann and Jeck but with the new music approach of Racine (who sounds like she’d do a dynamite version of Cage’s Atlas Eclipticalis) and Alvares.

Across two very long discs (one live and one studio), Lang combines the musicians in any number of ways to facilitate different versions of his basic compositional template “Differenz/Wiederholung.” His basic interest is in having the electronicians bend and mutate the other improvisers in real time, as they together try to navigate the basic compositional form. The piece itself seems fairly dense, from what I can discern (its contours are much clearer on the studio performances), including sections of real rhythmic complexity as well as open sections of indeterminate harmony. There’s a lot of room, in other words, for the gifted improviser to interpret and reconstruct the given rules.

Two complex, multi-directional performances by the Jeck/Herbert/Reisinger trio open the disc up, but believe me: it’s a far cry from lead instrument-bass-drums. Samples, soundscapes, and unorthodox techniques create a sort of sonic blender which mixes elements together. Happily, some of the most compelling tracks in this regard are the ones featuring the largest groups: the first disc’s nonet track is outstanding, and the 22-minute closer (part solo Jeck, and part quartet with Lacy, Herbert, and Reisinger) is pretty fab too. It’s on these tracks where multiple electronic idioms (from the groove-based to the post-AMM) merge with new music and jazz-related forms of improvisation, often coming off very well. (One of the real pleasures, of course, is hearing Mr. Lacy, who really never sounds out of place in any musical situation.)

The studio disc captures the compositional detail somewhat better, though this may have more to do with the instrumental configuration (particularly the contributions of Alvares) than the improved recording quality. The largest configuration here is a quartet and, with a high quotient of flute and piano, you’d be forgiven for thinking some of these were performances of hitherto unknown late Feldman scores. There is also a gorgeous, 17-minute drone track near the end of this disc. It’s an ambitious recording, whose 2-hours plus of music don’t consistently win me over. But Lang is trying to achieve a new synthesis and there’s plenty here to enjoy.