Alberto Pinton Quintet - The Visible

Moserobie 022

By now, it is quite possible to discuss Ken Vandermark as an influential jazz figure. This comes as something to a surprise to an observer such as myself, for, like many, I was distracted throughout much for the 1990's by the Wynton Wars. But the din of that decades clashing slogans had faded fast -- so it seems -- and now critics have no excuse but to try and puzzle out just how this earnest, flat-topped kid from America's heartland -- the region that spawned REO Speedwagon, Styx, and Head East ("Save my life I'm going down for the last time / woman with the sweet loving better than a white lie / bring a good feeling ain't happened such a long time…") -- has become such a defining figure, both in "American jazz" as well as in certain categories of "European improv".

Vandermark's success, I think, is a rare testament to the efficacy of being a true believer. His constant name-checks of great musical figures of the past (and present) are not simply attempts to anchor his own music in some great tradition or canon. Vandermark's tributes are true "shout-outs": they are a form of advertising, an attempt to turn listeners on in the best -- i.e., most genial -- Comic Book Guy fashion. Ask yourself honestly: would Peter Brötzmann enjoy the reputation he now enjoys were it not for his Chicago connections? There's something quintessentially all-American about being so proud of one's influences, of holding on to one's heroes, so that one can natter on and on about them without coming off like a shill. See, vim, that's the key. Enthusiasm; like the man says, it's contagious, right?

Of course, the same enthusiasm infects Vandermark's many records. And, like all great passions, his is mostly indiscriminate, encompassing as it does everything from Jimmy Giuffre's sere pastorales to the suave lurching of prog rock rhythms (think of how you might bang your head to King Crimson's Red). Vandermark, of course, is very well connected in Sweden, and the form of free improvisation specialized in by collectives such as AALY and The Thing represents the ne plus ultra of his aesthetic. Which brings me to this new release from baritone saxophonist / clarinetist Alberto Pinton and his Stockholm quintet: Mats Älekint (trombone), Mattias Ståhl (vibraphone and marimba), Torbjörn Zetterberg (bass), and Jon Fält (drums). Here is music that proudly proclaims its debt to tradition, aims for urgency and authenticity rather than fizz and thrills, welcomes fugitive tonalities and formal experimentation, and refuses to make any aesthetic compromise in order to have all that it wants -- all in 45 lean minutes.

Cliché that it is, nonetheless the group comes storming out on the disc's first two pieces, "Hammerhead" and "Interference". Both themes possess a muscular intricacy, and each player exerts himself accordingly. Pinton, who loves slumming it in the lowest registers of his baritone sax, is nevertheless fiesty, almost reckless, reeling off phrases at near-quadruple time. Älekint takes a more woozy, legato approach, molasses to the saxophonist's four-alarm salsa. Zetterberg's bass line rumbles as it paces around unpredictable intervals, and Fält -- a truly impressive player who is quite attuned to Pinton -- is all over kit but never loses the swing in the battery of little sounds (woodblocks, triangles, tambourines [I would swear]) with which he surrounds himself. The percussionist's approach is an inventive mixture indeed: equal parts Baby Dodds, Paul Lytton, and Gary Young. Vibist Ståhl, meanwhile, has the most difficult role to fill in this ensemble. Not only is the bass clef so dominant here, but the mix itself emphasizes the ensemble's darker colors and the music's complexity over the clarity of individual instrumental voices. Appropriately, Ståhl's own timbre is chunkily spectral rather than tinkly. Whatever light he brings to the music is more like the glow cast by a jack o'lantern than the sparkle thrown off by the precious stone woven into a cold evening's costume. Come to think of, there is something magical about the way the ensemble eases into "Interference"'s big, almost ridiculous but grin-inducing, riff.

Unfortunately, the third piece, "Days" is symptomatic of the problem that plagues the center of The Visible's program: mushiness. There is really nothing wrong with the compositions themselves per se, which are solid, if a little four-square. Or with the improvising, which stays in character. But, like the early boppers, these young players are still searching for a comfortable approach to ballad or down-tempo material, and their uncertainty causes them to swoon occasionally into a bland volubility. "For Them" is the exception that proves that rule, a lovely, pensively bitter piece that features an affecting marimba solo and Pinton's best John Carter-via-Vinny Golia clarinet solo of the date. The one work here tinged with blue, "For Them" would have made a satisfying album closer, but Pinton has attached the "Mirror For Contra-Alto Clarinet". An exploration of the rich sonorities that this little-heard member of the clarinet family can produce, and a sensitive duet (midway through) with Fält, but it would have worked better as a prologue than a postscript.

A certain generic amount of generic music is inevitable with the Vandermark(-derived) approach, however, and the end results are often so endearing and "uncool" that such lapses are more easily forgiven than not. The Visible is, after all, quite enjoyable and easy listening by and for jazz geeks. No pejoratives intended, honestly. Only jazz geeks could reference Eric Dolphy's Out To Lunch as creatively as Pinton and his colleagues do. Both recordings share the same basic instrumentation. And both recordings sustain a mood of disturbed meditation. Dolphy employs open spaces -- caesurae? -- within his compositional structures as well as within his piano-less ensemble, with the result that the music seems like very sheer material stretched thin, almost transparently so in spots, over the void. Pinton, however, pits poses against themselves. That is, the longer the flex is held, the more concentration it requires, and the more imminent it breaking looms. Pinton's music only seems brawny, just as the braininess of Dolphy's music is misleading. Out To Lunch is the greater achievement, of course, but Pinton is to be admired for even daring to match his wits against a master. He is also to be congratulated for producing such entertaining results. As many of Ken Vandermark's projects are, The Visible may be yet another chess match against a canny old-timer, a jazz classic. The key difference, though, is one of attitude. Dig: Pinton's is the kind of cold-eyed, jack-hammer precise, swiftly meting yet balls-out strategy that stokes the gents even as it impresses all the ladies la-deezzz.

~ Joe Milazzo