Brötz's Power Trios

Atavistic/UMS 149

Victo 93

It’s been a while since I’ve heard any new Brötzmann. Still enjoying something of a creative renaissance (or perhaps simply an invigoration through greatly expanded exposure), Herr B. has clearly had an abundance of energy since the mid- to late-1990s, when his Die Like a Dog and Tentet groupings marked a series of new alliances with younger American and European improvisers. There were pretty big waves of excitement that initially greeted these activities, but in the last five years Brötz’s listeners again have polarized: at one end sit those committed listeners who study his solo work and hear the nuance in his tarogato, the subtlety in his balls-out tenor salvos, and the clarity in his ensemble work; at the other end we find those who tire of his relentlessness and the purported sameness of his playing regardless of context. Regardless of their eventual opinion, neither camp will be able to deny the power and conviction of these two very different recordings.

Medicina features one of Herr Brötz’s lesser-known groups (he is in quite a number of them, despite the fact that the above-mentioned combos receive by far the majority of coverage), a power trio with electric bassist Peter Friis Nielsen and drummer Peeter Uuskyla. This new date is actually their fourth release. Though the record is divided up into eight tracks, each nominally composed by a member of the trio, the 75-minute recording has the feel of a long, lusty free improv session. As is often the case in a live setting, Brötz is inclined to visit each of his horns – alto, tenor, tarogato, and clarinet – and touch on a number of familiar feels, from raging full on (the bellicose “Justicia” or “Artemisia”) to groove based blowout (on the opening “Rocket Tango”) to melancholy repose (the fine “Some Ghosts Step Out”).

The texture here is certainly different than one might expect, owing largely to Nielsen’s fairly supple electric playing and Uuskyla’s unique timbres (his sound and approach to the kit owe a bit to Sven-Åke Johansson). The electric bass is a widely scorned instrument, at least as far as improvised music fans are concerned. But Nielsen is quite resourceful, coaxing moans, sighs, burbles, and thunderclaps out of the thing, shying away from Laswellian excess (think Last Exit) and fret-monster locquaciousness alike. So the trio is a basically sympathetic unit, and their music is as good as any small group stuff Brötzmann has recently released. It’s not particularly my thing but for those who like it loose and hard charging, dig in.

Somehow The Bishop’s Move, though featuring real veterans and thus perhaps seeming like it might be more predictable, ends up being the fresher and more satisfying of these two recordings. Most people know the back story by know: Brötz’s trio with bassist William Parker and Hamid Drake was on tour at the same time as Parker’s group with pianist Alex von Schlippenbach (subbing for Barry Guy) and percussionist Paul Lytton. Some scheduling tweaking was done, and the two groups appeared onstage simultaneously at the 2003 Victoriaville Festival. The result is this 73-minute slab of exuberance, history, and possibility.

Each of these long-standing trios has its own distinct style of improvisatory momentum, Parker’s trios tending more towards a mercurial sizzle and Brötz’s towards a tumbling force. Believe it or not, it works quite well here. It’s not just that the musicians give each other lots of space – they do, letting each independent group do its thing while also allowing the collective to permutate into several different sub-groupings (including an excellent section with Schlippenbach, Drake, and Lytton; a superb section highlighting Brötz’s tarogato and Drake’s frame drumming; and a slightly less compelling encounter between the two Parkers) – but they also sound pretty damn fine as a whole (though there are surprisingly somewhat few moments when the two horns play together, one frequently ceding to the other, as Parker quickly does upon Brötz’s brusque entrance 1/3 of the way through). True, there are a fair number of awkward moments, periods of tentative reserve where the music is held up for fear of toe-trodding. But on balance I have to say that this is a surprisingly varied and vigorous set that will please even the jaded.