Philip Gayle - The Mommy Row

Family Vineyard

Alan Ginsberg once observed to a class on Buddhism that statements delivered in anger can only engender anger, an observation as true as it is obvious. The same principle ("in kind") applies to excitement, and New York-based improviser Philip Gayle's fifth full-length and first for the Vineyard is, at its heart, an all-embracing outburst of unbridled enthusiasm. The guitarist's stream-of-consciousness approach is innocently experienced yet evinces a mastery of sonic possibilities. Nothing clinical or "aw shucks" wry here, however. Gayle is more than willing to explore new sounds and new ideas; this music lives to be reborn.

This sense of ceaseless... one almost dares to say helpless... discovery is immediately palpable as Gayle on the opening track, "Gyo, Gyo, Gyo, Gyo". The action is frenetic, the momentum is a hurtle. And even on the disc's more reflective moments, high energy levels are maintained. Gayle's multi-layered improvisational style can initially be a form sensory assault is due to, and it is a style made all the more dense, not to mention overwhelming, via the use of overdubs. (This, after all, is a solo recital in the contemporary mode, i.e., the work simultaneously of one person and many personalities.) The guitarist's "bent" pulled and hammered guitar work, his incorporation of toy pianos, all manner of percussive and liquid "found" instruments, create a sound world often simultaneously transparent and brutal. It is also a world in which jarring shifts in tonality and temporality become the norm.

This is not to say that planning is absent from the pieces collected on The Mommy Row; quite the contrary. "Payphone" is too structured to be an eruption: a guitar duet that meanders between B-flat and G, with touches of E major thrown in for good measure, Gayle providing a nice modal workout over what might loosely (and awkwardly) be termed rhythmically staggered and chromatically inflected arpeggios. It's a nice reverie after the squall and scree of "Kanojo No Pan", a rather berserk Partchian deconstruction of what I assume to be a twelve-string axe. And, in one of the disc's finest moments, Gayle proves he can be beautifully distracted away from his often fragmentary approach. Despite the connotations of its title, "Zoomly Zoomly," opens up a negative, meditative space in the program, following "Gyo..." as it does with a portentously repeated gong. High-pitched drones -- one of the only times I could detect that effects were in use here -- keep the piece anchored as it shifts in and out of focus, the overall aesthetic being both luminous and terrifying.

In the final analysis, though, every standout track here is just one aspect of a hugely creative, unified effort. The Mommy Row is one of those discs that rewards reluctantly, but once it does start to reward, it does so consistently. It is also one of the most adventurous, some might posture prickly, releases Vineyard boss Eric Weddle has dropped thus far. Congratulations to all involved for a challenging and often moving listen.

~ Marc Medwin