Four More from Utech

Fine-tuned and fecund, the Utech apparatus continues to press shiny new product to the tune of roughly four new releases per month. That schedule may not seem like much in the context of the majors, but on the scale of a small indie outfit, it’s damn enviable output. In the interim since my first Utech survey, eight more titles have hit the streets. The pending payload for May and June is already advertised on the label website. To state it plainly, I can’t keep up. So, in the interest of providing some coverage at the cost of a catchall critique here are sketches on four selections from the aforementioned eight that particularly caught my ear.

Baczkowski & Padmanabha – Tongue Rust and Lead Moth

Utech 29

As with so many other permutations of jazz instrumentation, there exists a prevailing opinion that saxophone and drums duos have largely been “done to death.” Steve Baczkowski brings something new to the hardly fledgling format with this collection of eight improvised duets with percussionist Ravi Padmanabha. His foghorn baritone eructations on the opening “Tongue” flex and billow against a steady drum clatter, the resulting stunted phrases regularly strong-armed into submission. “Rust” builds to an even more thunderous racket with whinnying sax blasts and bruising snare punctuations suddenly dispersing into a stretch of downcast lyricism. Padmanabha’s brushes shape a perambulating beat on the contemplative “Brain” prompting Baczkowski to reel off a succession of gnarled rhythmic trills, peppered by weird Aylerian melodic quotes and mouthpiece pops. The two actually have quite a bit in common with Paul Flaherty and Chris Corsano, another powerhouse sax plus cans combo that specializes in pealing noise pocked by detours into disarming melodicism and textured interplay. Baczkowski’s meeting with that more established pair on last year’s The Dim Bulb first cemented the notion of kindred souls and it’s further borne out in the company of Padmanabha. Here, his playing is just as heated and excoriating with reeds regularly masticated into mushy pulp. Padmanabha manages a malleable balance between brawny momentum with sticks and vivid color with bowed cymbals and peripheral bells and gongs. For those who feel that such pairings begin and end with Interstellar Space or Duo Exchange this edition-of-200 memento just might alter your perceptions.

Matana Roberts Quartet – The Calling

Utech 30

Matana Roberts has made the transition from Windy City to the City That Never Sleeps in style. While I miss her old Chicago ensemble Sticks and Stones, she’s swiftly set about hooking up with New York colleagues that ably ease the ache. Recorded at Zebulon this six track set finds her in the company of trumpeter Taylor Ho Bynum and two new names to me, bassist Thomson Kneeland and percussionist Tomas Fujiwara. Roberts has long concerned herself with adapting unlikely song recruits to the free jazz cause. In this particular case it’s the Billie Holiday vehicle “My Man” and the Louis Armstrong staple “Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans.” Both picks allow for lengthy hot-to-cool interplay that hearkens back to earlier jazz forms and exudes a heady aroma of New Orleans. The less left-field Sun Ra madrigal “ We Travel the Spaceways” makes for a third inspired choice. Stretched out to a daunting sixteen minutes it tests the players’ mettle in extrapolating on spartan source material, but sadly contains no vocal. One of the best features of the band is its flexibility of voicing and attack. Roberts and Bynum achieve a particular tight weave on the opening unison salvo of the title piece setting up a series of supple sub-divisions that includes various duo and trio formations. Fujiwara’s late evolving drum solo marks a lag point, but the rest of the piece is right on target. Bynum blows some gregarious textured brass against a background of sinister arco bass and cymbals on “1863”, but it’s the more straightforward blowing numbers that speak to the band’s strengths. The audience is a bit chatty, the recording somewhat distant, but neither condition is detrimental to the music, and the concert comes easily recommended as a whole.

Ras Moshe – Live Spirits, Vol. 3

Utech 34

Ras Moshe embraces late period Coltrane as his primary inspirational source on this third entry in the continuing Utech anthology of his work. I’m familiar with Moshe mostly from his postings on several free jazz chat sites. Through those dispatches, he has come across as passionate devotee of the music with a substantial command of its history. Recorded live at The Stone in January of this year, his work here limns the Coltrane legacy closely with a single nearly 70-minute piece yoked with the ungainly “Umkonto We Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) for John Coltrane and Tyrone Washington” as signifier. Each of the sextet’s members plays his designated historical part admirably. Pianist Walden Wimberley pulls back the curtain on some very serviceable Tyner-tailored chops. Drummer Jackson Krall captures the propulsive thrust of Elvin, sneaking in more abstract veins of Rashied when the situation dictates. A strong bass tandem of Matt Heyner and Todd Nicholson echoes the classic Jimmy Garrison and Don Rafael Garrett union of Live in Seattle. In the frontline, Moshe and fellow reedist Joe Rigby choose from a saxophone cache that includes tenor, alto, soprano and sopranino constituents. Swirling aggregations rise and recede in an unbroken medley of ensemble and solo segments, though the results are very much a sum-over-parts proposition with the players barely pausing for breath before the next concerted sally presents itself. It’s all very exciting and engrossing for the first twenty-minutes, but by that point, my attention began to suffer under the constant cannonade of ululating horns and galloping rhythm. Imitation may be the highest form of flattery and Moshe’s prolonged paean to Coltrane is uncommonly devout, but I still get the lingering feeling that his own voice would find freer expression through less slavish simulation.

Hubback – Ambiance de la Cave a Vin

Utech 37

An undeniable sense of ready-made intrigue envelopes this release even before disc is extricated from sleeve. The premise: percussionist Steve Hubback sequestered in a wine cellar 50 klicks west of Paris with three gongs and a stainless steel sculpture of his own construction. Roll tape. The results remotely recall the work of fellow tone scientist Steve Micus, whose music derived from flowerpots and stones has been a staple of the ECM stable for over thirty years. Hubback’s approach is less overtly meditative and lofty than that of Micus, but achieves a similar cerebral feel. Three untitled pieces serve as sounding boards for his carefully configured devices. On the first, he sets up resonating percussive waves that overlap and attain an almost drone-like sustain within the constricted acoustics of the cellar. There’s the vaguest semblance of melody in the scintillating self-replicating whorls of sound. The ensuing hypnotic effect reminds me of expanding symmetrical ripples set in motion by pebbles puncturing the limpid surface tension of pond. Twenty minutes tick off in what seems like a fraction of the time. The next piece parses out more easily recognizable beats and brings to mind Gamelan patterns in their use of repetition and polyrhythms. The last employs scraped surfaces and darkly shimmering tones to shape a murky funereal dirge. Both tracks are bathed in heavy metallic echo that almost sounds electronically treated, though there is no mention of such processing in the brief annotations included with the disc. Hubback is definitely onto something here, though what it is exactly I’m left unsure. Even without a readily accessible roadmap delineating artistic intention, the music stands as an entrancing experience and one I’ll not soon forget.

~ Derek Taylor