A RogueArt Deuce

Rogue Art 5

Madison, Wisconsin is not a town renowned for a populous improv presence. The biggest names in the area are Roscoe Mitchell and Richard Davis, both deserving of doyen status. Players like Scott Fields and Hanah Jon Taylor occupy a secondary “celebrity” tier not all that well known even within the city limits. Taylor’s brushes with fame have been periodic, but repeatedly stymied by preferences and personality. In particular, there is his fickle temperament and tendency toward alienating club owners and booking agents, traits he may have picked up from his former employer, Miles Davis. One consequence is a discography still countable on a single hand. Bassist Malachi Favors is much better known, but pickings are also lean when it comes to his sessions as a leader. The posthumous Live at Last adds another entry and also accords Taylor an audience larger than he’s had in a long while. Drummer Vincent Davis, frequent sideman with Mitchell, completes the trio. The results, captured mainly from a concert gig on the University of Wisconsin campus, are a mixed bag.

The most persistent problem with the set is Favors’ amplification. His strings exude a blubbery resonance that leads to some weird intonation issues on several of the pieces and proves particularly invasive during a series of rumbling strums on the bop racecourse “Au Privave.” A methodical, even plodding tactility hinders his playing elsewhere, as with the wobbly walking that opens “Beware the Wolf.” Davis is a colorful drummer and does his best to compensate, moving fluidly from textures to strapping pocket-centered beats, but it still takes a bit of time for him and Favors to gel. The opening improv “Talkin’ to You” finds them largely playing past each other while Taylor turns in some tough Sonny Rollins reminiscent tenor. Taylor also plugs in his keyboards on several occasions including an overly diffusive reading of “Maghostut”, and the funky, stops-pulled “Electric Elephant Dance” a track that unexpectedly turns Tangerine Dream-ish in its final minutes, but it’s his switchblade sax work on the former piece that proves much more incisive. The final selection, a shared extemporization on the old black folk song “My Babe”, comes from a gig six days later at the Velvet Lounge. The fidelity is dodgier and Favors’ sounds even murkier, but the arrival of a thunderous energy in the second half surmounts the sketchy aural surroundings. This disc isn’t a prizewinner, but there are stretches of exhilaration and surprise that make it worth a look.

Rogue Art 6

No Side Effects cooks up a two course feast for Roscoe Mitchell fans through a pair of generously sequenced discs taped last winter in Madison studio. Mitchell is in excellent company with Chicagoans Harrison Bankhead and Davis joining him on a colossal two dozen tracks. He brings plenty of instruments to the party rotating through soprano, alto, tenor and bass saxophones, flute, and piccolo and turning to his patented percussion cage on certain other pieces. Considering the breadth of the program, it almost feels like overkill, but Mitchell’s restless compositional proclivities make for reliable insurance against matters growing stale. Davis’ skills as a colorist come into play frequently, as does Bankhead’s aptitude for more classically oriented sonorities with bow. “Poem” couples grainy legato streaks with a dour arco undercurrent pocked by sparsely placed cymbal ripples. “From Red to Rusk” also pivots on Bankhead’s seesawing bundle of horsehair and supplies a soapbox for Mitchell’s garrulous alto. “Trio Four” teams flute with more cumbrous arco and mallets in a mellifluous combination that also sounds ominous at its edges. “Frame Three” traffics in colorful percussion and string play to create a calmative tone poem of struck and plucked surfaces before shifting gears into a caustic convergence of bass sax gurgles, icy cymbal swells and razor wire bass. The liquid harmonics of “Ride” and “Yellow Night” offer up other chamberish delights.

Lest the reader think the program weighted to heavily toward highbrow improv, there is also plenty of bruised-knuckle free jazz on hand. “Flash” is all pugilistic collisions and slaloming soprano. “Shake Up” starts with the portentous tumble of teeth-snapping bass strings and snowballing drums, compounding to set up torque for Mitchell’s whirlpool tenor. The lengthy “Parched Plain” that opens the second disc erupts with an effusive force as Mitchell steels himself for a marathon alto blowout that brings to mind “Chasin’ Another Trane” in its locomotive single-mindedness. “Enfold” is similarly meteoric with Mitchell’s alto shooting through a frothing curl of rhythm for the better part of seven minutes, leaving an artery of decaying multiphonics in his wake. Summary blurbs arrive relatively easy with this music, but none comes close to capturing the diversity and creativity that constitute sounds. Better to allow the ears the pleasure of that exercise. Mitchell could have taken cutting shears to several of the percussion cage pieces, but overall this is an estimable program that, especially when approached as two distinct albums, holds together very well. Easily recommended to true believers, it’s also a great package for those either un- or under familiar with man’s oeuvre.

~ Derek Taylor