Michael Keith/ John Oswald/ Roger Turner - Number Nine

Emanem 4129

The current free improv directory is so crowded that it’s an exercise in futility trying to keep pace. Scores of players ply the non-idiomatic idiom in locales across the globe. The situation is so sweeping that an industrial-sized tickler file is necessary to attempt to maintain tabs on them all. Take Toronto resident Michael Keith, a guitarist I was unaware of prior to sliding this new disc into my CD tray. Notes hint at his relatively recent entry into the free improv sector somewhere around early 2001. Several years later, Keith jumped at the fortuitous chance to gig with elders, in this case fellow Toronto improviser John Oswald and Englishman Roger Turner. A series of performances followed along with a satisfying trip to the studio where these nine tracks were recorded.

From the onset, the trio betrays a strong post-Bailey, post-Parker, post-Lytton sensibility, dealing in scrapes and scribbles and harsh, but often dazzling, sounds. Keith cops to a former life as a rock and blues performer in the booklet and there are places were stunted riffs and splintered chords from those tablatures come fleetingly to the fore. The manic bottleneck detours of “Instants” suggest one such stroll down memory lane. His picking can be nettlesome and abstract, but there are also regular returns to rhythmically grounded strums. On “Nine” he sounds like a demented Flamenco artist, implosive arpeggios shaving off his strings to dance with Oswald’s clucking and wheedling exhortations. Keith makes use of amplification, but sparingly, and mainly in the service of conjuring and sustaining low aqueous drones. His ghostly operatic vocals, most prevalent on the closing “Harbourfront” bring to mind Robbie Basho. Much of the time, Turner plays like a man possessed, his blurred sticks sounding like knitting needles scuttling across cymbals to create a brittle percussive static. Plenty of detritus dapples his drumheads, furthering the sense of friction in his barrage. Oswald brings his Plunderphonics concept to the party, rising teakettle whistles and sustained wails alternating with murmuring reed pops and flutters, his alto becoming vessel for a swathe of extended techniques.

The three players aren’t ones to take themselves too seriously either and a welcome amount of humor invests the set. Keith caps “Sister” with the summary statement “weird”, and a combination chuckle and raspberry culminates “Canal.” Another wise move is to limit the disc’s length to a comparatively modest 50 minutes, a span that leaves little time for listeners to weary. The blueprint and implements are familiar, but this trio still manages to stake their own claim.

~ Derek Taylor