One of the tangential pleasures of Stephen Gauci’s several albums for Cadence Jazz comes in the rich acoustics captured by sound engineer Reuben Radding. As readers of these pages are well aware, Radding is also an accomplished bassist and improviser who keeps busy with his own docket of projects. An immediate upshot of hearing his audio earmark on Gauci’s music was the desire to hear him in league with the saxophonist on a directly musical level. That wish comes true with this recent CDR release, limited to a pressing of 250 copies and packaged in a stark white digipack with red rubber-stamped particulars.
Taped in the summer of 2004, the session strays a bit from Gauci’s previous discs in that it truly is a communal effort between the three participants. Radding and drummer Todd Capp hold equal footing with the saxophonist and each of the eight pieces is collectively improvised. Gauci’s chameleonic persona evident in the past is present here in abundance and he is not one to cling to any single voice for very long. His lines modulate in widths ranging from fine tip to jumbo marker, speeding up and slowing down his delivery such that time becomes liberatingly elastic. Ominous in mood, “The Elephants are Coming” finds him cycling from a slow purr to keening trill and back again on tenor. “Here It Is” encapsulates a near non-stop wash of industrious tenor oratory.
Another lure is the chance to hear Gauci apply his idiosyncratic talents to clarinet and flute. Featured at length on the Marxian “Duck Soup,” Gauci’s clarinet moves from lush and porous to pointed and mercurial, weaving with the woody strains of arco bass and pattering drums. His dry, dancing flute appears only on “The Rabbit Knows” in a compelling but all too brief audition. Radding is a similar variable wonder at his strings, thrumming out ripe cascades or locking on a fleshy ostinato as the instant dictates. His bow play bridges exactitude with a galvanizing degree of temerity, coruscating harmonics intersecting with Gauci’s pinched pitch peals on “Tales of Whales.” Capp completes the package with a light, active touch on his kit that carries subtle semblances of Cyrille through a battery of textured cross-rhythms.
The overall feel of the date is one of purposeful development over aggressive energy. Fangs come out on occasion, but more often, the players pace themselves in gradually building each piece from scratch. Even when the consensus calls for sprinting at a brisk clip, the effect is one of measured intensity with structure sustained and clutter avoided. Radding once again handles the recording, mixing and mastering duties and the date comes through in the choice fidelity of his past efforts. Fixed and relatively few in number, it’s one to jump on sooner rather than later.
~ Derek Taylor
Posted by derek on January 10, 2007 9:23 PM.................................................. © 2003 - 2006 bagatellen ..................................................