Fabian Gisler - Backyard Poets

hatOLOGY 645

Free improv and jazz have always shared nebulous borders. Bassist Fabian Gisler holds no qualms about trafficking eloquently in either region of inquiry. The members of his quartet are similarly versed and together they create music that is refreshingly independent of idiomatic rigidity. Pianist Colin Vallon combed a similar polyglot coiffure on his own Hat debut. Saxophonist Henrik Walsdorff bridges the dry melodic textures of players like Konitz and Giuffre with the pointillism of John Butcher. Lastly, there’s drummer John Schröder, comfortable playing countable meters or pulse-resistant palpitations all the while keeping things consciously free of convention unless called for.

The disc’s first seven tracks come from a studio session in Zürich and though freely improvised, they hang together like a continuous suite. The last three come from a club date in Basel recorded three months earlier. The sea change evident between the two sets is striking, intimated by Wallon’s “Sans Un Mot”, a gossamer ballad with a distinctive ECM-ish patina and a few other fleeting moments of tunefulness, but otherwise unexpected. On the Zürich pieces, Vallon regularly ventures beneath the hood of his instrument, generating metallic drones and shimmering textures or dampening the strings to call up creaks and sundry clatter. Schröder plays primarily with brushes, keeping quiet commentary percolating at a low simmer that can just as easily rise to a voluble roar. Walsdorff voices spiraling lines of similarly varying dynamics and speed that range from the smudged vibrato striations of “A New Life” to the whispery flutters of “Sham King”. The clarity of Gisler’s pizzicato during the passages of more intense activity suffers a bit by comparison, but not to any great degree of severity.

The Basel portion of the program has a prevailing jazz feel, beginning with the feisty “Starksy’s Delight”, a modal vamp built on Gisler’s flexing ostinato that pays respect to postbop of early 70s vintage. “Freedom Speech” works off Vallon’s prepared keys and what sounds like Gisler playing high on the bridge another rhythmic repeating pattern providing the grist as Walsdorff’s alto dances in cyclic arcs. “Neues Stück” serves up the closet thing to straight swing with a unison head and shifting time signatures, but does an about face into freer territory in its final minutes. Critic Tom Gtseiger’s contributes playfully absurdist musings in his accompanying notes, doing little to elucidate the players or music, but providing a clever counterpart to their efforts at escaping the routine.

~ Derek Taylor