Adam Rudolph’s Moving Pictures - Dream Garden

Justin Time

As with previous Adam Rudolph projects, rhythm lies at the root of this new outing. Stacked and often percolating profusely with polymetric complexity, the disc’s fourteen tracks pull from a plentitude of ethnic sources and instruments. Rudolph’s percussive arsenal alone includes thumb pianos, gourds, caxixi (basket shakers), carcaba (metal castanets), naccara (Turkish drum) and tarija (goblet drum). The mighty Hamid Drake, no newcomer to Rudolph’s rhythmic peregrinations, joins him on drum kit and frame drum and the result is a match made in drum maven heaven.

Where the session deviates from some past efforts is in the strength of the other participants, particularly the horn section of Graham Haynes, Ned Rothenberg and Steve Gorn. The latter two players divide much of their time between Asian wind instruments like shakuhachi and bansuri flutes and Western reeds, mainly clarinets. Haynes’ brass brings another authoritative edge and it’s apparent from the onset that horns are not intimidated by the assemblage of powerful. A third ensemble contingent consists of strings with Ken Wessel asserting a voluble presence on electric and acoustic guitars and Brahim Fribgane, the former acoustic and electric guitar Brahim Fribgane plucking oud and doubling on additional percussion.

Rudolph divides the program into longer tunes and shorter interstitial pieces. “Oshogbo” exudes a heavy African vibe via shakers, talking drums, pulsing bass and hard riffing horns and winds. Wessel weaves through the resulting thicket leaving behind a trail of metallic amplified strums. Barely over a minute in length, “Violet Hour” exchanges percussion for the chamber blend of harmonizing horns and strings while the more expansive “Twilight Lake” serves as a framework for Fribgane’s fibrillating oud blues. The snippet “Scintilla” sounds like an ideation forcibly extricated from the mind of Chadbourne in its blend of prickly string riffing, bent thumb piano pecking and restless clarinet interlocutions. The mbiras of the street band sounding “Happiness Road” are more inviting, braiding with flute and shakers in a syncopated shuffle that skillfully bridges melodic and rhythmic concerns. It’s territory trampled in even greater garrulous fashion on the raucously polyphonous track “The Sphinx”.

Parts of other pieces are equally deserving of explication, particularly Rothenberg’s stunning shakuhachi improvisation on “Cousin of the Moon” answered in kind by a blistering cornet solo from Haynes and a drum deluge by Drake. In the interest of preserving a sense of surprise though, perhaps its best to skip to set’s conclusion. “Walking the Curve” brings the band gloriously full circle, coupling Fribgane’s dancing oud with sintir, frame drum, bass clarinet, cornet, bansuri and guitar in a funky North African strut that serves as fitting capper to what just might be the finest album of Rudolph’s career.

~ Derek Taylor