Guy/Crispell/Lytton - Phases of the Night

Intakt 138

There is something tremendously fitting about Barry Guy engaging the piano-trio format, as he has for three releases with pianist Marilyn Crispell and drummer Paul Lytton. After all, the bassist was at the forefront of European free deconstruction of the format forty years ago, in a group with pianist Howard Riley and a succession of drummers. From disassembling Miles and Bill Evans toward poised mini-suites of the members’ own pens, to electro-acoustic improvisation, that trio did it all. Though it might be something of a misnomer to label Riley the British Paul Bley, there was an affinity for that music early on, something to which Crispell is no stranger to – delving into the songbook of Annette Peacock, for example, on Nothing Ever Was, Anyway (ECM, 1997). Phases of the Night follows Guy’s fascination with surrealist painting in title over four meaty, directed improvisations.

The reason that Riley wasn’t a European Bley was because he replaced tonal ambiguity with directness and poise, even within what are otherwise loose structures. Even as Crispell places herself spatially behind other instrumentalists in a group she’s still a guiding force, displaying an affinity for Riley’s approach. She colors the angles at wide intervals behind and around Guy’s five-string hammered fullness, spinning atonal ellipses in jarring cycles. It’s a strange facet of this music that one feels holes in her lines – even where they are dense – and wants to fill them in, thereby creating extreme tension (but not ambiguity). From this, a rondo form emerges at nearly the seven-minute mark of the title track, Crispell off at a foreground run but still pockmarking her phrases as the jitter of knitting needles, brushes and bass thwack spray the ground behind her. The pace then slackens to fractured points of light, Crispell replaying her egg-like clusters and flecks toward a tumbling group obsession with minutae. To a degree, density and sparse detail are the main poles by which the trio structures its music, slabs of sonic ground worked over until most of the paint falls away and leaves a curious residue of unfamiliar objects. Though “Nardis” might appear distant, one must keep in mind that the history in such pieces imbues every brushstroke this trio makes.

~ Clifford Allen