Jack Wright/Michel Doneda/Tatsuya Nakatani - No Stranger to Air (Sprout)

Last year, Nate Dorward reviewed this trio’s beautifully enigmatic SOS Editions debut, and his experience matched my own. Earlier this year, I bought a bunch of Wright’s back catalog, and this newer offering was tucked away in the package. I heard it once and was so surprised I put it away for several months.

Elegance and understatement have now been replaced by some of the most in-your-face skull-boiling I’ve heard from any of these three, and I’ll admit to some initial disappointment. However, on coming back to this one over the past couple of weeks, the almost unbearable tension and release in the music have changed my listening completely. Where the SOS disc presented sound and silence serially, the boundaries between them even slightly blurred, No Stranger is much more unified, the fact that the trio sounds physically closer together here fostering the aesthetic. Whether or not this results from the mix, the playing is condensed, a series of overlaps, interruptions and half-finished phrases that smell like old-time radio dialogue.

The music moves in waves of innovation and retrospection. Linkages with the past are somehow simultaneously more present and buried. Shrills and overtones abound, the two saxophonists reeking “new thing” havoc on my unsuspecting ears when I was prepared for 21st century intricacy. Then, without warning, some kind of dial-tone drone, an illusory hint of electricity and an ending, a hollow pop, the sudden stop after a long fall, the slow decay of a rhythm. For the last of these, just check out Nakatani’s opening gestures—a clattering roll that slows to a trickle, slickly picking up a bit of momentum again before disintegrating. Transient peak whistles, thuds and tiny engines drone, buzz and chirp above Nakatani’s expertly recorded bass drum and equally forceful chimes, until they suddenly disappear with a mild clatter.

The horns are of a piece, breath matching shake and flutter matching slow trill in ways that are both beautiful and almost too vocal for comfort. Bowed and struck percussion of all sorts complement perfectly every nuance Wright and Doneda can serve up, admittedly no mean feat and even more convincingly accomplished on this new disc.

The live recording is very nicely detailed, the entire frequency spectrum being wonderfully captured, and it’s all here, from the lowest rumblings to the most piercing sopranino, almost bell-like at times. I’m glad I didn’t try to talk about this disc when it came out. Some things just take time.

~ Marc Medwin