By Sammy Stein
Tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman and trumpet player Nate Wooley continue their long-running musical partnership with the release of Polarity 4. It is released digitally and as a limited edition of 500 CDs on Burning Ambulance Music.
Polarity 4 sees different directions explored as the duo find yet more ways to investigate musical possibilities between their individuality and shared musical imaginations.
Perelman has already amassed a varied and wide-ranging discography, with releases on numerous labels including Enja, Clean Feed, Leo, Homestead, and Cadence, to name a few. It might seem there are few ways still open to explore for Perelman yet, here with Wooley, Polarity 4 proves this is not the case. Its nine tracks include the first overdubbing in Perelman’s catalogue, with the opening track, Polarity 1, featuring ‘two’ of Perelman and Wooley improvising with each other and themselves. Perelman and Wooley prove themselves improvisers willing to seek and explore different thoroughfares among the much-travelled experimental landscape they inhabit. Perelman is always finding new ways to play with others, even those he has worked with many times before.
The Polarity 4 CDs are heavy-duty gatefold mini-LP sleeves printed on textured paper, with artwork by Burning Ambulance Music co-founder I.A. Freeman.
As ever, where Perelman is involved, the tracks on Polarity 4 serve as part of the continuing conversation Perelman is involved in with music and fellow musicians. Track 1 is busy, with the aforementioned overdubbing serving to create a textured sound with the musicians responding to each other and their own phrasing. The contrast in Track 2 is apparent because now we have ‘just’ two musicians, yet somehow they work a sound that is almost as busy as the opening track. Fast runs are echoed and tossed back and forth between the instruments, each return featuring a variation, however minuscule. Perelman regularly picks up the note that Wooley finishes on to create a continuum of sound. The lack of harmonics and the clarity of the streams of sound mean each note is crystal clear.
Track 3 sees more overlapping of individual phrasing, creating interesting conjectures of harmonies – sometimes jarring, but at other times gloriously developed as the staccato section sees each musician responding harmonically to the notation that goes before. Track 4 has a playful, yet competitive air as the musicians trade short, punchy lines and phrases. The middle section involves a back and forth of slurry, schmaltzy phrases, ranging from the depths of the sax to the highest trills of the trumpet.
Track 5 is wonderfully layered as trumpet and sax weave around each other, overlap, and work their individual lines, coming together for an almost classical duet format towards the end, while Track 6 has a gentle start, with hushed phrasing from both players before it slowly builds towards a tuneful end. Track 7 is an exploration of harmonics, while Track 8 is perhaps the stand-out track in terms of musical interaction, involving some brilliant register switching and changes between melodies and counterpoint. Track 9 sees the musicians finding yet more ways for sax and trumpet to interact, with full measure taken of the brassy tones of the trumpet, cutting across the timbre of the sax.
Polarity 4 features creative and explorative musicianship, as you might expect from players of this calibre. There is harmony, contrast, and above all, a sense of competitive, yet enjoyable and controlled mastery of sound.
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