James McKain / Damon Smith / Weasel Walter - ....seeing the way the mole tunnels... (Balance Point Acoustics / International School of Evidence, 2025)

 

By Richard Blute 

“I’ve always been attracted to extremity in music. I started listening to free jazz at the same time I was listening to punk and no wave in the ’80s. I put them on a somewhat even keel, and although they were different idioms, I felt they were saying similar things. That’s really the core of my aesthetic—I want music to be wet with bodily fluids, a certain bloody-mindedness that’s part of my music and attitude. I want to see sweat and blood, a little pain and struggle in music. This is not a style—it’s an abstract idea applied to music, and I’m more interested in those essences.”

-Weasel Walter, All About Jazz interview, 2009.

I spent most of my teen and student years listening to hardcore punk and other extreme music. So I feel a great affinity for the quote from Walter above, and that attitude can be found in abundance on ....seeing the way the mole tunnels... by James McKain, Damon Smith and Weasel Walter. Listening to this album for the first time, I felt the same rush of excitement and the same desire to bounce around my office that I used to get when I picked up a new Dead Kennedys album.

Weasel Walter is a drummer, guitarist and composer. His most well-known band is probably The Flying Luttenbachers, which he describes as brutal prog. He has a band called Vomitatrix, whose music he describes as acid grind. He has a band called Cellular Chaos, a noise-punk band. (It’s my favorite of his ongoing projects.) He tours regularly with Lydia Lunch, legendary singer of the no-wave scene. But he’s equally at home with jazz. I saw him perform a fantastic duo with Vinny Golia. His album with Damon Smith and John Butcher, The Catastrophe Of Minimalism, is superb.

Damon Smith is one of free jazz’s great bassists. He has developed a highly expressive language for improvising on bass which is well-displayed on this album. His label, Balance Point Acoustics, is a fine repository for his music. I find myself exploring it often. Check out the album with Walter and John Butcher mentioned above, or Mimetic Holds or Groundwater Recharge, which are favorites of mine.

I’m less familiar with saxophonist James McKain, only having heard him previously on the 2024 album A Man’s Image with James Paul Nadien, Jared Radichel and Tom Weeks. It’s a fine album with the two saxes providing an intense slashing attack. It was on my 2024 year-end list, and listening to it again now, I should have ranked it even higher.

On ....seeing the way the mole tunnels…, McKain is ferocious right from the opening notes of the first track, Wrecked Brain in the Capital. Walter’s drumming is unrelenting, pushing his partners on to more and more intense music. But he can also be more subtle, adding texture to the more quiet sections, as on the track A Cloud Which Does Not Last. Smith switches back and forth between bowing and plucking his bass, so that at times he’s conversing with the sax and at times adding more percussion. What I like best about the music is that it is very much a conversation. None of the three of them are grabbing the spotlight, every note struck is in response to something their partners have played.

Fun side note. All of the titles of the album come from the poetry of German novelist, poet and playwright Thomas Bernhard. I’ve never read his poems, but I have read a few of his novels. His style could be described as lyrical ranting. He wrote in an obsessive freeform style about all the ugliness he saw in the human condition. But at the same time, there’s an almost hypnotic beauty in his writing. It can also be hysterically funny. I can hear all of those aspects of Bernhard’s writing in this great album.

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Vinny Golia - Trios and Sextet

By Lee Rice Epstein

In addition to the many ensembles Vinny Golia leads and directs, he is also a steady sideman and featured player with a number of groups led by younger players. Among several he’s played on this year, three stood out.

Vinny Golia, Max Johnson and Weasel Walter - No Refunds (Unbroken Sounds, 2023) 

Bassist Max Johnson recently released this trio date from 2014. Along with drummer Weasel Walter, Johnson is a brilliantly free improviser. The set runs just under an hour, flying so fast and free with Golia performing Dolphy-esque leaps alongside Walter’s percussive fills. A fascinating drummer, Walter has a wind player’s knack for pulling back suddenly before a roaring processional. And Johnson playfully jumps from a kind of supporting role to one more goading and directional. His round tone is sometimes reminiscent of Ronnie Boykins (the set overall displays an early ESP-Disk’ energy, especially some runs where Golia evokes John Tchicai).

 

Vinny Golia, Stueart Liebig and Nathan Hubbard - There Is a Light That Goes On Automatically (Castor & Pollux Music, 2023) 

The second release for the trio of drummer Nathan Hubbard with Golia and Liebig, who plays fretted and fretless basses. Hubbard's another one of Golia's longtime collaborators, and the three are so beautifully in sync throughout two sets recorded over a weekend in August 2019, "There Is a Light That Goes On Automatically" (from Santa Barbara) and "Was It a Lost Weekend?" (from Long Beach). As a melodic, percussive player, Hubbard sets a tone for the group that calls back to John Stevens and Eddie Prévost small groups. 

Vijay Anderson’s Silverscreen Sextet - Urban Jungle: Los Angeles (self-released, 2023) 

Urban Jungle is Vijay Anderson’s second album with his Silverscreen Sextet. This time around, he’s shuffled the lineup slightly: cornetist Bobby Bradford, saxophonist Vinny Golia, tubaist William Roper, and bassist Adam Lane form the core band, while artist crushed blacks created an immersive video that functions as another instrument. Anderson has deep roots in the Los Angeles creative-music scene, born and raised in Southern California, he’s played with many West Coast luminaries (including Bradford, Golia, and Roper) for decades. And on several other projects he’s worked on with Bradford, Golia, Roper, and Lane, he’s consistently drawn inspiration from visual media.

To go a little deeper on this one, Urban Jungle: Los Angeles explores the city’s complexities through five chapters and interludes, which include dedications to historian and critic Mike Davis, the brilliant artist Simon Rodia (best known for his Nuestro Pueblo, or Watts Towers), firefighter Sam Haskins (both the first Black firefighter at the Los Angeles Fire Department and the first LAFD firefighter to die in the course of duty), streetcar operator Arcola Philpot (the first Black operator for the Los Angeles Railway) and the humanitarian Father Luis Olivares (who lived by his religious ethics and made his church a haven for El Salvadoran refugees in the 1980s).

Through both Anderson’s composing and the group’s improvising, the evocation of these stories weaves a complicated tapestry. Come to this album ready to learn, ready to think, and ready to have your complacency challenged.

And some visuals:

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Introducing Experimental Guitarist Sandy Ewen

By Eyal Hareuveni

Canadian, Houston-based experimental guitarist-visual artist-architect Sandy Ewen planned to focus this year on music, already released four new albums playing solo and in collaboration with others. Ewen is known from her collaborative work with double bass player Damon Smith and drummer Weasel Walter. She plays the guitar flat on on her lap and her approach is centered around found objects and extended guitar techniques. Ewen sees herself as guiding materials and space rather than executing a preconceived composition. “I like to explore mediums and materials and tease out their essence”, she says.

Sandy Ewen / Damon Smith / Weasel Walter - Live in Texas (Balance Point Acoustics, 2016) ****

Ewen has collaborated closely with double bass player and Balance Point Acoustics label founder Smith since his arrival in Houston in 201o. They recorded a duo album, Background Information (BPA, 2013), and Smith introduced her to avant-guitarist Henry Kaiser, worked together in an ad-hoc quartet with Dutch vocal artist Jaap Blonk, and played in a trio with Smith punk-jazz drummer Walter, that released its debut album, Untitled, on Walter's label (ugEXPLODE, 2012). Ewen continues to collaborate with Walter in a trio with vocalist Lydia Lunch.

Live in Texas offers seven hyperactive and urgent improvisations of the reunited trio of Ewen, Smith and Walter, three were recorded recorded in Austin at the NMASS festival in 2014 and the other four in two venues in Houston - Cactus Records and Avant Garden - with no mention of the time of the latter recordings. This is a hard-working trio, busy searching for uncharted, alien terrains, exploring intense dynamics and then deconstructing its them with sheer brutal force, melting their sound universe into a buzzing, explosive unity and always opts for abstract, structural disruption.

Sandy Ewen & Henry Kaiser - Lake Monsters (Balance Point Acoustics, 2015) ***½

Kaiser wrote the sleeve notes for the debut album of Ewen, Smith and Walter, advising the trio to "forget about melody, harmony and rhythm for the moment and listen to everything else that you can hear going on." Same advice can be applied to this live recording of Kaiser and Ewen, part of a six-hour marathon of Kaiser from December 2013 in Houston that produced two other releases for the Balance Point Acoustics label.

Ewen plays here the electric guitar while Kaiser alternates between electric and acoustic guitars. Ewen plays the guitar flat on her lap, her legs are involved, move and knock the instrument around with refined small gestures and full scale violence. Kaiser alternates between playing standing or in a seated manner, allows for chance within his pedal board. Ewen, the architect, explores nuanced textures while Kaiser, a a research diver in Antarctica, always searches for new sound universes, alien and strange as they may sound. Both playing is quite physical and anything but obvious, but Kaiser, the more experienced and stronger - literally - improviser (he trains in martial arts), is also a much stronger musical personality. His vocabulary references elements from psychedelic rock - as one who is proficient in the Grateful Dead legacy, the history of jazz, different folk and world music traditions and of course free improvised music. But here Kaiser opts to explore together with Ewen otherworldly, sound-based textures and spice these free-formed textures with light, rhythmic ingredients. This modest and inclusive approach enriches Ewen playing and charges these duets with fresh tension.  

Spiderwebs - In between the known and the unknown (Chiastic Society, 2016) ***½

Spiderwebs began is a duo of Ewen and New York-based guitarist Tom Carter, known for his work with acid-folk improvisers Charalambides and in a duo with No Neck Blues Band co-founder Pat Murano. Ewen and Carter began performing in 2003 and already recorded two albums, now augmented by a third guitarist, Houston-based Ryan Edwards, often the sound engineer of Ewen recordings.

Carter and Edwards both draw heavily from psych-rock and drone, while Ewen’s playing is more texture-based. The first three pieces are duo improvisations. Carter and Edwards begin with “Inform the Atmosphere”, a psychedelic, feedback and fuzz-laden drone. Ewen and Edwards continue with “We Were Isolated”, a more spiky and confrontial duet, where both guitarist explore extended techniques through hazy and noisy texture. Ewen and Carter reunite for “The Most Obvious Choice”, an abstract, open-ended texture, that flirts with noise and atmospheric drone. All three guitarists play on the last, the 33-minutes haunting improvisation of “A Happy Conjunction of Conditions and Events” אישא closes this journey with a slow, deep dive into psychedelic, topographic oceans.

Garden medium (Chiastic Society, 2016) ***

Garden medium is the trio of Ewen on guitar and objects, Rebecca Novak on cornet,  autoharp, shortwave radio, glassware and chimes and Carol Sandin Cooley on electronics and objects, as well as the self-titled album of this trio. Cooley is a veteran of the Houston noise scene, performing in such groups as Rotten Piece, Illicit Relationship, Painful Vigil, Black Leather Jesus and many more. Novak’s sound is rooted in her classical music upbringing.

The trio offers a broad and often quite chaotic and abstract sonic spectrum. The patient and emphatic, sound-based interplay follows Ewen ideas sketched on the prepared guitar, suggesting odd and loose structures for the eight spontaneous, slow-cooking improvisations. Novak charges these suggestive textures with fleeting melodic veins, while Cooley and Ewen inject eclectic, alien sounds that intensify the intriguing atmospheres. The last improvisations, “Crassula Muscosa” and “Bald Cypress”, brings this collective improvised process to its most fiery-noisy climax. Now the trio interplay sounds almost joyful in its own weird way.

Sandy Ewen - Tributaries (Chiastic Society, 2016) ***

Tributaries is Ewen’s first solo endeavor, originally issued as a digital download code on an art print in 2013, now presented for the first time on a disc with expanded artwork. This album offers Ewen highly personal playing approach with found objects and extended guitar techniques. She patiently and methodically investigates the sonic spectrum of the guitar as a kind of a mad scientist that explores a noisy object from outer space, and out of these searches sketches nuanced textures. The six improvisations echo and resonate sounds of a guitar and its metallic strings colorful atmospheres, overtones and feedbacks, but more as an instrument that is mutated, manipulated and recreated anew.

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Vinny Golia, Henry Kaiser, Ra-Kalam Bob Moses, Damon Smith & Weasel Walter - Astral Plane Crash (Balance Point Acoustics, 2018) ****

By Eyal Hareuveni

Astral Plane Crash is an expanded version of the long-running, free-improv trio Plane Crash with master guitarist Henry Kaiser, double bass player Damon Smith and drummer Weasel Walter. Kaiser wanted to form such an outfit that is well-versed in different forms of free improvisation - AACM, the distinct European schools, Japanese, Art Rock, Karlheinz Stockhausen intuitive music, the free jazz of Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler and Sun Ra, and post-WWII modern music strategies of improvisation as suggested by composers like Cornelius Cardew, Terry Riley and Iannis Xenakis.

Kaiser chose Smith and Walter, commenting that both know that “music is created in dimensions far beyond melody, harmony, and rhythm”. The Plane Crash trio released two albums so far, Plane Crash (ugExplode, 2009) and Plane Crash Two (New Atlantis, 2015), The Astral Plane Crash quintet introduces two highly experienced improvisers - multi-reedist Vinny Golia and jazz drummer Ra-Kalam Bob Moses. Kaiser and Smith have collaborated before with Golia but it was their first musical meeting with Moses. Golia brought to the to Astral Plane Crash recording session - conducted on April, 2018, in Quincy, Massachusetts - a wide range of woodwind instruments, including an Egyptian flute - kawala,, multiplying the timbral variety of the core trio. Moses anchored the dynamic interplay of the quintet with great sensitivity and clear rhythmic patterns.

Astral Plane Crash offers two epic, collective improvisations. The first, 44-minutes of “Fountain of Dreams” begins like a fiery free jazz improvisation, with Moses suggesting a loose, rolling pulse while Golia articulates the dark atmospheres with his earthy baritone sax, but suddenly the original Plane Crash trio erupts and offers an alternative course, fast, thorny and restless that refuses to settle on any form, pulse or narrative. When these two contrasting courses merge all five musicians sketch an open, supportive interplay that swings between Golia’s dominant, singing tone and Kaiser’s challenging, sharp and dissonant attacks. Moses and Weasel attempt to balance these poles by weaving powerful rhythmic layers while Smith aligns with Kaiser and intensifies the tension with his bowed, amplified double bass. Kaiser introduces the second, 35-minutes of the aptly-titled “Mysterious Journey” with a contemplative, acoustic solo guitar that later interacts gently with Golia’s folk flute, innocent melodies and the light percussive contributions of Moses and Walter.

When Kaiser switches to the electric guitar and Golia takes the soprano sax the interplay becomes tougher and packed with nervous density, but soars fast into cosmic-psychedelic atmospheres and burns with the percolating pulses of Moses and Walter. Astral Plane Crash comes with a 12-page booklet featuring the artwork of Kaiser’s inspiring hero and artistic influence, San Francisco-based, artist-filmmaker Jordan Belson’ series “Death and Transfiguration” (2003), as a mystical visual counterpart to the cosmic mindscapes of this recording. Kaiser writes that Belson’s “films’ imagery was exactly like my dreams… only clouds of light and patterns in space. Synesthetically, I see this same sort of imagery when I listen to and when I play music”. And he adds: “playing music for me is largely an internally visual experience… I'm drifting through glowing clouds of light among coruscating fractal and geometric forms that shimmer in and out of existence… It's pretty much like I have a Jordan Belson movie running inside my head all the time”. No doubt, Astral Plane Crash is a pretty wild experience.

For sale from the label.

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Weasel Walter & Chris Pitsiokos - Drawn and Quartered (2015) ****

By Paul Acquaro

So, the gauntlet has been thrown down on using the term 'extended techniques' (sort of), and I accept the challenge to not use it (maybe). Though such a useful phrase, I'll admit, it's a bit of a shortcut, it's a tad lazy, and it can end up maybe even reinforcing the notion that there is a 'right' way for an instrument to sound. Henceforth, I shall banish the word from my reviews, I will set autocorrect to deal with it.

Drawn and Quatered, a duo effort from saxophonist Chris Pitsiokos and percussionist Weasel Walter comes screaming to life, taking no prisoners in its embrace of extended techniques all the sounds that their instruments can afford. It is an energetic effort from the get go, and the duo uses every side, shape and sound they can to create an intense and interactive set of music.

The names of the tracks - 'Hanged', 'Drawn' and 'Quartered'  - do not suggest anything nice and the music lives up to this. It's brutal, it's bruising and at times it's beautiful. Pitsiokos is a force to be reckoned with - from piercing blasts to deep bellows, overblown passages to relaxed meditations. He is also an excellent match for percussionist Walter, whose work with Mary Halvorson, Nate Wooley, Yoni Kretzmer, Peter Evans, Nels Cline and others has been documented here on the blog. Walter, it seems, is a musician who can incorporate an endless array of objects to effectively extend his rhythmic ideas. The interaction between the two musicians is almost like a game of cat and mouse, with Walter mirroring the woodwind's bursts with fervor and Pitsiokos darting about the complex rhythms expertly. 

It's hard to say if there is a 'melody' or a 'tune' on this album, rather on these tracks there is an endless supply of ideas, starts, and endings that seem motivated by the moment rather than by a well-laid plan, and what we end up with a bountiful and bloodied cornucopia. This is a tremendously energetic duo and a highly recommended album that is simply brimming with ideas.

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Nate Wooley / Scott R. Looney / Damon Smith / Weasel Walter - Scowl (ugEXPLODE, 2011) ****½

By Paul Acquaro

I wonder what would make music like 'Scowl' of interest to the 'lay' listener? I suppose this is a question that has been asked in varying ways many times before, and no doubt will continue to be asked as members enter and (dare I say?) leave the fold of avant garde jazz. I don't pretend to have an answer, nor will I even posit a theory, all I can offer is that It is a compelling listen that offers the small raptures of pleasure in each one of its five sermons.

I believe that a fair comparison can be drawn to the efforts of Evans, Halvorson and Walter's recent release 'Electric Fruit'. In writing about that release, I said it was "a celebration, a joyous racket, a jumble of adjectives and superlatives running roughshod on the expected. The songs are ever shifting and building explorations of texture, tonality and expression." That description fits decently well here too. While the actual connective tissue between efforts is percussionist Weasel Walter, 'Scowl' is a like-minded excursion into purely improvised music that eschews any traditional song structures, harmonic cliches and expected rythmic figures. The music feels uninhibited, flowing and natural, capturing the spirit, even as it at first presents disorder to the ears.

All acoustic, Nate Wooley's trumpet, Damon Smith's bass, Scott R. Looney's piano and Walter's percussion exploit all the angles, sides, valves, keys, strings, and resonant surfaces available. Unbound from convention and expectations, the tracks veer from full throttle collective improvs to quiet exploits between the various combinations and extended techniques of the instruments. While describing each track would be a lexical adventure, an exemplar is 'Tomb Trisects' which begins with shards of bowed bass and leads into a dense mix with voices rising and receding, the musicians creating a journey through sound and time. The piano lays down a spontaneous figure that blends into the trumpet performing a solo that is more texture than sound. Walter lays out at times, and then bursts into the scene with clicks, clacks, thuds, executed with expert timing. Quiet moments appear as well, with Wooley playing short melodic phrases with a tone that brings to mind 1960's Miles Davis.

While 'Scowl' is a recording that requires repeated and intense listening, it is not without reward. It is smart, suggestive, hedonistic and cathartic. Though I have yet to answer the questions I began with, it with assurance that say that on each spin it reveals more and more.

© Paul Acquaro

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Eric Zinman/Mario Rechtern/Weasel Walter – Mermaids and Sirens Know (Studio 234, 2021) ****½

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

I must state from the beginning, that this is the best piano trio that I’ve listened so far in 2021. The fun fact is that Mermaids and Sirens Know comes out ten whole years after the four tracks were recorded. All three players have really made their names heard in the grey, but so appealing to some of us, zone between free jazz, free improvisation, rock and, even, noise. Walter, who is a disciple, of all out punk attack in drumming, has managed to participate in so many great free jazz albums. Call him a jazz drummer too… In bands like the Flying Lutenbachers, but also in various more jazzy formations he has proven his skills. Yes, I’m a fan…Pianist Eric Zinman, apart from being a member of the amazing Linda Sharrock Network, has also shared the same stage and studio with saxophonist Mario Rechtern, again in various formations that cover any ground from improvisation to jazz, to any kind of experimentation.

Mermaids and Sirens is comprised of four tracks with a total duration of more than an hour. All four of them present the three musicians in great form, eager and aggressive to explore. Zinman’s Tayloresque playing allows room for the other two to attack their instruments (which are alto, baritone and sopranino saxes for Rechtern), while he bangs on the keyboard with the force and wit of the great Cecil Taylor.

I’ve already wrote about him, but it makes no justice to him, to label Walter’s playing as just “energetic” or “dynamic”. Apart from being the backbone in all tracks, his interaction with his fellow comrades makes him a point of reference for the cd. Rechtern’s sax playing, as always, make him the ideal partner. Even though he tends to get carried away (but is this a bad thing when we are talking about a free jazz recording?), he never slips out of phenomenon, meaning the collective feeling of the trio. I also believe that he has listened to a lot of Frank Lowe’s playing…

Their aggressive playing leaves enough room for small details that prove fruitful for the listener: Zinman’s piano timbre, Walter’s percussion work on the less noisy parts, the shifts between the saxes from Rechtern.

Overall a great recording, that, so far, has made it to my shortlist for the best of 2021. You can listen and buy here:

@koultouranafigo

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Talibam! & Weasel Walter – Polyp (Mnóad, 2014) ****

By Julian Eidenberger

Listening to Polyp, one could get the impression that the musicians involved are making fun of music. The record abounds with moments of deliberate silliness: goofy voices, short, nonsensical skits and even a piece that could be taken from a TV commercial advertising some nutty religious sect – complete with electronic drums, cheap, muzak-like keyboards and spooky voices intoning “mystery” – are sprinkled throughout the album. This penchant for absurdist humor will delight some and annoy many others, but it won’t come as a big surprise for those who are already familiar with the trio of musicians responsible for Polyp. Talibam, the duo of keyboarder/synth player Matt Mottel and drummer Kevin Shea (also of jazz pranksters Mostly Other People Do the Killing), have never adhered to the rules and standards of official “good taste”, often finding the sublime in the ridiculous. Likewise, Weasel Walter – who adds bass clarinet, guitar and extra percussion here – is certainly not averse to humor himself, as evidenced throughout his career by – among other things – his bizarre glam-rock troupe Vanilla. But apart from the humor, these three gentlemen share a love for a particularly fierce brand of free improvisation, and that’s what Polyp, too, delivers.

It’s actually not a completely new recording; originally released in 2009 on Cd-r only – under the title Keep Your Laws Off My Body! – it has been remixed and re-sequenced for a 2014 release on Belgian laabel Mnóad. That, however, does not diminish its worth; on the contrary, this re-release is quite meritorious considering the intensity of the music. From the get-go, the trio puts the pedal to the metal, opening the album with Quebranto, a track that sounds a bit like an improvisatory take on the faux-dilettantism of everyone’s favorite rock deconstructionists, US Maple. Shilajit, then, which accounts for almost a quarter of the album’s forty minute running time, is clearly a high point here; on top of Shea’s (almost) one-of-a-kind drumming – he lets the drum sticks land as greedily on the skins as a swarm of locusts on a corn field – the band works itself up into a frenzy, with the clarinet-blowing and the 8-bit-twitter of the electronics trying to keep up with the percussion. It’s a strain of improv whose most obvious historical precedents are probably Captain Beefheart’s Hair Pie instrumentals. Another track that’s worth singling out would be Ska vi knulla: Once again, Shea’s scattershot drumming is the highlight here; about midway through, it starts to sound like hail falling on a gigantic vibraphone.

Now this is the point where most readers probably expect me to say that Polyp could’ve been an outstanding improv record – if it weren’t for the silliness. But that’s not going to happen, not only because it’s already good the way it is, but because – more importantly – the humor is probably inseparable from the trio’s way of music-making. Perhaps not unlike Beefheart or Zappa at their respective best, they don’t use humor simply for cheap laffs – they employ it to position themselves differently vis-à-vis their music. So yes, they are making fun of music in a way, but they’re doing it in a quasi-satirical manner, that is in order to gain a new perspective on music, in order to be able to look at it – and at the prescriptions of good taste – from a distance. Consequently, Polyp has a boundless energy that surpasses many of the more poker-faced improv records – the energy of someone who’s literally rolling on the floor laughing and throwing himself about in fits. And, as you might know, that can be infectious.

   
Listen:


  

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The Continuing Adventures of Damon Smith

John Butcher, Damon Smith, Weasel Walter - Catastrophe of Minimalism (Balance Point Acoustics, 2017) ****½

By Paul Acquaro

Bassist Damon Smith writes in the notes for this release, which was taped live in Oakland, California in 2008, that he likes to let recordings age: "You are very sure about the music when you live with it for a few years before putting it out in the world."

It makes sense: let the ingredients over time interact, if done right, perhaps an unanticipated richness develops around them, ideas that perhaps didn't seem right at the time turn out to be brilliant moves, something perceived as a mistake when it was played has somehow completely melted into the whole. While uncertain what, if any of these things apply here, what is certain is that Catastrophe of Minimalism is a sumptuous and intense album, sure to tickle the most fickle palette.

Saxophonist John Butcher and percussionist Weasel Walter round out the trio. The first track 'An Illusionistic Panic Part 1' begins among a spate of percussive hits, saxophone smears, and bowed bass. The melange of ingredients exist both together and seeking their own space. Coming together with a cymbal crash, the tone is set for how these three musical provocateurs will proceed. 'A Blank Magic' follows, featuring skittering multi-phonics from Butcher, expressive and unexpected anti-patterns from Walter, and textural friction from Smith. The fevered pitch that Butcher brings the group to with a repetitive circular phrase and the subsequent percussive tangent that follows on 'Modern Technological Fetishes' is worth the price of the album alone.

Each track provides a different angle on the inner workings of this trio, each offering it's own complex arrangements of overtones, undertones, and meaty notes between. The titles, like the ones for Six Situations are inspired and borrowed from the mid-20th century artist Dan Flavin. 

Here, have a whiff of this particular good vintage:

Leap of Faith - Domains (Evil Clown, 2017) ****

Smith has relocated a few times over the years, from his website: "After many years in the San Francisco Bay Area, and six great years in Houston, Texas working regularly with Alvin Fielder, Sandy Ewen, David Dove & Chris Cogburn, Damon moved to the Boston area in the fall of 2016.” So, though he is a recent arrival in Boston, it obviously wouldn't be long before he was beckoned into the Leap of Faith multi-verse. Leap of Faith is the work of Boston based woodwind player David Peck (aka PEK), along with the core group of cellist Glynis Lomon and drummer Yuri Zbitnov. The trio is joined on Domains by bassists Silvain Castellano and Smith.

Those who have ventured into Leap of Faith's musical world know of the rich rewards and decadent dangers contained within. Domains starts quietly, a bed of sound is made through various percussion instruments and what sounds like a subconscious accordion. There is a rumble from down in the bass register, and as tempo and temper pick up, the bowed sounds of the low strings swirl about, while the contra-alto clarinet spins a rich suspended gossamer web around the skittering percussion. It would be quite hard to pick out which is Castellano and which is Smith, however a Leap of Faith recording isn’t so much about the individual voices, but rather, the totality of the improvisation. Veering from bowed to bouncing to bitonal, the basses dominate, and the group weaves their dark magic around them (check out the music around the 55 minute mark - its intense!).

Recorded live at Outpost 186 in Cambridge, MA in August 2017, Domains is a unique album. With the tilt towards the strings, the set is dominated by the low frequency instruments and features a different level of gravity. Absolutely captivating.

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Chris Pitsiokos, Weasel Walter, Ron Anderson – Maximalism (Eleatic, 2013) ****

By Julian Eidenberger

True to its title, Maximalism is a trio recording adhering to a “more is more” aesthetic. It’s no surprise at all that a record of that ilk should issue from the hands of the three musicians involved: Pitsiokos is a young Brooklyn-based saxophonist who lists, among others, Evan Parker and the early John Zorn as influences – musicians who aren’t necessarily known for their restraint. Weasel Walter – who happens to be on Pitsiokos’ list of influences as well, and who handles drumming duties here – is probably one of the most notorious “maximalists” in underground music, playing Free Jazz, Death Metal or all-out Noise with uncompromising intensity. With the Flying Luttenbachers, his main musical outlet for many years, he had made it his goal to replace the soft-loud dynamics, popular in many rock and jazz idioms, with a “loud-louder” dynamic. Next to this duo, guitarist Ron Anderson is the odd man out here. Not that his music – for example the albums produced with his excellent math-rock outfit Pak – has ever lacked intensity, but of the three musicians responsible for Maximalism, he’s the one who’s most likely to leave the listener room to breathe. Here, however, his penchant for spacious melodicism is for the most part overruled by his collaborators.       

So, what we have here is a one-hour-plus recording on the gnarly end of the free improv spectrum. With the exception of the quieter second track, which hints at Roscoe Mitchell’s groundbreaking Sound as a possible influence, the music rarely lets up in intensity. Since this dogged insistence on a maximalist aesthetic is not going to appeal to many listeners beyond those who are already converted, it’s necessary to emphasize the fact that this particular record is in many ways a reminder of how much fun free improv can be. Quite often, it’s a delight to simply listen to the bizarre sounds issuing from the trio’s instruments; beyond that, the fun consists in trying to figure out what may happen next, and in being surprised time and again – as in an old Roadrunner cartoon – by the sheer improbability of the (non-)resolutions. It’s as though the laws of nature were suspended for the record’s duration. In other moments, though, Maximalism sounds menacing rather than cartoonish: The sprawling 17-minute piece that is track 3 proceeds in a volcanic manner, spewing out white-hot chunks of sax- and slide-guitar-noise while Walter adds ramshackle double-kick patterns that sound as though a Poltergeist had hijacked his kit. In the second half of said track, Pitsiokos trades his sax for electronics to produce chirping and hissing noises that recall an excited R2-D2.

It’s interesting to note that Pitsiokos lists, besides the more obvious choices mentioned above,   John Cage as an influence. This may seem to be an odd choice at first, since Cage’s music has never been – at least as far as I can tell – as aggressively chaotic as this record; on second thought, however, it starts to make perfect sense, as Maximalism is clearly fueled by an attempt to obliterate any remainder of traditional musical coherence. There’s no all-seeing composer or musical “subject” controlling and overseeing the proceedings, no narrative arc in which the sounds are embedded as in an organic whole. Of course, this attempt was (and is) certainly not completely alien to free jazz practitioners, but Maximalism goes beyond the relative freedom of even the freest jazz record, eschewing, for the most part, chords and melodies in favor of an emphasis on sound as such. In this respect, Pitsiokos’ approach is Cage-ian indeed; he’s “getting rid of the glue” to liberate listening from conventionally “musical” expectations.

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Meet The Experimental Vocal Artists #4

By Eyal Hareuveni

Danish Randi Pontoppidan, British Phil Minton, German Ute Wassermann, Dutch Jaap Blonk and Slovenian Irena Z. Tomažin keep expanding the frontiers of the human vocals. 

Randi Pontoppidan - Rooms (Chant Records, 2019) ****½

Danish experimental vocalist-sound poet-composer-improviser-educator Randi Pontoppidan has worked with some of the greatest bass players of our times - Greg Cohen (their duo, Event Horizon, released its debut album, Space Geode on Chant, 2018), Joëlle Leánder and Jamaaladeen Tacuma as well as with Danish poet Morten Søndergaard, sax hero Lotte Anker and pianist Jakob Davidsen. She is also in-demand vocalist in the contemporary classical world, working with Paul Hillier’s Theatre of Voices and performing works by Steve Reich, David Lang, Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage.

Pontoppidan’s first solo album Rooms finds her exploring many rooms of her own, tp paraphrase Virrginia Woolf, using only her voice, filtered through various loops and electronic effects and machines. Pontoppidan reaches the outer limits and the deepest secrets of her own voice - processed, multiplied and layered, and sketches an arresting series of imaginative and highly nuanced soundscapes, ranging from the angelic and spiritual (“Hush of Expectation”, “Mari Si”), to playful sound poetry (“Dunh”), abstract industrial sounds (“Industrious - Moving Castle”), icy, sparse minimalism (“Arctic”, “Tidal”), Reich-ian tribal pulse (“Dis Appearence”) and hymnal and meditative (“Dreamy”). When the listening experience of Rooms takes over - and it happens quite fast, you may forget that all these colorful, suggestive sounds are made only by a human voice. You may feel abducted by friendly aliens, gifted with a thousand, singing tongues, tempting and charming in many magical, wordless languages, and happy to share their untimely, infinite wisdom with the attentive listeners.

More: Youtube | Soundcloud

Randi Pontoppidan & Christian Rønn - Head Space (Chant, 2020) ***

Pontoppidan returns with Head Space, a meeting with fellow Danish electro-acoustic composer-improviser Christian Rønn, known from the free jazz trio Blind Mans Band, who plays here on the Wurlitzer piano and electronics. Pontoppidan and Rønn claim that the combination of her heady, vocal-improvisations and electronics and his fierce amplified Wurlitzer “took off to the hemisphere.” 

Pontoppidan and Rønn have choose to travel in loose and barren atmospheric landscapes, letting Pontoppidan operatic vocal flights disperse slowly and gently into thin space, echoed by the sparse, resonating Wurlitzer sounds of Rønn. The most interesting pieces are the ones that subvert this monotonous, deserted attitude, where the dynamics gravitate towards more tense, noisy collisions as on “Waterproof”, “Udspring” and “Gamma”. 

Speak Easy - @ Konfrontationen (Confront Records, 2019) ****

Speak Easy is the quartet of British vocal artist Phil Minton with German vocal artist-sound poet Ute Wassermann, who adds bird whistles to her vocals, percussionist Martin Blume, and Vienna-based Thomas Lehn on analogue EMS synthesizer. This free-improvising quartet has been active since 2008 and released its debut album, Backchats (Creative Sources, 2009), a live recording from Bochum, Germany from March 2008, followed by a DVD, The Loft Concert (PanRec, 2009), documenting a performance from a day later. The sophomore album is another live recording, captured at the Austrian Konfrontationen festival in Nickelsdorf on July 2016.

The audience of the Konfrontationen festival is the perfect one for this kind of eccentric quartet, familiar with all its musicians and eager to be startled and amazed by more and more eccentricities. And Speak Easy (a nickname for secret, intimate bars who sold drinks during the prohibition ban on alcohol in the United States, 1920-1933) provides exactly this recipe - 52 minutes of “Speechless”, a wild, funny, intense piece, one that never ceases to offer weird sonic inventions and strange yet emphatic dynamics. No doubt, Minton, Wassermann, Blume and Lehn found their very own way of speaking - urgent, easy, touching, intoxicating, sometimes with subtle, explosive noises, but always ready to share their most intimate secrets and teach their new languages to the curious, adventurous listeners. 

Ute Wassermann, Jaap Blonk & Michael Vorfeld (Kontrans, 2019) ***½*

Dutch experimental vocal artist-sound poet-electronics player Jaap Blonk’s own label, Kontrans, has a line of releases - improvisors - that documents his free-improvised meeting with like-minded musicians. Kontrans has released Blonk’s meetings with Mats Gustafsson and Michael Zerang, Maja Ratkje, Jeb Bishop and Frank Rosaly.

This release documents Blonk’s meeting with Berlin-based, fellow experimental vocal artist Ute Wassermann, who also plays on assorted whistles, “kutu wapa, frog buzzer and mirliton” and percussionist and visual artist Michael Vorfeld, who adds to his arsenal string instrument and light bulbs. It was recorded at AudioCue Tonlabor, Berlin, on March 2018. Like Rooms, this trio also offers 13 distinct pieces, but contrary to the introspective, reserved atmosphere of Rooms, this trio experiments with the wild, weird and noisy. These three hyperactive and reckless adults - alien bards, as one of the pieces is titled - play an endless, dadaist tag while soaring higher and higher into their sonic universes, Luckily, Wasserman, Blonk and Vorfeld share the same kind of humor and like risk-taking, hectic games. These three improvisers even succeed to create a surprising intimacy, but sometimes you may want to ask them to slow down a bit. 

JeJaWeDa - Pioneer Works, Vol. 1 + Pioneer Works, vol. 2 (Balance Point Acoustics, 2019) ***½*

This new quartet JaJeWeDa features trombonist JEb Bishop, JAap Blonk, both adds electronics, plus the powerful rhythm section of percussionist WEsel Walter and double bass player DAmon Smith. The quartet  debuted in the spring of 2019 with a series of concerts in the Northeast of the USA, but Blonk had collaborated before with Smith (North of Blanco and Hugo Ball: Sechs Laut-und Klanggedichte 1916 (Six Sound Poems, 1916), both released by Balance Point Acoustics, 2014). The new quartet debut releases - Pioneer works Vol. 1, a disc with a booklet of artworks by Blonk, and Pioneer works Vol. 2, a cassette with an unpublished sound poetry score by Blonk from 2001 (and a lime green tape), were released before a short autumn tour of the quartet.

The first volume, recorded at Pioneer Works, New York on March 2019, offers a wild, noisy, funny and urgent, free-improvising quartet where Blonk employs his vocals as another instrument, competing with the strong personalities and impressive sense of invention of Walter, Bishop and Smith, as all sound as getting closer and closer to a sonic meltdown. After a short “Warm Up”, all dive into the 30-minutes of “Work Out” where anything can happen and does happen, a total freak out of possessed dynamics. JaJeWeDa is supposed to “Cool Down” on the last piece, but this option does not exist in this quartet manual, and we get another playful, dadaist piece that by no means succeeds to exhaust the quartet’s energy. The second volume, recorded at the same place, same date, suggests a loose, structured texture. It often sounds like an eccentric, chamber texture. Blonk is the natural leader and main protagonist, staging a mix of fairy-horror tale with his hyperactive, playful comrades. 

More: Youtube

Irena Z. Tomažin - Cmok v grlu / Lump In The Throat (Sploh, 2019) ***1/*

Slovenian Irena Z. Tomažin experiments with fragmented vocals and bodily sounds produced between-with-after-at the realization of the voice. Her voice is deliberately morphed into extended noises with repetitive movements of the tongue, soft palate, throat muscles, teeth and air in micro resonating spaces of the oral cavity. The first, brief 11 pieces reflect Tomažin’s latest experiments with her voice, while the last, extended five improvisations are taken from her audiovisual installation piece, “Faces Of Voices # Noise’”, a production of MoTA – Museum For Transitory Art. This material was transformed and re-composed for Cmok v grlu / Lump In The Throat, her fourth album.

There are no words, melody or rhythm, at least not in any conventional sense of these concepts, but pure, highly adventurous, expressive and often unworldly and enigmatic sound art that keeps pushing for more edgy frontiers. Tomažin sounds on the first 11 pieces as willing to communicate only in her own terms. The other five pieces offer more complex and elaborate soundscapes, stressing how far and profound is her vocal artistry. These pieces move from the mysterious and silent “Zataknjeno za zobmi” to the spoiled and playful “Drobovje ust", the extraterrestrial chat of “Klic meduze”, the emotional lament of “Črna ovca” and the cryptic choir of “Neko drugo krdelo” 

More: Youtube

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Piano Trios

The amount of CDs and LPs we get is far too many to ever be able to listen to, let alone review them. Hence the reason to cluster music once in a while in overview reviews, somewhat artificially united by a theme, and this time it's the line-up, and the line-up is piano, bass, drums, one of the more "traditional" band formats, but let that not deceive you : creativity within given restrictions is possible, as the albums below testify.



Charity Chan / Damon Smith / Weasel Walter ‎– Improvised Music And Tentacles (Bug Incision, 2013) ****½

Now here's a trio that makes incredibly adventurous use of their instruments. You don't know what you hear, but it's fascinating. In essence, the three musicians, Charity Chan on piano, Damon Smith on bass and Weasel Walter on drums, make sound collisions, shooting of notes like mesons and protons shot through the Large Hadron Collider.

It is fascinating and the outcome totally unpredictable, probably even less predictable than quantum physics, including the non-zero energy state and the opening of opportunities for more dynamic and chaotic possibilities - freely stealing from wikipedia here - yet the music comes close to it, and in a sense becomes almost real, more realistic than the human sentiments that you can expect from the Bill Evans line-up. This is a raw, unfiltered vision on sonic possibilities, where indeed dynamics take over, creating realms of unpredictable possibilities. It is the total lack of compromise which makes this a great album.


Michael Wintsch, Weber, Wolfarth - The Holistic Worlds Of (Monotype, 2012) ****

We know Swiss pianist Michael Wintsch from his "Different Song" with 4Tet, but more especially for his work with "WHO Trio", with Gery Hemingway and Bänz Oester, now we find him back with the "WWW trio", with Christian Weber ("Six Feet Under" with Nate Wooley and Paul Lytton) on bass and Christian Wolfarth ("Circle and Line") on drums.

The trio brings their own take on the format, pushing boundaries without alienating the listener, and demonstrating creativity, subtle skills and open-minded thinking throughout the LP. The tracks are short to medium length, each with well-defined character and approach. The band is intense, alternating intimacy with abundance, yet every improvisation sounds so incredibly fresh and new, as if the concept of music itself was invented on the spot. The trio play with their heart and love for music and spontaneity, avoiding with dexterity all the pitfalls of having no boundaries, and focusing on the essence : great music, fantastic interplay, and at least one listener (me!) who enjoyed this albums many times over.

As the title suggests, they do create holistic worlds.


Dawn of Midi - Dysnomia (Thirsty Ear, 2013) ****

Three years ago, I was exceptionally touched by the debut album of "Dawn Of Midi", because of the intensity and the rhythmic hypnotism of the trio, consisting of Qasim Naqvi from Pakistan on percussion, Aakaash Israni from India on bass, and Amino Belyamani from Morocco on piano.

In essence, this album even reduces their approach to rhythmic hypnotism even more than on their debut album. The downside is that the piano is also reduced to a percussion instrument, with muted keys keeping the pace going forward, with only a limited number of notes being played. Hard repetitiveness kept on relentlessly, relentlessly.

Somehow their approach has become a kind of Philip Glass in jazz format, with minor changes gradually adding increasing complexity and rhythmic madness to the core material.

Although I prefer their debut album, the musical experience they present here is utterly compelling and strange.


Craig Taborn Trio - Chants (ECM, 2013) ****

After many years of mutual collaboration, the trio of Craig Taborn on piano, Thomas Morgan on bass and Gerald Cleaver on drums has become a trio, releasing this formidable album on ECM. Taborn and Cleaver played their debut together in 1997, as part of Roscoe Mitchell's Note Factory, and have performed together on each other's albums, of which a good part is reviewed on this blog. Taborn and Morgan are also part of Michael Formanek's quartet and of Tomasz Stanko's New York quartet.

Taborn's music is quite exceptional, in the sense that his compositions are quite challenging pieces full of rhythmic complexities and implicit anchor points to make the tempo changes, but as you can expect from such a rhythm section, they take all curves and bends with elegance and style. The compositions are dense and intense, with long improvisations and subtle interplay who keep a kind of paradoxical lightness and openness to the music.

The music is inventive and creative too. The opener "Saints" sets the tone well, with gradually increasing intensity, mesmerising left hand, with Cleaver going wild on the cymbals, and the way Morgan underpins it all is stellar."Beat The Ground" has a more pumping rhythm, offering the great context for a piano solo full of nervosity and speed. Yet also on the slower tracks, such as "In Chant", and "All True Night/Future Perfect", subtlety reigns, offering Morgan more space to solo, or as on "Crackling Hearts", where Cleaver can demonstrate how percussive subtlety can add to emotional anticipation in a piece that's really built around silence.

My favorite track is "Silver Ghosts", again an intense but carefully paced composition, with eery phrases full of wonder and suprise. Again, a great example of how restraint and control can actually build tension and even power. The last track "Speak The Name" is again a little gem of rhythmic madness, with both hands playing in different worlds yet in a strange conflicting and coherent way.

A truly beautiful and strong album.


Sophia Domancich, Avenel, Goubert - Upcoming Summer (Sans Bruit, 2013) ****

French pianist Sophia Domancich with Jean-Jacques Avenel on bass and Simon Goubert on drums. The trio has played together in various line-ups for many years, and that's obvious when you hear the music, which is crisp, fresh and open.

The music was recorded live in 2008, the day Johnny Griffin passed away, and the playing is again excellent, full of nervous tension as we hear on "DAG", her previous album with the same trio, from which all the compositions on this album come from : "As Usual", "Pour Vous", "Soliloques", "Surface De Réparation" and "Pourquoi Pas?".  The big difference is the increased intensity and the great space to keep improvising and developing the music. What was six to seven minutes long on the studio album, now become epic pieces of twenty minutes, adding energy and expansiveness to the compositions. In this live setting, it works really well, demonstrating the sheer joy of making music.


Busk - Nur Eins (Ilk, 2013) ***½

Busk is a Danish trio with Anders Filipsen on piano, Thomas Rehling on bass and Lasse Ehn on drums.

The trio's approach is gentle and minimal, with lots of built-in silence and well-crafted pace. The pieces are short and pleasing, quite open-ended at times. As Rehling describes it : ”First and foremost it’s a soundscape that is characterized by nature – a serious, but also liberating music, that we’ve worked on quite a while before recording. It’s filled with sounds that connect to forces of nature such as storm, wind, rain and sun, in a form that leaves much space for improvisation.”

And he's right and totally wrong too. The music sounds organic, light-textured and free, but there is no storm to be heard, and the wind is just a breeze. But that should not reduce the joy of listening to this album.

Nicolás Chientaroli Trío - ViajeraMente (Pan Y Rosas, 2013) ***

This Argentinian trio, led by Nicolás Chientaroli and with Carlos Alvarez on bass and Sebastián Groshaus on drums is jazzy and adventurous, occasionally quoting from Ellington, Coleman and Monk, and besides own compositions/improvisations, the album includes a cover of Dizzy Gillespie's Be-Bop. The music is quite intense and playful at the same time, and two quieter solo piano pieces give some breathing space to the listener, without actually releasing the intensity.


Novoa-Moreno-Prats - Bajo Cero (Femme Sutil, 2012) ***

This is the third album by Spanish pianist Eva Novoa, accompanied by Javier Moreno on bass and Ramon Prats ("Duot") on drums.

Novoa is an accomplished pianist, who studied jazz piano and composition in Barcelona and The Hague. She is active in both classical music and jazz. The album consists of twelve pieces, mostly short ones, in which an idea is presented and briefly expanded, with the execption of the very long "Medium Over The Water". The playing is good, with varying moods and levels of intensity, all very fluent, liquid even if you can say that of music, it is light without being sentimental. It's only her third album as a leader, and even if technically the music is strong, Novoa will still need to work on a more recognisable "voice", something truly of her own, that will make her stand out.


RGG Tio - Szymanowski (Fonografika, 2013) ***

Now for the even more impressionistic playing, for the real fans of traditional piano trios, this excellent piano trio from Poland, with Lukasz Ojdana on piano, who actually replaces founding member Przemyslaw Raminiak, Maciej Garbowski on bass and Krzysztof Gradziuk on drums, but they retained their original acronym for the band's name. On this album, they pay tribute to Karl Szymanowski, the great Polish classical pianist and composer, active at the beginning of last century. RGG turns his compositions into jazz. As I'm not familiar with Szymanowski's work, it's hard to judge how the trio uses the original material. In any case, the playing is excellent, although more mainstream than adventurous.


Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock & Jack DeJohnette - Somewhere (ECM, 2013) 

Allright, I didn't think I would ever review an album by my old-time hero Keith Jarrett on this blog, and I won't. It's not bad, this album, technically brilliant, but then what? More of the same? But don't worry Keith, you remain very high on my deserted island pick list, yet not with this album.

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Yoni Kretzmer - Protest Music (Out Now Recordings, 2014) ****

By Ed Pettersen

This is the second record I’ve been asked by the FJB to review this month where I knew absolutely nothing about the artist beforehand but yet again it’s a revelation.  Every track bristles with verve, passion and creativity and Protest Music is the perfect title for it as each track urges you to feel something, asks you make a stand without making you angry or agitated.  Call it compassionate provocation.

Yoni Kretzmer is an Israeli saxophonist who currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.  He began practicing his particular blend of classical and free jazz in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and studied at the American School of Modern Music in Paris.  The band is only bass, drums and sax yet is excellent on this record and you’d think they had been playing together for ages though they’ve only been working for a short time (Mr. Kretzmer has a few units he works with since his move to the U.S.).  They are seamless and the interplay between them stellar, evocative and inspiring.  They sound like much more than just three pieces.  It strikes me that Mr. Kretzmer is probably highly influenced by Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders and a bit of Sam Rivers but explores the lower registers of his sax more than those legends which is a good thing in my mind.  It would be too easy to mine the same territory in this style yet I found this music wholly original. The songs on Protest Music - This, Is, Our, Very, First, Album, Together - have a lot of variety for such a small band and though a lot is going on to propel the songs there’s plenty of room to breathe too.  None of the songs are very long, the longest is just over 9 minutes, but they hold your attention at every note and leave you wanting more.  Perfect.

The group is Mr. Kretzmer on sax, Pascal Niggenkemper on double bass and Weasel Walter on drums.  It was beautifully recorded at Park West Studios in Brooklyn by Jim Clouse.  Due to his classical studies he brings a unique sensibility to his craft and I think you’ll hear that classical influence in his songs.  He’s obviously found some very sympathetic players to his compositions.  This is terrific stuff.  I look forward to hearing more from this terrific young instrumentalist and composer.  I listened to this album at least four times while writing this review and will go back to Protest Music a lot more in the future.  Highly recommended.

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Mary Halvorson/Peter Evans/Weasel Walter – Mechanical Malfunction (Thirsty Ear, 2012) ****

By Troy Dostert

As a glance at the cover of the record would lead one to expect, Mechanical Malfunction explores a somewhat crazed world in which mechanical precision isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  Indeed, the more interesting stuff may happen when the organ grinder’s monkey becomes just a bit unhinged…

This is the second recording of this lineup, the first being last year’s Electric Fruit (also on Thirsty Ear), and like the former record, this one too reflects a commitment both to delicate, intricate interplay and heavier, rock-influenced gestures.  The work of guitarist Halvorson and trumpeter Evans should be familiar to the readers of this blog, as Halvorson’s had a number of stellar recordings over the past few years (2012’s Bending Bridges being particularly outstanding), and Evans’ work with Mostly Other People Do the Killing (amongst other projects) has been consistently creative and genre-defying.  Walter is a veteran of the Flying Luttenbachers, among other groups, and thus brings a noisy propulsion to his work on this disc, in the process pushing Halvorson and Evans to explore the more aggressive side of their playing.  The result is an enjoyable and engaging disc, of particular interest to those listeners willing to let their hair down a bit and rock out.

This is not to say that everything here is loud and intense, as some of the more interesting moments are ones in which all three musicians explore more subtle terrain.  The opening cut, “Baring Teeth,” is an especially good example of a strong piece of group improvisation involving Halvorson’s trademark bending lines and Evans’ fluttering passages and assorted growls, while Walter fills in the gaps with a variety of ideas on the drums in a relatively understated way.  But when the group does decide to rock out, as on the second track, “Vektor,” or “Interface,” Halvorson pushes the distortion into overdrive and Walter starts pounding, with Evans taking an equally brazen turn, as he’s more than capable of holding his own through the barrage.  The results are frequently invigorating and powerful.

Editor's note: Mary Halvorson will be performing at JACK New York (Brooklyn) on January 28th with Ingrid Laubrock and Jon Irabagon. For more info. 

© stef

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