As we object fetishists all do, I occasionally search and hunt down new
material from artists that I really appreciate. Be it in the ever expanding Discogs database or just surfing the internet. It has proven fruitful in a
number of occasions. Michel Doneda is one of those artists. Along a handful
only other musicians he has explored, in every direction possible, the
sonic possibilities of his instrument. He does not, in any way, confine
himself between even the blurred lines of free improvisation, and is
willing to explore and dynamics that shape the sounds he produces. Be it
those coming from his instrument, those from the recording space and the
interactions with other musicians.
Before A Peripheral Time, I wasn’t aware of Mathieu Bec’s work. What never
ceased to impress me through is that for over an hour, his limited resources (only a snare drum) proved limitless in regards to sound. His raw, non-technique oriented approach makes
him really unique. If there was not any image of him playing I would
totally succumb to the idea of him (like a modern version of Paul Lytton)
performing with a vast variety of drums and percussion instruments. Even
though I consider Doneda a master of the sax, it’s Bec who attracts most
attention on this recording.
This is an improvisational duo though, and the interaction is amazing. Bec
uses a variety of approaches and Doneda follows eagerly with the same
amount of passion. Their playing as a duo is pretty intense, employing 'a raw
animistic approach,' as Bec himself describes it, and he is absolutely right.
Sometimes it feels like it’s a battle between them. Even though the sheer
volume is totally bearable, the levels of energy and pathos are high up in
the stratosphere. Considering that all four tracks of the CD last more than
ten minutes (with the titular track clocking just under half an hour) the
intensity of their playing never fails the listener.
It seems always so difficult that, at some other points during this CD,
they incorporate silence as a means of subverting themselves. It’s those
moments, and their integration throughout A Peripheral Time, that convince
me they are out on a search, not following one single path. Even though
this path (high energy improv following a cohesive straight line) takes
most of this CD’s time, they dare to change it, re-approach themselves and
allow us to look for more. They take risks, do not take themselves so
seriously, and present with clarity and pathos all the swifts and changes
that real discoveries produce. They feel like this is an ongoing
relationship with more audio fruits to come. We will be waiting.
There’s always some special interest in hearing a musician freshly arrived,
more so when the musician is in company as elevated as bassist John Edwards
and drummer Eddie Prévost. I suspect, though,
that guitarist N.O. Moore would likely attract some attention in any fit
company, for he brings a highly personal conception to an instrument often
sullied by redundancy.
Moore is an electronic guitarist, a musician whose sounds include
ones you wouldn’t necessarily assume are coming from guitar, including some
that sound like radio waves, oscillator or synthesizer. At the same time,
he eschews effects like looping, instead fixing his playing, as one might
assume from his partners here, very much in real time. That quality of his
playing, in fact, its nowness, is so strong that after repeated
listening to the four tracks of this CD, I don’t have a strong sense of
each track’s shape, as if the immediate attention demanded by the music’s
instants precludes the imposition of larger temporal patterns, while
simultaneously contributing to an ultimate coherence. Listening to this
music, one is absorbed in this music, like one of André Breton’s soluble
fish.
Moore combines with his sonic arsenal a sense of detailed nuance, subtle
shifts in picking and fingering, that unites the trio in its sense of
living and interactive detail. The play of volume and timbre extends
throughout the group, so that their are patterns of resemblance beyond
physical differences. Edwards’ range of arco effects and Prévost’s cymbals
and tight snare often cross through Moore’s electronics, creating both
strange ambiguities and a special fellowship.
Mindstreaming for metaphors for the way Moore approaches the guitar, I had
a sudden flash…it’s as if John Milton or William Blake returned to earth
and, finding language exhausted and bereft of sense, turned instead to the
electric guitar. There must be something in that slightly skewed title.
Googling (both cause and answer to said exhaustion and sense-paucity) for
some imagined confirmation, I find, after a few entries for the release of
this CD, two germane quotations, one from Milton (Book 1 of Paradise Lost, lines 597-604)—
In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs: darkened so yet shone
Above them all the Archangel; but his face
Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care
Set on his faded cheek, but under brows
Of dauntless courage and considerate pride,
Waiting revenge.
and perhaps its source:
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that well
in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.
(Isaiah 9:2)
That contrast of darkness and shining is everywhere in the contrast of
acoustic and electronic sound patterns here, but it also speaks to the
bright intensity of the music’s ongoing interaction and the mystery of its
larger structures, including, perhaps, the grim embrace of the historical
moment.
On Saturday, May 18th, just before noon Japanese great double bass
player Tetsu Saito passed away after a long battle with cancer. The
self-taught Saitoh was born in Tokyo on October 27, 1955, and began playing
the bass only when he was 22 years old. In the last three decades he became
one of the prominent free improvisers in the Japanese scene, playing with
such local heavyweights as sax player Kazutoki Umezu, drummer Sabu Toyozumi
and guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi. Soon he proved himself as one of an
elite group of musicians who expanded the vocabulary of the double bass and
kept innovating the extended techniques of playing the bull fiddle.
Bass aficionados may know Saito from his seminal collaborations with fellow
bass masters - Joëlle Léandre (Joëlle Et Tetsu - Live At Yokohama Jazz
Promenade Festival 1996, Omba, 1998), Barre Phillips and Nobuyoshi Ino
(October Bass Tri-Logue, PJL, 2001), the homage to Peter Kowald with
Phillips, Léandre and William Parker (After You Gone, Victo, 2004), the
bass orchestra Bassmasse of Sebastian Gramss with Phillips, Achim Tang,
Robert Landfermann, Ulrich Phillipp, and many more (Schwarm, gligg, 2013)
or the recent homage to another visionary bass player, Italian Stefano
Scodanibbio, organized by Gramss, with Barry Guy, Mark Dresser, Phillips, and Léandre (Thinking of …
, Wergo, 2014).
But Saitoh was more than a virtuous bass player and imaginative free
improviser. He said that “a musician only needs to sing one song in life… I
will always try to sing my own song”. But this statement reflected most his
modest character; throughout his life, Saitoh sang many beautiful and expressive songs. His musical
vision was truly free, genre-blind, brought faraway traditions to the present and
encompassed compositional strategies and improvisational techniques from
classical music, Spanish flamenco, Argentinian nuevo-tango, Brazilian
choro, Japanese traditional folk music, Korean shamanic music and,
obviously, jazz. He had worked with Butoh dancers and modern dancers - most
well-known is his close friend Jean Laurent Sasportes (who has worked
with Tanztheater Wuppertal directed by Pina Bausch), Noh theater actors,
painters, poets and filmmakers. His works responded to current affairs as
Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, that caused the meltdown of three reactors
in Fukushima nuclear plant. No matter what kind of music he played, it was
always his own. He always suggested new perspectives and nuances in his
interpretations and his improvisations. If you want to experience his
idiosyncratic, rich vision you may begin with his most beautiful, last solo
album,
Travessia
(Travessia, 2016).
Saitoh understood music as the healing force of the universe in the deepest
sense possible, long before he had to struggle with the symptoms of cancer
that forced him to limit his activity. He saw music as a method to self
realization, here and now, and free improvisation as one of the truest
forms of such enlightening realization. But he was not bound to any kind of
ideology or mysticism about his virtuous qualities. He was gifted by a
profound knowledge how to connect people with music, manifested in his work
with handicapped and disabled, most notably dancer Ryotaro Yahagi who
became another regular collaborator. Everyone who knew Tetsu-san, even if
only through his albums, DVD’s or correspondence with him, fell immediately
in love with music, his uplifting energy, humble manners and his
compassionate sense of humor. Once you knew him, he became a dear friend.
Saitoh had plans to perform solo and with friends for the coming months,
but was open about his medical condition in his Facebook posts. He kept
uploading video clips from recent performances as the last one in his
youtube channel with another long-time comrade, sax player Michel doneda
and traditional Japanese musician Shun'ichiro Hisada. Unfortunately, sensei
Saitoh left us too soon, way too young. He will be missed.
Three Danish musicians, Lars Bech Pilgaard on guitar, Henrik Pultz Melbye on tenor sax and clarinet, and Rune Lohse on drums, meet French bassist Sylvain Didou for this formidable piece of music. One long improvisation is stretched over two tracks ("Wedding" and "Funeral"), and the listener is treated to a haunting mixture of drone, noise and jazz.
On "Wedding", the four musicians create one gigantic wall of sound, that moves forward relentlessly, barely shifting in colour and harmonics, mesmerising and trance-inducing, frightening and horrifying. Pultz Melbye's sax keeps repeating the same phrases frantically, madly over the violence of bass and drums and deafening guitar sounds, and then, near the end, without relinquishing the piece's core idea, they deliver the same but now in a quiet mode of agonising sensitivity, with the struggling sax taking the lead role.
On "Funeral", the rhythm and approach are deliberately hesitant, raw and pumping, chaotic in its intent, yet somehow things coalesce into a crazy blend of harsh distress, until after four minutes a simple sax vamp creates a single anchor point for the three other instruments to move in the same direction, picking up energy by the collaborative effort, power and violence, and before you know it, the funeral has turned into an absolute nightmare. Things quiet down again, luckily, and a repetitive electronic pulse is the only continuity in freely improvised sonic emotions. Anything can happen and it does as you enter a world of eery, disturbing and disorienting sounds, full of agony and darkness (it is a funeral after all (but then the wedding did not sound like a wedding either)), first like free improvisation, then again shifting patterns start to emerge, built around a repeated deep note on the sax, and despite the vague structure, the music remains ephemeral and never turns solid.
This is daring music, and an incredible listening experience. A kick in the teeth.
Listen and download from Bandcamp ... and definitely watch the video!
I’ve probably listened to this record more than any other thus far in 2019,
as I’ve been extraordinarily busy tending to the non-music related
activities in my life and this type of music lends itself well to both
active and passive listening. It sounds fantastic whether you are attending
to it or not, and will wriggle its way into your subconscious if given half
a chance. “erroribus humanis et antinomy” (translated from Latin: human
errors and antinomy) documents two meetings between Tetuzi Akiyama on
guitar, Ken Ikeda on electronics, and Chihei Hatakeyama on guitar and
electronics. The uber-prolific Akiyama is one of my all-time favorite
guitar players. His work has appeared here sporadically in the past, as his
musical practices tend to overlap with the interests of the blog. He’s a
special artist and one of the most unique voices in modern improvisation
today, whether playing solo or with acclaimed artists such as Taku
Sugimoto, Toshimaru Nakamura, Oren Ambarchi, and Alan Licht. Ambience
master and video artist Ken Ikeda has been very active in the free
improvisation arena as of late, releasing terrific albums with
Eddie Prévost
, Toshimaru Nakamura, and David Toop. I’ve also been a fan of producer and
guitarist Chihei Hatakeyama since his days on Kranky Records. There’s a
meditative beauty
to his music that radiates into the listener’s headspace like a narcotic,
and when I saw him teamed up with Akiyama and Ikeda for this record I knew
it would be a pretty special set.
The first track “I” begins with a quiescent hum of electronics over which
Akiyama’s guitar is very subtly strangled. I’ve always enjoyed the
unconventional sounds that Akiyama can wring from his instrument, and in my
opinion his sense for melodic abstraction is unsurpassed. Examining the
underlying hum a little more closely reveals a sort of skittering,
fractured dynamic layered with high pitch swells that echo and decay back
into the simmering EAI sauce. There are some low tones that simply hang
tranquilly, like taut but motionless flags buried far back in the mix.
Ikeda, true to his Touch Records roots provides a bed of ambience for the
guitarists, peppered with delay modulation noises and light electronic
pings. Hatakeyama (I assume) is the source of the swelling, delayed tones,
though I’m half guessing here. His playing is like celestial birdsong, a
benevolent specter residing in the right-most channel (again, I’m guessing
here, but I believe the mix is: Akiyama – L, Ikeda – M, Hatakeyama – R).
“II” begins with Akiyama’s scratched out notions as Ikeda and Hatakeyama
swell from the ether. A subtle untreated guitar arpeggio grounds the piece
as all manner of electronic effects are peppered into the amalgam. It’s
truly difficult to tell who is doing what here so I won’t bother any
further. The resulting sound field is gorgeous, at once serene yet highly
active, like a still pond teeming with colorful, busy fish just beneath the
surface. “III” is slightly noisier than the preceding songs, lots of grainy
artifacts and unconventional guitar sounds agitated in a vibrant,
kaleidoscopic dust cloud of haze and shimmer. Ikeda at times sounds like
rain on a paper roof, at others like a malfunctioning public-address
system. Akiyama’s guitar work is unmistakable, and it works brilliantly
with Hataeyama’s hiccupping, whooping delay undulations and granular
fragments. The last piece “IV” is the shortest and perhaps the most
straight-forward of the set. The mostly untreated guitar around the
periphery surrounds Ikeda’s electronic glow as it radiates from the center
of the mix and yields a symmetric soundscape that nicely rounds out the
album.
Although this is way outside of the jazz idiom, I find this type of free
improvisation just as enjoyable. It’s measured for sure, but there is
plenty for the listener to take in. It’s all about subtle dynamics, soft
details, and the building of sonic textures and it succeeds marvelously at
that. I’ve found that this sounds best on headphones or played at high
volume on decent speakers in an otherwise quiet space in order to really
get the full experience. And even though I’ve listened through the album a
couple dozen times I have yet to tire of it. Highly recommended.
Guillermo Gregorio (clarinet) and Brandon Lopez (contrabass) play freely
across twelve tracks lasting 39 minutes on 12 Episodes. I love
duos because each player is given ample time and space to really display
their personality and still engage in player to player communication. The
duo is a rare and welcome format for these two; I believe this is Lopez’
first recorded duo and Gregorio has only recorded the format with Paul
Giallorenzo on Multiverse and Ran Blake on Something To Live For. The duo do well for themselves and I hope
it’s the first of many meetings, especially considering Gregorio’s penchant
for developing lasting relationships with physical, violent strings (e.g.
Fred Lonberg-Holm and Kent Kessler) and Lopez’ penchant for playing such
strings.
The 12 tracks are structured in such a way that the first two thirds of the
recording last as long as the last third, with the earlier vignettes having
only enough time to explore one thread though they navigate few thematic
changes in the longer tracks too. Despite the tracks’ structural monotony,
each one is timbrally rich. Gregorio cuts up mellifluous lines with
overblown distorted tones, circularly breathes furiously flurried flights,
and utilizes key clicks, air notes, tongue clicks, and perhaps some light
voicing. Lopez switches up his typical, physical arco by tapping the
strings with the bow, sawing below the bridge, tapping and rubbing the
body, preparing the bass by threading something through the strings,
plucking the strings so hard they buzz against the neck, rubbing the
strings so hard the flayed sound is almost like a chair creaking (think Raging Bull), and splaying out bowed tones’ chroma like a prism
disperses a ray of light. And though there aren’t many thematic changes to
listen to each other for, the communication between the two is present and
prompt, with each player matching the cadences and complimenting the
textures of the other.
Beyond the somewhat limiting structure of the takes, my only criticism is
that Lopez tends to resort to a walking - or rather lumbering - bassline
when Gregorio falls back to more mellifluous playing, and I think some
syncopation or unequal time would have complimented Gregorio’s more subtle
angles a bit better. However, this is a rich, colorful study from two
masters that’s just as much fun as Gregorio’s legendary Hathut run or
Lopez’ recent exceptional work, including this year’s Old Smoke
with Steve Baczkowski and Chris Corsano (also on Relative Pitch).
Readers of the blog may know the work of the Slovenian drummer Zlatko
Kaučič, especially his recorded collaborations with European
heavyweight improvisers such as Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker, Agustí
Fernández. Ab Baars, Phil Minton, Barry Guy, and Maya Homburger.
Kaučič single handedly fostered a scene for free music in the newly
founded Slovenia, mentored younger musicians, ran venues, organized
local festivals, and always encouraged all around him to keep pushing
their boundaries. Now, a bit about his music...
Zlatko Kaučič - Diversity (Not Two, 2018) ****½
The Polish label Not Two has released, since its inception, special box sets that have celebrated special projects from Ken Vandermark (including DKV Trio & Joe McPhee), Mats Gustafsson, and Barry Guy, as well as important
anniversaries such as celebrating 40 years of Joëlle Léandre's professional career as a musician, and more recently that of Kaučič, who celebrated last year
his 65th birthday. The 5-disc box Diversity encompasses a series of
intimate, free-improvised meetings with old and new comrades, all
highlight his idiosyncratic percussive language, focused on his own set
of ground drums, percussion devices and his distinct playing of the
electric zither.
Diversity begins with a live recording - a trio with Catalan pianist
Agustí Fernández and British tenor sax master Evan Parker, captured at
Sound Disobedience Festival, Ljubljana, Slovenia, on October 2016, and
titled Butterfly Wings. Kaučič recorded before duets with Parker (Round
About One O’Clock, Not Two, 2011) and Fernández (Sonic Party, Not Two,
2014), while Parker and Fernández have collaborated regularly since the
mid-nineties as a duo, as well as in Parker’s Electro-Acoustic Ensemble and Octet, and in a quartet with Barry Guy and Paul Lytton; however, this is the first
recording of this trio. Kaučič colors the abstract, free-formed
interplay with imaginative kinetic energy. He resonates Fernández
inside-the-piano playing with subtle zither sounds on '#2', offers
minimalist, poetic interventions to the tranquil and mysterious duet of
Parker and Fernández on '#3', sings peacefully with his percussive
devices on '#4', and sketches inventive, quiet percussive sounds on the
last, dark and enigmatic '#7'.
The second disc, Kras, is a duet with Parker, recorded live at Jazz
& Wine of Peace Festival in San Michele del Carso, Italy, in
October 2016, two days before the trio with Fernández. Parker plays the
tenor sax while Kaučič adds the drum set to his percussion devices and
the electric zither. Both Parker and Kaučič have mastered the sax-drums
format and here opted for reserved yet highly conversational, free jazz
dynamics that explores twisted, melodic themes and minimalist textures.
The 20-minutes “#2” distils best their profound connection. Kaučič
begins with ripples of meditative zither sounds, Parker answers with
beautiful, lyrical ideas and Kaučič continues coloring this
conversation with powerful, rhythmic drive. The following #3” deepens
the delicate, fragile vein of the zither and the sax and the short
encore “#5” is the most expressive piece here.
.
Kaučič calls playing solo “a necessary evil” as he is forced to “lay
yourself bare and expose your true self”, and the third disc, Rainbow
Solitude, is exactly that. Kaučič was recorded at studio Input Level,
San Biagio di Callalta, Italy on April 2016, playing ground drums,
various percussion instruments and devices and the electric zither. The
short nine pieces stress his unique melodic approach, often contrasted
with the distorted and otherworldly sounds of the zither, and encompass
broad range of sonic references that are apparent in his meetings with
other musicians. You can find traces of gamelan on “Drive Through
Obstacles”, delicate touches of cymbals on the meditative “Tonal Flow”,
peaceful layers of resonant sounds on “Memories”, noise machines on
“Sip Of Story”, disturbing cinematic tension on “Pokrovček”, meditative
and ceremonial sounds on “My Home”, cheap sci-fi sounds on “Himna Za
Mojo Teto Karlo”, a dramatic story on “Predor” and a playful, folky
song on “Mlin”.
The fourth disc, Anima, recorded at Saint Martin's Church, Šmartno,
Slovenia, on September 2016, with Danish tenor, alto and soprano sax
player Lotte Anker and Polish trumpeter Artur Majewski and acoustic
bass guitar player Rafał Mazur, both recorded later with Fernández
(Spontaneous Soundscapes, Not Two, 2017), and all appeared on Anker’s
recording from the same location (Plodi, Klopotec, 2017). Kaučič plays
the ground drums, percussion and the electric zither. The atmosphere of
this meeting is, again, minimalist and peaceful, focused on patient
structuring of nuanced, fluid textures. Anker plays in an impressive
subtle and poetic manner here, especially on “Iconic Thoughts”, “Unison
Creation” and “Trte”, where she cleverly contrasts the urgent attacks
of Majewski, while Kaučič comments and steers this quiet yet expressive
commotion with delicate touches of the cymbals, skins and the zither.
The last disc collects two duos. The first is 'Med-Ana' with late German
trombonist Johannes Bauer, recorded at the Old Movie Theatre, Medana,
Slovenia, on September 2012; the second, Šmartno Suite, in memory
of Bauer, with British vocal artist Phil Minton, recorded at Brda
Contemporary Music Festival, Italy, in September 2014. 'Med-Ana' is a
beautiful homage to one of the greatest free-improvisers of the
European scene, emphasizing his passionate, highly playful and
talkative interplay with Kaučič. Both sound like close friends who enjoy sharing amusing secrets and wild stories. Kaučič adds some subtle dadaist
percussive inventions and interventions to Minton's vocal gymnastics but
eventually manages to discipline the stream of Minton’s whispers,
moans, whistles and overtones.
Massimo De Mattia SuonoMadre - Ethnoshock! (Caligola Records, 2018)
***½
Kaučič plays here in on a live recording from the Italian quartet of flutist
Massimo De Mattia, featuring vibes-balafon-electronics player Luigi
Vitale and keyboardist Giorgio Pacorig, captured at Piazza Metteotti,
Udine, Italy in July 2017. The cover photos and the liner notes are from Italian reeds player Marco Colonna (with whom Kaučič recorded a trio
with Agustí Fernández, Agrakal, Not Two, 2018) relate to the movement
of immigrants from the Middle East and Africa to Europe and calls for
listening, respect, acceptance, maturity and welcoming. This quartet
suggests that music paves the way for such compassionate values.
The quartet equates the unpredictable mass movement of people to the
unpredictable elements in any free-improvised meeting and demonstrates
that society and music face the same issues. But, at least, with this
inventive quartet, the future sounds more promising. 'SuonoMadre' insists
that there is a place to all sounds, old, new and futuristic, acoustic
and electronic, jazz-tinged and more traditional sounds. Chaos forces
all out of their comfort zone and offers dynamics and solutions, You
still need open ears and minds but then the music flows, almost as by
its own will. Then, the different, individual languages of the four
musicians melt organically into a new sensual, seductive language. A
language that spreads playful, melodic chants that can drive away the
old demons of hate and fear. Free-improvisation is indeed a political
practice and a very humane and compassionate one.
Cene Resnik Watch the Dogs Trio - Shades of Colors (Not Two, 2017)
****½
This great album somehow slipped beneath the radar. It brings together
fellow-Slovenian tenor sax player Cene Resnik, a frequent collaborator
of Kaučič, with another of his close collaborators, Italian double
bass player Giovanni Meier. The trio was recorded in “beautiful old
church” - St. Mary of the Annunciation - in Crngrob, Slovenia, in September 2016.
Resnik a soft and gentle voice, often a lyrical one, rooted in jazz
legacy but totally free. Maier and Kaučič are perfect partners for this
kind of chamber, intimate - a collection of “Conversations That Never
Stop” as the last piece is titled. Both color the searching yet
harmonious phrases of Resnik and his careful and patient investigation
of overtones and multiphonics with minimalist but precise touches,
offering great timbral sensitivity. Kaučič work with the cymbals and
inventive percussive sounds throughout the extended pieces “Zemlja
(Suite of Crngrob)”, “Thieves Came Quietly”, “Satellites” and the last
piece is truly remarkable, always enriching the deep melodic veins of
Resnik with great senses of imagination and invention.
The Canadian ensemble Quatuor Bozzini are really something special. I only
recently came across them on Cassandra Miller’s Just So, which I
loved
. A quick internet search reveals that they have interpreted everyone from
contemporary composers such as Miller and Linda Catlin Smith to John Cage
(of course they did) to, now, Phil Niblock. And they do all of this with
great aplomb and, even more impressively, refinement.
Phill Niblock-Baobab
is no exception, though it is a very different beast than some of their
other releases. (For you Niblock fans out there, you likely already know
what to expect.) Originally penned for orchestra, the two tracks on this
album - “Disseminate” and “Baobab” - have been chopped and reconfigured as
20 separate tracks, each consisting of a single instrument, performed by
the quartet of Clemens Merkel, Alissa Cheung, Stéphanie Bozzini, and
Isabelle Bozzini. The result, per the notes of Emanuelle Majeau-Bettez, is
a sort of “hardcore drone” of microtonal layerings, albeit created by a
chamber quartet. In that, it reminds me of a less wandering and less
entangled take on Zeitkratzer’s Metal Machine Music recording . As seems fitting for such acoustic drone, these tracks are
characterized by sonic modulations rather than melodic shifts or
unpredictable sounds. In this sense, the music sounds deceptively
mechanical, as if it were a series of digital loops. Of course, the
acoustic nature of the music belies this. Apart from the brief fade-in and
fade-out marking the beginning and end of each piece, these songs have no
prescribed course. They simply and glacially fluctuate, as the listener’s
ear wanders from tone to tone.
This is music to listen to closely. This is music to read to, to tune in
and out of. This is music to mediate to and contemplate. If full, subtle,
and loud new music is your thing (and, yes, this should be played loud), Baobab is well worth the listen. And, if you are not yet sure
whether you enjoy this “hardcore drone,” this compounded, aggressive
monotony dense with rich timbral subtleties, then this albumis an
excellent place to start.
Nate Wooley (trumpet, effects) recruits Mary Halvorson (electric guitar),
Susan Alcorn (pedal steel guitar), and Ryan Sawyer (drums, voice) for three
original compositions spanning 53 minutes on Columbia Icefield.
Halvorson and Wooley have collaborated with some frequency, perhaps most
famously on Crackleknob with Reuben Radding and in various
settings with Anthony Braxton’s Tri-Centric Orchestra and its alumni.
Sawyer recorded with Wooley on Seven Storey Mountain III & IV
and Seven Storey Mountain V. And Alcorn recorded with Halvorson on Away With You. So there’s some significant familiarity among this
new quartet, and its communicative possibilities are perhaps further
nurtured by Wooley composing these pieces with these musicians in mind.
Wooley grew up near the mouth of the Columbia River yet only recently
visited its headwaters, the glacial landscape from which this recording
borrows its name, and the extreme environment inspired Wooley “to express
what is most natural and most foreign to us simultaneously,” manifested by
a theme of dualism/counterpoint threaded through each piece. If you take
the stream’s path to its origin, the kinetic water becomes static glaciers,
fertile valleys transition to scablands, relicts of an ancient hellscape
flooded by fiery basalt succumb to ice, the squandered Hanford site leads
to the pristine Canadian Rockies, and the dams, levees, plants, and mills
that currently yoke the river lie by evidence of the biblical Missoula
floods. The dualism in the story of the watershed is mimicked in the music
by the frequent counterpoint of Alcorn and Halvorson’s dueling guitars,
Wooley’s textural fermatas soaring over the discrete notes of the others,
Wooley’s trumpet transforming from a mellow, dark, soft, reflective tone to
a breathy bluster almost instantaneously, and the relatively tight
compositions providing seemingly small windows for improvisatory outbursts.
Even the titling reflects the theme, with “Lionel Trilling” named after the
literary critic because Wooley thought it was beautiful that he could love
and hate someone so much, or “With Condolences” being a dryly humorous
apology for butchering John Berryman’s words and then making Sawyer
vocalize those butchered words (rather than the common “funereal” or
“tenebrous” interpretations, despite it being the fastest and free-est
track). The entire experience feels like a continuous push and pull, ebb
and flow, wax and wane, call and response, an exploration of counterpoint.
This kind of equilibrium of conflict frequently feels like it’s about to
boil over, but the playing is relatively timid until Halvorson and Alcorn’s
fiery solos in “Seven In The Woods” or Sawyer’s fills in “With
Condolences.” Along with these solos, other individual highlights include
Sawyer’s brushwork complimented by effects like disintegrating tape from
Wooley on “Seven In The Woods” and Wooley sounding like a hot air balloon
burner on “Lionel Trilling.” The progressive structure and guitarwork on
“Lionel Trilling” reminds me of the Chicago-Louisville strain of “post
rock,” which I enjoy and also hear in Wooley’s buddy’s band, Marker. I’m
partial to the headier, quieter aspects of Wooley and a part of me wishes
the compositions allowed the players more freedom to improvise with each
other (particularly Alcorn and Halvorson), but Wooley doesn’t disappoint.
Columbia Icefield
is available digitally and on CD.
Sax player Michaël Attias is often described as one of the most questing
and keenly collaborative figures on the New York jazz scene, His first solo
album, échos la nuit (Echo by Night) finds him collaborating with himself,
playing simultaneously “left-hand alto (sax)/right-hand piano/right foot
sustain pedal”. This album was "twelve years in gestation and recorded in a
little over an hour ". No overdubs, just "melodies in free fall… The
reverberation is from the room and the sympathetic resonance of the piano
strings set into vibration by the sound of the saxophone."
The 12 short pieces were improvised, recorded at La Maison en Bois in
Abéville-La-Rivière, France, in December 2017. Still, all highlight his
highly personal concept of sensual lyricism, “a kind of musical
synesthesia, but where music is the only subject and the only object”, as
his friend and close collaborator Anthony Coleman calls it (Attias guested
on many of Coleman’s albums, beginning on Selfhaters, Tzadik’s Radical
Jewish Culture, 1996).
These instant, supposedly simple, compositions allude to Attias' nuanced and
imaginative language as well as his unique sense of space. The
mysterious “Trinité” plays with angular-serpentine Monk-ish lines and
brings to mind Steve Lacy interpretation of Thelonious Monk work. The
whispering, seductive alto sax on “Grass” adapts North African scales.
“Fenix III” borrows a chord from the late Japanese pianist Masabumi
Kikuchi, with whom he performed and later was inspired by him to compose
“Nerve & Limbo” (Nerve Dance, Clean Feed, 2017). “Circles” is a deep
meditation on extended breathing techniques where every touch of the sax
key and every blow is a decisive one. “Rue Oberkampf” goes back to Attias’
early twenties in Paris studying Schillinger Technique of Musical
Composition. “Song for the Middle Pedal” charms with its quiet innocence.
“Sea in the Dark” and the last “Echoes II: Night” offers dark, film-noir
narratives, still, surprises with their suggestive, poetic tone on both the
sax and the piano.
And back to Anthony Coleman that reminds us the wise words of Morton
Feldman: “Now that everything’s so simple, there’s so much to do.” You
should listen to the many, enchanting things that Michaël Attias does.
