Some days just call for a little more muscular sounds and others something more delicate. Fortunately free-jazz and experimental music is so wonderfully ill-defined that you can find something that fits both your mood and nice tolerance level without problem - often within the same album. Here are two bands from New York City that make a lot of sound but in very different ways.
I Don't Hear Nothin' but the Blues - Volume 3: Anatomical Snuffbox (Irrabbagast Records, 2020) ****
I have not heard saxophonist John Irabagon’s first installment of I Don't Hear Nothin But the Blues, which was a self-titled album with drummer Mike Pride. I picked up with 2013’s I Don't Hear Nothin But Blues 2: Appalachian Haze in which the duo had added guitarist Mick Barr to the mix and I reviewed here many moons ago. At the time, I wrote "suffice to say, there is a constant stream of sounds on Appalachian Haze. Mick Barr's guitar continuously agitates, it's pokey, it's scratchy, and it punctures the blankets of sound that saxophonist Irabagon lays down. Pride's drums propel and accentuate energetically.” Well, as they say, the more things change, the more they stay same, which, to my jaded ears, is just right.
Of course, there is still no blues, so to speak, on the album. However, what is different is that if you check out the progression of the cover art, a clever cartoon depiction of the band set in a mythologized Wild West town, you’ll see they’ve now added one more to their crew - none other than the incendiary guitarist Ava Mendoza. “What," you exclaim, "another guitarist? Doesn’t Barr already fill most of the space with his electric fire and fury?" Sure does, but add Mendoza and the energy level notches up even higher.
The 47-minute album, consisting of a single track, was expertly captured live by Randy Thaler at the Brooklyn performance space Happy Lucky #1, under the aegis of John Zorn’s Stone. This version of the Stone is a part of the expanding universe of locations and series, which is still anchored by the virtual Stone location at the New School in NYC’s West Village.
As for the sound, Anatomical Snuffbox is a flat out scorcher. Pride provides unparalleled pounding, Barr and/or Mendoza frenetically strum and strafe, while Irabagon pushes his embouchure to the breaking point, riding the energy building up around him. There is a slight break around the 30 minute mark - maybe the band was getting a bit saddle sore from the wild ride - or maybe not. This pause, if there even really was one, only lasts a moment before it picks up and rides wildly towards the sunset.
Yes, the quartet is unmatched in energy, but watch out for the real surprise, snaking through the underbrush are stealthy melodies and surprising harmonic ambushes.
Jonathan Kane and Dave Soldier - February Meets Soldier String Quartet (EEG Records, 2021) ***½
Ok, so here is a big sound, but a different approach. It’s still a noisy affair, but instead of pushing the needle to the red, it jumps hypnotically between the grooves. The 'string quartet' part of the title is an bit tongue-in-cheek title as the recording is the work of the duo drummer Jonathan Kane (a founding member of Swans) and the neuroscientist, author, and string player Dave Solider. They are are also joined on one track by guitarist Jon Creider.
Suffice to say, their sound is more than sum of the parts. The first track is cumulative, repetitive, but sweet to the ear, as it builds into a swirl of sound, mostly rock, with a pinch of new wave, no-wave, and just smile-and-wave mixed together. This is followed by “A Very Good Year”, a take on the standard associated closely with Frank Sinatra. The nostalgic melody weaves and wanders through wistful modes under coalescing into a noisy, but not-indelicate jam, Soldier’s violin sometimes a thin squeal, sometimes a raucous force. 'Requiem for Hulis Pulis’ starts austere and solid, like a sludge rock epic that builds patiently, very patiently, growing in intensity through a simple, repeating melodic statement. The final track ‘Vienna Over the Hills’ is the more experimental of the tracks. It begins with a shimmering dissonance that oozes and mutates slowly, at times crystalline and soothing and other times opaque and sharp.
This is a fine collaboration that offers a lot for the listener to grab on to.
By Nick Metzger
Guitarist and singer-songwriter Wendy Eisenberg makes quite a statement
with these two 2018 albums. It's not surprising that they're as good as
they are, her playing on Birthing Hips’ 2017 album Urge to Merge is fantastic; at once melodic, prickly, and virtuosic. These albums
showcase two sides of this multifaceted artist's music; her solo
acoustic-electric material, where she chases her muse in a very personal,
idiosyncratic guitar language, and in a trio with Trevor Dunn and Ches
Smith where her playing style is utilized to dual with these sonic titans
in an absolute blast furnace of an album. And though the style of the
albums differs wildly, there is a continuity in her playing across both
sets that works whether she's plucking out angular acoustic shapes or
laying down fuzz bombs.
Its Shape Is Your Touch (Vin Du Select Qualitite, 2018) ****½
The album begins softly with 'Sol Lewitt', in which softly plucked
strings tangle with muted, percussive pops and bent harmonics. She weaves
folk and free improvisation in a continuous flow of ideas, though more
heavily leveled towards the latter in this track. In 'Lethe' she
lets the folk elements emerge and evolve. It begins abstractly before she
settles into a fingerpicked melody that evokes a journey down the song’s
namesake river; discomposing but still peculiarly comforting. ' Early November' is a clinic of melodic ideas and guitar technique.
Eisenberg’s mastery of manual dexterity is apparent, as fingerpicked
passages are interlaced with quick runs of trills, harmonics, and
hammer-ons. She moves from one musical idea to the next, each evolving from
the previous so naturally that it’s hard to discern the chicken from the
egg. It sounds to me like 'Eridanos' is pocked with very slight nods
to Spanish guitar and flamenco that have been mixed into her sound
concoction. 'The Designated Mourner' would almost fit in on an old
Takoma release (I’m sure Fahey would’ve loved this album). It has a
rolling, narrative feel emanated by many of those artists but all filtered
through Eisenberg’s incongruous, constantly probing style. 'Sawn'begins with a barely discernable figure scraped out of her guitar before
some warm chords. The song is very hypomanic, exhibiting several creative
flights and variations before returning to the subdued attack of the
opening. 'All Saints' recalls for me the early work of
guitarist/composer Bjørn Fongaard in its use of pointillist microtones and
harmonics. Its penetratingly investigative approach explores the spaces
between semitones with enthusiasm and serves as a final statement from a
most satisfying album.
Eisenberg’s acoustic work brings another name to mind of course, that being
the late, great Derek Bailey. It’s almost unavoidable that his name will
pop in your head the moment you hear a false note or harmonic being thrown
in the mix, but Eisenberg’s music has a more narrative feel compared with
Bailey (or even Tashi Dorji’s acoustic material as a more recent
comparison). Another name that I’ll mention, although sadly much less well
known, is that of the late New Zealand guitarist Donald McPherson who
informed his free improvisations with the essence of classical and folk (or
perhaps vice versa). All of these comparisons however fail to capture the
scope of her unique talent and are ultimately due to me trying to reconcile
this brilliant album with something that I am familiar with, as ultimately
her music may have its allusions but it’s uniquely her own.
Three Dream Rooms - VDSQ
The Machinic Unconscious (Tzadik, 2018) ****
The Machinic Unconscious finds Eisenberg teamed up with longtime John Zorn
collaborators Trevor Dunn on bass and Ches Smith on percussion. Mr. Dunn is
well known to the Collective, whether from his Mr. Bungle/Fantomas/Tomahawk
fame, or his work with John Zorn. The same goes for Ches Smith who played
skins on
an album
that showed up in almost all of the Collective’s Top 10 lists in 2018.
Besides that he’s played so many projects in 2018 alone that it would be
difficult to list them all, but they include contributions to records from
Mary Halvorson’s Sextet, Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog, Matt Mitchell’s debut,
Tim Berne’s Snakeoil, as well as being a longtime collaborator of Trevor
Dunn’s in Trio-Convulsant and Secret Chiefs. Dunn and Smith are both
accomplished and well-practiced free improvisers and provide the perfect
foil for Eisenberg on this recording.
'The Descent of Alette'
begins with Dunn’s bass growling with fuzz and peeling off squeals and
chirps into which Eisenberg and Smith dimly venture, Eisenberg with clean
lines glossed at times with ring modulation and Smith with a light
crackling attack, like a kindling fire. The piece varies in intensity
several times tricking you into thinking that kindling will take off and
leave this one blazing, but it never does, and remains a fragmented and
probing affair throughout. 'Depths of Locusts' feels every bit as
disconcerted, with the band rapidly shifting between blasts of fuzz and
quieter introspective playing. The avant-funk of 'Parataxis' is
built off Dunn and Smith’s steady tempo, with Eisenberg slashing chords and
motifs from her guitar, playing at times with and against the
rhythm. The stage is set for'Zoning' against Dunn’s wooly mammoth
bass playing and Smith’s understated clatter. The rhythm section provides a
lightly spun (but intense) structure for Eisenberg to light-up with some of
her most fiery playing of the set. Kiln starts off with an
overdriven chord progression that disappears almost as quickly as it began,
buckling and collapsing into free interplay. This piece is another showcase
of Eisenberg’s dexterity, she absolutely shreds on this track. 'Frayed, Knotted, and Unshorn' kind of sounds like the name implies,
it’s very disjointed. Eisenberg and Dunn hit the pedalboards hard on this
one, deriving just about every texture you could think of from their simple
stringed instruments; the group chemistry is terrific (I bet they had a
blast making this record). Ches Smith is so sly that you barely notice that
it’s really his sandbox they’re playing in.
On'Dangerous Red' we get an off-center vamp by Eisenberg via
rapidly sliced out chord sequences as Dunn and Smith provide a rumbling bed
of rhythm for her to traverse before the piece opens up into another
fantastic improvisation. 'Kin Dza Dza' is a brief, fervent,
well-timed explosion that finds the band pushing their capabilities (and
gear) into the red for about a minute and a half. It concisely answers the
question that was building in my mind while listening to this album: “How
intense can this get?” 'Mycoaelia' begins with crackling, chirping
guitar, rubbery bass, and a wisp of cymbal chatter. It is in turns probing
and assertive; jangling melancholy turns to fuzzed-out maelstrom in the
blink of an eye, never allowing you to gain proper footing. '6J' is
a timbral as much as a rhythmic exploration that displays the band stacking
juxtaposing phrases that crackle with intensity between more pensive
build-ups of brooding interchanges. The album is capped off with 'Foresworn', a brief improvisation that doesn’t summarize the album
so much as it offers one more possibility of what this group can sound
like. The variety of sounds and playfulness combined with the intensity of
a rock band make this release a real standout.
I've been mesmerized by the fearsome math rockers Ahleuchatistas. The North Carolina based guitar/drum duo of Shane Parish (guitar) and Ryan Oslance (drums) deliver some carefully constructed progressive music, leaning toward the heavier rock side, but still balanced tunefully with space and melody. I had been listening and following along, but somewhere in these carefully constructed twisting passages, I lost count and decide to just go with its flow.
As the collective brain of Wikipedia has it, "math rock is a rhythmically complex, often guitar-based, style of experimental rock and indie rock music that emerged in the late 1980s" - which is why I suppose I am thinking a bit about King Crimson as I listen - "it is characterized by complex, atypical rhythmic structures (including irregular stopping and starting), counterpoint, odd time signatures, angular melodies, and extended, often dissonant, chords."
And that's pretty much what happens here, in fact on the opening track you can hear a puzzle being built, with a catchy looped riff and the drums connecting in unexpected ways. To my ears the duo is far greater than the sum of its parts. Building over loops and tricky rhythmic patterns, the tracks move from the driving (Sundowning) to the anthemic (La Faena) to the prickly (also LaFaena) to metal (Power With) to the down right unusual (Shelter in Place). The precision of their shifting patterns however does not fall into a rut, and the ever morphing patterns keep the music ever in motion.
I never thought I'd take to this type of music, something about the genre seems cold, but Arrebato is an incredible listen - the Ahleuchatistas certainly know how to add it up.
Billed as “a 2015 cover of the soundtrack to a 1970’s remake of a 1930’s movie about the Middle Ages,” Jacob Garchik’s Ye Olde is a sly, propulsive wall of sound. Much credit to Garchik for delivering so precisely on the promise of his concept, but the final product wouldn’t be the same without this exact group of musicians. Vinnie Sperrazza’s heavy kick drum and open, splashy cymbals bring that 70’s heavy metal drive. And on guitars, you’ve got three of the most creative and sonically interesting players, Jonathan Goldberger, Mary Halvorson, and Brandon Seabrook. And of course, Garchik is all over this record, bursting through the funky haze with crisp, bold lines.
Because Ye Olde is something of a soundtrack to an imagined medieval quest, tracks are divided between the plot-driven “songs” and transitional “wipes,” brief interludes between each set piece. The songs introduce the large cast of characters, including Mortise Mansard, Queen Anne, “The Lady of Duck Island,” “The Elders of Ocean Pathway,” and “The Opossum King of Greenwood Forest.” Throughout, Goldberger, Halvorson, and Seabrook shift through hocketed melodies, solos in round, and just about every effects pedal at their feet.
Each smaller event builds to the three-part conclusion of the story, beginning with “The Battle of Brownstone Bulge,” the 6-minute menacing and lurching climax of the album, featuring a stirring solo from Garchik. Ye Olde pauses for “Refuge In the Ruins of Castle Martense,” a sonically rich breather, with its trombone chorus, fading drums, and syncopated guitar, leading to the final track, “The Throne Room of Queen Anne.” Filled to the brim with royal brass, marching snare, and crenelated riffs, “The Throne Room” brings grand closure to this fantasy quest.
Some albums are exciting just by the nature of the lineup, garnering a kind of “What will that even sound like?” anticipation. Like Kris Davis’s Infrasound, from earlier this year, Jacob Garchik’s trombone, drums, and three guitars lineup for Ye Olde was, on paper, too interesting to resist. And on record, it’s fantastic.
By Paul Acquaro No Pair, an Italian jazz-rock improv group came to me as a recommendation, and brilliant one it was. I've had the album in high rotation now for the past six weeks or so that it has been in my grimy paws, never tiring of its loose and fragmented ferocity. It's one of those rare albums that catches on the first spin and doesn't let go.
A bit hyperbolic, I know, but let me explain. Chaos and Order is the work of Francesco Chiapperini who composes and plays bass and soprano clarinet. He is joined by Gianluca Elia on tenor sax, Dario Trapani on electric guitar and Antonio Fusco on drums. To make any comparisons, I'd post that there are strong traces of Lucien Dubius' looping bass heavy songs and even a bit of Marc Ribot's style in the guitar playing. Some of the writing, like on 'Brain Misty' even has hints of Bundle's era Soft Machine with it's mix of horn arrangements, analog electronic sounds and biting guitar work. In fact, I think the group enjoyed playing that one so much they didn't know how to stop - so it simply ends with an acute fade.
The album kicks off with 'Edag' which begins like a steamroller, gives way to a solo clarinet passage that twirls around until leading back into the power chords and a dance of the woodwinds. It's scripted for sure, it's so precise, but it's also loose and jangly. The follow up 10 minute 'Sliding Snickers' starts starkly different, shape shifting snippets snake stealthily around a implied pulse. You're halfway through already before the pieces come together - fast - and then fall apart just as fast. The ironically playful 'Spreadsheet' is vivacious and fun, as Chiapperini's clarinet work shines through clear and delightful. The skeletal groove of guitar, sax and drum makes for tenuous and lovely support.
I've had Chaos and Order with me in the car, on a jog, on the train and blasting through the house. What can I say, it sounds great everywhere. The quartet draws deep from the well of rock and jazz and comes up with something fresh.
The second Spanish Donkey release begins somewhere beyond where the last ended. Joe Morris' seething and scalding guitar is a hot iron pressed again the flesh, and the microtonal keyboard work of Jamie Saft is grinding and eviscerating.
Direct and relentless, the 33 minute epic 'Raoul' begins with Morris' fuzzed-out melody and drummer Mike Pride adding muscle and flair. As Saft creeps in on the organ, the tension rises and Morris begins a wholehearted embrace of the wah-wah pedal. The piece is a tremendous tone poem that could be dedicated to mastodons sinking into tarpits as lava pouring down a volcano ignites the forest around it.
The album is a less about the individual voices as it is the dark and foreboding movement of sound. It's at once sludgy, defiant, nuanced and textured. The shapes of the sounds are as important as the notes themselves which, like on the track 'Behavioral Sink' rises from the slash of Saft's organ and the metallic clang of Morris' guitar.
Every once in a while, a band comes along that revisits and refreshes genres that might seem stagnant and lacking any innovation. In the case of SudoKu KilleR, the quartet led by Italian double bass player and composer Caterina Palazzi, we’re offered a twist on the often stale, old paradigms of jazz-rock. However, while jazz-rock really is a prominent element in the foundation of their sound, an idea fleshed out in the contrast between the guitar and the saxophone, their sophomore release Infanticide actually presents a delicate blend of different approaches and styles.
The adopted sound and employed idioms feel more like a symptom of Palazzi’s and her cohorts’ concepts that revolve around a certain loss of naivety and innocence in perceiving the world, a dedication to Nirvana and Cobain’s demons that extends beyond the record title. It’s from these thoughts that ambience and atmosphere emanate, accompanied by a predominantly noirish, brooding, and melancholic vision resembling film music. The band thus often resorts to slow, patient buildups during which the instruments move sinuously to each other, leaving behind a taste of carefully constructed, fragile structures and sparse yet lush notes within a negative space left by the lingering music. With all the looseness and sparseness in the playing, a false sense of lack of compositional maturity comes to mind. False, because even when they’re visiting and drawing from the worlds of surf rock, psychedelia, and post-rock, each composition on this record is nothing but carefully thought out. The only real criticism can be directed towards the lack of more improvised, freer segments that fit so nicely on, for example, the eponymous “SudoKu KilleR” and the wonderful “Futoshiki”, and that can be heard during Caterina Palazzi SudoKu KilleR’s live performances.
Noisier freak outs, that tend to appear after brusk transitions, are question marks and exclamation points, not constants. There’s not much straightforward rocking out here. Instead, the music is dominated by Giacomo Ancillotto’s distorted scratchy guitar improvising freely but subduedly and Antonio Raia’s saxophone rising to the forefront with interesting melodies, while everything’s being held together by Palazzi’s double bass that also gives a note of mystery to the sound and Maurizio Chiavaro’s mercurial, but firm drumming. Because of all this, Caterina Palazzi SudoKu KilleR appears to be a pure jazz band playing occasionally rock influenced songs rather than a fully melded jazz-rock unit. Their five long, cohesive tracks could even be described as Scandinavian contemporary jazz with a smidgen of avant-rock mixed in. And it’s for the better.
Contrary to what the names of the quartet and the album suggest, Infanticide doesn’t feel like an aggressive affair nor a mind-boggling conundrum. Instead, it shows four masters cultivating a dark but vital bonsai tree, patient and careful. It’s rare nowadays to craft a unique, recognizable sound within a well-established genre - something that Caterina Palazzi SudoKu KilleR achieve with apparent ease and by stepping outside of the genre’s boundaries. Recommended for listening during those warm, insufferable summer nights.
This is one of those very special records, although this may be a 4.5 star review, there's no doubt it's a five star listen. This is a record that crosses many boundaries and certainly guaranteed to make you not only sit up and listen but also rock around the room (if played loud enough). GOINGa Belgian based group, has a skeletal line up which packs a big punch, 2 drummers, Joao Lobo and Mathieu Calleja, and 2 keyboards/synths/objects (and plenty of effects) are Giovanni Di Domenico and Pak Yan Lau. The sound that they come up with could be loosely post-rock, but also closely allied to improvised music (sound wise). To top that off they have a description on their website describing themselves as a "[..] psychedelic groove band".
The album consists of two beautifully organised pieces. The first side/track "Red Machinery" develops slowly from sparse drums and keyboard sounds into repetitive figures and a complex interlocking groove. The combinations of rhythmic patterns are at the heart of this composition, the melodic seed is simple but varies slightly to blend into (and with) the various patterns. You could 'think' of Chicago group 'Tortoise' for a reference, GOINGtap into the same area, overlapping rhythms and rock beats, mixing some great experimental sounds and repetitive riffs, its a delightful combination and very addictive!
The second piece "Blue Machinery", has a slightly harder edge. Its brooding atmosphere and constant recurring single note pattern give this a urgent edgy quality. One feels the piece may brake, at any moment, into a up-tempo groove, but the group hold the music back in a way to produce tension. Minimal solo lines give the track just the right balance between a groove and melody, allowing the music to evolve naturally.
The clever combination of two keyboards/effects and two drummers really gives the music plenty of space, and the lack of a bass to drive the group is actually what gives it the group its pure sound. There are plenty of details to hear within the recording due to this combination and the different paths taken by each instrumentalist. There are no real soloists, just co-operative group made music.
This is a vinyl release, with one track per side, although it's possible to buy a digital version. I received the music on sound-files and I have to say that it seemed (in my humble opinion) a great medium to host this excellent music, as I found myself listening to the two tracks as one long evolving piece.
This is certainly a highly recommended release, and easily accessible to many people interested in either jazz, rock, electronica and the minimalism of post Steve Reich's world. Anyone interested should quickly head over to their website as this is a limited edition of 300 odd copies.
Guitarist Ava Mendoza has been toying with the phrase 'Unnatural Ways' for a while now. Her 2012 duo release with percussionist Nick Tamburro was titled Quit Your Unnatural Ways, and her current working trio with bassist Tim Dahl and drummer Max Jaffe is called Unnatural Ways. On this album, Unnatural Ways, Mendoza is accompanied by her previous Unnatural Ways line-up of keyboardist Dominique Leone and Tamburro.
Pushing at the edges of free jazz and avant-rock, the album's fiery opener 'Shapeshift' is a solid block of rock based improvisation and composition that blurs musical categories. It features some fierce fretwork, loop augmented rhythms and a shifting undercurrent of tempo. Though heavy at times, the music is still textured and nuanced.
Then it gets crazy. 'Dogsbody' features Mendoza's punkish vocals - with lyrics at least ostensibly about dogs - tangled up with her knotty guitar lines. The following 'No Record' is a nice bit of avant-prog, starting with a Crimsonesque intro that segues into a vintage Janes Addiction-like melody in which Mendoza observes that "everything we do is being recorded". 'Goodnight Irene' is probably my favorite deconstruction of a folk song since Ribot undid 'St. James Infirmary' on his solo guitar album Saints. In Mendoza's hands, the Leadbelly song snarls, lurches, and sticks menacingly to the ears. 'Danifest Mestiny' begins atmospherically, but the surrounding space is boiling, and the track quickly becomes a stomper with lyrics sufficiently obscure to invite a deep listening. The throb of the keyboard gives the song an even more foreboding presence.
Unnatural Ways is a significant statement from Mendoza. It showcases her past musical associations and points to where her music is headed. For me, the vocal parts were a bit of an acquired taste (isn't that the best kind?) but after repeated listening their importance in the music became clearer - in fact the whole thing comes together in kind of a natural way.
Give it a spin, see what you think:
Mendoza's Unnatural Ways is playing at the Downtown Music Gallery in New York City on Tuesday May 5th at 6:30 p.m.
