Johs Lund and Henrik Pultz Melbye - Play Baritone Saxophones (Svala Records / Aether Productions, 2018) ***½

By Paul Acquaro

The Baritone saxophones is big and formidable. I've always enjoyed the power and sonorities of the large woodwind, and it seems it is the last sax that one can play without having to sit, or have some sort of contraption scaffolding the instrument. Folks like Dave Rempis, Ken Vandermark, and Mats Gustafsson eat up the instrument, often luxuriating in the instruments powerful, reverberating tones. This Scandinavian duo takes a different tact, here Johs Lund and Henrik Pultz Melbye, both accomplished musicians who work within the experimental, jazz, and rock worlds, enjoy the sonic possibilities of two bari-saxs in three one-take improvizations. 

The two use circular breathing and engage extended techniques to create an immersive musical environment that envelopes the listener. The notes for the album claim "this puts both the musicians and the listener in a state of trance and provides a multidimensional soundscape that is overwhelming, compact and intense." I see no point in disagreeing with this open-ended description, but would like to add a little more concretely, the two can sound as kinetic as bees dancing around hive full of honey or as sinister as waiting all night for something anticipated and terrible that never happens.

The music on Plays Baritone Saxophones is experimental and hypnotic. It advances without moving, a constant buzz without a stated goal. The longer and deeper one listens, the more the little changes and variations make bigger differences. Patterns set up expectations and the musicians then subtly break them, introducing new lines within the confines they set up. Just two saxophones, but so much use of the imagination that it seems like much more. Listening requires relaxing, letting the patterns swirl around, and grasping the deviations. 

I've unfortunately let this one, along with many other fascinating recordings, languish. Go to Bandcamp and add it to your collection ASAP.

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Simon Rose & Steve Noble, Simon Rose & Philippe Lemoine

By Stef

Of all the leading saxophones of today's jazz, people will think naturally about Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker, Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark, Mats Gustafsson, but Simon Rose should be on this list too, not because of his influence or renown, but simply because of the quality of his playing. His baritone has this wonderful warm, round and deeply emotional sound, that is equally intense when playing with power or quietly. And apart from his tone, he is a true creative artist, a writer of sonic stories that capture the attention and don't let it go.

Both albums show a different face of Simon Rose and his art. The first one is epic and grand, the second is poetic and intimate, and both are of very high quality, and easy to recommend.


Simon Rose & Steve Noble - North Sea Night (Not Two, 2019) ****½

On North Sea Night, we get a duo performance with his compatriot Steve Noble, recorded in 2018 at the Jazz North East festival in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Both musicians have performed and released albums together over the years, in various line-ups, including in the trio Badlands with Simon Fell on bass, and their collaboration is almost symbiotic, to use a cliché.

The first track is half an hour long, and it is actually massive, even if performed by only two musicians. Some moments are full of thundering violence, with deep plaintive howls, alternated with more delicate and sensitive voices. Noble gets a long solo moment, and it's captivating, full of joy, both technically and musically. Then Rose gets his long solo moment, again it's raw, deeply emotional, strong and impressive. This is free improvisation at its best: in the moment, immediate, direct, rich and unpredictable, without fringes or needless embellishments. They manage to keep the intensity going, even in the quieter moments, and they manage to keep the inherent lyricism of their music, even in the most energetic moments. Strong!

This is a great performance, even grand, lifting music to a very high level. There is a level of purity and authenticity to it that resonates with your humble servant. We can thank Not Two to have released it, especially because both musicians are under-released. It's ferocious, sensitive and smart.

Don't miss it!

PS: Simon Rose now lives in Berlin. He's not the traveller like the other saxophonists mentioned in the first paragraph, so it may be worth a trip to Berlin to see and hear him perform.

Simon Rose & Philippe Lemoine ‎– Séance (Tour De Bras, 2018) ****

On "Séance", Simon Rose performs in a duo with French saxophonist Philippe Lemoine, the former on baritone, the latter on tenor, and also a resident of Berlin. Much like Rose, he is an explorer of sound, like Rose playing with resonance, timbre, pressure, force and speed.

In contrast to the duo with Noble, we get twelve relatively short pieces, each around three minute long - like hit singles - which each on their own develop a musical short story. In contrast with the live performance with Noble, the overall tone is calmer and more subdued, even if that does not result in less adventurous or intense music. Both saxes use all their repertoire of instrumental techniques, such as timbral innovations, circular breathing in combination with improvisational inventiveness to create a wonderful dialogue of intertwining sounds.

The overall tone is incredibly warm, and the listener gets engulfed by this beautiful and strange summer breeze. There is no violence or sense of urgency, just the quiet and gentle embrace between two flows of sound, circling, merging, touching, very focused on each other. It's a dialogue which the listener is somehow part of, a privileged onlooker and inactive participant.

The meeting is one of a merging of European cultures, its common history and topography, and the title itself refers to the different meanings of "scéance" in French and English: in French it's just a happening, in English getting in contact with the dead. According to Rose in the liner notes: "Seance signifies something otherworldly, extra-sensory and at the same time an everyday musical encounter".

Be part of it.

Listen and download from Bandcamp.



PS. One last comment. It is telling that British and French creative musicians need music labels from Poland and Canada to publish their music.

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Wind? Woods! Breath? Brass!

Two horns interlocked in mesmerising dialogues, finding a common language, a common sound, challenging each other, pushing boundaries. Nothing like a duo of similar instruments to engage in a competitive interaction, one which forces the other musician to listen to what you can do, suck him in your universe and be challenged to venture in his - not "her" in this list unfortunately - sound world. Strangely enough the trap is to be focused on each other, much more than to create something simultaneously for an audience, as you would with two completely different instruments.


Evan Parker & Joe McPhee - What If They Both Could Fly (Rune Grammofon, 2013) 

On the first one European legend Evan Parker meets American legend Joe McPhee. Both meet full of respect for a fascinating dialogue on trumpet and sax, or mostly both on sax. The playing is fully improvised and because of the sound of the tenors, also a very warm album. The mood is relatively subdued, with lots of circular breathing, yet soulful, with some moments of increased power play, although these are few and far between. Both artists think about sound, and perform something together, rather than competing. It is solemn and highly recommended to fans of either musician, and of both of course.

Available at Instantjazz.


Ken Vandermark & Mats Gustafsson - Verses (Corbett vs. Dempsey, 2013)

Another fascinating listen is this duo between the two champions of the tenor, Ken Vandermark and Mats Gustafsson, two heroes of this blog, artists who've been shaping the form of improvised music and free jazz in the past decade, saxophonists whose names stand for power, creativity and productivity, two men who are also fascinated themselves by the shoulders they stand on, whose legacy goes back to Ayler as much as to respecitvely Giuffre or Bengt Nordström. Both musicians had played together before, but always in larger ensembles, with Brötzmann's Chicago Tentet, or with Sonore, on joint meetings of their trios with DKV + Aaly.

Yet this is their first duo performance, with Vandermark on tenor, bass clarinet and b flate clarinet, and Gustafsson on tenor, alto and baritone, and they show us the myriad of possibilities of sound with these instruments, and even if they demonstrate a variety of techniques and skills, the focus is always on the music, which flows between soulful and quiet moments - as on "I Never Dreamed", to intense chatters ("Fortunate Rust") and powerful howls ("Beside Me, Images"), yet always, always subtle and full of nuance.


Listen to Ripolin
 

Available at Instantjazz.


Michel Doneda & Joris Rühl ‎– Linge (Umlaut, 2013)

The German French Joris Rühl is on clarinet, for his second album, in the company of the French soprano saxoponist Michel Doneda, who must be around his seventieth album by now. Of all the albums in this review, the overall atmosphere is the most minimalist, and one on which both musicians are focused on creating a common soundscape rather than enter into a dialogue. Indeed, both reeds create a longitudinal slow movement of sound, which quietly develops around a tonal center. This is a work of subtle finesse, of tonal refinement and precision that is totally different from the raw interaction of some of the other albums reviewed here, there is no call and response, no fierce dialogues or powerful howls, no, the mood is subdued and intense, less about expression of emotions than about the creation of a fragile beauty.


Lol Coxhill & Michel Doneda - Sitting On Your Stairs (Emanem, 2013)

On this album, we find the late Lol Coxhill in a duo with Michel Doneda, both on soprano for a really intense dialogue, so intense, that you often wonder whether they ever thought that anybody would have to listen to this, yet that being said, once you actually do listen, the result is pretty hypnotic at times, with both men doing bouts of circular breathing, or moving together in loud screams, bird-like calls, and then falling back to real fragile and tender musings, vulnerable. I am not sufficiently expert to distinguish who is who just based on their sound, which is remarkably similar, both in tone as in the timbral and musical dynamics. They are really on the same space when playing, equally technically skilled, equally free, at any time able to join the other artist on his wild flights while guiding him back if needed too.


Steve Swell & Kirk Knuffke - Feynman's Diagrams (Nacht Records, 2013)

There is a strange relationship between physics, mathematics and music. Think of references made to astronomy, particle physics, quantum mechanics and other theoretical physics references in albums by Agustí Fernández, Matthew Shipp, Rob Mazurek, and several more. Here we have Steve Swell on trombone and Kirk Knuffke on trumpet, engaged in great interactions, bouncing like particles in Feynman diagrams, some moving towards the future, some back in time. Here we are in a moment of full perplexity, again, as to what all this means. Nevertheless, Swell and Knuffke are great musicians, stellar artists, and their dialogue is interesting. They explore. They explore sounds, without any intensity, slowly, cautiously, interacting, reacting, co-creating a canvas of phrases and notes, more abstract than the mathematical equations underpinning the Feynman diagrams, and the result is great, offering a sense of wonder about individual tones, creating a sense of gentle surprise at the next thing happening. It's intimate, contained, minimal yet rich, full of small attentions and maybe also intentions, like notes offered like presents, generously, full of warmth and friendliness, in the icy cold and barren world of particle physics.


Vinny Golia & Urs Leimgruber - Empricism in the West (Relative Pitch, 2014) 

This albums offers duets of two masters of free improvisation, Vinny Golia from New York on bass flute, soprillo, sopranino, bass saxophone, Bb and contra-alto clarinets, and urs Leimgruber from Luzern, Switzerland, on soprano and tenor saxophones. And for the latter I have some regret about not having reviewed more of his albums on this blog. Again, this is an album of dialogue, yet one of ever shifting players, because of the frequent changes in instruments used, especially by Golia. Their musical universe is one of try-outs, one of spontaneous improvisation, one of experience, as its title suggests. You can theorise as much as you want, and as the title of the tracks suggests ("The Analytic And The Synthetic", "The Scientific Method, Logical Truths Are Linguistic Tautologies", "Matter Is The Permanent Possibility Of Sensation", etc.), it is not about science, it's not about organised systems with high predictability repetition of experiments, quite to the contrary, it's about the experience of the try-out itself, about organic beauty that cannot be captured by systems or logic or mechanics. You get a lot here, an open-ended creation of two highly specialised experts of their instruments, bringing lots of variety despite the limited line-up, demonstrating the experience of freedom and the demonstration of freedom that comes with experience. 

Available at Instantjazz.


Aaron Novik & Arrington De Dionyso (Bandcamp, 2013)

A totally different sound we get from two lesser known musicians, Arrington de Dionyso on voice, bass clarinet and percussion, and Aaron Novik on bass clarinet, electric bass clarinet, clarinet and percussion. On the first track they are joined by Eli Crews on electronic manipulation. Both reedists come from a more punk and rock-oriented background, iconoclasts and irreverent destructors of established patterns, with "trans-utopian world music for a world that exists in fever dreams and hallucinations" as we can read on de Dionyso's website, and we know Novik from his "Secret of Secrets" on Tzadik two years ago. 


The first track "Electric Duo" is an out of this world nightmarish vision, yet once they play their reeds acoustically, the universe changes. Don't expect sounds like the heroes in the other reviews, the approach is surprisingly a little nicer, with often some klezmer-inspired or balkan references. Yet, their music has indeed some shamanistic howls, some unusual approaches - luckily! - and it is fun, although you feel they not on their familiar ground here. Is it too nice? Check for yourselves.

Listen and download on Bandcamp.

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Jack Wright / Ben Wright - as if anything could be the same (Relative Pitch, 2014) ****½

By Paul Acquaro

I did a little internet research on this father and son duo before I cracked open their new CD as if anything could be the same. By the time I finally plunked it into my player and the music began I had already formed a rather positive feeling towards both musicians. I was taken by saxophonist Jack Wright's uncompromising story: his moves between the East Coast and the mountains of Colorado, his work in academia and subsequent move into performing free jazz, and enjoyed his DIY take on music and art. Bassist Ben Wright was a little harder to find out about, but even from the bits I read on Spring Garden, I found myself intrigued by his punk rock roots and current work out in New Mexico. 

So, I had really set my expectations up for this new album, and I wasn't disappointed. Restless and searching, as if anything could be the same is the outcome of two deeply connected musicians acting and reacting to each other with their instruments, unafraid to stretch boundaries. 

The tracks, improvisations broken up and named after each word of the album title, are each self contained showcases of free jazz experimentalism. The two musicians share a language comprised of staccato passages, breathy space, and intense workouts, that while unpredictable and full of surprises, is imbued with meaning and understanding. When Jack produces a percussive stanza, Ben responds in kind, not repeating it but acknowledging and proposing the next step.

It would almost be a futile, and certainly a long winded task to explain each track. Rather, it's suffice to say that the saxophonist and upright bassist work both within and outside their instrument's more traditional ranges and roles, often slipping into extended techniques and forms. They are always on equal ground, supporting and propelling each other through an eclectic, engaging and energetic set of free improvisations. In a way, it's everything I had expected from exploring the musicians bios but nothing like I had ever heard before. Highly recommended!


Available at instantjazz.com. 

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Colin Stetson & Mats Gustafsson - Stones (Rune Grammofon, 2012) *****

Music for two saxophones and dialogue for two voices

By Martin Schray and Paolo Casertano
 
M - Whenever I listen to Mats Gustafsson or Colin Stetson I hear an enormous physicality. I imagine them headbanging to their own music, like these toy birds picking up food or water. And I see them struggling with their huge instruments, fascinated by the sounds their instruments can create. So, on the one hand their cooperation sounds like a match made in heaven but on the other hand their music is - despite all similarities - quite different. Gustafsson is notorious for his highly energetic style, he takes no prisoners, while Stetson seems to be more refined integrating minimal riffs and circular breathing. How do you feel about that, Paolo?

P - I agree with you, Martin. Let's compare, for example, the recently quoted “Needs” by Gustafsson with its buzzing engines to the melodic accessibility - and I say this as an absolute worthiness - of “New History Warfare Vol.2: Judges” by Stetson. For sure Gustafsson can boast on a far more extended discography than Stetson, spanning from traditional interpretation to extreme experimentalism, from solo to very large ensemble. But this is a live recording and not a studio take, so I really wonder how this cooperation has been settled. I'm persuading myself that someone must have cheated on them. Something like: “Would you come and play tonight for a solo set at the Vancouver Jazz Fest? Be sure no other sax players will be there the same night!” Whatever way it went, I must admit they're not the first two saxophonists coming into my mind for a duo.

M - Absolutely right, Paolo. All the more if you consider the fact that sax duos are relatively rare. There are some on FMP (one of my all-time favorites is Koch/Fuchs/Parker/Sclavis’s “Duets dithyrambisch”, for example, or Lacy/Parker’s “Chirps”) and, of course, Jarman/Braxton’s wonderful “Together Alone”. The idea seems to be born out of the moment, even in the aftermath Gustafsson sounds as if he was blindsided. He said about the concert: “No escape ... nothing to hide ... you just need to go out there and interact!” But let’s talk about the music now.

P - Martin, don't you think that the most prominent aspect of this album is the capacity of the two players to blend their tunes more than setting a dialogue as in a traditional duet? This really seems to be the core of their approach to improvisation, no role or function is given in advance. They chase each other towards high pitches dismantling the rhythmic section in the most avantgardish style á la Philip Glass, or swiftly turn to melodic and dramatic bluesy phrasings as you can see at the end of “Stones that only be”. The symbiosis resulting from their interaction is so complete that what you have back is a sort of doppelgänger musician trying to surprise himself about where his music is really going.

M - At the very beginning of the first track “Stones that rest heavily” they sound like two opera singers warming up before one seems to lose track sounding like a thirsty, dangerous animal which is put on a strange drug. Then, after two minutes, the track starts anew, which is structurally a very similar beginning as on Stetson’s “New History Warfare Vol.2: Judges”. Only here he plays it with Gustafsson, his ugly twin, who was hidden from the rest of the family. And that’s where the music goes: it really reminds me of sex (are we allowed to say this?), passionate and greedy, exuberant, but also very tender, as if lovers were exploring their bodies for the first time (including outbursts of joy). What do you think, Paolo?

P - Totally true, Martin! I really like the long and slow passage of sustained trembling notes in the low register around minute four. I must admit I'm enchanted moreover by Stetson's timbre. He has developed these kind of hoarse death throes where Gustafsson can lean on to climb towards high pitches. It's really like an animal courtship that brings us, around minute seven, to the fight. The cohesiveness is then disrupted by syncopated assaults of cutting notes. But exactly as two deer stuck together by antlers, once the acme is reached, they need to loose and that's why we have this far relaxed atmosphere opening "Stones that only be", like two friends remembering their reckless youth. Have you heard the double tapping of minute three and a half? They must be happy! I have now a question for you. I know you're an earnest "Gustafssonian", so, listening to the beginning of "Stones that need not", in my opinion again really "Stetsonian", how do you interpret this? I mean that there is something more standardized and recognizable in Stetson's sound that conform the presence of the heterogeneous and eclectic (that's for sure!) Mats Gustafsson. Or is the Swedish axe giving his young friend the privilege to throw down the gauntlet and choose his best weapon so that he can follow him to his territory?

M - It is a typical Stetson beginning, no doubt. Maybe the fact that the album is dedicated to Sweden’s influential outsider poet Gunnar Ekelöf helps us here. Ekelöf once said: “I have only studied, unsystematically, things which could have some importance for my work as a poet. For the work of a poet is vision and form, and I praise the particular God who has made me capable of translating even dull facts in thick tomes into vision”. I guess this is what Gustafsson also does, he is interested in the music of others and - with Stetson being one of the most outstanding players of the younger generation - he is fascinated by his structural austerity and adds his vision to it. Stetson is dominating the beginning of the track, however, Gustafsson tempts him constantly to leave his well-structured playing, he is luring him away to more open pastures until Stetson submits himself. The second half is the meeting for the cup final, the showdown. Both have met each other at eye level, they are firing their musical magazines at the audience until they are almost empty – one of my favorite moments on the album. So, after all, what is your impression of the album?

P - Is it an aural hallucination given by the fight of saxophones or at the very beginning of  “Stones that only have” the duo is for a brief moment a trio counting the far cry of a child in the audience? - and I want to send my admiration to his parents here for the musical education they’re providing. By the way, this is a great album, Martin, and I like this notion of the artist as someone so in love with his art that is not interested in prevailing on someone else “flexing his muscles”, he can just stay still and stare enraptured by the beauty of what is listening, choosing the right moment to speak. Gustafsson is certainly a total musician, a great improviser in any conceivable formation and an artist devoted to the development of music in general. Stetson is a great promise and worthily joins the first. Considering that in the production of the younger a conspicuous amount of composition is evident by now, and considering as well that this is a live recording, I’d really like to see this same couple in a studio production. The most important thing is that they will give us other unforgettable meetings as this one.

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