Ryoko Akama - places and pages (Another Timbre, 2017) ****

By Connor Kurtz

Rating or reviewing conceptual music raises a difficult question: and that is, what am I really rating here? Should I ignore all conceptual context and rate the music on its own, in terms of how it affects me as a listener, or should I think of the concept and score and how it intrigues and inspires me? I'm brought to Alvin Lucier's 1981 conceptual classic I Am Sitting in a Room, which consists of nothing more than Lucier playing back a voice recording into a room, recording it, and repeating until nothing more than the natural resonance of the room is heard. What interests me most, something that Lucier mentioned in his book, is that he decided to use text of him describing the experiment, rather than a poem as initially planned – this was so that the listener would gather no artistic power from his words and would simply focus on the concept. What is left is a wonderful concept resulting in a slightly boring album which I'll likely never revisit – and this seems to have been Lucier's intention. Now the quandary – how do I rate an album like that?

places and pages is a massive work of contemporary conceptual music, reaching nearly 3 hours over 50 tracks. [Only 45 of the tracks could fit on the 2 CDs, so the remaining 5 are made available for free download here: http://anothertimbre.com/akamadownloads.html – for those of you who would like to view these as 5 sample pieces, let me remind you that there was a reason that these were the ones left off of the album…] Many potential listeners may be deterred by this, I'll admit that I nearly skipped this one myself, but please hear my argument before you close the tab. places and pages was initiated by composer Ryoko Akama and Chilean guitarist Cristián Alvear, who are both members of the wonderful ensemble which I will get to soon. Akama explains the concept underlying the composition as follows: "a score that would concern location, situation, time and environment in terms of performance, and that somehow would erase a boundary between 'performance' and 'installation'." [Source: http://glissando.pl/en/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Ryoko-Akama.pdf] The score takes the form of 50 pages in a notebook, each with their own brief text score which is equal parts simple, cryptic and concise.

When I listen to avant-garde music, I typically prefer longer tracks – I like to submerge into a soundworld, and stay for a prolonged period of time. places and pages contains fifty tracks, ranging from a few seconds to 9 minutes, so this becomes a much more difficult listen than other similarly long releases. Each track requires heavy concentration; otherwise you may miss what makes them so enjoyable. When I first heard the album, I planned on doing some reading while listening, but to my surprise I was constantly distracted from my book and looking at the tracklist. My advice for listeners is to take this in in several sittings. The tracks all exist as their own independent statements, and there's little to be gained from hearing them in a row.

places and pages is performed by a wonderful international ensemble, which includes the composer, Cristián Alvear and four members of the Swiss INSUB. music collective. The tracks use many different combinations of performers, creating a vast range in the possibilities for realization of the score. All 50 tracks are really quite diverse, so I've decided that the best way to detail this music would be to take the microscope to just a few tracks – those being the five which I've seen the scores of.

#6:

"repeat

'none to six'"

#6 was realized by Ryoko Akama, Cyril Bondi and Christan Müller, and is 1:13. The piece was performed by the trio all standing around a bass drum, which they create a simple rhythm on with their hands (a picture is included below). They seem to all try to stick to the same rhythm, but it's very sloppy – and that slop is what I like about this piece. Certain hands strike the drum milliseconds after others, so rather than creating a bang-bang-bang rhythm, it sounds more like petite bang clusters in sequence. It sounds like a malfunctioning delay effect; it's broken in a very human way.

#28:

"two leading objects and

eight following objects"

#28 was realized by Ryoko Akama, Cristián Alvear and d'incise, and is 8:23. This piece was performed on droning instruments, which I assume to be Akama on an electronic instrument and Alvear and d'incise on bowed percussion instruments (there may be a melodica in there somewhere). The three drones always move together, creating sparse pulses where one introduces and the other two follow. The three drones are all distinctive enough that no natural harmonies are created, so it feels more like being serenaded by three sources at once (as these drones are quite beautiful).The piece is one of the album's longest cuts, and the longest of which I'll discuss, and it seems to be the perfect length – longer would certainly become tedious, as it is such a simple idea, but it is nearly awe-inspiring, and even relaxing, at its current length.

#39:

"thirty-nine (systems) (sticks)"

#39 was realized by Cyril Bondi, and is 0:53. This piece is a very brief performance on snare drum, with two drumsticks. Bondi plays single notes, short sequences and tiny rolls. What this piece makes me think of more than anything else is the uniqueness of the snare drum. There are few instruments with a more succinct sound than a snare drum; the instrument's decay is nearly immediate, but the voice is rich and complex. All sound, and all evidence, of the instrument fades in an instant, so even when a couple of seconds are left between sounds it feels like ages. The piece feels like a lowercase composition on an incredibly small scale.

#44:

"fourty-four

walks"

#44 was realized by Stefan Thut, and is 1:38. This piece is an outdoor field recording, where
deceptively little is happening. It feels like any day in the city, but it's texturally rich and full of humanity and personality. We hear birds, a garbage truck filling up, conversations in the distance and people walking. It's no surprise that this piece was a realization from one of the Swiss performers, as the album was recorded in Switzerland and this feels like a document expressing love of one's home.

#50:

"fifty overlaps"

#50 was realized by Ryoko Akama and d'incise, and is 6:24. This piece is an electronic duo, where the two performers play sine tones and noises which overlap over each other to create complex harmonies. The piece is surprisingly fast moving, making it sound much shorter than its relatively long runtime. It's hard to say what's more surprising: the size of the arsenal of sounds, or the high pace and absence of silence. In seconds the piece will move from comforting to alarming, and it's all surprisingly shocking and exciting.

Each of the album's tracks could be looked at and enjoyed on their own. What we're left with is 50 bite-sized scores, concepts and realizations, each one thoroughly enjoyable, and each one carrying a distinct message. Listening to the entire album feels more like a slideshow than an individual film: several wonderful photographs which are held together quite arbitrarily. The individual power of the tracks is likely the album's best quality, but its inability to exist as a single artistic statement, as all albums should, holds it back from being a truly great album.

The album does have its own over-arching conceptual questions though, what is the role of the composer in contemporary music, and what is the role of the performer? The composer gives little more than instructions, and I'm often praising the performers for their intuition, rather than their ability to follow instructions. However, it is the scores and the work of the composer which inspired these realizations – they would not exist without the composer. This brings me back to my initial question: am I rating the concept, or the outcome? The album gives no answers, but it provides me the tools to enjoy both simultaneously.

places and pages is an album that requires patience and attention, containing at least 50 complex concepts which will surely take multiple listens to absorb and understand. What results from this is a wonderful multifaceted release, which gifts something new to be heard on each consecutive listen. The fifty pieces all carry their own intrigues, all present their own sound phenomena and all influence in distinctive ways, but when the listener looks at the bigger picture they will find even bigger questions. It's easy to look at Ryoko Akama as a child of the Japanese Onkyo movement and the international Wandelweiser movement but, places and pages confirms her as a unique creative being.

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Big Bold Back Bone - In Search of the Emerging Species (Shhpuma, 2017) ****

By Derek Stone

How does one come to appreciate, let alone enjoy, a new genre of music? Despite the cries that ring out from some musical essentialists, it is my belief that the enjoyment of new, as yet un-grappled-with types of expression can be developed. As many of the writers and perusers of this site will tell you, a love of free jazz didn’t just spring out of the soil one happy day - it took considerable time and effort, an investment of interest and a willingness to occasionally put oneself at the mercy of tones, timbres and textures that were often downright ugly. But soon, the effort paid off; familiarity helped round the edges, so to speak, and the oblique, forbidding architecture that makes up so much of free jazz began to slope and curl its way into shapes that could arrest us, captivate us, leave us foaming at the mouth in anticipation of more. The critical viewpoint played its role as well. While much of free jazz is seemingly senseless on first listen, the astute observations of many a free jazz critic were instrumental in giving us a foothold, so to speak - by fixing a grid atop the swirling chaos, we suddenly had some coordinates with which to find our place. The development of enjoyment doesn’t just move in one direction, either; doubtlessly, some of our readership started with the strong stuff, imbibing Sun Ra, Coleman, or late-period Coltrane before eventually working their way back through the ‘60s and ‘50s to arrive, like battle-hardened generals returning to the scene of the first fight, at the earliest jazz recordings of the ‘30s and ‘40s. And, once again, enjoyment didn’t just spring up. After a diet of fiery, intense free improvisation, the bouncing sounds of Duke Ellington and His Orchestra are like another planet, with all of the dread and uncertainty that that implies.

The reason I make this preamble is that I, personally, have not yet found a good entry-point into electro-acoustic improvisation (often simply called EAI). While I’ve been exposed to a fair number of the genre’s respresentative recordings, there has been nothing to grab me and give me that “aha!” moment - that split second when everything falls into place and the sounds begin, little by little, to open up and make themselves known. Big Bold Back Bone’s debut on Clean Feed, In Search of the Emerging Species, while not explicitly an EAI record, has enough stylistic overlap with the genre to have been a cause for concern for me - would I have anything meaningful to say about it? Would it just be wind in my ear? In any case, I decided that the path to enjoyment had to start somewhere, and it may as well start here.

A quartet, Big Bold Back Bone features Marco von Orelli on trumpet and slide trumpet, Sheldon Suter on prepared drums, Luis Lopes on electric guitar and other objects, and Travassos on electronics. One thing to note when going into this recording, however, is that Big Bold Back Bone approach their instruments in the same way that I once heard Derek Bailey approached his guitar - as an alien artifact, a found object without context or connotation, a tool with which one could experiment freely. As such, the focus here is not on making “music” in the traditional sense of the word, but on exploring the sounds that can be constructed when a certain group of people come together at a certain time, in a certain room, with certain instruments and objects at their disposal. As the title suggests, In Search of the Exploring Species is an investigation of possibilities, a circuitous trek, rather than a direct route to some predetermined destination.

At an unbroken 43 minutes, it might be feared that the sole piece here, “Immerge,” is a slog to get through, but that’s not true at all. If anything, because of the lightness (volume-wise) of the textures and the relative lack of structured movement, it seems to speed by. It opens with a tentative series of knocks from Suter’s kit, some hard-to-pinpoint rubbery scrapes, von Orelli’s metallic gurgles, and the softly roiling static of Lopes’s electric guitar. Meanwhile, Travassos provides some high-pitched tones that, due to their relative faintness, fall somewhere between bird-song and the whine of drills. From this initial setting, deviations seem to occur in imperceptible waves - notably, von Orelli treats his trumpet as an open canvas of sorts, extracting all manner of timbres from its body: hollow sussurations, watery burbles, dry crackles. At some point, Suter moves from the more forceful pops and taps of the opening to cymbal-work that casts an uneasy shadow over the entire piece, and Travassos follows suit with cavernous electronics that open up the bottom and threaten to submerge everything. Lopes is ever-subtle, preferring to use his guitar as a textural device - from staticky drones to unsteady scrapes, he’s continuously in service of the overall tone of the piece. In fact, one of my abiding impressions of “Immerge” is that no single player seems to dominate the proceedings; in the spirit of the best free improvisation, the individual sounds bleed into each other, mixing and melding in ways that help to elevate the whole. Interestingly, the final ten minutes of the track find some of the musicians getting close to something that might be called “traditional music-making.” Lopes produces open notes that ring out with astounding clarity after the muffled drones of the preceding half-hour, and von Orelli emits a series of, well, trumpet-like tones. Suter engages in glacial, abstract percussion-work, and Travassos murmurs quietly in the background, a constant presence that never makes itself unduly felt.

By the time “Immerge” comes to a close, I feel that I have gotten ever closer to understanding the world of electro-acoustic improvisation - if I’m not yet putting every release from the Erstwhile label in my Discogs shopping cart, I’m at least considering the possibility. At a brisk 43 minutes, and with a variety of textures and sounds to keep your ears busy, In Search of the Exploring Species is a better place than any to get started on a new journey of musical enjoyment. And as a selfish addendum - feel free to post recommendations for more of this type of music in the comments below!

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Peter Brötzmann / Steve Swell / Paal Nilssen-Love - Live in Tel Aviv (Not Two, 2017) ****½

By Eyal Hareuveni

Live in Tel Aviv is the third live album of the powerful trio of German reeds player Peter Brötzmann, American trombonist Steve Swell, and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love since its formation in February 2015. It follows live documents from Krakow, Poland and Copenhagen, Denmark (all released by Not Two). Live in Tel Aviv was recorded at the Levontin 7 club, the same club where Brötzmann and Nilssen-Love recorded their previous duo performance.

This album is more concise than the previous live ones, only 43 minutes long, but captures the trio energetic dynamics at its best (I can testify to that as I was sitting in the first row). It opens with the 31-minutes “The Greasy Grind”. The first sounds come from Brötzmann, his typical, muscular sax roar. Swell and Nilssen-Love join immediately and charge the stormy intensity with the power of a hurricane. Both criss-cross Brötzmann's muscular cries and eventually release the cathartic tension with moving melodic lines, and light infectious rhythmic detours. This play of building and releasing tension continues along a massive, propulsive grind, and stresses the role of Nilssen-Love as the beating heart of the trio.

Nilssen-Love shifts the storm dynamics with masterful, totally natural leadership. He constantly varies and colors the pulse with imaginative bare hands drumming that suggest new, exotic scales, scratches of the drum skins and cymbal surfaces with varied objects, and dances with inventive cymbal touches. Nilssen-Love knows when to push Brötzmann or to offer fresh rhythmic ideas that highlight his strong bond with Swell, as they explore different sonic avenues. Inevitably, he directs this muscular grind towards another ecstatic tour-de-force that ends with an emotional duet of Brötzmann and Swell.

The second piece, the shorter, 13-minutes of “Ticklish Pickle”, solidifies Swell masterful exploration of sonic ideas. Swell transforms these abstract sounds instantly to rhythmic patterns that correspond with Nilssen-Love's drumming. Soon both lay a light, free-associative pulse that accommodates Brötzmann's lyrical and gentle cries on the clarinet. Both comment on these tender cries with brief emotional blows and delicate cymbal touches, patiently concluding this inspiring performance with a surprising, peaceful, and compassionate coda.

[See also Derek Stone's review of Live in Tel Aviv.]

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Ripsaw Catfish - Namazu (Raw Tonk Records, 2017) ****½

By Lee Rice Epstein

There’s something inherently revealing about a duo performance. Being let into a discrete conversation between two musicians creates a kind of intimacy, I think, between the duo and listener. This is heightened in person, but a great recording can also bridge this gap across the digital divide. Case in point, Ripsaw Catfish’s latest, Namazu. A guitar-baritone sax duo based in England—guitarist Anton Hunter resides in Manchester, while saxophonist Cath Roberts is in London—Ripsaw Catfish is as stunning as its biological namesake.

Namazu is the duo’s second album for Raw Tonk, following their debut, For the Benefit of the Tape. This new album was recorded over two live shows. “Stone” and “Mud,” from October 2016, comprise the first half of the album. “Thrash,” from November 2016, wraps things nicely with a non-stop 20+ minutes of fierce improvisation.

“Stone” begins with an almost skittish tease. Around seven minutes in, Hunter breaks into some grandly abstract noise, and Roberts goes searing off-planet into the upper register of her baritone sax. As radical as the shift seems, it's just as rapidly deconstructed. The track ends as Roberts blows a relaxed melody contrasting Hunter’s punk-ish feedback. These contrasting textures reappear in “Mud,” a longish textural improvisation that sustains its high-wire tension for over 15 minutes. Hunter has a way of subverting the guitar by pushing it to some highly unexpected places. He’ll drag his pick across the strings, then quickly shift into muted staccato.

Fittingly, the final piece, “Thrash,” recapitulates several ideas and threads first presented in “Stone” and “Mud.” Opening with a ping-pong game of Roberts’s pops and Hunter’s muted picking and plucking, the single performance very quickly shifts into a playful, driving improvisation. These constant shifting dynamics mean no one person stays in the lead for long. Roberts plays some melancholic lines midway through “Thrash,” which Hunter gently steers into a kind of post-rock drone, before the two pivot again into a section of thorny, abstract interplay. There’s a sense of humor underlying some of the more heightened improvisation, befitting a band that named itself for a dangerously thorny fish. Similarly, the album title, Namazu, comes from a Japanese folktale about a large fish. The triptych retells the myth of Namazu, who is kept in place by a stone, buried in the mud beneath Japan, until it gets free and thrashes about, causing major earthquakes. ‘Nuff said?

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Mama Luma – S/t ( Krapp’s Tapes / Noise-Below, 2017 ) ****

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

Mama Luma is a free jazz/improv trio from Thessaloniki, Greece consisting of Christos Yermenoglou on drums, Pavlos Pavlidis on alto sax and Haris Agoritsas on tenor sax and electric guitar. On this self-titled cassette their sound is expanded into a quartet with the addition of Illias Fillaridis on piano.

Any way you see it - as a trio or quartet - Mama Luma have a rough path to follow. Their choice of playing this kind of music in a country shredded to pieces by austerity - with a left government that nullified the last hopes of the majority - is a hard one. Why? Because, basically, almost no one cares.

Very few are taking into account the way Mama Luma have absorbed both traditions in free playing. They incorporate the energy and pathos of free jazz from the other side of the Atlantic, while in their music you will find the never-ending search for non-linear progression of European improvisation. Well, they do seem to enjoy it!

Mama Luma’s music is definitely structured (or, better, balanced) around Yermenoglou’s percussion skills. While the other two seem to move in and out of focus, he stands – even at his freest moments – audibly in the middle of their sound. With Fillaridis joining in the added piano brings a second point of focus. The feeling you get from this recording from 2014 is a similar sense of the urgency to the first generation of European free jazz. The audio quality – so suitable for a cassette – isn’t the best you can find, but it adds up to the aforementioned feeling.

The louder parts are saturated by this audio quality. You kind of feel like you have to lean towards your cassette player and try harder to listen. This kind of audio hiss and lo-fi noise felt very satisfying, certainly a piece of the whole experience. Their music – as also presented on a live setting – is not one of a linear progress but, on the contrary, one of highs and lows. I definitely enjoyed the fact that the piano is part of the whole noise aesthetic of the cassette.

Why buy this cassette? Because this is a free jazz quartet who is not taking itself seriously while they are trying to present their take of free jazz through a lo-fi noise aesthetic. If all the above are not enough for you, then I do not know what else to say…

Listen here:

@koultouranafigo

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The Unique Vocal Artistry of Isabelle Duthoit and Viv Corringham

By Eyal Hareuveni

Two recent releases, presenting two unique vocal artists - French, Vienna-based Isabelle Duthoit and British, New York-based Viv Corringham. Both demonstrate how even the most weird and experimental music can sound sensual and tempting...

Isabelle Duthoit / Franz Hautzinger - Lily (Relative Pitch, 2017) *****

The duo of Isabelle Duthoit (who also plays the clarinet but not on this recording) and Austrian trumpeter Franz Hautzinger, a couple also in their private life, has been playing together a great deal in recent years, including in a quartet with Czech trumpeter Petr Vrba and Austrian synthesizer player Matija Schellander (that recorded Esox Lucius, Corvo Records, 2015) and recently at Nickelsdorf’s Konfrontationen festival in the Uruk quartet with American drummers-percussionists Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang. Lily is their first recording of Duthoit and Hautzinger as a duo and it compiles eight studio improvisations, recorded at Park West Studios, Brooklyn in March 2015 and a live improvisation, captured at Philly track Crossroads Music, later that month.

Lily is an intimate meeting, not only because of the personal connection between Duthoit and Hautzinger but more due to the emotional tone of this album. Duthoit and Hautzinger sound like opposites who attract and complement each other. She employs her expressive, wordless voice to suggest physically intense, deep emotional states of mind while he prefers a more reserved and introspective playing. She sound completely intuitive, totally possessed by her uninhibited, extrovert feelings while he adopts g a more cerebral sense of control. But such distinctions are eventually superficial. Duthoit and Hautzinger are strong-minded improvisers who like to take risks and experiment. Both know how sketch profound, fascinating sonic universes with minimalist, simple means.   

Hautzinger keeps developing on Lily his idiosyncratic vocabulary that translates reductive, electronic sounds to microtonal trumpet sounds, often using a quarter-tone trumpet to produce pure, abstract sounds and silent breaths. Duthoit spirals Hautzinger's abstract expressions into turbulent, ecstatic moods, with her immediate, natural stream of cries, groans, shrieks, gasps and whispers. Their interplay is simply telepathic - quiet, close and naked. Sometimes it is difficult to know who is doing what, Often both leap instantly between quiet, meditative expressions to cathartic peaks. On other times, as on the urgent “Un Serpent Dans la Nuit” or on the last, live playful piece, the only improvisation where Hutzinger references sounds of a conventional trumpet, Duthoit and Hautzinger sound like sonic lovers, literally, enjoying every second and every aspect of their unique relationship.

Viv Corringham / Stephen Flinn / Miguel Frasconi ‎– Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens (Creative Sources, 2017) ***½

The trio of Corringham with American percussionist Stephen Flinn and glass objects player Miguel Frasconi was formed in 2015 and is titled aptly after the old public gardens in Kennington, on the south bank of the Thames river, now part of London. Listening to the debut album of this spontaneous-improvising trio, recorded at The Pencil Factory, Brooklyn in November 2016, may bring memories of an amusing trip to an enigmatic garden, full of weird, colorful sounds and visions.

Corringham is a certified Deep Listening teacher, after studying with Pauline Oliveros, and has worked before with innovative percussionist as Gino Robair and Eddie Prévost and vocal artist Maggie Nicols; Flinn is a composer who searches for unusual sound sources, uses rhythms to teach positive communications and social skills and has performed before with innovative vocal artists as Phil Minton, Jaap Blonk and Nichols; Frasconi is a composer specializing in the relationship between acoustic objects and musical forms, playing also on electronics and constructions of his own design and has composed chamber music, operas, film and dance scores.  

The six untitled pieces explore different, unchartered terrains of strange and even strangers sounds and dynamics, with elegance and impressive senses of adventure and invention. On the first one Corringham vocalizations mirror and extend the subtle, free-associative stream of  sounds of Flinn and Frasconi. The following improvisations are looser and more abstract, sketching detailed atmospheres with clear strokes of resonating sounds and a suggestive voice. The trio moves freely on these improvisations, offering on the third one an introspective and quiet texture and  sparse sonic searches on the fourth one. On the fifth one the trio explores game-like ideas. Flinn focuses on fragmented berimbau-like sounds, Frasconi dives into deep-space sounds while Corringham offers her uninhibited stream-of consciousness delivery. The last, short one is the most playful and passionate one, like three mad sonic scientists make mad sonic love.

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Peeter Uuskyla / Tellef Øgrim / Anders Berg - Ullr (Simlas, 2017) ****

By Antonio Poscic

In Norse mythology, Ullr is usually depicted as a cryptic god “of snowshoes, hunting, the bow, and the shield.” So what strange motivation pushed drummer Peeter Uuskyla, guitarist Tellef Øgrim, and bassist Anders Berg to title their new record in his name? Perhaps it’s just a serendipitous result of the Scandinavian trio’s game of free association. Or could it be that Ullr is here to reveal an additional dimension of the deity’s symbolism, identified by some accounts as the god of duelling. The music on the record – boisterous and contained, silent and maniacal – suggests as much through a constant constructive tension between the players and a sense of confrontation that outlines the six intriguing cuts.

Take the opening “Disembark then Board,” for example, which rolls in with Uuskyla’s powerful, machine gun drumming that messily entangles Øgrim’s disjointed fragments of bluesy riffs and Berg’s bass twirls, swishes, and drones. It’s an energetic tune with allusions to a rock foundation disassembled and thrashed around an improvised framework. The flow of the track is nonetheless surprisingly stable, rhythmically anchored to Uuskyla’s vociferous drumming. The tense, aggressive mood brought on by the first track is partially dispelled on the second, “Ullr,” which is bare and simple, almost minimalist. It’s a song defined by Berg’s bass chugging and burrowing, resembling a caterpillar escaping its pupa, his tone reminiscent of Bill Laswell’s bulbous, distorted instrument. Meanwhile, Uuskyla will replace his drums for percussive elements on “Lusk,” steadying things even further and pushing Berg and Øgrim to the forefront while they create a seductive and pulsing breeze.

But it’s somehow always Uuskyla’s often spastic drumming style that dominates the proceedings, touching on the rapturous, bordering on the chaotic, even on slower cuts such as “By the Southward Verging Sun.” It’s not surprising then that the centerpiece of the record, the twelve minutes long “Shine Your Soul,” is also propelled by rhythm – first by firm handclaps, then by a sparse but long winded drum “solo” – and all the while haunted by a constantly rising tempo. Here Uuskyla provides a swooshing backdrop for Berg’s intermittent bass punctuations and Øgrim’s isolated, squeaky and nervous guitar riffs. It makes for a riveting, hypnotic piece. As this epic fades, two shorter, to-the-point tracks take over and close the album. Out of the two, “By the Southward Verging Sun” is especially soulful and calmly beautiful, formed as a dismantled ballad.

Emerging parallel to a very productive Scandinavian free jazz and improv scene, Uuskyla, Øgrim, and Berg end up doing their own thing. Contrasting the stylistic traits exhibited by some of their peers – Trespass Trio’s contemporary jazz sensibilities or Fire! (Orchestra)’s progressive approach – the trio’s music is an oblique and deconstructed but red-hot mix of jazz, rock, and several other styles in between. As a whole, Ullr is an engaging, captivating, and often unrivaled listen.

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Mario Pavone – Vertical (Clean Feed, 2017) ****

By Troy Dostert

A reunion record of sorts, with bass legend Mario Pavone getting together with some long-time colleagues of old in a sextet format. And the results are predictably excellent: multiple horn parts giving life to Pavone’s thorny compositions, a strong yet occasionally unpredictable rhythmic current, and superb musicianship throughout.

Pavone was quite fond of medium-sized groups on his early records as a leader: sextets, septets, and octets were commonplace. And a number of the personnel here are veterans of those albums, specifically drummer Michael Sarin, saxophonist Tony Malaby, and trombonist Peter McEachern. Trumpeter Dave Ballou is a more recent partner, having played on Pavone’s 2014 release Street Songs; and clarinetist Oscar Noriega is only now joining Pavone on record for the first time. It’s a wonderful ensemble, in any event, and it marks a departure from most of Pavone’s recordings during the last several years, as with the exception of Street Songs, he’s been working heavily in a piano-trio format. To be sure, they’ve been some outstanding piano trios: when your recent resume entries include outings with colleagues like Craig Taborn and Gerald Cleaver (Arc Trio, from 2013) and Matt Mitchell and Tyshawn Sorey (Blue Dialect, from 2015), you know you’re at the top of the heap. But it’s a treat to hear Pavone returning to the larger group context in which so many of his excellent records, like Song For (Septet) (1993), Dancers Tales (1997), and Deez to Blues (2005) were made.

One crucial difference here from those earlier records, however, is the absence of a pianist. On almost all of his medium and smaller-group projects, pianists (especially Peter Madsen, a ubiquitous presence on lots of Pavone records) were there to complement Pavone’s lyrical side, enhancing the accessibility of Pavone’s catchy but sometimes challenging compositions. Without that role in this group, Pavone’s pieces are somewhat less immediately satisfying; they take a bit more work to grab ahold of. But while the pleasures of the music aren’t as quickly forthcoming, there are still some fine moments of collective music-making on this record.

Pavone’s skill at harnessing the strengths of his partners has always been a hallmark of his music, and it’s certainly evident here. Ballou should get a good deal of the credit in this regard, as he’s listed as the primary arranger on these eleven cuts.   His charts utilize the four-horn format splendidly, with interweaving parts that set up intriguing harmonies and rhythmic nuances. The compositions are also nice and compact, with no meandering: most clock in at around 5-6 minutes, rendering solo statements potent and focused. Even so, there’s an open feel to much of the music, as Pavone allows space for spontaneity as well. Especially memorable tracks are “Suitcase in Savannah,” where Sarin’s and Pavone’s airtight rapport sustain an intricate groove that supports feisty soloing from Ballou and Malaby; “Cube Code,” a catchy piece that features some riveting mutual improvisation between Ballou and Noriega; “Start Oval,” an irresistible track built around a sinuous ostinato phrase that will definitely get the toes tapping; and the closer, “Voice Oval,” which gives all four horns some room for stimulating group improvisation.

All in all, a welcome and highly worthy addition to Pavone’s substantial catalog of impressive mid-sized group recordings.

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Vasco Trilla

By Dan Sorrells

Barcelona-based drummer Vasco Trilla is having his moment—but he’s only just getting started. Last year saw a dramatic uptick in Trilla’s recorded output, with two solo records (The Rainbow Serpent on FMR and Suspended Step on Discordian), Tidal Heating on NotTwo (an absurdly virtuosic trio with Michał Dymny and Rafal Mazur), stunning duos with bassist Johannes Nästesjö, flutist Pablo Selnik, pianist Jivko Bratanov, and saxophonist Yedo Gibson, and still other recordings with groups like Obo, Tatvamasi, and Triplezero.

Trilla first came to music via metal, and has drifted more and more towards free improvisation after years of playing progressive and jazz-rock in groups like October Equus and Planeta Imaginario. Since 2011, he has been closely linked with the Discordian netlabel and the associated Barcelona scene. Trilla’s breadth of experience makes him a particularly protean drummer—he slides easily from playing precise time and complex changes to driving, pulse-based free drumming to almost indeterminate experiments in noise, using bells, bows, and other objects to create shimmering—and sometimes menacing—fields of sound. Surveying his work from the first half of the year provides an excellent overview of his varied approach, and leaves no question as to why he’s become an in-demand collaborator throughout Europe.

Völga – Völga (Multikulti Project, 2017)

Völga is the quartet of Trilla, guitarist Fernando Carrasco, bassist Àlex Reviriego, and trumpeter Iván González. The idea is to bring elements of disparate genres like black metal, folk, and ambient into free improvisation. In this, Völga is successful, although these strains of music are represented indirectly, imported more through a certain stance towards music-making than via tangible things like riffs or blastbeats. Theirs is a music of abrasion, ritual, and what Trilla calls “impossible textures.” Opening track “Valdái” is metal against metal, Reviriego's resounding bass plunking notes against a grinding, grating backdrop. There's a nearness to the recording that makes you feel like you're somehow inside all of the instruments at once, or maybe trapped at the bottom of a well, all four members peering over the edge and raining their sounds down upon you.

Elsewhere, "Samara" builds to a remarkable crescendo of jangling metal, radio static and feedback. "Kalmukya" begins with ringing bells, a repetitive acoustic guitar motif, and González's fluttering trumpet tremolo. As with much of the album, it exists in a weird holding pattern between abrasiveness and beauty—and there's no denying the beauty and lyricism here, even as Trilla and González steadily intensify the tension and noise, like a folk song being played on an industrial factory floor. By subtracting the overt, familiar characteristics of their influences, Völga instead tap directly into their vital energy, resulting in a unique and immersive ambiance, and one of the best listens of the year.

Szilárd Mezei, Marina Džukljev, Vasco Trilla – Still Now (If You Still) (FMR, 2017)

Still Now (If You Still) is music of furious virtuosity. It is an album that makes you hold your breath as you listen. It is sound rushing into a vacuum. Paolo Virno says that virtuosity is “an activity which finds its own fulfillment (that is, its own purpose) in itself, without objectifying itself into an end product.” It is also “an activity which requires the presence of others.” These seem like particularly apt descriptions of improvised music, which is concerned with the process of creation rather than specifically what has been created, and requires the witness of musicians and audiences to come into being.

Here, virtuosity transcends technical ability—which is certainly on display by Trilla, violist Szilárd Mezei, and pianist Marina Džukljev—and embodies a nearly ecstatic act of creation. The whole album feels like a tremendous store of energy to which the musicians are mere gatekeepers; rather than a cathartic blast, Still Now seems an attempt to wrangle and channel incredible forces, to deploy Džukljev’s dissonant clusters and Mezei’s splintered microtones in an effort to responsibly mete out pent-up violence. At times, this is explosive, like the nearly unbearable crescendo that caps the title track, and at others, it is tightly-wound, as in the aching beauty of “Because Homework.” Still Now brings into the cerebral realm of chamber music the emotional, gut-reaction heft of free jazz, and maybe just a touch—true to Trilla’s roots—of the relentless, hypnotic intensity of heavy metal.

Ernesto Rodrigues, Yedo Gibson, Miguel Mira, Luis Lopes, Vasco Trilla – Nepenthes Hibrida (Creative Sources, 2017)

Trilla fits agreeably into the Creative Sources aesthetic, which values collective mood-building over individual displays of prowess. Nepenthes Hibrida was recorded live a few days before Christmas 2016, and features Trilla, violist and label boss Ernesto Rodrigues, cellist Miguel Mira, Yedo Gibson on soprano saxophone, and a notably minimalist Luis Lopes on electric guitar.

“I” ventures carefully, the players difficult to distinguish within the hushed activity. Eventually, Gibson begins to goad the other players into raising the volume, and the music moves fluidly between periods of agitation and near silence. By the arrival of “II”, the group have worked themselves into a knot of activity, with Trilla taking an open, aggressive approach and Lopes at one point sounding like he’s tearing the wiring out of his own amplifier. The track reaches the levels of terrible beauty that Völga have so perfected: a stationary, towering monolith of sound, conveying not narrative or moment, but only sheer presence. “IV” highlights the interesting interaction Gibson and Trilla have developed through their duo work, sounding like the groaning of swaying skyscrapers. In all, Nepenthes Hibrida captures a wide-ranging performance, one that nicely bridges some of the contrasting approaches and sensibilities the five musicians bring to the collaboration.

Harald Kimmig, Ernesto Rodrigues, Miguel Mira, Guilherme Rodrigues, Vasco Trilla – Blattwerk (Creative Sources, 2017)

Blattwerk’s two torrents of strings move like a waveform, cresting and dipping in volume and intensity. The quintet features an unusual line-up—violin, viola, two cellos, and Trilla’s drums—and shifts between an indeterminate world of creaks and pops and one of nocturnal, romantic lyricism. Trilla is integrated seamlessly, matching his cymbals to scraped strings and fleet arco runs and meeting pizzicato plucks and thumped wood with rolling toms and bells. His touch is such that he never once overwhelms, instead finding subtle gaps and openings to bolster the strings.

Both tracks convey a sense of dramatic, even cinematic, development, although the feeling of journeying is most pronounced in the darkened movements of “II”. “Blattwerk” is the German word for “foliage.” What I see in my mind’s eye when I listen is not leaves rustling in the wind, but instead the shifting black mass of their shadows dancing across the ground. Evocative music, of the quality we’ve come to expect with Rodrigues and company.

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Trilla will kick off the second half of 2017 with upcoming releases featuring the trio Phicus (with Ferran Fages and Àlex Reviriego), a duo with Mikołaj Trzaska, and a trio with Yedo Gibson and Hernâni Faustino.

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Peter Evans and Alfred Vogel – Il Piccolo Incindete (Boomslang, 2016) ****

By Rick Joines

Peter Evans plays trumpet with an uncommon inventiveness, intensity, and athleticism. Strange and previously unimaginable sounds emit from his bell at an incredible speed and in limitless combinations. His breath and formal virtuosity are impressive all on their own, yet the sheer physicality of his playing and his endurance make an equal impression. Evans produces an unexpected onslaught of musical ideas, as if he aspires to play all the parts of an orchestra by himself—and all at once. While Evans’ playing on Il Piccolo Incidente is more playful than usual, it lacks none of his usual rigor or intelligence. The panoply of Evans’ vigorous and inimitable “extended” technique is on full display, but he deploys his profound facility with a lighter touch, and a little humor—beginning with the title. An “il piccolo incidente” is a “small accident,” like a faux pas. The idea of “small accidents” chimes well with the unpredictability of spontaneous composition and improvisation. There is also the literal reading: Evans plays a piccolo trumpet, so Il Piccolo Incidente is a record of the things that occurred, by chance, when he and Alfred Vogel invented seven songs lasting 33 minutes.

No forms, modes, or shapes can denote Evans truly. He moves, measure by measure, from the baroque through bebop to minimalism and back again, picking up what he missed the first time. The quantity of notes astounds the ear, and while this could come across as showing off, his playing is entirely devoid of arrogance. Instead, there is an obsessive insistence on aggregation, an almost manic anxiety that a timbral possibility might be missed. As in a cartoon thought bubble floating over a composer’s head, Evans’ mind seems to be madly flipping pages of scores, a blizzard of notes falling everywhere. Occasionally, he perseverates with dizzying speed on a phrase, and, as with a minimalist composer, the repetition begins to blur how we hear the notes—and the nature of the notes themselves. At other times, he’ll linger on a note or phrase, emphasizing the background of silence. He can sound like a tweaked-out Miles Davis with a Harmon mute, but he reminds me most often of Adrian Belew and Robert Fripp, solo and in King Crimson. Evans coaxes the animal kingdom out of his horn with the exuberance of Belew twang-bar-kinging the cries of a lone rhinoceros, an elephant, or a big electric cat. Then again, like Fripp, Evans can braid emotional and tonal registers with utter grace, frightening us then breaking our hearts with beauty.

Alfred Vogel does not attempt to compete with the blitzkrieg of Evans’ playing. Instead, like a magpie, he’s collected a nest of things, and all those things percuss. He does not “accompany” Evans, nor keep time; instead he plays around Evans. With sticks, drum kit and cymbals, bells and cans, and bits and pieces of this or that, Vogel is a vigilant partner, yet in a way that seems wonderfully indifferent to Evans. It’s easy pay little attention to Vogel because of the glam and glitter of Evans, but when one does one marvels at the genius of Vogel’s restraint, which contributes elegantly to the joy and playfulness of this album.

Album and samples are available here: http://www.traps.at/boomslang-en/il-piccolo-incidente

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