The Young Mothers & El Omblico – Botapierna (In-Correcto, 2020) ****

By Daniel Böker

This is more a fan post than an actual review.

Please listen to this album. (You can read on but this is the message. Done!)

In the Catalytic Quarterly, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten wrote about his two weeks (there were three planned but the last one was cut off because of the lockdown) as a guest teacher al Javeriana University in Bogota.

During these two weeks there was a concert by his working group the Young Mothers together with the Colombian group El Ombligo. Håker Flaten wrote that there would be a recording of this concert on the label In-Correcto. Since I like the former records of the Young Mothers, especially Morose from 2018, I was hooked after reading about the record.

And well, here it is.

One has to say that the sound is the sound of a live concert. Which means on the one hand that it is not as clear and distinct as a studio recording. I listened to it on my headphones and think the music could use some production effort. But and this is a very strong but(!), then again, it feels as if the listener was almost there in the actual room.

And here, I think my fandom starts. What you hear is the sheer joy of playing together. My own mood completely changed (I became light-hearted and couldn’t help smiling. No joke.) and I almost started dancing to the beat of the rhythm section. Everything in this performance falls in place and you can hear and feel the joy of playing together.

The record consists of three tracks between 12 and 18 minutes. Each is based on some “simple structures” (I.H.F.) by Santiago Botero (the drummer of El Ombligo) which they rehearsed in the afternoon the same day the show took place.

I guess these “simple structures” are mostly the rhythmic structures that build the foundation of the three tracks. The album (the concert) has a strong vibe to it, that carries the whole thing along. There are not many noisy outbursts but again: a rather steady rhythm and the joy of playing along or against it.

Here in Germany at least spring is coming and this album might be my soundtrack for that time of year.

Check it out on Bandcamp.

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Rafał Mazur ‎– The Great Tone Has No Sound (Fundacja Słuchaj!, 2020)

 By Stef Gijssels

For the occasion of Polish acoustic bass guitar wizard Rafał Mazur's 20th anniversary in improvised music, the four CD box "The Great Tone Has No Sound" is released, showcasing the art of the musician in its various manifestations and musical approaches. 

The title of the album explains Mazur's musical philosophy, which is anchored in the Chinese Taoism: "In order to hear the Great Tone, we must transcend our habits, our ways of hearing. We must give up beliefs built on narrow imaginations and open our minds to a wider perspective. (...) The world opens to us when we transcend our own cognitive boundaries, and as the old martial arts saying goes: even the strongest blows are light as a feather. Then every meeting is creative, every action comes easily, whatever we do appears spontaneously and quickly, without plans or sketches, as in Chinese “one brushstroke” painting. We stick to the world and follow its changes. And everything is just simple". You can read the full text on the Bandcamp page below. The music on the album does represent this philosophy, being fully improvised, flowing naturally, whether in solo, duo or quintet. 

The first CD - "Beyond The Five Notes" - presents two twenty minute solo acoustic bass improvisation. Mazur is a real master on the instrument, starting with pizzi, demonstrating his unusual technical skills but then switching to his bowed playing, which dominates the entire second track. He was originally trained as a cellist, but he switched to acoustic bass guitar later, which is now custom-made. Apart from the other acoustic bass guitar virtuoso, Jonas Hellborg, I am not aware of too many musicians using the instrument. Its sound is something unique and Mazur shows us all its possible sonorities in his free improv. 

On the second CD - "The Strongest Blows Are Light As AFeather" - he is accompanied by Guillermo Gregorio, the Argentinian clarinet master for six improvised duets. The music is intimate, recorded with excellent quality, and the interaction is astonishing. Whether calm or agitated, adventurous or meditative, the music has an incredible lyricism, largely due to Gregorio's unpredictable bird-like flights, adding a wonderful contrast to Mazur's deep and warm tones, who once in a while increases the intensity to ensure the creative dynamics of the interplay. 

The third CD - "Water Flows From Above To Below" - presents four ten-minute improvisations with Artur Majewski on trumpet, a musician with whom the bassist has performed and released albums with over the past few years, including The Night Of The Swift and a trio with Agustí Fernández. The sound is heavier, with more gravitas than in the clarinet duets. The first track also has an uncanny sense of urgency, as if both players have a lot to convey in a too short period of time. Mazur's versatility on his acoustic bass guitar is nicely complemented by the timbral range of Majewski's trumpet, who shifts easily from crystal-clear tones to multiphonic growls. The music is intense and fiery. 

The fourth CD is titled "The wind creates great harmony”, and we get a quintet with Satoko Fujii on piano, Natsuki Tamura on trumpet, Guillermo Gregorio on clarinet, Ramon Lopez on drums, and of course Rafał Mazur on acoustic bass guitar. The expansion of the band leads to much denser music, a collective improvisation full of energy and respect. Every track is opened by one instrument to set the scene and the tone. Gradually the others join with wide open ears that are creative enough to move the piece forward collectively, and often massively. The Japanese-Polish-Spanish-Argentinian ensemble once again demonstrates that music truly is the universal language, and free improvisation even more so. And even the interaction between clarinet and trumpet - which is normally very precarious - actually works very well here. 

To quote Mazur again: "Movement is harmony, harmony is movement. Contrary to certain conceptions, harmony is not an ideal, perfectly balanced state of stillness, but a way of operating and existing in continuous transformation. Harmony is thus created in motion, and movement, like wind, creates great harmony. Stabilization, stagnation, and stasis lead to petrification and death, while movement and change are signs of life. And this is precisely what you can hear when you hear the Great Tone — not a single, solitary sound, nor many sounds at once, but rather constant, changing, varied, wide, all-encompassing, and undefined vibration. There’s no need to analyze it, let’s just join this stream of vibration and flow with it wherever it goes".

I agree, let's stop analysing. Join the music.

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

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Firas Khnaisser & Ali Robertson ‎– Midlife Pandemics (Chocolate Monk, 2020) ****½

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

Electro-acoustic improvisation, or experimentation if you prefer, has gone too far a way, starting from some dark rooms in France’s GRM, then at –don’t call us academia- the New York School up until the past three decades where is seems that there are no limits. Of course many stops, turns and revelations have occurred in between. And mistakes, thankfully.

Chocolate Monk of Dylan Nyoukis and Caren Constance has continually showed a perseverance in championing the outer limits of what we call experimentation or the aforementioned electro-acoustic sound making. And they have done a great job in this field, forming what someone –as the absolute contradiction- would comment as the Chocolate Monk sound. But, do not get me wrong, by no way I mean a pattern or some kind of mannerism. It’s mostly about the everything goes approach. If I where to give it a code name, I think the title of an old Prick Decay ( and older moniker for Nyoukis’ sound making) recording, Junk Operatics, would be the most appropriate of all.

Both guys on Midlife Pandemics follow this vein of musical thinking. Do not ask me, please, to name every musical instrument or sound source they are utilizing, because I simply can’t…The cd is comprised from two long tracks recorded (thus the title I believe) during the covid pandemic. Their way of thinking and reacting to each other is totally open to any suggestion. I’m always, as a listener, really happy when I feel there’s a total interaction and egoless understanding between two or more musicians. Midlife pandemics is another of these times.

They do not seem to follow any rule or code, or even care about all that. They zigzag between amplified moments, silence and more acoustic experimentation (that word again, shit). They also incorporate the humor and stubbornness of someone who doesn’t take himself seriously and, at the same time, is eager to let things out of his chest. This totally so un-academia, so punk in its core, so free from all restraints that codify the way we think as listeners and sound makers. I loved it.

@koultouranafigo

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Savina Yannatou & Joana Sá - Ways of Notseeing (Clean Feed, 2020) ****½

By Stuart Broomer

My appreciation of Savina Yannatou dates from a week spent at Krakow’s Jazz Autumna in late 2014, listening to her in Barry Guy’s Blue Shroud Orchestra. During the day the band rehearsed Guy’s score; at night they performed in improvisatory sub-groups. Both the small-groups (Tensegrity, a four-CD set on Not Two) and an orchestral recording (The Blue Shroud, Intakt) are available. Between them, Yannatou ranges from subtle chamber music to dense free jazz with the small groups, while singing complex parts in multiple languages in the ultimate orchestral piece, all matched to great expressive and musical powers. Those powers are also apparent in these duets.

This is a first-time collaboration between Yannatou and Portuguese pianist Joana Sá, but it’s already work of rare collective vision and empathy. In a recollection published on the Clean Feed site, Sá recalls a woman approaching her after a performance in Greece and suggesting they collaborate, only discovering later from the woman’s note that it was Yannatou. Afterwards, Yannatou decided to travel to Lisbon to launch the collaboration even before a concert venue could be booked. That spontaneity feeds this music, though it also includes moments of magical calm. Ways of Notseeing suggests not blindness but all the senses and modes of perception other than the merely visual, most significantly of sound, including the subtlest nuance of expression, and extending from there to near telepathy, as the duets unfold with strong (yet likely nonexistent) texts of great intensity, conceived and sung in unknown (unknowable?) tongues‒variously shouted, cried, chattered and whispered‒and ranging from great passion to joy to sorrow.

Even at its most impassioned, the music is dream-like, whether in the distance of piano from voice or in their radical finesse. Joana Sá’s instrument is described as “piano, semi-prepared piano and & props.” I can’t describe those “props” exactly, but on the reverie of movement IV, the wealth of eerie, sustained sounds suggests bowed piano strings for long tones with percussion, though there’s the sonic suggestion of added echo and distortion (her youtube video from 2010, “Through This Looking Glass” includes bowing, rubbing and placing metal spheres on the strings, screws between strings and overhanging bells). One of the most developed segments, V, begins with alternately tuneful and percussive, relatively conventional piano-playing combining with the sometimes talkative, sometimes melodic vocal to suggest initially an unknowable music-hall and an increasingly enchanted theatrical episode; by its conclusion, though, it has become psychodrama, with vocal leaps across both musical and emotional ranges. The sustained narrative contained within VI might be a forced confession, but each listener will have her or his own associations, the utterance seemingly flying out of a vigorously scraped and struck piano interior.

Sá also provides three solo pieces, entitled resonance 1-3. Interludes placed strategically amongst the seven duets. Each possesses the same combination of form, mystery and indestructible fragility that inform the duets; they serve, however, as islands of repose. This is collectively improvised music of rich associations and rare drama.

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Mark Whitecage (1937 - 2021)

Mark Whitecage. Photo by Peter Gannushkin

By Martin Schray

There are musicians you always wanted to see live, but somehow it doesn't work out. This was the case for me with Mark Whitecage for years. Then I was able to catch him with the Nu Band at the German-American Institute in Heidelberg two years ago. It was a great gig and he was in a great mood and entertained the audience with anecdotes and his varied playing. Now the wonderful saxophonist and clarinetist has passed away at the age of 83.

Mark Whitecage might not have been one of the alpha dogs on the scene but he was an outstanding old school (free) jazz saxophonist. And he had a long musical life indeed.

He began performing in his father's family band at a very early age. In his youth he listened a lot to Roy Eldridge, Ben Webster, Lester Young and Stan Getz. He went to New York in the 1970s and was loosely associated with the loft scene with INTERface, a quartet with Perry Robinson (clarinet), John Shea (bass) and John Fischer (piano). Then he met Gunter Hampel and did longer tours with Hampel’s Galaxie Dream Band, which helped him to build up a network outside the US. “We probably played every venue in Europe. When we first started in ’72, Gunter was very hot and we were playing the festivals, too. It was very nice. I know all the people over there and they know me“, he once said in an interview with All About Jazz. During the 1980s he had two separate bands: Liquid Time and the Glass House Ensemble. In the meantime Whitecage had gradually built up a very good reputation and he connected with the New York City-based Improvisor's Collective, a network that brought forth many of the best jazz musicians even to this day. His name is also closely related to the founding of Bob Rusch’s CIMP Records, a label he recorded for prolifically. The people he played with at that time is a like Who's Who of US free jazz: William Parker, Jackson Krall, Anthony Braxton, Dominic Duval, Joe McPhee, Steve Swell and many more. By 2000, he had split from CIMP because - as he said - Bob Rusch wasn’t interested what he was interested in at that time - namely electronics. Instead Mr. Whitecage recorded predominantly for his own Acoustics label.

Although he was socialised with bebop and cool jazz, Mark Whitecage was an improviser of extraordinary imagination and intensity. His linear, free-bopish style had its roots in the music of Lee Konitz and Charlie Parker, but his phrasing also reminded me of Ornette Coleman and this special mix created his very own voice. His sound on alto saxophone could be voluptuous and sparkling at the same time; his clarinet could be dark and gloomy, like the style of his friend Perry Robinson. His improvised lines are hard to pigeonhole, so skilled was he at adapting to the situation of different surrounding.

His latest working project, the Nu Band, was an organism that had found its common breath. Well grounded by Joe Fonda’s warm walking bass, the band was one of a kind. All of the musicians contributed compositions (Fonda, Roy Campbell/Thomas Heberer on trumpet and Lou Grassi on drums), they threw the melodies back and forth to each other. Especially with trumpeter Roy Campbell (and after Campbell’s untimely death with Thomas Heberer) Whitecage was able to meet someone for sensitive dialogues.

At the Heidelberg gig my friend Christoph, who had seen him often at live shows, asked Mr. Whitecage what he was doing at the moment besides the Nu Band. He replied that he played in a lot of completely different projects, including theater and even with people from the Grateful Dead. Joe Fonda, who stood next to us, then said that his friend was actually a hippie. “First I was first a beatnik, then I was a hippie“, he shortly remarked, smiling. It also says a lot about his music.

If you have hardly heard anything about Mark Whitecage, know this: he was not only a musician’s musician, even if his colleagues have praised him to the skies. Sadly, music magazines like Down Beat or Jazzwise have hardly mentioned him. But you get a glimpse of what the music of this man is about if you listen to Consensual Tension or Research on the Edge (1998 and 1999, CIMP). Give Live in Concert by Dominic Duval’s String Ensemble (1999, Cadence) and Live at the Public Theater by Saheb Sarbib and his Multinational Big Band (1981, Cadence) a chance. Also, check out the Nu Band’s The Final Concert and Live in Paris (2016 and 2010, both on NoBusiness). The first INTERface album (1976, NY Composers Collective) is a treat. And you’re never wrong with Gunter Hampel’s Galaxie Dream Band’s Broadway/Folksong (1972, Birth Records). Then you will know something about his music and why he should have a place in the virtual free jazz hall of fame. Music was his life, he once said. People will miss you, Mark Whitecage.

Watch Mark Whitecage with the Nu Band at the Bop shop in Rochester/New York:

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Tashi Dorji & Marshall Trammell - Duo Damage, Vol 1: Live in Portland (SIGE Records, 2021) ***½

By Keith Prosk

Duo Damage continues SIGE’s documentation of drummer Marshall Trammell’s collaborations with various guitarists, after Untitleable with William Fowler Collins and Experimental Love I & II with Aaron Turner, both from 2020, and of course Trammell’s longstanding duo with Zachary James Watkins in Black Spirituals . And of course, guitarist Tashi Dorji might be best known for his longstanding duos with drummer Tyler Damon and Thom Nguyen. While Collins, Turner, and Watkins inhabit spectrums of metal and noise not too far from Dorji, none are as devoted to a relentlessly repetitive cadence in their attack. While Damon and Nguyen are both hecatoncheires, able to cover the whole kit and fast, Trammell’s focused approach, centered on bass drum and cymbals with bursts of rapid repetition on one part of it, provide a particularly driving pulse. So, though a familiar format for both, each offers the other a rhythmic momentum not often heard in their other guitar/drum duos.

Duo Damage is a half-hour set from January 2019 divided into two tracks. It follows the idiom of improvised performance in that it is a collage of themes glued by slowed moments as the musicians reset and lock back into each other. However, it is consistently loud, consistently noisy, and the shifting beat never stops, sustained by bass drum carpet bombings, a crackling morse code, chiming chords, or something else. Out of a constant chug from a menagerie of riffage slither out feedback solos and pulses. Joined by the spirit of Ayler’s drummers, in Sunny Murray’s sustained cymbalwork and Beaver Harris’ jimmy leg, with bass drum flutterings and lurching low end like dub techno, and moments of just beating the hell out of the tom, or the snare. The whole set is frenzied and their styles seemingly compatible without consideration, but they communicate through density, volume, and pulse.

Despite the conservative personal rating, this is a stunning pairing highly recommended for fans of the musicians and I consider it among the most compelling recordings from either of them.

At the time of writing, Duo Damage, Vol 1: Live in Portland is a digital-only release, but should be available on cassette in the future.

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Sounds of the City

By Paul Acquaro

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. 

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Benoît Delbecq - The Weight Of Light (Pyroclastic, 2021) *****

 By Stef Gijssels

French pianist Benoît Delbecq is one of those musicians whose sound is immediately recognisable. Over the decades, he firmly established his own signature sound. This effect is even stronger on a solo album such as this one, his first in more than a decade. Apart from using a prepared piano, with muted strings and strong percussive effects, his other unique aspect is the sparse lyricism of his compositions, using a limited number of notes to convey something meaningful. 

"The Weight Of Light" has a double origin. His brother, a physicist did his PhD thesis on the mass of light. (On a side note: the relationship between physics and free improvisation should also be the topic of some further research, as many artists are inspired by its rational mystery or mysterious science). The second is the actual movement of light over objects, as with the mobile on the cover of the album, or the movement of a cloud behind the stained glass windows of a chapel, making the light and shadows move inside. 

Despite its easy and light-footed sound, the music is actually relatively complex, with polyrhythms and irregular and shifting patterns, built quite consistently throughout the pieces. They reflect his idea of the mobile on the cover, with its relatively stable structure constantly changing because of internal movement and the external effect of shifting light and shadow, while staying the same object. 

Interestingly enough, the album is accompanied by a one hour documentary on the creative process and techniques used on the album, and I can recommend to watch it (below). It's in French, but with English subtitles and the occasional piece of interview in English. 

Light can be seen as a source of energy, but also as a source of solutions and perspectives. Delbecq is clear that his music is not the expression of his emotions, except for the personal pleasure in structure, form and intrinsic beauty. A kind of "l'art-pour-l'art"without other motives or intentions. The emotional response that the listener has is welcome, but very personal and not designed to happen. 

His music is light, bright even, with a certain pulse, not rhythm, because it has to be more free, less constrained, and once you think you have it, it's gone and replaced by something equally intangible but similar, moving, offering, ever changing perspectives on the same topic. 

Delbecq has his own approach to conceptualise and graphically structure his compositions. Like Bach compositions, there's something scientific about the way patterns are invited to interact, even if Delbecq is more loose and jazzy in his delivery. He draws circles with specific size differences and areas of overlap, within which he draws a coloured route to connect the various circles as the piece moves forward. “When I’m composing, it’s exactly like I’m looking at inventing the future shape of an object,” he says, “so I look at it from different places. It’s like a 3-D way of conceiving things that has to do with optical phenomena. If I move around it, it will reveal shapes that are hidden at other angles.”

This results in music that is playful, creative, fresh, full of surprise and with an inherent lightness despite the percussive elements. It doesn't lead you anywhere, there is no built-in tension, no real development or evolution towards a grand finale, but small particles of pleasure, polyrhythmic joy and poetry: an apparent simple surface structure built on a deceptively complex foundation. As a listener you often wonder which hand does what on the piano and how he builds his lyricism around the muted and unmuted strings. When you watch the video, you can see that he does both with one hand even. 

To understand his sense of nuance and subtlety, Delbecq writes he "drew the record cover pretty fast, but the shadow took me days. I wanted to render something mysterious about the shadow of this mobile.” His music has the same attention to detail, however small, fragile and insignificant it may seem. When you reduce music to its essence, every detail gets more weight. Check out the attention given to the wooden objects used to mute the strings, and his obvious reference to the African balaphon. 

Delbecq's music is beyond categorisation, and a true delight. 

Don't miss it!

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

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Oliver Schwerdt, Barry Guy, Baby Sommer – One For My Baby, And One More For The Bass (Euphorium, 2020) ****

By Nick Ostrum

The name “Baby Sommer” first drew me to this album. For those unfamiliar with his work, he is a singularly resourceful drummer, who often seems more focused on producing waves of percussive sound than on any resulting rhythms themselves, on the changes and detours rather than simply striking and riding a groove. Then I noticed bassist Barry Guy was featured, as well. Sommer and Guy? Yes, please. Oliver Schwerdt was the new element for me (and the youngin’ of the bunch) on One For My Baby, And One More For The Bass, a titual nod to the senior members of this trio.

'One for My Baby' is a real pleasure to experience. One hears glimpses the “serious” classically-oriented avant-garde, especially in some of Schwerdt’s quieter and more restrained passages. Most of the album, however, is a twisted romp through the myriad corridors of the current European improv scene that Guy and Sommer have played such an important role in shaping over the decades. Schwerdt’s piano swings between delicate, fractured neoclassical passages (approaching Schlippenbach territory) to muckier inside work (evocative of Jacques Demierre) to slanted strides almost seamlessly. Indeed, it is remarkable how the pieces run the gamut of the contemporary avant-garde from strange balladry (and these are all titled after ballads) to choppy non-idiomatic sound-making to more (free)bop lines so convincingly. Barry Guy, as usual, is inspired and deploys his arsenal of off-balance grooves, brittle arco and pizzicato (especially in a wonderfully extended passage halfway through 'On The Road Again') and heavy strumming. Sommer, for his part, is as curious and freewheeling as ever. At its most exuberant, 'One For My Baby' conveys great joy in the musical journey, bells, whistles, odd-ball objects, and all. At its slowest, it approaches well-wrought new music and soundscaping, focused as much on creating distinctive hews and textures as on more traditional interplay and free improv melodicism.

If someone asked what free jazz or the avant-garde sounded like today, not in its extended technique and minimalist and maximalist fringes, but in its unstable center, I would point them to One for My Baby. It is just one of those albums. Not conventional, but also not extreme. It includes familiar elements, but nevertheless continues to probe these elements, perform them with vigor, and arrange them in exciting ways.

Now for the novelty of the album itself. It includes two discs, one mixed by Robert Amarell and one by Gilbert Eiche. One can hear the differences in the fullness of the Amarell versions and the woodier, acoustic-forward sound of the Eiche version. I am not sure whether this is a big selling point in the end. That said, it is something I have not encountered before and, for those with the attention, makes for an interesting comparative listen.

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Olie Brice, Binker Golding, Henry Kaiser, N.O. Moore, Eddie Prévost - The Secret Handshake with Danger, Vol. One (577 Records, 2021) ****½

 

By Sammy Stein

577 Records is an independent record label based in New York City, operating since 2001. Daniel Carter and Federico Ughi met soon after the latter's arrival in New York from Italy in 2000, via a brief stay in London. The pair began a series of concerts at 577 Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn. The quality of the artists they found willing to contribute to these events inspired them to diversify and extend their range, and 577 records came into being. They have since added two side shoots; Orbit577 which showcases a catalogue of digital albums and Positive Elevation - a sub-label dedicated to experimental electronic sounds. Their support of improvised music and their mission, together with Carter's 70th birthday, led to the inaugural Forward Festival which has, since 2015 been a fixture of the NYC scene and features a diverse line-up. The label supports musicians directly with 100 per cent of profits from most albums going to the musicians who make the label a success.

Now, to celebrate 20 years of 577, five improvisers have come together on The Secret Handshake with Danger Vol. One they are Eddie Prevost (Eddie Prevost trio, Sadaka, Ear AMM) on percussion, Olie Brice (Olie Brice Quintet, Alexander Hawkins, Rachel Musson, Evan Parker), on double bass, Binker Golding (Elliot Galvin, Moses Boyd) on saxophones, Henry Kaiser (Wadada Leo Smith, Derek Bailey, John Zorn) on guitar and N.O.Moore, a well-known improviser on the U.K. circuit on guitar.

The album's two extended tracks are mostly spontaneous composition, though influences from Miles Davis' On The Corner electro-jazz era are evident. The tracks were recorded and mixed in a single day in a Westpoint London studio, hours before the U.K. official national lockdown.

There are just two tracks; the first ' Door 1' is 22 and a half minutes of improvisation, opening with a heavy bass and drum dialogue, into which the sax drops like a rabid dervish in a rapid, feverish complimentary sidetrack. This expands the interactions and fits neatly in between the ranges covered by bass and guitar. The guitar entrance foretells the creation of a screaming, raunchy top-out track of its own, which, picking up on the hidden rhythmic depths, the sax lifts, whilst masterfully switching the centre of attention to the sax line.

The sax is left largely on its own over quieter percussion and guitar for a short while before bass rejoins and offer its own countering voice before a delightful drum-led section around the seven-minute mark. The track flits hereon in from powerful, steely electronic guitar to a gentler underflow from sax before the guitar retakes the impetus. The bass emerges with a beautiful solo in a brief interlude before the rest of the ensemble rejoin, first gently, steadily and then with added emphasis and dynamic flow.

Repeated motifs from the saxophone provide a basis for the rest to roll over for a half minute before a more surreal section evolves. The little trickity section at the 18-minute mark between guitar, sax and drums is an earful of delight before the pace increases again, and the energy diverts to a helter-skelter trip to the end of the track.

The track includes some sections played disorienting speeds alongside exhilarating rhythms, navigating the confusion with confidence and trust. It is the rhythm patters which often predict a change in feeling, subtly yet with confidence. Given the ensuing lockdown where musicians' gatherings would be denied them, the music's sense of urgency is ever more appropriate.

'Door 2' has a gentler, ethereal start with warpy electronica and spacey noises. Soon the percussion gets a little busier, and the rest follow, adding their voices. The sax introduces a theme which wavers for a while, before being taken over and morphed by the ensemble into a different sound. The track is sax-led for a major portion, but the bass and drums' importance are not lost to the listener, and the guitars have the knack of finding the missing notes and slotting them in just-so. A different door this track but ultimately one that leads to the same place - improvised sounds which both make sense and feel right. The crazy guitars section is wonderful, and the ensuing dynamism from the drums numbingly beautiful.

This recording is a wonderfully amorphous dialogue which is unpredictable, yet somehow it comes together in ways which make it feel comprehensive and entire. The dynamism and energy never wavers, making it uplifting and a substantial recording, demonstrating the true art of improvisation.

On 577, I asked both Daniel Carter and Federico Ughi if they could sum up their thoughts.

Carter says, "577 Records is uniquely visionary, all about freedom of musical expression, and fairness to and respect for musicians, being straight-up honest with them. If 577 weren't about encouraging freedom of musical expression, it would make me nervous, and worse than nervous. I've no doubt been spoiled like a spoiled child, but mind you, in a divine way, by this record company, because it never gets in my way. It always encourages me to play the way I feel. It encourages me to meet my maker, i.e., face my own deepest, highest, inner being, with all its shortcomings, as well as strengths, encourages me to head out directly for the divine spark, which is deep inside every human being. 577 gives me way more than enough rope to hang myself, if I'm foolish enough to do that, and unfortunately, sometimes I am. But sometimes, I'm actually less foolish, to allow the encouragement of the spirit of the musicians I play with, and the spirit of 577 Records, to enable me to arrive in "musical and life places", I would never have believed possible, before I met Federico Ughi, who, around two decades ago, not only founded 577 Records, but he's also one of my very favourite drummers. While in New York, I've played with him more than with any other drummer) Such a wide and deep range of sounds he makes on the drums, and all with the Federico Ughi soul and personality, transcending musical genres, but also demonstrating an astute knowledge of and feel for each and all of them. By the way, all these are also the musical traits and character of 577 Records, itself, already two decades in the running, but shooting for further unbelievably amazing horizons. Believe it or not, I'm actually trying here not to gush in my praise for 577's accomplishments and visions for the immediate future and beyond. All that being said, of additional primary importance, is how Federico consistently sets a wicked pace in the area of being a true friend, willing to go all out for a friend. He's a person of high moral character, integrity, wisdom, charitableness from the heart, devoted, committed to his family. I truly don't know how he does it all. I am deeply thankful to him for all that he has given and continues to give to me, which has been indispensable in this miraculous, yes, but all too often punishing world, just putting it mildly. For me, 577 Records, from its inception, has constantly renewed my hope, courage, confidence, stability, and vision, and continues to do so, for which, I remain eternally grateful."

I asked Ughi about the importance of improvised music. He said, "Why is it important to create and support improvised, creative, abstract music? When I was 14-years old, I wanted to get a tattoo. So I went to the tattoo parlour where my friend Alberto worked. I was not sure what to get. Alberto gave me one of the most important pieces of advice I ever received: go for something abstract, so if things change around you, you can be free to look at something abstract in a different way and make it whatever works for you at that specific moment. This is how I perceive the improvised, creative, abstract music we produce and support at 577 Records and why I believe these sounds are forever.

577 Records will celebrate 20 years of operations in 2021. Everybody involved in 577 Records has a role: the musicians, the graphic designers, the audio engineers, the writers, the record stores. I am so grateful to have been blessed with such a strong team throughout the years. A special thanks to Daniel Carter, the instigator, the one who created the community, the spark and the theory this project is based upon. "

With these thoughts in mind, re-heard the tracks. Elements of 'Trane, Davis and Sharrock can be heard, whilst improvisers like Vandermark and Parker would not feel out of sorts in the musical landscapes created by the ensemble. There is introspection, spirituality, coupled with a sharing of and profound understanding of sound.

No words adequately describe that feeling when music does its thing, and improvisers can somehow provide just the right notes, in the right places - and in the proper order. 577 encourages musicians to do that and allows them the freedom to work out whatever it is they are chasing musically. The result is simply great music. There is to be a Volume Two released at a later date. 

Volume One releases March 12th. More here.

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