The Parisian Lenka Lente Editions specializes in publishing collections of poetic texts matched with experimental-improvised music, sometimes by jazz musicians such as sax players Jackie McLean and Daunik Lazro and more often by alternative musicians like Nurse with Wound (aka Steven Stapleton) or Bill Nace.
Lenka Lente latest edition feature writer, poet and editor Charles Plymell (born in 1935), who was nicknamed as the ‘original hipster’ and is one of the legendary figures of the Beat Generation. In 1963 he shared a house in San Francisco with poet Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady, the protagonist of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. There and at that time he wrote his most famous poem “Apocalypse Rose”, published in 1966 by the City Lights Journal and later that year in his first book of poetry with an introduction by Ginsberg.
Fifty years later this electric poem is presented in a French translation, along the original English version, with a CDR that features music by guitarist Bill Nace, inspired by the poem. Nace, who runs the Open Mouth label, is also a visual artist, plays in the Body/Head duo with Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and collaborates frequently with free-spirited improvisers as sax legend Joe McPhee, cellist Okkyung Lee, and drummer Chris Corsano.
Nace's 16-minutes instrumental abstraction of this free-associative poem mirrors beautifully its dense, hallucinogenic images. Nace arranged a slow, hypnotic drone, first played on a distant, Far Eastern-tinged acoustic guitar, that later morphs into a quiet, and even quieter claustrophobic-electric rustle, that fits the closing lines of the poem:
Throughout 2016 Jon Lundbom & Big Five Chord will be releasing four digital download EP’s, with a view to releasing them as a CD box set at the very end of the year. We’ve had the pleasure to hear the first two, both of which contain the band of Jon Irabagon (alto saxophone), Balto Exclamationpoint aka Bryan Murray (tenor saxophone, balto! saxophone, prepared saxophone), Moppa Elliott (bass), Dan Monaghan (drums) and Jon Lundbom (guitar). Make The Magic Happen starts with the confident and sassy ‘Ain’t Cha’. Sporting a nicely worked contrapuntal horn arrangement for the melody, whilst the guitar bubbles away under the surface against the solid backdrop of the rhythm section, with Balto Exclamationpoint (Bryan Murray) left to his own devices to stretch out and solo over. His horn solo starts off by initially dancing around the groove until by the end the improvised line is eventually wringing out every last drop of expression it can muster. Lundbom then takes up the baton and continues where he had left off. Chromatic passages mixing it up with free-funk motives and a gradual and well-worked development of the material that eventually leads to a noise based saturation point. The phrasing in the playing is a real joy and the way it sits within the rhythm will have you toe tapping before the track is out, worth getting just for this piece. ‘La Bomb’ is a dirge, again starting with a short full band arrangement before Lundbom’s guitar heads off into a perpetual motion of rolling phrases that tumble over the skitterish percussion and solid bass, giving an effect that there are three different tempos briefly playing. This then disperses leaving the sorrowful multiphonic ornamented horn solo gradually gaining in momentum and intensity. The last track is Ornette Coleman’s ‘Law Years’, which after stating the initial theme is then opened up by the bass to take centre stage before the prepared horn joins for some right royal honking! Bring Their ‘A’ Game also contains three longish tracks coming in under the half-hour. These pieces are structurally similar to the previous EP, with theme based band arrangements starting the pieces before the soloists take up the mantle for the rest of the track. The first (‘Wrapped’) and last piece (‘W.R.U’, another Coleman composition) have an up-tempo, free-boppish, time no changes feel to them which Lundbom beautifully exploits in his solo before returning to the theme half-way through ‘Wrapped’. The second piece ‘Worth’ has a slow schmaltzy feel to it, with the horns sounding one minute like air-raid sirens in their long drawn out solos before mixing in chattering and shrieking phrases.
The emphasis on both of these EP’s is clearly on the tracks as a vehicle for improvised solo melodic lines and there is plenty of space for each of the soloists to stretch out and express themselves. As usual Jon Lundbom shares the limelight with his talented band making the music much more than just a guitar-centric outing. However, there is some great playing from the guitarist across these two EP’s. Each of the EP’s can be exclusively obtained from www.JonLundbom.com as they become available.
As a kick-off to another 'Guitar Week', we begin with two videos featuring that wonderful creation - quite rare in free jazz - the pedal steel guitar.
Peter Brotzmann and Heather Leigh
This video from a festival in Krakow in 2015 begins with two minutes of forlorn and visceral solo clarinet-like taragato. At the two-minute mark when pedal steel guitarist Heather Leigh's otherworldly tones begin intertwining with Peter Brotzmann's flow, it becomes absolutely captivating. The pair has been on tour in Europe and we're planning to head to one at Fat Out's Burrow in England on March 31st. They are also planning on releasing an album soon - Ears Are Filled With Wonder on Not Two Records (CD) and Trost Records (limited edition vinyl LP).
Susan Alcon and Dom Minasi
Susan Alcorn is a master of the pedal steel and has leapt from the more typical country and western setting of the instrument to gorgeous renditions of Astor Piazzolla's tangos and other collaborations. In the video below, she is playing with guitarist Dom Minasi, whose work seems to be focusing on duo dates recently. The video below is from a concert date in Baltimore, MD.
Dalston’s Cafe OTO, now one of the world’s leading venues for free jazz and improv, recently launched its own digital download service, a sign of how music distribution is changing and prescient of things to come. Those still wedded to physical media are being left behind even in the world of free jazz, many of whose audience are of an age that they can remember when the LP reigned supreme (and some wished it still did). OTO records all its gigs and increasingly, musicians have been using them for their own releases. OTO’s previous albums on its own Otoruko label have been on vinyl and it will continue its commitment to the LP format – three new albums have been announced for release in April – but the wealth of recordings meant it needed a further outlet. Under the heading: “Made with love in East London – downloaded across the globe”, the background to the service can be found here.
The downloads are available either individually or more cheaply, by way of a digital subscription providing credits for three albums a month. In either case, part of the payment goes to the musicians, who’ve all approved the final mixes. For techies, the files are available as MP3s@320 (lossy compression) and as FLACs (lossless compression). Since they both cost the same, I suggest you go for the latter where you want the best sound quality. For the Apple community, FLAC files can easily be converted to ALAC, Apple’s lossless format, and played in iTunes. The FLACs are 44.1/24 files, a combination of sampling frequency and bit depth judged to strike the right balance between sound quality and size, for ease in downloading. And of course, with computer files the time constraints of physical media don’t apply: you can hear the gig in its entirety – Cleaning the Mirror, with John Dikeman, William Parker and Hamid Drake lasts almost 100 minutes.
At present, downloads are being added at the rate of about one a week, and they cover the entire spectrum of music put on at the venue, not just free jazz and improv but also, for want of a better term, “experimental music” of all kinds. From the initial recordings, I’d recommend the first release: John Tchicai, Tony Marsh, John Edwards – 27 September 2010 (one of my albums of the year) Phantom Orchard + Steve Noble – Live at Cafe Oto 2014, Fred Frith, Theresa Wong, John Butcher – Quintillions Green, Charles Gayle, Roger Turner, John Edwards – 26.05.15, Akira Sakata, Giovanni di Domenico, Roger Turner, John Edwards – 15.01.14, and the aforementioned Cleaning the Mirror.
There’s also the subject of this review: Evan Parker and AMM’s Title Goes Here, a 72 minute improvisation recorded during a week of concerts in October 2014 to celebrate Parker’s seventieth birthday. This version of AMM consists of John Tilbury on piano and Eddie Prévost, percussion (a useful potted history of AMM and its various line-ups can be read here). Although at one time these stalwarts of Brit Improv were regarded as forming two distinct camps – integrated (Parker) v. layered (AMM) improvisation – they have much in common and their paths have inevitably criss-crossed over the years. Parker and Prévost first played together when the latter substituted for Jamie Muir for a performance by the Music Improvisation Company (a period in Brit Improv referred to by Parker as “the Big Bang”) but surprisingly, their first recording together was not until 1984, the appropriately entitled Supersession (Matchless Recordings, 2015) with Barry Guy and Keith Rowe, recently reissued in a remastered edition. An album genuinely deserving the epithet “classic”.
I’ve often been baffled by some of the more lavish praise heaped on AMM’s music. The CD release of The Crypt (Matchless Recordings, 1992) contains on the reverse a review comment, “The music I want to hear at my funeral”. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but it sounds terribly important in a way I’ve never been able to grasp while listening to the album. I also have to admit an aversion to the sound of scraped metal – a Prévost speciality – especially when amplified, it can set my teeth on edge like the sound of chalk on a blackboard, but in this performance there’s not much to trouble even my delicate sensibility.
3 Nights At Cafe Oto (Matchless Recordings, 2015) was another of my albums of the year, the trio of Parker, Prévost and John Edwards (double bass), alone on the first night and with guests on the second and third. The first makes for an intriguing comparison with the current release, since the differences are not solely attributable to the substitution of Tilbury for Edwards, piano for bass – we get a different Prévost too. His playing falls into two categories (the distinction is not intended to be scientific): free jazz drumming where he plays the standard trap kit, as on his Meetings with Remarkable Saxophonists series; and textured percussion, usually restricted to a few selected skins and metals, which characterises his work with AMM and his workshop ensembles. He’s the former on 3 Nights, the latter on this album.
The comparison also highlights how personalities adjust according to their surroundings. There’s no mistaking Parker here, and there’s some delightful jigsaw-like configurations with piano and saxophone, recycling and augmenting tiny overlapping figures to see how they might fit. Elsewhere however, Parker’s playing sounds like its taking place in slow motion, thinning out the thickets of notes to the bare essentials – the molecules that make up his sound – sometimes breath itself. Tilbury’s crystalline piano, and arpeggiated chords fill out the space along with the resonant zing of Prévost’s bowed cymbals and gong, and their decaying vibrations. A different kind of time seems to be at work.
Parker’s trance-like exercises in circular breathing are usually unaccompanied. Fellow musicians tend to fall silent while absorbing his meditations along with the audience. Here, with Parker on tenor, the piano adds deep, sustained clusters before joining in the cyclic motion over Prévost’s reverberating percussion. When Parker switches to soprano saxophone and finely spun phrases, accelerating and decelerating, there’s a delicate layer of piano chords, eventually joined by a throbbing drumbeat. Parker then moves again into his oscillating waves of tones, overtones and microtones, with Tilbury providing a glitter of notes in the treble.
The last fifteen minutes of the performance (which can be seen below) have an almost pastoral feel as piano and tenor gradually resolve around shared intervals. The music seems to be evaporating into silence, until a final flourish from Parker.
The Offshoot is Tim Berne on alto saxophone, Sarah Gail Brand on trombone, Joe Morris on electric guitar, Simon H. Fell on double bass, and Steve Noble on drums. As you can tell, it’s something of a free jazz “supergroup,” so I was understandably excited to delve into the recording and see what this particular configuration of players had to offer. Charybdis was recorded at the Vortex on November 22nd, 2007 - the two pieces here are completely improvised, but there is an inherent logic, a tendency to glide between voices and modes with relative ease; it all fits together in a way that, at first, looks haphazard, but eventually reveals itself to have an internal structure not dissimilar to an old-fashioned clock - tiny components all working together to execute a single function.
First of all, a brief lesson in mythology. “Charybdis” was a large seamonster with an unquenchable thirst for water - thus, she consumed the ocean-water three times a day, forming whirlpools and causing the demise of uncountable sailors and their ships. The Offshoot do indeed possess a sound imbued with enormous force and power. On the other hand, they are not lacking in subtlety - there are spots of tranquility here, delicate threads there, and throughout all of it, a cool mastery of the pieces’ organization and flow.
The first piece, “Usclatx,” opens in a somewhat meandering fashion, with Tim Berne acting as the “primary mover,” so to speak. He weaves his complex alto lines through the piece, providing the serpentine needlework that gives it its initial shape. Within a few minutes, the other players pick up the pace, particularly guitarist Morris, bassist Fell, and drummer Noble. For anyone who has heard Morris in an improvisational setting, his playing here won’t come as a huge shock: clean, pointillistic scales that sound like tightly-wound balls of string coming undone. After brief solos by Berne and Morris, the piece moves into more amorphous territory - trombonist Brand provides brassy bursts that drip like molten wax, Morris offers distorted rumbles, and Berne toys with the altissimo register. Noble is constrained, sweeping the cymbals and supplying textures that rattle patiently beneath the abstract wanderings of the other players. In many ways, “Usclatx” swells and recedes in a distinctly wave-like fashion: Noble’s percussion rumbles, then pounds, Fell unexpectedly goes into runs on his double bass, the volume increases, the tempo picks up - and then it all recedes again. These oceanic pulses give the piece a feeling of animation, like an organic mass that expands and contracts with each breath.
“Blubberhouses” starts off with roiling perturbations from all the players, Berne again going on convoluted runs, Morris racing alongside him, and Noble laying out sibilant billows with the cymbals. After five minutes or so, most of the players withdraw, and Noble takes some time to play with all of the percussive tools at his disposal. As he establishes an atmosphere of tense expectation, the others contribute with near-imperceptible splashes of sound that gradually pool together. As in the previous piece, the tempo starts to escalate, and the players go from producing sparse droplets to unleashing veritable cascades of sound. Soon, the cascades diminish, the trickle stops, and the piece comes to a close.
In my opinion, this performance by the Offshoot was an incredibly fruitful one, and the recording produced is a fine example of what five musicians can accomplish in an improvisational setting - while the players all work together in a unified fashion, they never lose their idiosyncratic voices, and that is one of the most recognize hallmarks of a free-jazz session gone right.
A few years back, Matthew Shipp laid it out: “If jazz can’t create new stars, rather than relying on people who played with Miles Davis in the '70s, then it really does deserve to die.” Friends, that is a mic-drop if I’ve ever heard/seen/read one.
I’ll get to it.
So I’m in San Antonio. The place is Hi-Tones. It’s a bar with a sizable floor and a big outdoor smoking yard where you can also grab some street food from the carts or a t-shirt if the band inside has them. It’s an old fashioned, steel door kind of place and when you open that door, it’s fucking loud. My wife’s with me and we go grab a beer and some bourbon and try to stake a spot to catch this band we’ve heard about. It’s tough though because there are maybe three chairs in the whole place and besides a few howlers at the counter, people are dancing. Not some swing shit either. It’s a tad more … free. The place is red all over and it stinks of sweat. The band is a quartet – alto sax, bass, guitar and drums – and there’s nothing acoustic about it. Later, I'll read local publications call the band's sound "jazz with a leather jacket energy." And yeah, it's fucking heavy. But it's also completely unpredictable. One minute, the band is screaming "Bullets for breakfast!" (also the name of their debut album), the next minute they're launching into a jazz onslaught with a rhythm section keeping time like its in a curbside brawl while the guitar and sax play more exploratory, contemplative runs atop the carnage. The difference in approach is both intriguing to hear (and even better to see live) and perfectly described by bandleader/bassist/producer Phillip Luna, "We're all alpha players." And for a band of alphas, they have the perfect name: Royal Punisher. And yeah, the whole "alpha" thing will of course mean that the band won't be several jazz fans' cup of tea. But that's kind of the point. If that kind of "tea" is your thing, pop your pinky up and find a nice lounge or hall where you can sit on your ass and watch some "traditionalist" fill his horn with spit while you convince yourself that you're experiencing something with every fiber of your body. Now, to be fair, can music move you if you're not dancing frantically in a bar with peeled-paint walls? Of course. And sure, I can't speak for everywhere. New York has its thing. Berlin has its thing. I get it. But here's the San Antonio thing: seated jazz clubs are for blue hairs and tourists. The set continued with its unpredictable curves. Bullets moved from screams to solos to a ramped up biting of Caravan's theme. A cover of Zappa's Peaches En Regalia was surprisingly complex given the limitations of a quartet interpreting the original piece. And with The Last Word, Royal Punisher latches onto a concept often cast aside in jazz of all forms: the beauty of repetition. I love the chaos of a virtuoso's frenetic ideas and insistence on going twenty different places in as many measures. That said, sometimes, it's nice to hear a riff worth repeating actually be repeated. In The Last Word, said riff popped up again and again ... and again. Each time, it prompted an explosive response. And afterward, I talked to Luna about the project:
*Who are the players in the band? Phillip Luna, bass Don Robin, guitar Kory Cook, drums Estevan Garcia, saxophone *How did you guys link up? Estevan and I had just stopped playing with another band - an original jazz-ish Morphine-esque trio (I played drums in this band) called Psychics. We play a few Psychics tunes in RP. Don had been playing a weekly house jam with a group of fellow doctors as well as Ken Robinson, a drummer Estevan and I had played/toured with for many years but were no longer in a band with together. Ken decided to bring Don to meet up at my studio and see if we would vibe. Estevan and I had been moving more towards jazz and playing a lot of improvisation and Don came from a jazz/improv background. We started gigging immediately, reading standards from the Real Book. We weren't very good but my reputation afforded us gigs wherever we wanted and the novelty of long hair, youngish (for jazz) rockers playing heavy hacked up versions of standards created some excitement. At some point, frustrated with our progress of making the actual transition between being garage rockers to jazz players, Ken decided to move along and focus on a rock career and Kory Cook joined the band. His first gig with us was JazzS'Alive. After awhile we began writing original tunes and mostly playing original improv sets live. *How long has the band been active? We have been together about six or seven years. *What's the story with day jobs? Kory is the music director and an RTF Professor at KRTU at Trinity University. Don is a neuroscientist at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio and Estevan has been a carpenter for as long as I can remember. I am primarily an artist/musician and all the things that go along with that. If anything, our day gigs are really useful sometimes, considering some of us are in the industry. Even Don works in the area of improvisation and neuroscience. *Where did the name Royal Punisher come from?
Don was wearing a hat from the Bieli winery whose feature wine is The Royal Punisher. Seemed a great name for a jazz band! And one that approaches music as we do. *How would you describe the RP sound?
Post-Punk Heavy Jazz. Kory is easily one of the best drummers I've ever ever seen. Don knows chords and chord subs and improv like English. Estevan was my drum major in high school marching band. He was also in jazz band. We both played sax. He was in jazz band, but I couldn't pass all my classes so I couldn't join. I learned jazz bass about six or seven years ago. I think it sounds like putting those four people in one room and pressing play on each of them individually. We would probably each describe the sound differently based on what we are each trying to get out of it personally. I'll leave up to you to describe our sound ... I don't know ... Cats being killed? *How has the local support been? Are there any plans to tour at some point?
Local support has been very strong. We were voted Best Jazz Act in San Antonio 2011, 2012, 2014. We always get amazing feedback from gigs from all kinds of music lovers and people of all ages. Some of the more established jazz players who like to play the usual standards in a formal way are less enthused, but we like that a lot. Our record is currently ranked on Jazz Week - the national report for jazz radio airplay - and are always actively looking for licensing opportunities through our publisher. Yes, we want to tour. We are perpetually planning one but our schedules are really hard to wrangle.
*Can you describe the process of making Bullets for Breakfast?
It actually took a little longer than we would have liked from the time we wrote the tunes and the time the record was released. Most of the time was spent figuring out the exact process we would use in the studio to get the tunes down. We spent way too long stubbornly insisting that all the tunes be recorded live (in studio), but live in the sense that we all play at once and keep the whole take beginning to end. We refused to consider any other way until frustration got the best of us and, in one night, decided to get Kory and I in the room and let us go at the bass and drum tracks. That was really all it took to get things going. Most of the rhythm tracks are first or second takes at the most and the other guys were able to shred their parts in one session each, so the album was done in a matter of several weeks from then. After having been trying to pound it out live for many, many months, I booked the record release before the record was even mastered - so mastering, art collab and production was a crazy race to get it done.
The writing process is another story entirely. We each bring songs or sketches and then try and communicate those ideas to each other; then what happens happens. I'm not sure if we ever really land anywhere near the writer's intent. We write mostly the road map and make sure not to make too many obstacles for the others while we each do our thing. I record a majority of our rehearsals. I mic everyone up demo style so we can listen back and save any good moments for later. Songwriting can be a desperate thing, where you pretty much will try anything to get the tune. We employ every writing method any of us has ever learned in order to get to an exciting musical moment together. *Future plans?
We are currently recording an EP to be released soon. At the same, time we are writing our next album. We book as many live shows as we can. When we discuss our future plans, it's mostly in the context of writing and recording. We envision the future of RP as a marathon rather than a race. We feel like we have a lot of material to cover and a lot about music and each other to learn. So we really want to record and release as often as we are able so we can just keep on gettin' down the road per say.
Bullets for Breakfast is available as a CD and a digital download (with a vinyl pressing imminent). Who's to say if these guys are among the "stars" Shipp hopes to find in modern jazz. All I can say is this, in that San Antonio spot that night, as these guys punished their instruments into something new and interesting with potential for days, jazz seemed pretty fucking far from dead.
Martin Küchen’s trio with Jon Rune Strøm (b) and Tollef Østvang (dr) is a condensed version of his All Included quintet (which also contains trombonist Mats Äleklint and trumpeter Thomas Johansson). Only two of the pieces on Melted Snow are new (the title track and “Stein“), five of the seven compositions have already appeared on All Included’s Satan In Plain Clothes. So it is obvious to examine in which way the tracks sound different when played in this context.
On one hand, the band has retained the themes of the compositions as well as Küchen’s muscular playing, which can be raw and energetic as well as emotional and subtle. On the other hand, the most striking difference is the rhythm section: In All Included they often propel the reeds with sharp, funky and brittle rhythms. On Melted Snow they usually avoid a straight pulse creating a feverish, almost spooky energy.
The album is bookended by two versions of “Satan In Plain Clothes“. The opening track, a so-called “breakdown“ variation, gets rid of the All Included rock groove, the squeezed saxophone notes, and the funky bass, and in general the arrangement is looser. Strøm and Østvang reject a steady meter and replace it with free and fast rhythms and bowed bass lines which give the track a very tense and uneasy feeling. Küchen’s saxophone reminds of Brötzmann’s squeals and cries, there is a clear link to the European free jazz tradition of the late 1960s, when many small ensembles often concentrated on collective improvisation and dense patterns. In "Satan In Plain Clothes (beat up)", the last track, the rock groove is back. It is a pared-down version of the All Included track but I must say that I miss the funky reed section here because they are the icing on the cake on the original.
However, the gems of this album are the slow numbers, for example, the dark ballad "I’ve Been Lied To". All Included have already played it like a New Orleans funeral march and the trio takes over the minor key blues structure in which Küchen’s emotional vibrato and overtone vocalizations on the tenor stand out fighting with Østvang’s fast, free, agitated drumming and Strøm’s accentuated bowed bass. This contrast creates a very intense atmosphere, it’s Küchen’s moaning that brings to light an enormous vulnerability. The two previously unreleased tracks take a similar line: “Melted Snow“ is another slow and melodic blues in which Küchen backs down in the middle of the piece and leaves the field to a tender bass/drums duo while “Stein“ features him on the soprano. Although the piece is faster and even displays a short swing feeling at the end, it doesn’t leave the given pattern of forcefulness and gloom. Melted Snow is another nice piece in the puzzle of Martin Küchen’s exciting works. It is really worth checking it out. Melted Snow is available on vinyl in an edition of 300 copies only.
On “Shadow Garden,” vocalist and composer Sarah Buechi returns to the lush, sensual soundscape of her debut, reassembling the backing band of Stefan Aeby on piano, André Pousaz on double bass, and Lionel Friedli on drums. Album opener “Lost and Found” sets the tone early on. There’s a transparent sincerity to Buechi’s music, and she sings the refrain, “follow your heart, if you can,” as a naked plea. Admittedly, there is something refreshing about the earnestness (even though I, personally, don’t usually go for that sort of thing). Aeby, Pousaz, and Friedli leave plenty of space for Buechi to play with, and she skips up and down intervals before pausing for a lyrical solo from Pousaz.
There’s a skittering syncopation to “The Apple” that winds through Buechi’s story-like lyrics, a nod to the Biblical tale of the apple. Around the midpoint, things get super interesting, with Buechi and Aeby performing a simultaneous solo, with the two coming together on a melodic bridge. It’s the standout track, for precisely this run, a flat-out gorgeous couple of minutes where you can feel all four musicians really pushing the composition to its limit. These interludes, which recur on each piece, are the highlights of the album, undoubtedly. “Comfort of Illusions” features a breathier, more expansive solo from Buechi that really highlights the avant undercurrent of her technique. “Right Nor Wrong” hits its stride about halfway, when Friedli takes the lead with a nicely melodic drum solo that segues into another syncopated duo between Buechi and Aeby.
Overall, I wish the quartet would explore these collective improvisations more, there’s a lot of potential in them. Towards the end, there is a transcendent high note in “Irish Garden” that segues into a simmering middle section, with Aeby’s quiet piano groove under Buechi’s reflective lyrics. And you can hear, in moments like these, the rich collaboration being established with this quartet. I’m not entirely won over, but I’m definitely looking forward to their next album.
Many of this blog’s readers are probably familiar with the album Carve, performed by Lisa Ullén and Nina de Heney. It has been perched in the “Popular Posts” section for quite some time (and the review can be read here).
On that recording, the possibilities of the piano-bass duo are thoroughly explored - each piece is a sculpture of sorts, some marblesque, with rounded edges and smoky contours; others, jagged and barbed, with unexpected turns and bristling textures. Despite the success of that record (and its equally incredible follow-up), it needn’t be assumed that Ullén is only concerned with minimal sound-experiments. She has also invested a great deal of time into her Quartet, with Mats Äleklint on trombone, Nils Ölmedal on double bass, and Andreas Axelsson on drums. Their last album (the wonderfully-titled Revolution Rock) was released seven years ago, which means that the individual members have had plenty of time to hone their skills and explore fresh terrain and, indeed, that’s what they’ve done. Revolution Rock was not a conservative record, by any means - it had complex and intricate playing, labyrinthine shifts-in-direction, and dazzling exchanges between the musicians. Borderlands has all of that in droves, but it also integrates some of the elements of sound-sculpting that Ullén has been engaged in for the last few years. Thus, it updates all of the best parts of the Quartet, while also allowing them to progress in new and interesting ways.
The first track, “Sisters, Brothers, Here’s Another,” starts with rumbling clusters of notes from Ullén, an elastic rhythm section, and trombonist Mats Äleklint’s idiosyncratic honks. From this first piece, it’s evident that Äleklint will be integral to the Quartet’s revised sound; he has an irresistibly original style, moving ably from buzzing groans to terse clucks to mellifluous streams. Ullén’s playing has also become more elliptical, and there’s been a definite refinement of the sound-sculpting techniques she explored during her time with Nina de Heney. Take “Waiting Room,” for example: accompanied by Äleklint’s laconic squeaks and squawks, she offers only tense clusters from the low registers and fragments and splinters from the high, all while the rhythm section billows airily below. Meanwhile, lilting electronic tones oscillate throughout, approximating the soft hums of medical equipment that one might expect to hear in a real waiting room: anxiety interlaced with the tranquilizing repetition of machines. “Now What” is equally oblique, but it’s driven by Andreas Axelsson’s more assertive percussion-work. Next, “Midnight Conversation” finds bassist Nils Ölmedal pairing up with Äleklint for a brief and enigmatic duet. Here, Äleklint mostly sticks to a straight-ahead style of playing, but it makes for a nice respite.
That track transitions nicely into “Room Full of Tunes,” which is piano-bar jazz that has been reimagined, reconstructed, and injected with a kind of lyrical ambiguity. It starts in a fairly conventional manner, but quickly becomes a swirling dreamscape; Ullén’s Quartet stuns me with its ability to leap from near-orthodox melodicism to weird, textural experimentation, often in the space of a minute or two.
The final piece, “Won’t Be Late Again,” sees Ullén going “all-in,” so to speak, with convoluted runs and percussive rolls. Midway through, time is given for Nils Ölmedal to offer a sumptuous solo, and the piece then shifts back to Ullén’s dazzling pyrotechnics.
The approach of the Lisa Ullén Quartet is not a direct one; it doesn’t divulge much in the way of easy melodies, but it’s incredibly intriguing and rewarding for the patient listener. Also, I urge listeners to take some time with this thing; at first, I was perplexed and a little disinterested. After spending the better part of a week with it, however, I was genuinely enthralled and found myself actively craving it! Highly recommended to fans of Lisa Ullén’s previous work, as well as to those who enjoy the various projects of Kris Davis: Paradoxical Frog, Infrasound, etc.
The quartet of Swedish pianist Lisa Ullén is unfortunately not a model of a working band. Their discography features only three albums in the past decade, including the new one that follows the debut Big Bang (2006) and the sophomore Revolution Rock (2009), all released on Ullén's label, Disorder. But each time that this quartet reconvenes for a live performance or a recording session, one can expect to a very creative interpretation of the concept of free, improvised music.
Ullén herself was busy in recent years working with double bass player Nina de Heney, first as a duo and then as the Nuiversum trio with vocalist Mariam Wallentin and as a member of sax player Anna Högberg's sextet Attack. Her quartet feature highly prolific trombone player Mats Äleklint (Mats Gustafsson’s Fire! Orchestra, Paal Nilssen-Love Large Unit, Martin Küchen’s Angles 9, among many other outfits), who adds electronics to his palette of sounds, double bass player Nils Ölmedal and drummer Andreas Axelsson, all whom have played in the quartet since its inception.
Borderlands is an accurate description of the spirit of this album. The musical language is rooted in the European form of free jazz but this quartet takes the notion of freedom seriously, ignoring genres and rules, relying on an emphatic trust and deep listening. This quartet is a kind of a “new bird” as Ullén writes in a short liner notes. “It comes in many colors. It speaks in many languages. It isn’t pretty, but it’s always pretty wild”. She finds the quartet aesthetics close to the experimental, suggestive poetic language of Gertrude Stein, making it all “a magnificent asparagus and also a fountain” (quoting from Stein’s seminal Tender Buttons book).
Ullén is in charge of “concepts and ideas”, but these fragmented motives were developed in collaboration with the quartet. The opening piece, “Sisters, Brothers, Here’s Another” marks the colorful course, blending Monkish angular piano attacks with psychedelic interplay that suddenly is transformed into a tender hymn led by Äleklint. The dramatic, eerie atmosphere of “Waiting Room” with its distant electronics storms sound as an outtake from Pink Floyd recording sessions of Dark side of the Moon and “A New Leaf” sounds as a free improvised piece that is informed by the minimalist, electronic spirit of krautrock Can. The inventive, game-like interplay and the nuanced humor of this quartet is highlighted on “Now What” and “Won’t Be Late again”. The beautiful melodic abstraction is stressed in the way that Ölmedal and Äleklint weave their solos on “Midnight Conversation” or when all the quartet plays on the following, quiet “Room Full of Tunes”.
This quartet is indeed a rare bird, tasty as a fresh asparagus, and flowing with surprising ideas like a fountain of clear water.
