Reissued and unreleased music by Rashied Ali (Part 1)

By Martin Schray

Reissues of successful and/or seminal recordings and albums with previously unreleased material from important artists have been en vogue for quite some time. Just think of the box sets that Columbia has released of the most important Miles Davis records, Bob Dylan's attempt to curate his work with his Bootleg Series, John Coltrane's Both Directions At Once, Eric Dolphy's Musical Prophet and the endless unreleased Sun Ra albums that have been brought to the public on Record Store Days. In order to celebrate its 80th anniversary, the Blue Note label plans 24 reissues ranging from Chet Bakers’s Chet Baker Sings (1954) to John Scofield & Pat Metheny’s I Can See Your House From Here (1993). History obviously sells.

In his book Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past (Faber & Faber, 2012) Simon Reynolds has suggested that our fixation with the past has to do with the need to extend the lost l’age d’or of the music we like, which is why we want to revive it. Reynolds refers his assertions to pop music, but there is an intersection with jazz as well. According to him, retromania can go so far that rather second-rate recordings from this period are retrospectively overrated. Repetitions from that time and a particular kind of music (in our case this would be the free jazz of the late 1960s and early 1970s) are based on a deep devotion to a certain sound that is no longer made and cannot be compared to anything else. This devotion applies both to the record labels and to the fans. Reynolds goes even further and claims that - for the latter in particular - it’s a refuge from the musical (and thus social) soullessness and the uniformity of consumer society. The intention of retromaniacs is to dig up principles that characterised earlier jazz styles, which have almost disappeared in the meantime in order to establish them as the basis for future developments. This actually sounds positive, but Reynolds sees retromania (and reissues belong to this field) rather critically, to him it means seclusion, which includes the prevention of innovation, because the focus of the music (in our case even free jazz) released today is increasingly on the past.

In the following two days, these theses are the basis for the review of two albums by drummer Rashied Ali which have recently been (re)released. Survival Records, a rather small record label that he founded in 1973 and operated until his death in 2009, has been relaunched with these two LPs this year, a hard-to-find classic and a never-before-heard 1967 live recording. Ali kept an archive of recordings and live performances, which have been carefully catalogued and remastered since his death by a team that includes Ali’s widow Patricia, mastering engineer Joe Lizzi, drummer George Schuller, and historical researcher Ben Young.

Rashied Ali / Frank Lowe - Duo Exchange: Complete Sessions (Survival Records, 2020) *****

Rashied Ali's fame stems mainly from his collaboration with John Coltrane. In the last phase before the jazz icon’s death he replaced Elvin Jones on drums. He appears on Meditations (together with Jones) and on some tracks of Cosmic Music, but most of all he accompanies Trane on Interstellar Space, a saxophone-drum duo recording, which was recorded in 1967 and released seven years later. Duos played by just a saxophonist and a drummer were rare at the time the album was recorded and hardly ever before featured on an entire LP. The exception to the rule is Willem Breuker’s and Han Bennink’s New Acoustic Swing Duo, which was also recorded in 1967 (read Colin’s insightful review here), but there is no evidence whether Ali or Frank Lowe were aware of this album.

In the end, Duo Exchange, Ali’s session with Lowe, was released even before Interstellar Space and is therefore often referred to as a twin album. It was the first release of Ali’s Survival Records in 1973 (Lowe was the label’s co-owner). Lowe was a lesser-known player at that time, Duo Exchange was his first album. Yet, you can hear immediately what a potent and promising force on the saxophone he was. This new version of Duo Exchange provides the complete sessions for the music, which means the complete original album plus alternative tracks.

Lowe is obviously influenced by Coltrane, the first piece on his second LP Black Beings is called “In Trane’s Name“. The first track here starts with a sax head, which almost qualifies as a James Brown funk riff before he throws in catchy melodic phrases alternating with harsh, piercing roars, which are sometimes so crass that they remind me of a dying animal or a grinding machine. Lowe works with overblown notes to the extreme, as well as with agonizing overtones. Nevertheless, his lines are melodic, they can be bittersweet, just to be honed by torn squeals. A perfect example of this is his solo in the last part of “Duo Exchange Part I (Movement 1)“. This way he brings to mind Coltrane’s “sheets of sound”, in long, exhaustive runs he explores every possibility of a musical idea. In contrast to Coltrane his sound is less spiritual, he seems to reach for pure notes, reflecting the bleakness of early 1970s New York, something not unusual at that time (e.g. listen to David Murray and David S. Ware on William Hooker’s … Is Eternal Life from 1975). “Movement I“ is book-ended by the same motif the two started off with, another reference to Interstellar Space, on which Coltrane used a similar order for his pieces. “Duo Exchange Part II (Movement 1II)“ is dominated by Lowe and Ali dueling like two acrobats in a Beijing opera. It’s fascinating to listen to Ali countering Lowe’s penetrating, seismic, manic tones. He is there with Lowe with every fiber of his body, he shatters the rhythms around him especially with his snare rolls, propelling the saxophone to even greater extremes. The second LP expands the original with interesting outtake versions. Exploring this material, other qualities of the musicians become obvious - like Lowe’s mild-mannered, vibrato-laden tone in the middle of “Movement I”. He delivers exquisite ballad playing on the subtle “Movement V,” with Ali gloomily accompanying him - it’s almost a refuge in the turmoil the music displays in general.

Duo Exchange is mastered from original tapes for the first time and expanded with nearly an hour’s music from the session, which was never heard before. For a decent copy of the original LP you might pay up to $300. The fact that Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore put it in his personal top ten list in 1996 also contributed to the album’s reputation as one of the most revered free jazz LPs, which makes the original so expensive. Therefore, it’s a real gift that it’s now available for an affordable price. For fans it’s a view into the session's work-in- progress, a process is revealed, how it finally came to the final album version. Even the conversations are enlightening. Once Ali tries to tell Lowe where he wants to go with him: “We gonna stretch,” he says. “Play your saxophone on this one, man. Don’t worry about no time limit and shit; just play your saxophone on this tune, ’cause it’s gonna be, like, a mellow, relaxed kind of a beat; it ain’t gonna be too frantic and shit. Just play your saxophone, and then I’ll play, and that’ll be it.” Lowe does that and you can see where the instruction leads the two. For listeners today it’s an insightful view, like a making-of of a masterpiece.

Duo Exchange is available as a two-LP set or as a digital download. You can listen to it here:

 

You can also get it at http://www.downtownmusicgallery.com

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Han Bennink & Willem Breuker ‎– New Acoustic Swing Duo (Corbett vs. Dempsey, 2019) ****(*)

By Colin Green

Towards the beginning and end of 1967 two ground-breaking albums were recorded, quite independently and continents apart, which established a configuration that has become a staple of free jazz. In February at the Van Gelder Recordings Studio, New Jersey, John Coltrane and Rashied Ali laid down a set of pieces for the duo of tenor saxophone and drums. The tapes sat in the vaults until they were issued by the Impulse! label in 1974 as Interstellar Space, a posthumous release that became one of Coltrane’s most influential recordings. Perhaps less well known is an album resulting from two sessions in the Felix Meritis building, Amsterdam in November and December 1967 by Han Bennink and Willem Breuker, released that year under the ironic title, New Acoustic Swing Duo. The albums differ yet both have a sense of fresh thinking using a jazz ensemble reduced to its minimum, reeds plus percussion exploring new kinds of relationship and old relations anew. Melody, texture and rhythm, the boundaries between tuned and untuned, notions of dialogue, solo and accompaniment, were rejigged and expanded in ways that have provided an impetus to this day.

Previously only available on CD as part of the massive Instant Composers Pool box set (ICP, 2012) this reissue has been remastered from the original tapes by Alex Inglizian at Experimental Sound Studio, Chicago. It was the first release on the ICP label, founded by pianist Misha Mengelberg, Bennink and Breuker as an outlet for music that would receive little interest from regular record companies. The home-made nature of the project was reflected in a batch of the original album covers, individually produced by Bennink using an assortment of drawings, stickers, feathers and anything else that came to hand, that rapidly became collector’s items, particularly in Japan, which might account for the pervasiveness of the sax and drums format in the burgeoning Japanese free jazz scene during the following years. The CD booklet reproduces three versions from that personalised edition taken from Mats Gustafsson’s gargantuan vinyl collection .

Neither Bennink nor Breuker were strangers to the recent advances in jazz and formed part of a group of North European musicians inspired by the work of the U.S. “new thing” and keen to develop their own, distinct dialects. Bennink had performed in Eric Dolphy’s penultimate recording session in 1964, both had played with Cecil Taylor during his visit to Holland in August 1967 and were to form part of Peter Brötzmann’s Octet ‎on the eruptive Machine Gun (‎BRÖ, 1968) the next year. What’s initially striking about the album is the novelty of sound and textural diversity. Coltrane and Ali played tenor (with occasional shaken bells) and a standard trap kit. Breuker switches between soprano, alto, and tenor saxophones, E-flat and bass clarinets, and Bennink deploys an array of percussion, listed on the back cover of the LP: bass drum (larger and more resonant than a standard kick drum), small and large tom toms, street parade drum, snare drum, tabla, banya, vibrapan, homemade rattles, cow and temple bells, Chinese 7-inch giant cymbals, scraper, Chinese temple blocks, hi-hat, iron and wooden sticks, and his voice. These additional percussive colours are used for contrast and embellishment as well as being integrated into a bespoke kit stretching the usual envelope of sounds, the boom and tizz enhanced by the acoustic of what sounds like a large room captured using a simple two microphone setup into a portable reel to reel recorder – basic but purist, though at times overloaded due to the wide dynamic range.

Like much of the new music during this period there’s a conscious effort to reach beyond Western practices and even reject the jazz legacy – for Europeans always a foreign tradition and one amongst many – in a bid to start from a place expunged of memory traces. There is something liberating in such a radical departure yet also a feeling of being cast adrift. In a number of respects this was the operation in jazz, a medium that had only recently been deemed worthy of serious attention, of tenets created during the birth of modernism in Paris a century earlier and which still held sway in the turbulent 1960s, what the art critic Robert Hughes considered the most durable aspects of the avant-garde from that time:

“…the sense of not having a fixed self, of being free to invent; and the idea of the artist as subversive. These combined to raise two chief themes of modernist self-awareness in art: disconnection and loss on one hand – the loss of a secure social past, of a parental tradition – but on the other hand, artistic self-emancipation.”

Navigating this new terrain took different and necessarily, very personal forms. Coltrane had an almost molecular understanding of motivic permutations, and the stars, to guide his tightly constructed, celestial ascents. Breuker is more earthbound, at times as if he’s forgotten how to play and is starting again, in flight from established rhetoric generally and coming to terms with the granular materiality of blown sounds and the harmonics, partials and tiny overtone particles he can produce in an archaeological excavation as concerned with what lies in the layers between as the notes themselves. He and Bennink seem to be reaching back to something more elemental from a time before recognised traditions. Even ‘Singing the Impalpable Blues’ with its tortured clarinet and churning drums sounds like a cross between a New Orleans funeral march and some ancient ritual. The longest track, ‘Gamut’, which occupied the whole of side 2 of the LP, is a mixture of gritty bursts and gnarled undulations having more in common with vocal articulations than saxophone techniques, fugitive melodies of no discernible origin, disconnected outbursts of clattering metal, wood and skin, and at its most intense moments cries and yells – the music of Neolithic stone circles whose significance is lost in runic obscurity. And there’s always the presence of Bennink’s unerring rhythmic facility and sensitivity to timbre, so refined that whatever he’s hitting it just sounds right, from the pitter patter of tabla to icy cymbal crashes.

The package contains a bonus CD of the duo in performance at Jazzclub Podium in Essen, Germany from early June 1968. This was recorded, with their consent, by a couple of enthusiasts using two stage microphones and is a transfer to mono made shortly thereafter (the whereabouts of the original stereo tape is unknown). Again, Breuker switches instruments between each of the improvisations which continue the textural explorations of the ICP album: filtered and modulated resonances, melodic shards, and Bennink’s tumbling polyrhythms, moving through pockets of high and low pressure. We get a chance to hear Breuker’s sinuous bass clarinet work at the close of each set.

As with Coltrane and Ali, there’s an awareness of heritage though more as a negative force – part political, part cultural, part aesthetic, with no obvious dividing lines – a combination of individual vision and the temper of the times. No doubt, there were, and still are, diverse motivations for this kind of free improvisation but possibly of more importance it represents something that was to remain essential, uniting thinking and making in music that is, by and large, about its own operational activities; the discovery of a new sonic understanding which paradoxically is more removed yet at the same time, in its unfettered directness, somehow more human.

Whereas Interstellar Space was made towards the end of Coltrane’s life and is a distillation of his late work, albeit one that suggests new territories, these performances can be seen as the beginning of a journey. Both Bennink and Breuker were to spread their wings further and reintroduce elements of the tradition, playing in and out, straight and fake, slicing and splicing in the Dadaesque collage that permeated much of Dutch improvisation in the years to come. You can hear their development on the only other album they made as a pair after years of playing apart, The New Acoustic Swing Duo in Japan 1984 (Jazz & Now) an occasionally manic parade of genre hopping appropriations and spirited free jazz.

This remastered edition of New Acoustic Swing Duo is also available as a download .

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Ways + Simon Toldam - Fortunes (Lorna Records, 2020) ****½

By Paul Acquaro

I used to live across the street from a park, it was a long rectangular shaped area that bordered an active train track on one side, and on the other side, I'd walk my dog. As we would approach the playground area, at just about where the "no dogs allowed" sign was posted, he'd do his business. At one point I noticed that the playground - which had been a rather traditional set of swings, see-saw, and slide - was replaced with, among other things, a light weight climbing structure, an angular geodesic framework atop a rubberized ground cover. I then began noticing a trend for these types of playgrounds when I was biking through a park, or walking around a city. I'm not a playground psychologist, but it seems to me this shift away from what I considered the traditional things that you "knew what you were supposed to do with" to these "make up your own rules" type of equipment was interesting. I mean, who doesn't love a good swing, but, the opportunity to define it as you go along is a lot fun. 

As I listen to the Toronto based group Ways, which is Brodie West on sax and Evan Cartwright on drums, along with the Danish pianist Simon Toldam (a group leader in his own right, who has also collaborated with a who's who of creative musicians), I hear masters of the new playground at work. The trio's collaboration is captured on the album Fortunes, which offers such a ill-defined, but well constructed environment for the group to create in. Often led by focused, exploratory phrases from West, the tracks follow self-constructed logic often to energized ends.

The first track, 'Health,' is also the longest. At over thirteen minutes, it takes its time to develop, starting with fragments of musical lines that gain in volume and density, finding interlocking points, but never truly sticking to each other. There is a combination of both mathematical precision and  disobedience of obvious choices. Here, the trio is setting out the rules as they encounter the imaginary playground. West sticks to choppier phrases, not so much filling the space, but darting about, as Toldam counters with his own acute melodic ideas. Cartwright punctuates the play with accents and propulsive attacks. The result is a musical tapestry made from discovery and invention, both self-contained and inviting. 

The next track 'Fame', is much shorter, and seems to follow a composition - or at least a predetermined form. The trio proceeds in short phrases, in perfect tandem. The melodic ideas are fully formed, but seem half-presented, ghostly, as if there is another hidden side. The effect is interesting and effective. The next track, 'Love', which continues to reveal the albums titling theme, also carries on with a sense of mystery. This time, Cartwright is the dominant voice ... a simple pulse from a floor tom provides the anchor point. The others drop muted notes, or other sound artifacts (a slap of the mouth piece of the sax, for example). Other tracks like 'Money', 'Money II', and 'Money III' are all sharp tunes. At least on the third one, Toldam seems to be playing a prepared piano and Cartwright utilizes a unique set of percussion to create a spiky underlayment, to which West reacts with vigor.  

Fortunes is an intriguing album. The group make quickly captivating music, and their approach offers many ways to engage with it. 

Check out a premier video of the group recording 'Fame' from Fortunes:

Ways feat. Simon Toldam - Fame from James West on Vimeo. Video by Mike Højgaard. 

Available on Bandcamp:

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Endless Field - Alive in the Wilderness (Biophilia Records, 2020) ****

By Paul Acquaro

Not protected like a National Park, National Monuments in the US are nevertheless meant to protect special areas from development and can be created by proclamation by the President. In 1996, President Clinton created Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, an expanse of high desert that contains absolutely stunning landscapes and geological features in the southern desert of Utah. One of the earliest acts of the Trump administration was to start dismantling these national monuments, Grand Staircase-Escalante direct in his mendacious glare. So why mention this in a music review? Because the music created by the guitar and bass duo Endless Field (Jesse Lewis, guitar and Ike Sturm, bass) was recorded on location in the mountains and chaparral of southern Utah, music inspired by the location, notes hung in the dry desert air. Aside from the aesthetic choice, there is a political dimension as well, as all proceeds from the record will be donate to the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is fighting to preserve the land.

Putting the politics aside for just a moment, the music of Endless Field contains big, sweeping vistas. Just two musicians, but the sonic territory they cover is impressive. Recorded in the field, the duo pushed the limits to bring this luminous album to life, lugging a solar-powered recording rig as well as National Geographic photographers and videographers to document - providing  videos for each track (I haven't seen the videos, but I'm including a picture here to help build your impression). Throughout the tracks, Lewis' acoustic guitar rings loud with a mix of hearty strumming and blistering finger picked arpeggios, while Sturm's bass playing is expansive, providing a firm grounding and perpetual motion. The album is about one half freely improvised and the other composed pieces. 

(Photo Credit - Christopher Georgia)

The opening track, 'Life on Earth', is a burly, but sensitive, tune. The bass line is deep and thrumming as well as lithe and melodic, while the guitar work throbs with rhythmic pulse - like a lumberjack sitting on the stump of a majestic tree he just felled, tears running down to his axe. On some tracks, nature is the third musician. A running waterfall, providing a light wash of ambiance, works it way into the follow up 'Wind', a short improvised interlude. The textural and contrasting track is a solo bass passage accompanied by some light percussion, which then segues into 'The Well', which contains the same background ambiance, as well as the lush tones of Lewis' guitar. I feel some connection to guitarist Steve Tibbett's acoustic work here in the organic drones, long melodic sighs, and natural flow of sound. Tracks like brief syncopated improvisation of "Fire" and the intricately composed "Zim" offer yet a different approach. Especially on the latter, which is a conscientious nod to Zimbabwean musical influences; however, Endless Field's roots are in folk, less so in world music.

Of note, the record is coming out on Biophilia Records, which release physical/digital releases. The physical products contain no actual CD, but rather an intricate 20 panel origami-like piece containing extensive artwork and a download code. These cases are all made from sustainable materials and inks. The idea is to provide the tactile object that downloads alone lack - something that I totally understand.

As you astute readers may have picked up, I have very personal feelings about southern Utah. Visits with my brother over the years, hikes in Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, mountain biking the famous Slick Rock Trail (which was also recently threatened by attempts from the current administration to open the area to mining - can you read my swelling anger?!), and surreal walks through Goblin Valley, left their mark, and I'll use any excuse to show my support for preserving this area of the world. 

Give a listen to the recording, it's at times gentle, maybe even too melodic for some of the more hardened listeners out there, but it is genuine, heartfelt music. Buy a copy and know that you did a little bit to help protect something unique. 

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Wendy Eisenberg and Shane Parish - Nervous Systems (Verses Records, 2020) ***½

By Jack McKeon

Nervous Systems, a duo guitar album of works by Wendy Eisenberg with Shane Parish, offers the listener a joyful and organic collaboration from musicians who seem familiar with one another’s style. Eisenberg and Parish work well together, as they seem to share a fondness for ornate legato lines and hard-plucked strings. Across Nervous Systems, you can’t help but notice the sense of play that exists in these musicians. Eisenberg and Parish are bent on exciting and surprising each other, and their happiness is infectious.

Listening to Nervous Systems feels as intimate as sitting in on close friends passing guitars around. The album has the spirit of a home jam and the chops of two fabulously talented people. Like the home jam, however, the album lacks a sense of direction. Not wanting to be tied down in experimental abandon or deliver a composed duet, Eisenberg and Parish are at times stranded between two shores. “Fresh Bust,” the album’s opener, moves towards climaxes with poorly constructed tensions, causing the point of resolution to feel a bit hollow. The blame may lay in the length of the tracks. The average track on Nervous Systems clocks in between five or six minutes, not giving the players ample time to lean into their experiments. “Playing the Long Game,” correctly named given its length at eleven minutes (which feels eternal in the atmosphere of the rest of the album), shows that the duo are capable of producing affecting longer work. In the latter half of “Long Game,” one player lays a sonic ground floor with subdued yet agile tremolo picking. With this hypnotizing drone in place, the other player travels across the fretboard to the upper register to play a series of peregrinations, all to quietly resolve back in the bass.

These moments of support abound on Nervous Systems, but you may be left wanting. If they would let the tape run just a bit more, this album could truly astound. That being said, Eisenberg and Parish have produced an album that is rough-hewn in the best sense of the words. Laughter can be heard at the close of tracks, and the sound of guitar picks colliding with the body of the guitar after a particularly emphatic riff conjures an organic, playful mood more interested in showcasing a collaborative experiment than in achieving technical perfection. In that spirit, Nervous Systems pairs well with a cup of tea and a sunny afternoon with friends. Pleasant but not complacent, it is a sound worth sharing.

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Catherine Sikora and Matteo Liberatore – Build a gold house to bury the devil (self released, 2020) ****½

By Fotis Nikolakopoulos

…“Too much philosophy
too much thought forms
not enough room
not enough trees”…

It is quite thrilling and mind-blowing that still, in this polarized full of hate world, music is a way of non-verbal communication between like minded people. I strongly believe that Catherine Sikora’s music works in the aforementioned way inside me.

…“Too much Police
too much computers
too much hi fi
too much pork”…

This duo recording of Sikora on the saxophones and Liberatore on the electric guitar is loosely based (but with strong connections to) on Sikora’s thoughts on the poem Ruhr Gebiet by another soul so dearly missed, the great Allen Ginsberg. You will find parts of the poem within these lines (please avoid any comparisons with my words). The three long tracks that comprise this recording, are all ideas and sketches that evolved into the three compositions. Even though this live recording was realized during September 2019, its relation to this dreadful dystopia is one of the first things that came into my mind.

…“Too much metal
too much fat
too many jokes
not enough meditation”…

Matteo Liberatore only came to know the compositions right before this recording was realized. Having that in mind one can say that the two musicians developed a close interaction but, maybe something more important and powerful I dare say. A complete and strong communion. Easy to comment about it, very difficult and demanding to achieve it. Especially today as our societies are becoming (to quote the vulgar Thatcher) more a big sum of individuals, it is totally demanding to leave your ego behind and try to communicate, formulate a shared common ground and ideas with others. To be human rather than just a consumer.

…“Too much anger
too much sugar
too many smokestacks
not enough snow”…

Personally I challenge the notion of progress. The given fact for many that by definition this world is progressing into something better. There enough facts to support this thought, I do not want to bore you with it. The music the two musicians are making seems to evade the trajectory of time in the same way the lines of Ginsberg’s poem do. I felt a balance between aggression and sentiment in Sikora’s sax lines. Liberatore’s guitar sounds (like him I guess) quite at ease with following. Never struggling, but always going along. Their music is, most definitely, one of the most optimistic pieces of music I’ve heard during this troubled (in many ways) time. It incorporates silence; it is soothing while it brings solace through both musicians passion. The third track, Not Enough Snow, seems like the culmination of sorts for the recording. It also sounded like their approach was more fierce in way, kind of chasing the demons away. A need, a hope for a catharsis. Just like in Rurh-Gebiet’s two final lyrics

…“Build a gold house
to bury the Devil.”

The two musicians achieved that even for a brief moment.

Eric Mingus made the artwork that leaves a strong impression and Elliott Sharp mixed and mastered the recording.



@koultouranafigo

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Elliot Sharp and Sergio Sorrentino - Spilla’ (Ants, 2020) ****½

By Jack McKeon

In case there was any doubt about it, the new album by Elliot Sharp and Sergio Sorrentino makes clear that the electric guitar is an instrument unto itself, and must be considered as something wholly different than its acoustic equivalent. Spilla’ (which the liner notes tell us means “‘to play’ in the secret language of the Neapolitan musicians”) overwhelms the listener with a barrage of sounds that seem unable to emanate from two guitars. Pinched harmonics, muted arpeggios, tapping on guitar pickups, soaring volume swells, and guitar picks being dragged over roundwound strings layer over one another for over an hour. The listener may be left wondering what these players are after on this recording. Are they enemies or brothers? Is the guitar simply the medium at hand to reach a greater understanding, or is Spilla’ all one great big love note to the 6-string?

The album consists of two recordings of Sharp’s “graphic scores.” These pieces, “Hudson River Nr. 6” and “Liquidity” are the first and third recordings on the record, and are broken up by two extended improvisations recorded live in Vercelli, Italy. Much like the techniques of mid-century composers Earle Brown or Christian Wolff, Sharp’s graphic scores ask the interpreter to approach the musical performance with a diversity of media in mind. As the question of these musicians' relationship to the guitar continues to swirl around the listener’s head, this mixed-media approach seems fitting given the backgrounds of the musicians. Sharp, a veteran of the New York avant-garde, has built a career around collaborative sonic experiments since the late 1970s. He is a multi-instrumentalist and technical polymath, often thought of as one of the first musicians to incorporate computers into his live performances. This pairs well with Sorrentino’s trajectory as a guitarist wholly committed to the “new” — whatever that may mean — while immersing himself in strings of yore. Sorrentino has performed works by Morton Feldman and Steve Reich, had his work played on concerts that also showcased compositions by Frank Zappa, and played the “Battente” baroque guitar with the Accademia del Ricercare Ensemble.

Their collaboration breathes new life into the oft-overused phrase “extended technique.” Sharp and Sorrentino reveal a desire to steer away from patterns, vamps, or familiar sounds. As soon as they seem to fall into a style, they take off in a new direction. That being said, listen for their favored pairings. The duo seem to like sustained harmonic notes that flourish over athletic tapped patterns. Often — most notably on “Liquidity” — they move towards cacophonous overflows of sound where the rapid picking of muted strings at the upper register of the fretboard begins to sound like castanets beating out the final palpitations of the heart. Never allowing their listeners to get too comfortable, Sharp and Sorrentino even go as far as to displace the tonal center of their pieces by detuning / re-tuning their strings and using elastic bends to baffle the listener. In the best way, there is nothing “familiar” about this album. A disorientation as reintroduction, Spilla’ is the system shock you didn’t know you needed.

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Rachel Musson, Naoko Saito, Audrey Lauro - 点字呼吸の領域 [The Region of Braille Respiration] (Armageddon Nova, 2020) ****

By Keith Prosk

Rachel Musson, Naoko Saito, and Audrey Lauro each play sidelong solo saxophone improvisations brimming with spirit and energy on the compilation 点字呼吸の領域 [The Region of Braille Respiration]. The compilation comes from the improv imprint of Japanese black metal label Deathrash Armageddon, Armageddon Nova, which was created to release Now’s The Time? from saxophonist Aishi Oyauchi and bassist Deku, continued to release other Aishi Oyauchi efforts, and now focuses on saxophone solos, though I believe they’re open to other instruments and small ensembles. The Region of Braille Respiration can serve as the female-fronted companion to their 2017 Saxophone Anatomy compilation, with solos from Lao Dan, Rick Countryman, and Colin Webster showcasing inspired yet underrepresented voices in free jazz from around the world.

The English tenor Musson, probably the best-known player here with collaborations including Alex Ward, Mark Sanders, John Edwards, Pat Thomas, and Olie Brice, begins the compilation with the 18-minute “Improvisation.” The opening notes are a soulful melody, strong yet dolorous, with vibrato; it’s the kind of tune that sticks in your mind and might seem familiar - in a good way - to free jazz listeners. Musson quickly moves on to improvise on this melody. Tongue clicks and kisses, raspy overblows and moments of only breath through the bore, free flurries and jubilant squeals, and nimble flute-like fluttering and languorous sustain transmute the melody until a tone or two seems to glimpse the original tune. There’s a brief moment of an ascending spiral curve reminiscent of Braxton’s 106c or Rothenberg’s “Continuo After the Inuit” or “Strata” and indeed the entire track might gyre through cycles of high and low density and high and low volume. It’s an excellent medley of inside and outside aesthetics, combining elements characteristic of the free jazz giants of the ‘60s with a modern, extended timbral pallette.

Saito, a Japanese altoist for which I believe this is the first recording, continues with another long solo in the 17-minute “A Song 0923.” She toys with sunny melodies by hastening and slowing the tempo, ascending and descending the tune, subtracting and then adding back notes to the melody, and occasionally increasing or decreasing the volume. There are a couple skronkier interludes and some breathy fluttering, but extended techniques are sparse and the mood is consistently playful. If the other two soloists’ efforts here could be considered tragedies, this is certainly the comedy.

The Belgian altoist Lauro, perhaps best known through her collaborations with Pak Yan Lau and Giovanni Di Domenico, ends the compilation with four tracks across 19 minutes. Half of that time is the third track, “Plein Chant,” which begins with hard blows and overblows disjointed across the register in a kind of call without a response like a petulant foghorn before coalescing into proggy free noodling. The other half is the most timbrally interesting material on the CD. “Crane 1” is a short multiphonic piece of underlying breathy choo choos with distorted trainhorn overblows; a distressed melody like what you might hear on a ferry or airplane comes through. “Crane 2” is a similarly short multiphonic sketch, though with undulating breath and spit underlying piercing shrills whinnying like eddying steam. And “Dark Canyon” is an ominous, shadowy theme that builds and rebuilds to resonance, with throbbing swelling overtones and quickening pulses accented by a very memorable two-tone call.

The Region of Braille Respiration successfully showcases three underrepresented voices in free jazz and also provides rare solo recordings for Musson and Lauro, whose performances are particularly strong here. While there might be a notion that a compilation is not as definitive or cohesive as an individual recording from each musician, the juxtaposition of significantly distinct approaches from musicians using the same instrument, from similar musical backgrounds, in the same solo format is a beautiful statement that might not otherwise be realized. Almost like the label itself, it’s a celebration of the improvised saxophone solo. I recommend it.

点字呼吸の領域 [The Region of Braille Respiration] is a CD-only release at the time of this writing. Japanese sources include Plus1 A.D., diskunion, and Deathrash Armageddon’s bandcamp page (this might update to include a digital version); American sources include Squidco.

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Mark Segger Sextet - Lift Off (18th Note Records, 2020) ****½

By Sammy Stein

The Mark Segger Sextet was formed in 2008 to play the music of drummer and leader Mark Segger. Currently a doctoral Killam scholar in composition at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, Mark Segger has performed with the likes of Allison Au, Lina Allemano, Jane Bunnett, Dave Burrell, Steve Swell, and Nate Wooley, among others. The title, Lift Off is inspired by the sense of weightless and release when a plane’s wheels leave the tarmac; the out of body experience felt in a concert at the moment when time slows to a halt, transporting the listener to another dimension or a performer when they feel as if they’re in the audience, watching themselves improvise on stage. These are experiences simultaneously otherworldly yet familiar. Lift Off includes a diverse stylistic palette of compositions and the delivery is varied, ranging from the sophisticated to the gloriously dislocated.

The title track which opens the CD, is fast, furious and eclectic with improvised trumpet, over demonic drums and piano meanderings, whilst reed specialist Peter Lutek imposes some creative additions on tenor. The trumpet solo which rises from the mayhem is luscious, rich, and the back-up from the sextet is strong and fluid. The drum acts as a conduit over which the trumpet line morphs to that for the tenor which rises, inserting creative innovative diversions over the top. You can almost feel the wheels leave solid ground and the stuttering of the engines - and your heart. A wonderful track to open the album.

'Cluttertone News' opens like it is going to be big band harmonious and rather cool but it develops into something of slow but controlled mayhem - in a manner which is both engaging and somehow wonderfully calming. The bass warphs and whoos, offering up little trickles of slurred notes, plucked sections and bowed lines, whilst under this, the ensemble creatively diverge. A gentler episode follows and the ear is taken again by the sonorous, flexing bass lines, the strings sawn raw towards the end. Interesting. Incidentally 'Cluttertones' were one of bass player Mark Clutton's bands.

'For The Bees' sounds like a slightly disparate New Orleans march initially, but after a few bars the resemblance is more akin to 3 different melodic lines pitched just off the harmonics for just long enough to hold the interest without jarring; a nod to the 1960s British Free jazz movement of 'insect music' with nuances of Bela Bartok. A bass solo over percussion is followed in quick succession by piano over the ensemble with the trumpet subtly plinking lines into the ether in the background. The sense of improvisation here is lovely, with the trumpet buzzing along - appropriately given the title - yet, though apparently structureless there is a sense of the ensemble knowing exactly where they are aiming for and this is precisely where they end up. Crazy musical shapes drift in and out and the track is a complete stand out.

'18' is contrasting; a bass-led section introduces the number over drums before the rest support. This of the same disharmonic structure as 'For The Bees' without quite the same resonance but a listenable track nonetheless. The real craziness is in the second half and this is where the beauty is found, especially on the second or third listen. Track number 5 is called '.......' which might seem odd but fits because this is an assembly of staccato chords and, single, occasionally held notes delivered separately in the main and feels like a complete break. 'One Note' follows and initially sounds like a tuning session before it develops into a rhythm piece, the interest of which is in the way you forget the music (it is one note after all) and concentrate on the listening to each instrument. There are perhaps influences of Grygory Ligeti's 'Musica Ricercata' but I am not sure this, like Ligeti's music would hold the attention for much more than the five and a quarter minutes it is long.

'Slow Motion' is an intriguing blend of ensemble work interrupted by random blasts of ferocity from the horns (after 7,6,2,1 and then another 12 bars) and then at further random points. The blasts have no pattern but the underlying rhythmic 4/4 is relentless across the number, adding a control, out of which the trumpet rises like some fiendishly charged entity. Unusual time contrasts and a track which is different, intriguing and emphatically full of character.

'Bassline' features a loud, huge struck bass entry over which sax and trumpet fly, dip and soar before the ensemble come as one, creating a track which features everyone, over what is an interesting and fast paced bass line. Communication on this track is tangible as each instrument comes forward and receded, offering up solo lines and support in equal measure.

This album was a revelation. This sextet show uncompromising musicality in their delivery. Each musician carries their weight in the group, offering up phrases whose variety and variation serve to sculpture and mould each piece, creating a unique section of the album, yet maintaining the essence of the sextet working together. An album to listen to, engage, immerse in.

Personnel:

Jim Lewis - Trumpet
Heather Saumer - Trombone
Peter Lutek - Tenor Saxophone & Clarinet
Tania Gill - Piano & Melodica
Rob Clutton - Bass
Mark Segger - Drums

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ROPE (Frank Paul Schubert, Uwe Oberg, Paul Rogers, Mark Sanders ) - Open Ends (Trouble in the East Records, 2020) ****½

By Martin Schray

ROPE is a German/British jazz quartet consisting of four excellent musicians – Frank Paul Schubert (soprano saxophone), Uwe Oberg (piano), Paul Rogers (7-string double bass) and Mark Sanders (drums, percussion). In 2015 they’ve already released a critically acclaimed debut, on which the bass was played by Wilbert De Joode. Actually Paul Rogers was a founding member of ROPE, but he wasn't available for the first two gigs of the band, so De Joode filled in. Their second gig at the Just Music Festival Wiesbaden was recorded and released as their first album. Both De Joode’s chamber bass with its unique tonal qualities and Rogers’s 7-string bass with its wide sonic range are responsible for the band’s special sound quality.

Open Ends consists of two long tracks around 35 minutes each, “First Movement“ and “Second Movement." And indeed, the music is moving, it’s structured around musical waves that pile up and then run out. In both tracks the musicians proceed similarly. Almost classically jazzy, the bass inserts a rhythm, which works as a mock-up or as an actual announcement of something monstrous. Then Sanders’s drumming indicates that the wave is being built up. Especially the piano supports this with an increased use of the lower registers, the sax picks up the tempo, so that the structure of the piece becomes denser. Before the first wave in “First Movement“ Oberg plays patterns reminiscent of early Schlippenbach, especially when his chords dissolve into arpeggios. Schubert flies over these patterns, he floats up and down the modal scales. Sanders chases them with accentuated strokes on tiny cymbals and on the snare. Eventually, Oberg sets off a firework of driving riffs, culminations, powerful energy explosions, tinged short runs and little ornaments, which he displays in furiously fast passages.

The quieter sequences in the wave valleys are like havens of tranquility, Schubert's saxophone dreams itself away in the high registers, the bass is bowed tenderly, the piano throws in prepared snippets, the drums set small sound accents. It’s calm on the musical sea, there is hardly a breeze blowing, one might even be reminded of an idyllic scenery. But these moments don’t last long. Mostly the energy shifts happen almost imperceptibly. Fascinating are not only the intermediate phases, in which every small corner of the previously created sound universe is explored, but also the art of keeping the built-up wave at its peak for as long as possible. The musicians try to keep the waves there by bursting in elaborate passages and diving in sonorous experiments. Sometimes Oberg is in charge almost single-handedly with clusters and small trills, sometimes it’s Schubert with his runs that ricochet through the room while the whole process is whipped forward by Sanders and Rogers. Another interesting aspect is the way how the group channels the energy. In sudden changes of mood, harmonic cells seem to wander astray and get isolated for a short time, the music changes from full blasts and sharp sequences to lyrical ones, sweet and solemn, melancholic and meditative. It’s often Schubert's squeezed tones which ensure that a certain tension is maintained, even when saxophone and piano leave the field to bass and drums. These parts are a tour de force of a microcosm, as if the waves were plunging into a whirlpool, but revealing a macrocosm of delicate phrasing and concise sound shades. Essentially, the band keeps you on the edge.

Last but not least, there’s some great soloing, for example when Rogers’s bass dances in an almost chamber-musical way, which is reminiscent of Barry Guy. Extensive trills, harmonics, repetitive patterns and wild outbursts create a tense atmosphere. Another example is Oberg’s solo in the middle of the second track, in which he jumps from Monk-ish phrases to Fred Van Hove and Matthew Shipp.

At the end of the second piece, the musicians pull the improvisation apart, as if they shied away from each other. Again the tempo is picked up almost imperceptibly, again it’s the rhythm section that agrees on an idea, sets the direction and prepares the others for a last big wave. Here, accents are set by contrasts: dark saxophone lines meet extremely high piano chords. Finally, the piece almost runs dry, the band searches for last sound structures, rears up again and then falls silent.

Open Ends is a very enjoyable album and therefore highly recommended.

It is available as a CD.

You can buy it from the label’s Bandcamp site:
https://troubleintheeastrecords.bandcamp.com or directly from Frank Paul Schubert: http://www.frankpaulschubert.de/

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