A round-up of Covid related efforts from the writers of the Free Jazz Blog ... please add more in the comments.
In lieu of a 10 concert-per-month concert series, Steve Peters of
Nonsquitur (Seattle) has commissioned new work by experimental musicians
(75 releases so far) all available free on Soundcloud. https://www.waywardmusic.org/ https://soundcloud.com/wayward-music
Stephen Gauci has uploaded 19 or so "Gauci duets" between him and lots
of wonderful partners, including Matthew Shipp, Gerald Cleaver, Daniel
Carter, Wendy Eisenberg and others. https://gaucimusic.com/
Mary Staubitz and Russ Waterhouse have curated an intriguing and often
amazing set of experimental, usually ambient music by 78 different duos (to
date) working remotely. Musicians include Thurston Moore, Greg Kelley, Zach
Darrup, Alan F. Jones, Chris Corsano, Jessica Goddard, and 72 others. All
the pieces are about 5 minutes in length and “name your price.” https://distantduos.bandcamp.com/
Jon Abbey's AMPLIFY was held virtually this year from March 20th to
September 29th and received 240 contributions from over 200 artists.
Contributors include Keith Rowe, Michael Pisaro-Liu, Reiner van Houdt,
Graham Lambkin, Vanessa Rossetto, Nate Wooley, Otomo Yoshihide, and many,
many others. Some people of the best music of 2020 can be found here. https://amplify2020.bandcamp.com/music
Tim Berne’s launched his sub-label 9 Donkey’s and released his first
solo album, a new David Torn album, and 8 live albums, some from groups
that have never recorded https://screwgunrecords.com/
Boston based saxophonist Jim Hobbs has updated his Bandcamp page and his previously OOP catalog is available at a discount right now https://fullycelebrated.bandcamp.com/music
Today, reviews of three albums released on the NoBusiness label – solo,
duo, and a quartet – taken from the Improdimensions concert
series, established in 2018 and held at MAMA studios, Vilnius, Lithuania.
Although recorded in a studio all the performances took place before an
audience (remember those?) providing the best of both worlds. Post-Covid
the series has continued with online sessions, details of which can be
found on the
Improdimensions
Facebook page.
Barry Guy decided to name his latest solo album after Comet
(1998), a screenprint by Albert Irvin (1922—2015) part of which appears on
the cover. The British double bassist has previously used works by his
fellow countryman as the album art for releases on his Maya label and the
solo, 10” EP,
Five Fizzles for Samuel Beckett
(NoBusiness, 2014). Irvin was a
British artist who created an extensive body of abstract paintings,
watercolours, and prints. His mature work has its own very particular sense
of dimension and depth, achieved through gestural mark-making and luminous
hues set against one another in chromatic vibration. He often worked on a
grand scale, but also created smaller, more intimate works which function
like a microcosm of his large-format paintings. Irvin “epitomised the idea
of art as the expression of the life force within the space of the image,” The Guardian wrote in its obituary. His motifs were abstracted
from the urban environment about him and as a result archetypal structures
came to the fore. In the early 1970s he turned to acrylic instead of oil
paint, which led to denser, more vivid layering and the pulsating grids of
colour and calligraphic shapes that spread across his canvases, likened by
Irvin himself to music.
Barry Guy’s artistic approach has aspects in common with Irvin’s. Dynamic
structures and intense sound colour are at the centre of his solo output;
his use of the double bass’s physical potential includes several extended
methods like rattling bows, sticks, and brushes. As expected, in this
performance from 2019 there are elements which strongly characterise his
music: notes that buzz around like flies on cocaine (the beginning of
“Comet”); nervous trills accompanied by long overtones (“Oscillating”),
that seem to add another dimension to the piece; Phrygian shifts in
combination with harmonics reminiscent of flamenco music (“Closed Space”);
and beautiful glissandi, which he counteracts with short, dancing notes and
slapped chords (“Ding Dang A Dingy Dang”).
So far, nothing new. Convincing improvised solo sets need to have an idea
of where the music is to go however, and of course Guy has one. His unique
sense of form, sublime tone, and harmonic imagination take us on a
gradually unfolding trip. The music seems to be in search of something as
it turns in one direction, then another, and finally leads us to a goal –
in this case, “Old Earth Home”, a piece that dances around a joyful
rhythmic riff. Rarely before has Guy sounded so light-hearted, so easy. The
piece has the appeal of traditional British folk music, as if the sun’s
come out at the end of a cloudy day. After that the music flows into a kind
of coda (“Barehead”) which concludes the set.
43 years after Statements V-XI for Double Bass & Violone
(Incus, 1977), Barry Guy continues to push the solo double bass genre into
fresh, exciting territories. Irvin’s Comet is highly recommended.
Agustí Fernández
has been a staple feature of recent European small group improv recordings,
displaying his fine-tuned ability to listen and respond to his playmates
together with a staggering proficiency both inside the piano and at the
keyboard. This album features continuous performances divided into three
pieces from the 2018 & 2019 concert series by the Catalan pianist and
Lithuanian reed player Liudas Mockūnas.
“Improdimension I” is the more recent event and begins with Mockūnas on
soprano saxophone, as he and Fernández engage in an animated conversation,
going back and forth with much chattering and many tempo changes as each
participant allows the other to state his case before responding. Mockūnas
switches rapidly from harsh raspy attacks to sweetly melodic scamperings,
while the pianist’s internal machinations are constrained to jangly, damped
stings and sliding what always sounds like a billiard ball across the
higher registers. On the second track a harsh soprano attack is followed by
muted staccato notes on the piano, in turn matched by the horn’s metallic
dots. Fernández’ pianistic legerdemain produces rapidfire damped notes with
percussive pounding. Wood blocks are dragged over the strings as the
soprano takes off on a circular breathing flight followed by a darting
melodic excursion on the keys. For “Part III” Mockūnas switches to tenor
saxophone, initially exchanging spiralling lines with Fernández before the
piano starts a persistent rhythm in the lower register, at the same time
maintaining the higher lines. The sax reacts to this by venturing gradually
lower on the instrument until reaching some of the deepest tones I've heard
from a tenor, as if it has a bass sax attachment, bringing the set to a
pleasantly jarring conclusion.
“Improdimension II”, from 2018, features Mockūnas on contrabass clarinet, a
mighty instrument which has a reverberant range extending well below that
of the bass clarinet and provides a nice tonal segue from the tenor blasts.
It opens with Fernández playing sparse notes at the top and bottom ends of
the keyboard, gradually modifying the strings to get resonant lows and icy
highs before Liudas enters with a croaky underpinning on his earth-bound
clarinet. Fernández then plays a quick, damped pattern as Mockūnas shifts
to the higher range of the instrument, like the cries of a humpback whale,
followed by slap-tongued notes that resemble boxes crashing on a ship deck,
to complete the nautical imagery. The second cut is Fernández alone, with a
skittering bumblebee flight building into a droning wall of sound that
slowly crumbles to nothingness through the intervention of rapid fingerwork
over his keyboard. The final track has elephantine sounds descending ever
deeper, joined by Fernández’ modified strings and drones, until the
instruments fade in and out as the listener tries to construe which is
playing what. Percussive punches and voices bring things to a conclusion.
These are two wonderful performances that don't outstay their welcome.
Agustí Fernández has been a personal favourite for a long time but Liudas
Mockūnas was new to me and has already received further investigation.
Hopefully, further joint explorations are in store.
This is a quartet bristling with ideas, comprising Nate Wooley (trumpet),
Liudas Mockūnas (contrabass clarinet, soprano and tenor saxophones), Barry
Guy (double bass), and Arkadijus Gotesmanas (drums and percussion). Both
Wooley and Guy were artists in residence for the 2019 Improdimensions and as far as I can tell this is their first
recording together. There are three improvisations: “DIES” (day), “NOX”
(night), and “LUX” (light).
In the same way that with Irvin’s art the action of his wrist is ever
present, so here there’s a sense of physical engagement being the
progenitor of sound and shape through the nuances of pressure, speed, and
articulation; and like Irvin, imbued with a certain opulence – welters of
plucked notes, brass sunbursts, the fluid consistency of wriggling reeds,
and bright, crystallised percussion. And in both cases the process of their
making is analogous to going on a journey. “MULTA DIES” presents mobile and
static pockets of activity, each distinct but drawn into the ambit of the
other, an intricate tracery carved out by bass and drums against sustained
notes on tenor and trumpet. In time the soprano saxophone opens up a
different region, agitated, erratic, cracking with febrile excitement as
the ensemble revels in the sheer palpability of sound.
In contrast, “MULTA NOX” works on a different scale, a nocturnal study
marked by the darker tones of the contrabass clarinet and an evanescent
construction, summoned out of air. Glittering flecks of percussion, Guy’s
light harmonics and muted trumpet float above subterranean murmurings. As
the range expands the music gains in solidity with grisly smudges on
clarinet and scraped bass strings, then thins to close as Wooley enunciates
soft phrases over a sonorous repeated figure from Mockūnas. “MULTA LUX”
takes a more animated approach, a fragmentary texture made up of daubs and
dashes proceeding like a series of lines – crossed, broken, and reconnected
– never fully resolved.
My only complaint is that the album is just under 37 minutes in duration,
though admittedly that’s about average for an LP. This is a quartet full of
potential and I was left wanting more, much more. In these melancholic
times there’s no telling if and when that might be, but in the meantime in
addition to the albums reviewed above you might want to try Mockūnas and
Guy’s Lava (NoBusiness, 2012), also recommended.
MULTA DIES:
All three albums are available on vinyl (in limited editions of 300) and as
downloads from the NoBusiness and Bandcamp sites.
Elsa Nilsson, a New York City based Swedish flutist, has released an album that celebrates the music surrounding the holiday of Lucia, a festival of lights, held on the Dec 13th, the Winter Solstice (according to the Gregorian calendar). So, it's a holiday album, but not one of the typical ones that you may expect at this time of year. Nilsson and her quartet have crafted and honed these arrangements over the past decade, performing them annually in Sweden. However, due to the pandemic, the quartet sought a different way to celebrate this year, thus Dark is Light is.
Nilsson has been very active this year, in fact this is her third album since February. The first, Hindsight, is a jazz-rock statement that fits neatly next to the latest Soft Machine recording. It is dramatic, politically inspired music, as Nilsson writes on her website:
Hindsight started as a reaction. November 9th, 2016. I was home alone, feeling confused and betrayed after the election. My whole world had changed overnight and my faith in humanity was crushed. As I do in times of turmoil in my life, I turned to my instrument. I remember experiencing this pit in my soul, like we all fucked up and everything was about to go dark.
Hindsight, born under these conditions, is excellent and something that I've returned to many times. So is the album For Human Beings recorded by her trio South by North East. With Bam Rodríguez on bass and Rodrigo Recabarren on percussion, the music is a fascinating contrast of registers. The 31-minute track 'Forward' begins with a slow, gentle layering of simple legato lines, which builds with focused tension to a point where Nilsson kicks on the distortion pedal and blows a gnarled melody over the intensifying bass and drums.
Ahh, but I should be talking about the holiday album. Sorry. Dark is Light is' opening track, 'När Juldagsmorgon Glimmar,' which translates to 'When Christmas Morning Sparkles', is upbeat and lilting, you may even be tempted to think that you hear 'Frosty the Snowman' in the melody. It also rocks. Aside from Nilsson's warm, round tone is guitarist Jeff McLaughlin whose own warm, round tone often spins out sinewy lines and well chosen chords.
'Sankta Lucia' is a great example of all the adjectives used in the previous paragraph. Another upbeat tune, the blend of McLaughlin's sound with Nilsson's is inviting and energizing. The melody is elliptical, and as you let your ears ride along, the celebration is tangible. McLaughlin's solos over an insistent electric bass lines from Alex Minier, and Cody Rahn's drum work brings the group to a rousing crescendo. The penultimate track, 'Julpolksa,' is another great example of a smart arrangement and the quartet's compatibility. The sweet folk song melody leads to an exploratory passage, and as the joyful tones get stretched out, light touches of dissonance hint at a hidden depth. Then, it begins to wind tighter and faster. After Nilsson drops out, McLaughlin delivers a spacious and beautifully paced solo over the solid accompaniment.
Dark is Light is is a holiday album for a holiday that you may not even knew you needed. It comes at a real solstice ... things indeed got dark and the coming days hopefully will again be getting lighter.
Last year when I reviewed Mars Williams An Ayler Xmas Vol 3, I wrote that I was hoping that this would continue to be an annual event - a new collection of Ayler/Holiday mashups to counteract the deadly ear-poison of 'All I Want for Christmas (is you)'. I also secretly wondered how Williams could keep finding new inspiration with the theme. Now, knowing the answer to both and I'm pleased to report that there is nothing to be worried about.
One thing that keeps this idea interesting is the ever changing set of musicians joining Williams on the stage. Last year there was a collection of tunes recorded in Krakow, featuring a collection of New York and European mmusicians. The year prior it was a selection from a group in the U.S. and a group from Europe featuring musicians from each continent exclusively. This year, we have Chicago vs. New York. Some new faces join the old in Chicago, and features, along with Williams on sax and toy instruments, Josh Berman on cornet, Jim Baker on piano, viola, and Arp synth, Kent Kessler on bass, Brian Sandstrom on bass, guitar, and trumpet, and Steve Hunt on drums. Rounding out the band (even further on some tracks) in Chicago is Peter Maunu on Violin, Katinka Kleijn on cello, and Keefe Jackson on baritone sax. In New York, Williams is joined by Steve Swell on Trombone, Hilliard Greene on bass, Chris Corsano on drums, Nels Cline on guitar, and Fred Lonberg-holm on cello.
Another thing that makes this yearly (fingers crossed) installment exciting is the evolving repertoire. No, I did not go back to see which songs have been on which album and in what order, that's for someone more OCD than me to do, but I have a simple explanation: it just hardly matters. The combinations change, the interpretations range from wild (see 'Did You Hear They Found Light in Darkness Looking for Chestnuts' from Chicago) to sublime (on 'The Hanukah-xmas March of Truth for 12 Days of Jingling Bells With Spirits' from the Chicago band, there is a beautiful solo piano section from Baker which then gets poked at by Berman's cornet) and often in the same track, like the 28 minute rendition of 'The Hanukah-xmas March of Truth for 12 Days of Jingling Bells With Spirits' from NYC, where the regal melody is lightly shadowed by Cline's wavering electric guitar for a little bit before it takes everything quickly Downtown.
Of course my question is what's next? The recordings so far have drawn from touring, live situations where the audience and band have made for ever changing experiences. However, this year because of the pandemic there was no tour (though there was a live streamed concert). One may be tempted to think, following current patterns, Vol 5 could very well be a Mars Williams solo Ayler Xmas release. Who knows!
A few notes: the vinyl version is built around contrast - it contains contains only tracks 3 & 6, which is the same medley from the Chicago and NYC groups respectively. The vinyl version does come with a download of everything. The NYC recording is also dedicated to Eric Stern, a friend and contributor to the blog, at whose concert series the NYC recording was made.
When listening to Alexander von Schlippenbach in a sax-piano-percussion
trio format, comparisons with his classic trio with Evan Parker and Paul
Lovens are difficult to avoid. Naturally, such a comparison lifts the bar
for Frank Schubert (saxes) and Martin Blume (drums). Viewing this ensemble
through the lens of Schlippenbach-Parker-Lovens, however, is somewhat
inappropriate, as the personal continuities rest solely in the pianist and
the similarities in instrumentation are somewhat accidental, as styles and
techniques can be so personal and vary so greatly. That stands even when
the musicians are working with loosely the same free improv vernacular.
(See Colin’s review of some of Schubert and Blume’s other work together
here
for a review that evades this comparison trap and examines the two
musicians more clearly on their own terms.)
On Forge’s two tracks, Merge and Forgin the Work, Schubert swings
from colorful sound sheets, to swaggering melodies, to expressionistic
abstractions and offers formidable counterparts to Schlippenbach’s
vacillations between classical romanticism and cubist amelodicism. Blume,
meanwhile, finds his way to unique time-keeping, riding the cymbals and
frequently sputtering on the bass drum and snare, but never quite falling
into the bebop rhythms with which he so playfully flirts. In doing so, he
creates a sense of billowing kineticism in the more energetic movements,
and endless rummaging for the perfect clicks and clacks in the more
spacious ones. At points, as with the classic trio, the three musicians’
lines entangle like a complex and irregular Nordic interweave. At others,
Schlippenbach, or Schubert, or Blume deviates, and drives his bandmates
into realms yet unexplored.
Most exciting about this album is the balance between Schubert’s and
Blume’s tendencies toward jazz melodies and free jazz cacophony and
Schlippenbach’s constant pull towards blockier constructions more common to
the virtuosic classical vanguard. This contrast leads to diverging paths,
an expanding and contraction of musical directions, and a truly compelling
knotting that stylistic purity or an overwrought singlemindedness would
simply not allow. It is, in other words, a group effort, and one which
rewards the listener with almost an hour of expert improvisation that
creates moments of clangorous exuberance, curious muffled clatter, and even
enlightened serenity, when everything about this alloyed trio and this
album just makes sense.
Shira Legmann - Giacinto Scelsi: Suite No.9 / Quattro illustrazioni /
Un Adieu (elsewhere, 2020) ****½
Israeli pianist Shira Legmann dedicates her second album for the elsewhere
label (following her collaboration with composer Michael Pisaro, Barricades, 2019) to the Italian eccentric composer Giacinto
Scelsi (1905-1988). She explains her fascination with Scelsi music with
“his unique syntax of musical phrases, and the freedom he allows for the
pianist in shaping them. By using minimal thematic materials and small
shifts of articulation, all in a free time-signature environment, Scelsi
offers a platform for the pianist to play with gravity points, resulting in
the internal logic of syntax and meaning”.
Legmann performs three compositions of Scelsi. These compositions derive
from improvisations - as Scelsi saw himself as a medium who received
musical messages while meditating and improvising. These diverse
compositions were recorded live in Tel Aviv in 2014 and 2019, “where there
is also an element of risk, surprise and spirit”. David Sylvian contributed
the cover photograph, echoing the mystic and profound beauty of Scelsi's
piano works.
The first composition is the nine-movements “Suite No.9” (1953), titled
also as “Ttai”, after the eleventh hexagram of the ancient Chinese book of
divination, I-Ching (“The little one goes, the big one comes.
Heaven and Earth unite, the image of Peace”. John Cage also used this book
for compositional decisions). Scelsi described this composition as "a
succession of episodes which alternatively express time - or more
precisely, time in motion and man as symbolized by cathedrals or
monasteries, with the sound of the sacred 'Om'", and advised that this
suite should be “listened to and played with the greatest inner calm.
Nervous people stay away!”. Legmann captures beautifully the mystical and
enigmatic world of Scelsi, himself a Zen Buddhist, including the recurring
attempt to balance between emotional turmoil and poetic peacefulness.
The second composition, the four-movements “Quattro illustrazioni” (Four
illustrations) (1953), is more dramatic and at times even chaotic,
referring to the four illustrations of the metamorphoses of the Hindu deity
Vishnu, as described in the Bhagavadgītā. Legmann enjoys exploring
the ecstatic and sensual storms and the freedom to celebrate the full sonic
spectrum of the piano. The last and short “Un Adieu” (1978/1988),
considered as Scelsi’s last composition, is a meditative and melancholic
piece, described by Lehmann as “a funeral march” where “the music asks the
pianist to keep walking and not look back”.
More than twenty years ago Swiss composer and clarinet player Jürg Frey
articulated his unique compositional approach in an essay titled
Architektur der Stille (Architecture of Silence), focusing on how the
physical relationships between sound and silence can affect our perception
of space and time:
“In Silence, a space opens, which can only open when the presence of
sounds disappears. The silence which is then experienced derives its
power from the absence of sounds we have just heard. Thus periods of
silence come into being, and then the physicality of silence.
There are pieces in which the absence of sound has become a fundamental
feature. The silence is not uninfluenced by the sounds which were
previously heard. These sounds make the silence possible by their
ceasing and give it a glimmer of content. The space of silence
stretches itself, and the sounds weaken in our memory. Thus this slow
breathing is created between the time of the sounds and the space of
silence”.
l'air, l'instant - deux pianos
features two compositions for two pianos, both realize magnificiently the
equisite Architecture of Silence approach: “Entre les deux l'instant”
(2017/2018), premiered by Dutch pianists Reinier van Houdt and Dante Boon
at Splendor Amsterdam, and “toucher l’air (deux pianos)’ (2019)”. Both were
recorded by Houdt and Dante Boon in the presence of Frey in Amsterdam in
September 2019. French artist Sylvain Levier's minimal artwork resonates
with Frey's extremely subtle yet profoundly captivating sonic vision.
The first piece on this album, “toucher l’air (deux pianos)”, was composed
in close connection to “Entre les deux l'instant”. This piece consists of
seven minimalist movements, Feldamn-esque in its spirit, written for two
parts for the two pianos, and van Houldt and Boom play each part at the
same time with subtle similarities but in different tempos. The interaction
between the two parts is only vaguely shown in the score, giving this piece
an elusive but strong poetic sense of openness and closeness, loneliness,
and intimacy.
The following piece, the 34-minutes “Entre les deux l’instant”, is more
ethereal and silent than “toucher l’air (deux pianos)”, and consists of two
parts: Melody and List of Sounds. Melody begins with Van Houdt, then
continues with Boon, going back and forth between the two pianists to the
end. When one pianist plays Melody, the other plays a note(s) from List of
Sounds given in order in the score but slightly later and softer than the
sounds of Melody, like adding a slightly ‘off’ shade to it. The two parts
are played simultaneously by two pianists but the timings are flexible, up
to each pianist to decide, not pre-arranged nor intended to coincide
precisely, but allowing each sound to resonate fully and beautifully.
Again, This kind of elusive atmosphere never let the music fall into
familiar patterns of time and space, but suggests similar, profound
meditative tranquility.
Infinite Ascent
is the fifth solo album of French pianist-composer Melaine Dalibert since
2015, all featuring his own compositions. This album consists of eight
intuitive and melodic songs, an area that Dalibert has been exploring in
the last years as a new compositional strategy outside his signature
algorithmic method of composition. Dalibert sees this phase of composing
“kind of pop songs” as a transient, but a necessary one”, as he wanted to
feel free to write outside of any academy or tradition.
Infinite Ascent
was recorded at the chapel of the Rennes Conservatory, where Dalibert
teaches, in December 2019. The album title was conceived by David Sylvian
who also contributed his artwork for the album cover. Sylvian adds that he
felt “a 'cosmic expansiveness'” when he listened to Infinite Ascent for the first time. “Vibrational waves traversing
the universe, a lone satellite, released from earth’s gravitational pull,
spinning infinitely into the bright darkness”.
Dalibert’s songs offer an evocative sense of mysterious, introspective
drama. These kinds of dramas are sometimes intensified with slowly
shifting, repetitive strong melodic motives, often associated with Philip
Glass aesthetics, as on the haunting “Horizon”, released as a single of
this album, or “Song”. But more often Dalibert opts for a contemplative
mode of playing as on the meditative “Lullaby” or the beautiful “Litanie”,
premiered by Serbian-American Paris-based pianist Ivan Ilić in October
2019.
freejazzblog on air, featuring blog colleague Martin Schray and radio host Julia Neupert broadcasted on SWR2 in southern Germany at 11 p.m. Central European Time (5 p.m. in NYC) is available online for week starting tonight.
The theme of the show is Spirituality in Free Jazz. Tune in for some talk and lots of music by
Kahil El' Zabar, Lakecia Benjamin, Angel Bat Dawid, Danile Carter, Amina Claudine Myers, Martin Küchen and Makaya McCraven.
Some people profit from the lockdown to clean up their house, others to clean up their archives. Norwegian saxophonist Frode Gjerstad is clearly in the second category, even if his archiving virus started well before the pandemic.
The art work above shows the time span of this archival effort. "Afternoon Tea" is a duo performance by Gjerstad and guitarist Ferdinand Bergstrøm, recorded in Gjerstad's home on December 4 of this year and released on December 13. As fresh as it can be, and so is the music. It is direct, intimate and it sounds as if the audience is in the room with them, with a very good sound balance between the acoustic guitar and the sax. Even if this is not breaking new ground musically, it is a fun and pleasant album to listen to.
The second illustration is of a performance by Gjerstad, William Parker and Hamid Drake, dating from the year 2000. It's the second set of a concert, and by itself it already lasts more than an hour. This trio with Parker and Drake has produced some of the best albums by the Norwegian, and it is great to hear this music for the first time. The list also presents the trio at various occassions during their long career, and it's a real treat to have it available.
I am sure that the list below is still incomplete. He released new material not only on his own Circulasione Totale label but also on some other labels and platforms.
It is all a little much to digest, but on the other hand it allows fans for some cherry-picking, identifying their preferred musicians and ensembles, such as Detail, Calling Signals, the Circulasione Totale Orchestra or mainstays of the free jazz scene such as Peter Brötzmann, Steve Swell, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Johnny Dyani, John Stevens, Bobby Bradford, Paul Rutherford, and many more ...
Enjoy and ... listen in moderation.
Bobby Bradford, Frode Gjerstad, Kent Carter, John Stevens - Blue Cat (NoBusiness Records, 2019)
Frode Gjerstad & Dag Magnus Narvesen – Live At Tou (FMR, 2019)
Frode Gjerstad & Jeffrey H. Shurdut – The Continuous Broken Flow (Circulasione Totale, 2019)
Trying to be up to the minute with Tim Berne releases is feeling nearly as
impossible as keeping up with Matthew Shipp. I’m doing it, but phew! Since
I signed on to review these three, four more have come out. One is
the sublime solo recording,
Sacred Vowels. The other three, like so much coming out during the pandemic, are
archival, never released recordings. It’s an embarrassment of riches that I
celebrate.
David Torn/Tim Berne/Ches Smith - Sun of Goldfinger (Congratulations to You) ****
Sun of Goldfinger (Congratulations to You)
is drawn mainly from recordings of the first concert Berne did with David
Torn (guitar, production) and Ches Smith (drums, electronics). He had
worked before with Torn in Prezens (with Tom
Rainey on drums), and he had been working a couple of years with Smith in
Snakeoil. Like Prezens, the Sun of Goldfinger (Congratulations to You) listens like a
soundtrack for a film that you’re improvising in your head. Imagine a 1920s
silent film house with some like James P. Johnson playing piano, and
instead of the music being improvised to the images, the images are
improvised to the music. That’s how I receive this. (I may have soundtracks
on the brain because I’m a fan of Torn’s movie work. Lars and the Real Girl? Anyone?)
Some of the things I love about this:
Tim’s baritone has been sorely missed by me. He’s become an alto-only
guy, which I can respect. Can’t serve two masters. But I loved his bari
work and hearing it here brought me joy.
Torn’s guitar encourages a dirty kind of Stax-funk sensibility that
used to be much more prominent in Tim’s work — possibly this is a
function of the baritone, too — and Smith’s drumming is so dang heavy.
(Good lord, is that a back beat I’m hearing? Oh! It’s gone).
The frame of this is landscape and noise. Given that this was live, the
layering of sounds, ideas, and atmosphere is pretty extraordinary.
There are characters, plot twists, scene setting, murders,
resurrections, masks, explosions, ebbs, flows, and reflection.
What it sounds like is 50+ minutes of Torn, Berne, and Smith
layering images one on top of another, withdrawing and shifting, very
electric, very rock, with the sax and guitars asserting themselves
melodically (and they are, indeed, very melodic) and sometimes the drums,
too. Torn’s minimalism (in the form of repetition, not austerity) creates a
lot of tension in partnership with Berne’s “solos,” with Smith driving the
whole thing pretty hard. It’s part of the subset of music that includes
Bitches Brew, King Crimson, and Blade Runner.
Tim Berne’s Snakeoil - The Deceptive 4 (Intakt 2020) ***1/2
Snakeoil has, by some reviewers, been referred to as having a “chamber jazz” sound by some, and there has been some eyebrow movement over the fact
that Berne is playing on ECM, perhaps wondering if he might be compromised
by that label’s perceived preciousness. Listening to the 2 disc set, The Deceptive 4 (Another obscure pun album title, huzzah!), I find
the second concern to be unfounded. There’s nothing precious (in the twee
sense) here, as has been true of the previous Snakeoil records, going back
to the beginning. And the great sound is just … well … great. As for the
“chamber jazz” idea … look, I can’t imagine Berne conceives this as chamber
music, but I do actually love chamber music. The term’s derivation, from
the Baroque era, is that it’s non-orchestral music played where you are
close enough (in the actual chamber) to hear the distinct joys of each
instrument and idea of the small group. On writer called chamber music “the
music of friends.” All of that serves Berne’s music very well. There’s a
separation and discrimination between the musicians that is not present,
for example, in Sun of Goldfinger. It’s a different thing. Each
player here — Berne, Ches Smith, Oscar Noriega (clarinets), and Matt
Mitchell (piano) — takes Berne’s knotty, “rubato based” (his words)
compositions, their parts, and pulls them into something wonderful. This
music has its gentle moments while everyone (Noriega and Berne, especially)
extend themselves into the fire, frequently. Honestly, Noriega is a goddamn
national treasure, and his voice in the rogues gallery of Tim Berne
compatriots stands out as something unique. Also, just a side note, is
there any sound more dissonant than dissonant vibes? Asking for no reason.
Tim Berne/Matt Mitchell Duo - Spiders (Out of Your Head, 2020) ****1/2
This is a 42-ish minute set of Berne tunes (and one Julius Hemphill tune)
recorded presumably in Feb 2020. The liner notes say “February 30,” which,
you most likely know, is a date that does not exist, but … fine. I do love
duet recordings. They are one of the great pillars of the creative music
explosion of the 1960s. The conversation as a unit of measurement in
jazzavantcreative music genuinely sings to me and is another form of
“chamber” music that resonates with me. Spiders has a lot of space
to it and Berne’s and Mitchell’s voice are each as brilliant. It is
genuinely surprising how light and fleet the two can be. There are moments
that, to me, code as earnest and beautiful, almost elegiac in a chamber
way. There is a particularly powerful side of Berne’s work that comes
through in this recording. In a podcast interview in April, Berne told the
reviewer, in being compared to Roscoe Mitchell, Hemphill, and that crowd,
“I’m not doing anything new.” And in a way he’s not, there are no formal or
technical innovations going on. Since his style matured in the way back,
Berne’s work has been structurally consistent. He creates situations within
which he can converse, collaborate, or conspire with different
agglomerations of creative musicians. He has a vision as a composer and
improviser and it is a #thingofbeauty and #awondertobehold. The joy, the
power, the wonder of Berne’s music is in the compositions he writes and
improvisations he spins. Within this chosen form — creative jazz — the well
of his imagination feels limitlessness. The fact that the expressions of
his creativity seem to suit my temperament to an uncanny degree just makes
me the lucky one. Both Berne and Mitchell are really masters, here, of the
pitch based (as opposed to extended technique) improv. It’s an
underappreciated asset. I say we appreciate it.
And just, in case you need a bit more before you get these gems...
Samara Lubelski generates polyrhythms of pulses through effects-laden
violin shredding on the solo Partial Infinite Sequence. For decades,
the multi-instrumentalist has collaborated with alternative and
experimental jazz and rock royalty like God Is My Co-Pilot, Tara Jane
O’Neil (plus The Sonora Pine), Thurston Moore, Marcia Bassett,
Bill Nace (who contributes the cover art), and
Nate Wooley (who contributes the liner notes). Carving out a singular, often
electric voice on the violin that is more rooted in folk and noise and
pure sound than jazz or classical, deftly demonstrated on Partial
Infinite Sequence.
From the first seconds, the sound is drowned in amplified delay-based
effects. Phasing and reverberating. The feel is ghostly in its wails,
cavernous in its echo, psychedelic in its altered acoustics, battish in
its erratic flitting squeaking, cosmic and nocturnal. The acoustic
input is most often a rapid fiddling, reducing the characteristic
sustain of the violin to nearly discrete peaks and valleys of a wave,
obscuring its timbral identity. The processed acoustic signals explode
into electric pulses at different times behind them, not so much
recognizable waves but more closely percussive echoes. And all this on
a substrate of some almost inaudible longform phaser, like the hum of
the amp. So there’s at least three lines heard, though at times four or
five as delay seems to multiply pulses of different frequencies. It is
a dense and rapid polyrhythm to pick apart.
I suspect the two tracks, both seventeen and a half minutes, are like
two takes. This is labeled as free improvisation but there’s certainly
a firm set of conditions for this music. The instrumentation, the
technique, the effects, the time, the result. If Lubelski actually
follows the idea of a sequence, it would be interesting to hear
additional parts to better characterize the distinct natures of these
two parts. For now, Partial Infinite Sequence showcases a dense
conceptual construction of rhythm that’s well worth continued
exploration from both listeners and the musician.
Partial Infinite Sequence is available on CD and digitally.
