Taylor Ho Bynum and Tomas Fujiwara meet once again share the stage in the under used trumpet/drums format. 7+ years since the wonderful True Events album, Bynum and Fujiwara show they still have a lot to say. Bynum's now trademark cornet is unmistakable, and ever since the wonderful, not to mention epic Navigation, I have been pining for more Bynum.
While the Anthony Braxton influence can be derived from his playing, you cannot deny Bynum has mastered his own unique style. Throughout the 48 minute journey of Through Foundation, Bynum digs into his bag of tricks and keeps you on your proverbial toes. Trading short phrases with long searing tones, the album, glued together by Fujiwara on drums, flies by in the blink of an eye. And Fujiwara is only getting stronger with each album he is apart of. Whether its his militaristic drums lines or the kodo-esque beats, your attention is immediately grabbed and held. Inevitably, I’m sure people are curious as to how this stacks up with True Events. Well, in my opinion they are two completely different albums. True Events felt like a spontaneous burst of creativity, where Through Foundation is structured, though clearly free, the musical soul of Bynum and Fujiwara have a much stronger bond after two decades of friendship.
The entire theme throughout Through Foundation is mellow with a much more gallant feel that True Events. From the passionate Micro (For Bill Dixon) to the playful Literary References And Basketball Minutia, there is a little bit of everything but it doesn’t have wild extremes that you can find in the Trumpet/Drum format. Another fine performance by a duo who knows how to let the kinship speak through their playing.
Listening to music is probably one of the strangest things in life, and when you listen a lot, you get used to newer things, different sounds that may be off-putting to many, yet that have an unmistakeable magic for others. This is one of those albums, that, despite their obvious simplicity, of one violinist playing alone, improvising alone, offers a entrancing complexity and artistry that goes far beyond the mediocre.
Angharad Davies uses extended techniques, like springs, plastic pegs, nail files, and other objects to limit and expand the sound of her violin, yet that is by itself neither unique nor the condition for good music - often even to the contrary - yet she makes it work, by the relentless intensity her music, the repetitive quality of the phrases, that barely move from their single tone center, yet offer timbral shades and slight variations in attack, that become enchanting after a while. This is minimalism, with fragile beauty and a wonderful contrast of lightness and gravitas. She calls them "studies", and maybe that's too humble a word for the performance, because even if there is some experimenting involved, the overall sound, the control and the end result can stand on their own.
In all honesty I prefer the album to the Youtube clip presenting its launch performance.
Jennifer Allum - Live Solo At Café OTO (FMA, 2014)
This short EP or fifteen minute free download gives a performance by violinist Jennifer Allum at Café OTO in London last year. Her sound is raw and harsh compared to the violin sounds of Angharad Davies, more physical, with shorter more powerful use of the bow, jumping off the strings in repetitive figures, that change ever so slightly, rarely playing one string at a time, but creating chords and phrases, sometimes even with a folksy undertone - but don't think you can dance on this music - and using dissonance as the key ingredient to her improvisation.
To be honest, I disliked “Radio Rondo” after first listening to Amphi/Radio Rondo. I’ve long been a fan of Barry Guy’s New Orchestra, the London Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, and nearly every member of the band in their countless projects and solo ventures. Last year’s Mad Dogs was one of my favorite releases of the year, and I was impressed with “Amphi” as it came to a close. But upon reaching the full band free jazz freak-outs in “Radio Rondo,” I wrote this in my notes:
“large portions of ‘Radio Rondo’ represent a strain of improvisation that’s becoming harder and harder to justify. All of the players involved are far more talented and nuanced than their combined cacophony suggests. Pieces like this offer a retreat from thoughtful improvisation by providing a dense thicket to hide in.”
A little later in the day, I was reading from Ajay Heble’s excellent Landing on the Wrong Note: Jazz, Dissonance and Critical Practice when a question was posed in the text: is musical meaning a function of intent or effect? For my money, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Meaning will always be a subjective blend of the two: the production of music is clearly an intentional act, and in the listener an effect is wrought, often as a result of experiences, moods and environments that are quite unrelated to the music at hand. In a way, there’s an additional tier of harmony that overlays the production and consumption of music: the consonance or dissonance between intent and effect. Free improvisation is interesting because in many ways it deals in dissonance at this level, too. There can be much discord between the intent of musicians and the effect that’s ultimately produced in most listeners.
Attempting to resolve this tension, the next day I sought out the earlier recording of “Radio Rondo” made with the London Jazz Composer’s Orchestra and Irene Schweizer. I found the burbling intensity to be more convincingly borne by the broader brass palette and use of strings, rather than the shrieking reeds that dominated my hearing of the New Orchestra. The strong effect of the earlier version poised me to reevaluate the new one. I returned again to Amphi/Radio Rondo, and my experience was much different. I could better sense the orchestral sweep of the piece, could discern more of its structure, how everything continually circled back to Agustí Fernández’s incredible piano performance. What was previously overwhelming seemed tempered now, and perhaps just as much as “Amphi,” I could see “Radio Rondo” as a function of Guy’s devotion to inhabiting the world of new classical music while leaving a foot in the unruly history of free jazz, too.
Though there’s nothing overtly political in Guy’s music, it comes from a long line of music in which a certain political stance is implied—the politics of struggle, regardless of whether a European or African-American path is taken to reach improvised music in its present state. Even if we never consciously consider it over a lifetime of listening, part of me wonders whether we’re ever immune to the social politics that underlie this music. For some, free music represented the very real struggle of human rights, but even at its most innocuous the music has always been a protest against the status quo, against rigid perceptions about what constitutes “real” music.
What felt different while I listened was that sheer volume and density no longer seem like the best ways to rebel. The power of a group blaring in the red is undeniable, but it also felt unsustainable. The screaming cacophony is what blazed the trail that leads to the New Orchestra today. Anger and intensity cleared the ground so that so much more could be said; hadn’t the need to shout diminished? I still believe that part of what allows the listener to fashion a bridge over the self-indulgence inherent in a lot of improvisation is the idea of a shared or—at the very least—vicarious catharsis. Rather than a release, my first listen felt more like being attacked. As I’ve listened again, I’m beginning to see how my bridge might be crafted—how I might align their intent with what I’m hoping to experience. It’s easy to misinterpret, and I want to be fair. There’s space for a limitless range of emotions in the New Orchestra’s clamor. It seems to me more and more that violence or anger or rebellion are the things that I brought to the table as I listened that day.
Part of what prompted such a struggle over “Radio Rondo” was the truly great effect of the preceding piece, “Amphi.” Joined by Maya Homburger’s Baroque violin, the New Orchestra is used to add color and tension to a piece Guy originally wrote as a duo for violin and bass. It brings to mind the way Luciano Berio transformed his solo Sequenzas into the orchestral Chemins. This isn’t the only classical touchstone in “Amphi”—the piece drips with the influence of many 20th century greats. Ligeti and Xenakis lurk in the atonal rumblings of the ensemble, and the Spectralists—Murail, Radulescu, Scelsi—are evoked in the wavering contrails of strings. In the liner notes, Guy equates the piece with chamber music, and it lilts between themes that are superficially dissimilar but seem strung together by some gut-level logic. A typically lithe Guy solo around 20 minutes in cements the awesome impact of the piece.
I dwell here on my listening experience because by now, fans of free music are more than familiar with the musicians in the New Orchestra. Sometimes it’s easy to take for granted the notion that the music they make is “challenging.” There are certainly many things in the musical realm that it challenges. But listening to and enjoying so much free improvisation can actually dull one to the feeling of what it truly means to be challenged. My initial distaste and discomfort with Amphi/Radio Rondo became a strength of the album, because it forced me think. It made me question what I know about this music, about my tastes, about what it means to be engaged in the strange dialectic between intent and effect. Most importantly, I had to ask myself: at the end of the day, aren’t those all the questions that drew me towards this music in the first place? New Orchestra: Barry Guy, bass, director; Agustí Fernández, piano; Maya Homburger, Baroqueviolin; Evan Parker, saxophone; Jürg Wickihalder, saxophone; Mats Gustafsson, saxophone, fluteophone; Hans Koch, bassclarinet; Herb Robertson, trumpet; Johannes Bauer, trombone; Per Åke Holmlander, tuba; Paul Lytton, percussion; Raymond Strid, percussion.
Kyle Bruckmann -- a classically trained oboist, spiritually a punk and free form improviser -- has, with his free form group Wrack, unleashed a free wheeling and wildly diverse conceptual album called "... Awaits Silent Tristero's Empire," influenced by the novels of Thomas Pynchon. The title itself comes from Pynchon's "Crying of Lot 49," a novel about a rivalry between two mail distribution companies. Tristero was the organization forced to go underground, hiding it's mailboxes in trash bins, identified only by a symbol of a muted post horn with a loop. The eccentric and brilliant book may give an idea as to the music on this album, which throughout its four tracks displays a vast range of musical genres and sounds but is cohesive. From circus music to vaudeville, swing to hard bop to free jazz, Bruckmann and his band skillfully execute all the various styles to create a musical world that reflects the music that would have been played in Pynchon's books.
"Overture," begins with a horn introduction, before exploding into a free form exchange between percussion and the horns, the trumpet providing a carnival like solo, as if preparing the listener for the circus show to follow. The remaining tracks are titled after three of Pynchon's novels. "Part One (V)," begins with a Harlem swing style horn playing, full of swagger, before switching over to a vaudeville like showtune, with an oom-pa-pa like rhythm. It evolves to a swinging hardbop tempo, with a trombone solo backed on the beat with emphasis by the other horns.
The one constant is the switching of styles, modes and moods, and when broken down like this it may seem disjointed, but in execution the music is strangely engaging and thought provoking. "Part Two (The Crying of Lot 49)," leads with a bass solo, then accompanied by a violin then drums in a slow moving and tender trio piece, before abruptly switching to a horn led funky bop theme, dominated by a wonderful solo by the bass clarinet, before moving into a faster, freer improvisation. This is the standout tune on the album, evoking those familiar styles without adhering to any one of them, an effective work of deconstruction. "Part Three: Gravity's Rainbow," returns to some of the themes established on the first two parts, alternating from the swing of Part Two and the vaudeville of Part One, before engaging in a very long free form Sun Ra like improvisation, then settling into a calm string duets, later joined by all in a soft but high pitched coda. "Awaits Silent Tristero's Empire" will appeal to many who are in search for something different in contemporary music. The improvisations, the creativity and execution are stimulating and appealing.
While those who know Thomas Pynchon's novels will get a deeper sense of appreciation for the music -- there are references to an Ornette Coleman and a Gerry Mulligan like musicians in his books -- those who haven't read them will find themselves immersed in a strange yet exciting world of mish mash improvisation and creativity. Recommended.
WRACK is:
Kyle Bruckmann (oboe, english horn), Jason Stein (bass clarinet), Jen Clare Paulson (viola), Anton Hatwich (bass), and Tim Daisy (percussion) joined by Darren Johnston (trumpet) and Jeb Bishop (trombone).
Flametet is a sextet from the Boston area and is led by acoustic bassist (and DIY synthesizer player) Kit Demos. The other members are Todd Brunel on baritone clarinet, Charlie Kohlhase on baritone saxophone, Pandelis Karayorgis on Wurlitzer electric piano, Johnny Mclellan on drums, and Jeff Platz on guitar.
The pleasure of A General History of Flame is as much in the timbers and tones of the instruments as it is in the collective improvisation. It’s obvious that a great deal of detail and attention go into the aesthetics of the music, and while the tracks themselves are delightfully flowing inventions that lurch along naturally, the particular mix of the electronic and acoustics instruments is very striking. The synthesizer and Wurlitzer add a great deal of color to the collective pallet, and they also reference early fusion efforts - when synthesizer patches actually referred to a mess of cables. A great example is the track ‘A Memo on Texture’, which grows from a slight whisper to a slightly louder whisper, each instrument contributing to the texture of the piece without ever establishing a melody, per se, yet evoking feeling throughout.
Everyone, of course, is essential to the recording. Brunel's clarinet and Kohase's sax intertwine melodically on ‘Brain Pan by Astrid', while the rhythm section drops fraught chords like tension filled bombs around them. Platz and Karayorgis provide dark rhythmic texture to 'Six or So.' About halfway into the track, amid the ring modulators and punchy grooves, the groups trades a round of solo spots with Demos taking an extended run. 'Flame Freeze (I Will Crush the Rhythm and Soul into a Fine Powder)' is a great example of the ensemble developing jarring rhythmic patterns and unusual syncopations. The track also features interesting fretwork by Platz and Demos.
A General History of Flame is a nicely balanced recording that presents a coherent vision for its sound and music. Straddling a line of free improv and acoustic-electric instruments, the Flametet recording is quite a good listen.
You can get an idea of the group's sound here, though this video features a slightly different line-up:
One’s listening mind can never again be a blank slate, years of hearing and listening have etched grooves, some long and trailing, some sort of wandering off aimlessly, and any sound entering has the tendency to activate one or more of these grooves thus creating a pattern of sometimes recognizing but always anticipating the next sound. A skillful player plays with this giving and not giving, resolving and thwarting, challenging and rudely interrupting, all this guided by his own voices and sent out to other voices, other rooms. In this missive we find ourselves with Sylvie Courvoisier on piano, Mark Feldman on violin, Scott Colley on bass, Billy Mintz on drums.
They begin with a suite, “Cards for Capitaine”, according to the liner notes dedicated to an old friend, an expert in Sanskrit. Old languages come to us in shards and fragments, torn loose from their moorings and it is up to us to find meaning, renew acquaintance. Mark Feldman sketched musical segments on index cards and let indeterminacy coupled with his own evoked memories combine to create a barrage of snippets, some short and unresolved some drawn out. Let me give you some impressions in poor words : on a repeating left hand theme, bows scrape and weave and smear, pizzicatos punctuate, bass takes over repeating undulations to spread a bed for romantic violin and Debussy-esque skittering, leading to strumming the piano and coaxing the violin into the gentle calm of an uncluttered mountain lake, strings are pulled and bowed and upon mallet sounds piano enters the purely romantic and points the violin and bowed bass into the hazy distance. There be whales out there. And shifting shoals of herring. Then over to the driving pulse of “Shmear”. Not for long though, the piano finds the beginnings of an anthem, gets bored quickly and hands things over to other strings, low bass, sparse sounds, Shostakovich country (to me), the violin launching into a mad melody and the piano coming in from the left and bringing the whole to a rapturous boil. And back to the unfinished anthem, not finishing it this time.
The quiet center, the eye of the hurricane bears the name of a yoga posture and holds it nicely. Prolonged breathing (though no wind instruments are present) with a subtle bass solo, muscles relax, tendons lengthen : “Natarajasana” is a glorious heart-opener that asks us to be stable yet at ease, committed yet non-attached, and fully engaged yet at peace.
“Downward Dog” brings you back to life after a long and tiring day at the office and allows Sylvie Courvoisier ample space for a dense solo. Wereupon “Birdies for Lulu” call and take you out in the woods where call and response flitter through the dappled shadows. Messiaen anyone? “Travesuras” then, playing games, hopscotching, hithering and thithering and the final track “Coda for Capitaine” brings us round to the beginning, riverrun, the eternal present wherein jazz exists. “Jazz is and always has been more of an attitude than a style.” (Art Lange).
This is highly original and new music, steeped in tradition but treated with the measured, ordered lucidity that brings ineluctable joy to the paradox of controlled freedom. Listen.
The violin, the cello and the viola make you think about classical music, about string quartets, about Bach, Vivaldi, Paganini, about Yehudi Menuhin, Pablo Casals, Rostropovich, and many more. Yet the strings may contain some more magic in them, magic that is only now released, with new sounds, weirder sounds, somehow more complex, multiphonic, distorted, tormented, somehow more fit for those strange times we live in, full of luxury, agony and inhumanity, full of beauty, sensitivity and horror.
No deep dives here, just some small sketches, hinting, encouraging you to discover the music. Ernst Reijseger - Crystal Palace (Winter & Winter, 2014) *****
Dutch cellist Ernst Reijseger no longer needs an introduction, film composer, member of ICP Orchestra, musician of world music, but also an avant-gardist, as on this album. Reijseger plays solo, and even if this is not his first solo album, it is definitely his best, with twenty-eight short improvisations inspired by the paintings of Jerry Zeniuk, and as the label describes it : "sound pictures at an exhibition".
All of the painter's work is in the similar vein, with full color dots sprinkled over the canvas, and one might expect some similar concept in the music, but that's not the case, quite to the contrary. Reijseger's music is different on each track. Beautiful, intense, classical, dissonant, controlled, loose, dark, frivolous. Some pieces are flowing like a soft stream in spring, some are percussive repetitive single plucked notes, some are filled with high-pitched overtones, some with hesitating soft bows, but whatever he does, it is beautiful, it is simple, it is rich, it is inviting and welcoming.
He will be celebrating his 60th birthday later this year, and he has already given us a fantastic present. A real treat for fans of high quality improvised music.
Highly recommended.
Hugues Vincent & Yasumune Morishige - Fragment (Improvising Beings, 2014) *****
French cellist Hugues Vincent and Japanese cellist Yasumune Morishige sound like soul-brothers on this album, which has incredible power and intensity from beginning to end. The two artists invite you to a sonic universe that is beautiful and dark, carefully weaving bowed phrases in a context of drone and noise and darkness. The instruments screech and whisper and sing and rumble. Their universe is attractive and threatening at the same time, as if the listener is invited to trespass into a forbidden area. They create suspense, anticipation, tension as well as ferocious moments of relief, they create long hypnotic contrapuntal flows close to a tonal centre. They create moments of despair and agony and doom. The create sounds with refinement and sensitivity and precision.
This is without a doubt one of the most coherent and powerful albums I've heard this year. A dark masterpiece.
Jennifer Allum & Ute Kanngiesser - Bell Tower Recordings (Matchless, 2014) ****½
The tree improvisations on this album are duets between Jennifer Allum on violin and Ute Kanngiesser on cello, and were recorded in a church bell tower, each in a different room. This is as avant-garde as it can be, with both instruments exploring well beyond the boundaries of their instruments, with the bells chiming in, and inspiring the musicians, as do other ambient sounds such as outside traffic, the siren of an ambulance or the ticking of the church clock mechanism (I think).
The music on the first track has a nice and sometimes even powerful interaction of high almost whistling tones interwining like a slow rhythmless dance, a cautious circling around a tonal center, with vibrating notes floating in mid-air, then gradually losing even the faint substance they had to become even more ethereal and ephemeral, slight wisps of music supported by silence. The second track, "Clock Room", has more gravitas, with a more forceful attack of the bows, even if that is still fragile. The pièce-de-résistance is the half hour long "Bell Room", in which the outside world quietly invades the music, and is integrated, carefully lifted into a new level of fragility and refinement. Each note has value here, and when silence takes the foreground, with the distant ambulance the only sound to be heard, deep tones from the cello and super-high tones from the violin create a mirrored drone-like repetition, full of menace and anxiety.
Many people will wonder about this music, and probably that's good. It has its own voice, its own story, its own aesthetic. It may take some time to get into it, but as usual the effort is worth taking.
This is the second duo release by cellist Yasumune Morishige and vocalist Keiko Higuchi. Regular readers will know that I am not a fan of vocal jazz or improvisation, because of the unauthentic sense of drama or in-your-face declamation that usually seems to drive singers, but here we get a different story. Higuchi's voice is an instrument, very much at the same level of the cello, and both look for sonic creation, in a very calm, quiet and precise way. Both cello and voice use sparse sounds that hover over a background of silence, fragile, vulnerable and sensitive. The nature of the music is very Japanese, and it may take some mental adjustment to get into this strange musical universe, but once you're in, you will be hooked. Very delicate and beautiful.
Fred Lonberg-Holm & Nick Stephens - Crackle (Loose Torque, 2014) ***½
My original Dutch version of the "Free Jazz Blog" will be forever frozen on Fred Lonberg-Holm's "Terminal Valentines", then just released in 2007. He has been featured many times afterwards, with his own efforts or as part of the Chicago jazz scene. Now we find him here in the presence of Nick Stephens, bassist and one of Britains lead voices on bass in the free improv and free bop scene. Their performance on this album is really one of dialogue, and in that sense maybe closer to jazz than it sounds. They tease, they react, they dance around each other, with lots of emphasis on the interaction, on the ideas and the joy of it all, rather than on the creation of a musical sound, which is raw, harsh, nervous, agitated, physical even, although they don't shy away from more quiet and sensitive moments.
Jim Baker & Sarah Ritch - Articular Facet 5.3 (Pan Y Rosas, 2014) ***½
On this quiet album, Jim Baker on modular synth and Sarah Ritch on cello, guitar and electronics, create a sonic environment with minor changes from a long horizontally developing tonal texture. The effect is mesmerising at times, with repetitive loops and sudden 'surprise skree', one of the appropriate tag lines that Sarah Ritch gives to her music, together with 'modern scratch, mechanical wood, tone bits, crushed fragments and atlantis shred'. Despite these names, the music is relatively accessible, and of a dark monotony.
Francesco Guerri - Prima Di Qualsiasi Altra Cosa Allora Si Perderà (Self, 2013) ***½
Francesco Guerri is an Italian cellist, with a degree of the conservatory of Cesena, who now ventures into his first solo album, after some previous group releases. His playing is very raw, with lots of coloring outside the lines, breaking conventions, and exploring new spaces, but without relinquishing the instrument's core sounds. His improvisations are dense, busy, like some solo dialogues with lots of rhythmic emphasis and strong attack, and only the last piece, "Macbeth", has a lighter texture, with Guerri weaving his notes around the silence of the space.
Ganjin - Healing (Self, 2013) ***
Ganjin is Hugues Vincent on cello, Frantz Loriot on viola and Yuko Oshima on drums. The album starts with calm precision, with soft touches and extended technique sounds coloring space and silence, until this explodes in your face with screams full of agony and despair, the sign to pull you along on a roller-coaster of rhythmic and tempo changes, with changing qualities of tenderness and violence.
Each time you think you're into their way of playing, you are wrong. The second track too evolves from some metal noise into a joyful balkan tune, with unison passages. "Sorry, But You're Too Far" starts with a long drums intro, to be followed by a great noise soundscape by the strings. "Diviheads" is all violence and mayhem out of your worst nightmare accentuated by infrequent drum beats, until you think that's what you'll get till end, but you're deceived again when Oshima lets loose some fierce rock drumming that is incapable of stopping the banshee wails of the strings. You get the idea, there is a lot to be heard, including long moments of silence, with a huge amount of variety and influences, putting the listener on the wrong foot time and time again, and that's fun in a way, but it destroys the unity of musical vision in a way. The album's strength is also its weakness. Yet it's worth listening to.
Hugues Vincent - Early Electroacoustic Works (Soliloq Edition, 2014)
This album is a re-issue of Hugues Vincent's first two solo CDs, both of which are actual live collages of cello, electronic sounds, radio snippets, film music and other ambient material that's all presented in a very coherent way in strange sonic sculptures. The sound of the cello itself is hard to identify.
Nils Bultmann - Troubadour Blue (Innova, 2014) ***
This beautiful album is a strange concoction. The first ten pieces are viola duets between Nils Bultmann and Hank Dutt, performing music composed by the former, as a result of years of improvising. The delivery sounds very classical, yet contains improvised parts, and some pieces have influences from country music, film music and other sources.
Then you get four pieces called "From The Depths", an unusual duet between viola and didgeridoo, the latter played by Stephen Kent. The atmosphere is totally different than in the first part, more solemn, with more gravity and emotional depth. Gripping stuff.
Then you get a five minute solo viola piece by Bultmann, a very melancholy and beautiful composition, slow and full of anticipation and intensity.
Then you get five pieces for solo cello, performed by Parry Karp, but composed by Bultmann as an hommage to Bach's famous cello suites. Some of Bach's material is used in the piece. Again, the quality of the playing is excellent, and so are the compositions, but as a listener you're into another sonic universe again.
In sum, great music, but a not very coherent album. The duo with didgeridoo would be preference for further exploration and real attention.
Giovanni Maier & Franco Dal Monego - 4 Pezzi Lunghi (Palomar, 2013) ***
An intense duo album with Italians Giovanni Maier on cello and Franco Dal Monego on drums. They perform four improvisations of approximately fifteen minutes each. This is a very jazzy outing, with long plucked and bowed dialogues, all very rhythmic and with strong interactivity.
Helena Espvall - Both Art And Nature Are Fond Of Machinations (2014)
I am not sure why I would mention this album here, apart from the fact that it is played by the cello and that the music is improvised, but basically what you get is one long drone of various layers of instrument, sounding like an entire orchestra. Not my cup of tea but some may like it.
Joelle Leandre is an accomplished French bassist, who has for over thirty years been one of the premier European musicians in contemporary improvised music, playing with a wide range of artists from Anthony Braxton to John Cage. Nicole Mitchell is an American flautist, president of the AACM, a professor and Doris Duke recipient who is known for her compositions as well as her playing. Sisters Where, is a duets album that features both artists in a live setting in Paris, 2013, and showcases their talents and high level of improvisational play. The six tracks, sub 46 minute in length, take the listener through their interplanetary exploration of spiritual jazz. The duo may have channeled a little Sun Ra in spirit, but they have their own unique take.
Bass and flute lock in together on "Sisters on Venus," occupying the lower registers, almost buzzing with low intensity, then drifting apart, Joelle engaging in a furiously quiet solo with quick, light plucking, and ending with breathy, wordless vocals. "Sisters on Mercury" has the flute soloing, insistent notes that have a strong eastern phrasing, then fluttering just briefly for the bass to come in, as they weave in and out of each other's sound for eight minutes. One must take note of Nicole Mitchell's playing which is outstanding. In some ways it is consistent when she plays in a large ensemble, but stripped down and exposed in this setting, the creativity and high level skill shines. Joelle Leandre is no slouch either, alternately plucking and bowing with expertise. They are a tight sonic duo, and their collaboration takes the listener into an engaging and stimulating voyage to the stars.
It is not their first collaboration. They had previously worked together as a duo on Before After, three years prior, and on this date, with the addition of Thomas Buckner, called Flowing Stream. Recorded live at the Vision Fest in 2012, the trio engage in a mixture of abstract vocal calisthenics and instruments. Buckner's gurgling and ululating occupy a low register, Mitchell the upper register, with Leandre somewhere in between. Flute and bass will replace a vocal with similar intensity and effect. Track number 6, which is untitled, is a standout track, with Buckner singing a wordless vocal, like out of a Carl Orff composition, Leandre doing a Bach like bowing on the cello, the result being something very spiritual and gothic. Most of the tracks are very short, so the album does not drag on, which is good, because 3/4 of the way through the ideas seem to run out, and the sound gets a bit repetitive.
Of the two, Sisters Where is a knockout of an album, featuring some of Nicole Mitchell's finest playing on record. Flowing Stream, is not as strong, but has strong moments of abstract vocalizing.
Expecting a noise-fest? Well, yes and no, firstly this album contains one long piece of improvised music, recorded live at the Copenhagen Jazzhouse in May 2013, which has naturally occurring contrasting sections that not only give the overall piece real shape and structure, but also create an emotional depth. Although completely free flowing, this involves a gradual switching, which is done with great execution, between the intense and loud opening maelstrom textures to much more reflective & sensual sounds and then back again.
Whilst listening to this piece, which lasts just over the half-hour mark, I found it almost impossible not to compare Yoshihide’s playing to that of his mentor, the late and great Masayuki Takayanagi, with the music at times sounding like an essay based on some of his albums such as Kaitai Teki Kohkan or April is the Cruellest Month.
Paal Nilsson-Love busies himself carrying the energy of the music on a wave of batterie-induced momentum, such as Krautrock legends Ash Ra Tempel did on their debut album. There is great involvement in the music from the drummer and pounding beats gradually develop into skittish rhythms with such ease as he drives the music on whilst being sensitive to the chemistry happening between the two instruments, especially in the more reflective middle section where extended techniques such as (what sounds like) bowed cymbals are carefully applied to the soundscape. There is a great moment where Yoshihide’s guitar is feeding back whilst being processed through some effects resulting in harmonic sweeps, which sound like an air raid siren due to a similar sliding glissando of harmonic spectra.
Although effectively a duo of electric guitar (Otomo Yoshihide) and drums (Paal Nilsson-Love), there is a real fullness to this album as both these instruments are exploited not only for their power but also for their introspective ability as well.
While there is nothing new necessarily happening here it is an extremely enjoyable album of improvised music, which is performed with a natural expertise from these two musicians, and grows with you on each new listen as all good music usually does.
Recently, I had the honor of being asked to provide liner notes for a solo saxophone album by Paulo Chagas. It was my pleasure to do this, and in lieu of a typical review, I am posting my notes here, with a link to the recording which is available from darkpebble-blue wave.
I'm on the commuter train, listening to a very early mix of Paulo's new solo saxophone album. The tracks are named and numbered essentially by date and what sax is being used. I am listening without knowing - no track names to fill my mind with interpretations, suggestions, or distractions whatsoever, it is just two Pauls with a saxophone and an ocean between them.
I’m looking out the window as the post-industrial landscape passes me by. Factories are being torn down, entire neighborhoods being turned into generic luxury spaces. My thoughts are in turn shaped by the sounds that both scrape and sooth my ears.
I wonder, what is it like in Portugal, in Paulo's studio, where he has lovingly recorded these expressions of his thoughts and feelings? What was he thinking? Why create something so personal as these improvised solo performances? Are we not hearing his voice, his thoughts, only slightly filtered through an instrument? Is he too looking at what's happening outside? Is he looking inward? Making up stories of things that have yet to happen? I wonder, as the sounds of breath, keys, embouchures, and creation happen.
I've never met Paulo in person but that does not really mean much in this context. I was first introduced to his playing through an album with fellow musicians Bruno Duplant and Lee Noyes called 'As Birds'. It came to me very early in my listening and writing about free jazz. For my review on freejazzblog.org, I wrote:
Chagas' bass clarinet and sax work is a joy to hear, though I've made my bias clear (I mention how much I love bass clarinet in the review). Not tempering the clarinet's bestial desire to squawk and rumble, but not relying on it either, he let's the instruments sonorous woody sound reverberate...
Parse through that mumbo jumbo and what I meant, and still believe, is that Paulo's playing speaks at both a very elemental and organic level (he lets the instruments be themselves, and in his hands they bloom) and with an emotional rawness that invites the listener to drop preconceptions and simply hear.
Paulo’s own website states that he “is a willfully eclectic musician, having devoted much of his career to experimentalism. Being by nature a maverick, he has committed his life to the research of new (or renewed) solutions and links between the sounds he explores.” Good enough for me, and really a great summary of this recording that you have at hand.
Saxophone Solos is a collection of 9 pieces recorded on soprano and alto saxophone between 2012 and 2014 in Paulo’s home studio. It is indeed an intimate portrait, a window into the sanctuary where ideas grow and the spirit wanders.
Paulo says that there is no set pattern to his creative process, almost anything may be an inspiration, "sometimes I played focused on an idea, a poem, a movie, a picture, sometimes could be a result of a technical exploration, and sometimes it is absolutely spontaneous stuff."
The stuff is good stuff indeed. Born of pure spontaneity and subconscious percolations, his ideas range from spittle riddled fluttering to repetitive rhythmic figures, and from extended techniques to sublime melodies. This very personal music speaks in many tones and always with deep feeling.
Says Paulo, "in this set of pieces I looked essentially for the balance between sound and silence, like a pencil drawing lines and points on the empty white paper"
Listen to natural pulse of the alto sax as a long droning tone begins to bubble. Feel the squawk as he bites down on the reed to get out that idea, that feeling. Take in the brief silence, as one idea seems to end, only to resurge with new vigor a moment later.
In the end, I cease trying to imagine what Paulo is thinking as he plays and just enjoy the thoughts that he has put down. I nod in agreement, I scowl in disapproval, and I smile in agreement. My fellow commuters, they just think I'm crazy, they don’t know the conversation I’m having with a saxophone playing in my ear buds. At they very least the seat next to me remains empty!
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