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Having finally finished What is familiar?, it seems as though I should start a fresh page here, even if in some ways, I'm right in the middle of a discussion.
I hope readers do continue to have a look at the previous set of entries, because I think there are some good discussions there, if I do say so myself — although not all of them are terribly worthwhile. Starting toward the end of that page might be a good idea. (I wrapped up that set of entries with a discussion of Henry Threadgill's latest album.) So one goal I have here is to keep the quality of discussion high, which mostly means talking about items I really want to discuss, and not falling into what I "should" do. (Of course, the opening line above already contradicts that notion, doesn't it?)
The previous page also ran for a full year of comments, so it was getting rather long. I should, perhaps, add here at the outset that I am putting new comments at the end, so if you want to see the most recent material, scroll to the end. (Maybe this isn't the best choice, but I'm choosing to keep everything in written order, over making it easier to see new comments.)
Another thing I'm considering, particularly in light of the comment about quality of discussion, is how to use my writing time more wisely, and that might mean more comments in this space, and less time spent redoing some of the older articles on the site — my intention to keep them always up to date seems to belong to another decade. In some tangible sense, they're becoming historical documents discussing historical music. Maybe I need fewer updates, and more fresh starts.
I do keep the favorites list up to date in this space, however, and indeed I have items remaining to discuss that already appear there. So hopefully that will help with continuity as I roll this page over yet again. Oh, and the performance fellowship also remains active, for those interested.
I feel as though I have a lot to say at this point, and some language developed for saying it, so we'll see how that goes....Todd McComb <firstname.lastname@example.com>
I have long expressed an ambivalence — maybe something more akin to hostility than ambivalence — to English improvisation here. Reductively, that ambivalence had much to do with the large amount of material available: English "free" improvisation dates, at least, to the copious output of the 1960s, and continues apace today with much music-making & album-producing activity. Indeed, I've had occasion, including of late, to trace some aspects of American jazz back to the 1960s (and sometimes beyond), and that required a willingness to do so on my part. Although such an endeavor disrupts my intended emphasis on contemporary music, it does allow the construction or reconstruction of more extended narratives — to further a theme. Moreover, in the case of American jazz from the 1960s, I not only know people who heard it new, including myself in its function as music for television themes & advertising, which as we've discussed, was not always for the best (to understate), but there is general chatter around me: Ornette Coleman's recent death resonated along multiple lines intersecting me, for instance. In the case of English improvisation, most of those factors were not in play: Indeed, I probably received the majority of my recommendations for English music of the past few years from Bruce Gallanter at DMG. I'm thankful to Bruce for the work he does to raise attention for contemporary music, but it's also the case that our tastes do not intersect terribly much — which is still rather more than not at all. Bruce loves English progressive rock, if that's what you call it, and if I may be so bold as to make that assessment. I do not. I did enjoy some of the original "English invasion" from a fairly young age — again, music from the 1960s — but have always thought of it as thoroughly commercial. In some sense, then, much of the English music is thus both more & less "accessible." Add my political distaste (if that's a strong enough term) for empire, and I think it's fair to say that I had "cold" feelings toward English improvisation. (I've taken to improvised music from other European countries more readily, in contrast, as the listings here easily demonstrate.)
Of course, I live in the current standard bearing nation for oppressive world empire, and consequently, I'm well aware that not everyone in the vicinity agrees with world aggression & domination. Moreover, such "home protests" can be very long-lived. Beyond that, there is my longtime admiration for Joëlle Léandre, and her own stated admiration for Derek Bailey (Sheffield, 1930-2005). I have long been aware of this, but it's gone nowhere for me: Unless a word search is failing me now, this is my first mention of Derek Bailey in this space, and I knew that anything I would have said previously would be ignorant — perhaps I should say "too ignorant," whatever that means, because I retain plenty of ignorance. That said, the handful of things I had heard from Bailey clarified his reputation little: His playing sounded like pointless noodling to me. (When I say that, I hope you'll think of some of the "unusual" things I have listed on my favorites list here, by way of context.) I've acknowledged this, implicitly, before: When you're hearing something decades later, after so many other people have already been influenced, it can be quite impossible to hear it as new. Hence, personal narrative, yet again. Indeed, the things I might have once found appealing (to construct an impossible hypothetical, explicitly) may have already been (over?) plumbed by other musicians in music I've enjoyed. I don't know. Part of this changed when 28 Rue Dunois Juillet 1982 was released last year by Jean-Marc Foussat. I can't say as I found this quartet of Bailey, Léandre, George Lewis & Evan Parker incredibly compelling per se, but I did spend several hours listening to it for historical perspective. Between Léandre & Lewis, it gave me some context, and of course I've heard Parker in various things too (including Jeremiah Cymerman's World of Objects album from last year). As for the English politics, and how it might be reflected or inflected in this & other music, I don't really know that answer either. However, as I've spent many words discussing lately, I'm at least willing to try thinking politics in the smallest spaces of music. What does following one note by another mean, if there are even notes per se...? Is free improvisation, by definition, social activism, even if it can seem haughty? Regardless of these questions, there is no question that a lot of time & effort has gone into developing improvisatory styles in the UK over the past fifty+ years.
My actual & immediate context for these remarks is Whitewashed with Lines, a 2015 release by the quartet Common Objects, led by harpist Rhodri Davies (b.1971, Wales), with Angharad Davies, John Butcher, and Lee Patterson. These are, with the exception of Butcher, I believe, people who are younger than me. Moreover, Butcher was the one member of Common Objects to appear already in this space, mentioned first with the trio album Exta, and then as the only English improviser headlining a "favorite," The Apophonics On Air. Note how I listened to Exta after hearing John Tilbury in Léandre's Trio on Live at the Ulrichsberger Kaleidophon — so Léandre once again. Indeed, Whitewashed with Lines is rather similar to that album in format, with its two CDs consisting of first a composition (as was Léandre's tentet, Can you hear me?), and then an improvisation. I was immediately taken with the improvisation, itself titled Repose and Vertigo (recorded in 2013), to distinguish it from Rhodri Davies's composition, Cup and Ring (recorded in 2014). It's probably quite pointless, if not detrimental, to obsess over family relations among these musicians, but I was not able to find if Angharad Davies (violin) is related to Rhodri. I also do not know if either is related to the late Hugh Davies, with whom Patterson studied, and who had been e.g. an instrument builder for Stockhausen, a co-founder of Bailey's Music Improvisation Company, etc. (Patterson has also e.g. recorded music by Cage as a percussionist, is involved on many Another Timbre releases, and seems to have spent some time at the University of Texas.) Repose and Vertigo was the second recorded, improvised set by Common Objects, the first being Live in Morden Tower, recorded a few months earlier in Newcastle, and released already in 2013 on Mikroton from Russia. (I probably saw it & ignored it at the time.) It is a trio album without Angharad Davies, three shorter solo tracks followed by a more extended trio performance. Before turning to Whitewashed with Lines more specifically, let me note a few other precedents: The album cover looks a great deal like Spill Plus on Nuscope, and indeed, I can't help but think (in retrospect) that Nuscope was mimicking the typical look of Another Timbre. Although released recently, Spill Plus is an even older recording, and reflects a similar sort of non-abstract "primitive" non-tonality (as I put it when discussing that album in January). There is also Plume on Unsounds, featuring Butcher & Tony Buck, with Mayas on one of the tracks, a track also recorded after Spill Plus. So that is something of the nexus for Repose and Vertigo for me, although Butcher is still the only musician on the album whom I had heard before. I decided to listen on something of a whim, which I do fairly often (in an explicit effort to remain open to possibilities).
As the first CD of the set, I did listen to Cup and Ring first, and it came off as "obviously" composed to me. (The score is graphic, apparently, motivated by the titular & quasi-worldwide style of neolithic petroglyphs.) Indeed, Rhodri Davies seems to be fairly involved in the academic music world in the UK. Anyway, the composition has grown on me a bit, but it was the improvisation that caught my attention: Exta might be a bit of a comparison in the way the sounds combine & evolve, without necessarily being articulated. (However, Exta also involved taking extracts of a much longer free session, so has kind of a peculiar character in that sense — oriented around when Tilbury interjects, i.e. necessarily discretely & outside of that unarticulated evolution.) With Common Objects, the percussive qualities blend with the changing tones, again not unlike Scelsi's use of scraping/percussive mutes during string glissandi. Butcher's background in physics is evident in the way his sounds interface, and I hear a similar sonic approach from the other performers as well: Particular sounds might come into or out of focus, integrate or become separate, not only in a "process" approach — as exemplified by Patterson explicitly playing "processes" in the credits — but in sometimes irreversible ways that might dissipate in percussive tinklings or distant-sounding gongs. There is hence a sort of elemental forcing, conjuring a world of becoming that often seems to elude some superficially similar explorations. (This is an issue that I have previously discussed as a matter of foreground versus background.) I might describe it differently as time itself being created via the musical interaction, rather than the musical interaction marking time. Is anyone really in control of what is happening? No, and in a good way: The quartet has more sonic possibilities, more independent counterpoint, and ultimately more transformative qualities than the trio on Live in Morden Tower. (Ironically, the violin does not add legato, so much as staccato, to warp some terms that might seem out of place here. It also disperses any tendency to "layer" the performance to align with a more traditional wind-strings-percussion trio.) This is one of those albums where the world seems changed after listening: The buzzing resonances, shifting sound masses, chirps, rattling materiality... these are real, physical sounds, even if electrically mediated, and they echo a different world of material possibility. (It would be crazy to call the result neolithic, but I do want to insist that Western tonality is not "natural," and is indeed itself an abstraction. Thinking tonality is not thinking sound.) Are these actually common objects? Maybe not, but their sounds do project a kind of genericity. I find the result captivating, and so perhaps I've finally found a point of connection with the English free improvisation tradition. There is no question that Whitewashed with Lines, for all of its echoes of primitivism, involves mastery of the instruments, common or not. The performers are very much in control of the sounds they are making, in that sense, or at least invoking processes intentionally. (Of course, why are people today so willing to believe that so-called primitive people didn't know what they were doing? But we do? Look around.) Whereas I can all too readily relate to the Repose and Vertigo title, I do wonder why this album needs three titles (plus a band name) for two tracks... a decidedly post-neolithic mystery for a provocative & engaging double album.21 June 2015
Partly on account of feeling some connection with the music on Whitewashed with Lines, and partly as a response to finishing What is familiar?, I went back to listen to about a dozen improvisation CDs from the past couple of years, albums I hadn't intended to revisit at the time, five of them from England. (I listened to the couple of albums with Joe Hertenstein as a sideman, coincidentally right before the new HNH was released, as part of that little "detour" too.) I felt that my intervening experiences had given me some different perspective, and indeed, I think some of the things that I had said (or sometimes only thought) about some of these albums were kind of foolish. (I have also noted from the beginning of this project that I don't want to be afraid of appearing foolish, because that's too restrictive a mode of exploration.) While revisiting these items was generally productive, the particular album that made the biggest impression on me was Compost by the trio (in credited order) of Daniel Thompson (guitar), Alex Ward (clarinet), & Benedict Taylor (viola). As per my introduction to discussing Whitewashed with Lines, I learned of Compost (which is packaged in folded brown paper, with no plastic) from Bruce Gallanter, and discussed it briefly here in April 2013. If you go back and read what I said at the time, I didn't know what to make of the album — the only thing distinctive I could pick out was the live church resonance, and how that gave an almost electroacoustic feel to an acoustic trio — and that's largely because I had no context for it within the domain of English improvisation. In many ways, I continue to have relatively little context, but I did very much enjoy it these two+ years later. So it becomes an "older" album added retroactively to my favorites.
Alex Ward (b.1974) is the most famous member of the trio on Compost, as the youngest member of Bailey's Company, and presumably the musician who drew Bruce's attention. (Ward has also become a guitarist, and can can be heard in a more "rock" vein on e.g. Red Kite on Raw Tonk Records.) Ward is indeed amazing on Compost, with much spontaneous precision & energy. It is violist Benedict Taylor (b.1982) who formed the Cram Records label, inaugurated by this album, and it appears to be mainly he who has forged these ensembles. Daniel Thompson (b.1981) appears to stick to acoustic guitar, although that's not always easy to judge aurally these days. I do think that my original emphasis on the church setting (with its characteristic resonance) had some merit, but I was hesitant (given my context here) to make any pat references to medieval music. Although it would be very easy to note dissimilarities with medieval music, as there are many, including the thematic material per se, this trio adopts a style of close polyphony — a style that makes it ear-catching as contemporary improvisation, and marks a certain similarity to English medieval music: It's multi-threaded, i.e. not single pulsed, nor is there a tendency to contract to a single pulse (as sometimes noted here), even if the individual pacing remains similar throughout, and with all three performers effectively occupying foreground roles simultaneously. (So as opposed to some of my foreground-background discussions focusing on not having enough foreground, here the entire interaction is foregrounded.) Although I have not always been thrilled with contemporary English approaches to medieval music, particularly with the sort of Restoration vocal articulation they have often imposed, there has certainly been a great deal of English activity in medieval music over the years. Undoubtedly these musicians are rather familiar with it, and it shows in some fairly subtle and/or indirect ways. The result has an amazing freshness to it, further underscored by the fact that it was the first time that these three musicians performed together. There is a sort of calm amidst the activity, as well as a consistent pacing in keeping with typical medieval performance. It's quite striking & electric — if I may invoke a word that's supposed to be out of place in acoustic music.
This sort of "chamber" interaction is somewhat evocative of the Jimmy Giuffre Trio, as recently reflected upon here via Spring Rain, and indeed, one could view the clarinet-viola-guitar trio as both a medievalization & contemporization of the clarinet-bass-piano trio. Whereas these are all modern instruments, the greater flexibility of the guitar over the percussive fixed pitches of the piano is amenable to both styles, as is the placement of the instruments in strongly overlapping ranges (i.e. close polyphony with crossing lines). Stark differences between the instruments in the Giuffre Trio become blunted, yield to more similarity, in other words. It's an opposite direction from the characteristic early modern (Baroque) innovations of monody & continuo. To complete one narrative connection I've had to the English scene, such an acoustic trio album can also be compared to those from England by Ingrid Laubrock, Catatumbo (recorded, 2010?) & Haste (recorded, 2011). Those are rattling around my head somewhere.
Coincidentally yet again, I decided to re-feature Compost here only a week or so before a similar trio album appeared on FMR Records, Hunt at the Brook. There are obvious similarities, but also some differences: Hunt at the Brook is a longer, studio album. It also features Tom Jackson on clarinet, rather than Alex Ward. It was strange to me to have this second album appear just as I was trying to decide how to discuss Compost (again), and is part of the reason for the delay: For one thing, as I've also discussed before, and in What is familiar?, I find an implied forcing here: You must pick one. (This is psychological forcing without any actual necessity.) Well, I would pick Compost, but I decided that I do enjoy Hunt at the Brook on its own merit as well. The newer album is more minimalist at times — resulting in a kind of polished, less raw quality analogous to Natura morta's second album, Decay, also on FMR, to pick an example I've raised at least twice before. Hunt at the Brook starts off feeling somewhat nostalgic to me, and that's not really a compliment, but it ends up being more than that. The album evokes something of a Baroque sensibility, by which I don't mean the classic Baroque of Bach, but the English seventeenth century of Jenkins & country house music making. (Again, dissimilar aspects dominate in many senses.) The track titles are also more environmental than that, suggesting a contemporary environmental consciousness, and even evoking e.g. traffic sounds in the music, but it's a sort of consciousness that's infused with awareness of musical styles farther in the past than are often evoked in jazz. I don't ordinarily think of "nostalgia" as a valid approach to history, but these performers succeed in forging a style in that space: Again there is a sense of overlapping, close polyphony in the acoustic domain, here less irruptive. Quick motivic interchanges & small sound inflections can evoke a static sense, etc. The result is a creative tapestry of new & old. (In fact, the effort of writing this entry has caused me to rethink which album I might pick, again if "forced." I'm not sure what has caused this description to seem so awkward still... I thought I had it mostly together when starting to write, but somehow the experience rewrites itself?)
Anyway, such an overtly polyphonic approach to trio interaction differs from superficially similar groups such as Baloni, with their emphasis on note & tone merging into composite sounds (although Baloni does play on separation as well). Per the mention of Giuffre above, the interaction here might be said to be more flexible than on e.g. Geäder, but it's a particular kind of small-scale polyphonic flexibility. These musicians seem to have developed a new style, and likely related albums will continue to appear. (Some similar albums have already appeared on e.g. Cram.) So what is or was it about Derek Bailey? A process of forgetting? Webern style atomisation? Perhaps both of these ideas can be perceived at times in these albums, if only in reflection, although neither seems to be especially crucial for these particular English improvisers, some more than fifty years Bailey's junior. Of course, there's another obvious question as I close this England-centered discussion for now: What other musical scenes am I still (most?) ignoring or disdaining?23 June 2015
I "jumped ahead" to discuss the new HNH, in part because I had been anticipating the album, and thought that I could readily relate to it, but even more so because it fit nicely in the sequence of discussions I was undertaking here at the time. So as I continue to work through what still seems like a very notable simultaneous outpouring of albums in this vague domain of jazz or improvised music, I'm finally getting to discuss some other Clean Feed releases from the same batch. I had recently been remarking on Clean Feed's "conservatism," largely attributing my change in perspective to changes in my own experience as a listener, but perhaps it was partly Clean Feed themselves, as this latest batch of recordings seems far more varied & provocative than other recent batches. I'm pleased by this in a couple of registers: I feel less crazy, and there's more new music to hear! I have not actually listened to the new album by Kris Davis, Save Your Breath yet, as I've been waiting to finish some other writeups here. As I get closer to that, let me share a few thoughts on a couple of other notable (at least to me) releases. As opposed to many Clean Feed albums, such as Davis's, these two come with fairly extensive liner notes. I don't know if that's a trend.
Grand Valis is by a quartet led by Hugo Carvalhais (b.1978). I had heard only parts of Carvalhais's previous albums, but could not resist this distinctive combination of his bass with violin (Dominique Pifarély, from e.g. Marc Ducret's Tower Bridge) & organ (Gabriel Pinto), along with Jeremiah Cymerman on electronic manipulation (and no drums). The sounds & textures are indeed individual & creative, stark and/or repetitive at times, but evoking a new sound world, sometimes a lyrical one. Perhaps Carvalhais's degree in painting is to be credited with part of this "canvas" approach to musical combination, but the result is also framed as a "meditation suite," specifically evoking Philip K. Dick. So there are broad influences coming together to forge something newly coherent. It's almost a dream of a world forming — a time before birth, or at least subject formation — yet attention-seeking beyond any elemental character. (Perhaps this latter impression arises from the use of tonality.) This kind of "dream of before" is further enacted in its own creative temporal staging, involving as it does electronic post-production. It's a very unified & polished album in this sense, despite its novelty.
Coding of Evidentiality by the Dre Hocevar (b.1987; Slovenia, living in New York) Trio features other new names for the Clean Feed catalog, including cellist Lester St. Louis. (Although Clean Feed states that this is his first album, St. Louis already appeared on Jeff Shurdut's The Music of Everything.) Besides Belgian pianist Bram De Looze, with whom I am not otherwise familiar, also appearing is Sam Pluta (of e.g. some Peter Evans groups) on electronics on one track. Here we have yet another rethinking of the piano trio, this time with cello (which seems to be a popular choice lately), and a less traditionally "jazzy" result than Hocevar's first album, Motion in Time (a typical piano trio with bass). Coding of Evidentiality remains rather based in the jazz tradition specifically, though, and indeed Hocevar states that he has been in school (lastly at the "New School"), surrounded by the best teachers, since he was six years old. So he is another highly trained conservatory musician from Europe, like some others I've recently featured here, and has already appeared with many famous older colleagues (although not otherwise on an album, as far as I know). While it seems to me that Hocevar is still working to develop a personal style, he is obviously very talented, and there is much to enjoy about this album: I love the titles, for one. Although the piano can be a bit repetitive or "romantic," there is an interesting open sense of rhythm developed to (at least partly) redefine some classical styles from the inside. As with many recent essays in the piano trio format, there is also a mixture of roles, evoking even more transversality when the electronics get involved on "Critical Discourse Analysis." I look forward to more from Hocevar.24 June 2015
I had no familiarity with Swiss pianist Katharina Weber (b.1958) prior to her new trio album, It Rolls, but was attracted in part by the participation of Fred Frith. Frith has appeared in this space, thus far, only in conjunction with his role on Live at the Metz' Arsenal by the MMM Quartet, an album I continue to find quite compelling. Frith's more recent albums have been duos, or a little farther back, more explicitly rock-oriented. In any case, his comment that Weber is "a new piano icon" drew my attention, on top of his actual participation in the trio. (I haven't found some of the previous all-European Intakt releases to be terribly provocative, so I needed some prodding to hear this. And given my remarks on England, what to make of the relation between music & Swiss politics?) Frith's comment wasn't actually applied to this album, but rather to one of Weber's earlier albums: She has primarily been a classical pianist, and has become increasingly interested in improvisation. She already recorded another trio album (with Barry Guy) devoted to improvising on compositions by György Kurtág, and then a solo album. It Rolls, however, is an all-improvised trio album, so at least in format, perfect for this space. Indeed, more than simply format, I've found it to be quite appealing, a unique & sophisticated combination of ideas, influences, and energy. It's been a very pleasant surprise.
Like the Dre Hocevar album discussed in the previous entry, It Rolls is something of a variation on the piano trio, with Frith's guitar substituted for bass. I keep finding myself thinking of it as a piano trio, in fact, and have to correct. That's not to say that the guitar isn't evident as a guitar (including electrical distortion at times, etc.), but the approach to the genre of piano trio is clearly there. As is the trend, the approach includes playing inside the piano, etc. The possibilities Frith brings on guitar — and the timbre of his playing varies markedly in different parts of the album — bring new ways to match or differentiate these interior & other sounds. (The liner notes describe a "wonderfully ambiguous spectrum of colors.") Swiss drummer Fredy Studer (b.1948) did appear briefly in this space in the context of discussing Hans Koch & hence Koch-Schütz-Studer. He is described as "hard core" in the notes, which I don't really understand, but he contributes a wealth of rhythmic ideas & textures throughout, weaving them into the general foreground-background tapestry. Although the liner notes state that this trio only played together once (live) prior to the studio recording, the result seems very natural & sympathetic. In keeping with playing both inside & outside the piano, It Rolls has something of an inside-outside character too, at least if we consider the various classical (including twentieth century) allusions to be "inside." The tracks vary considerably in length, but the various explorations & allusions don't really respect track boundaries. Rather they appear or play out in different ways at different points, so that e.g. the different techniques Frith employs are not segmented by track. There's also something of a leisurely quality to the album, even with much activity at times, and despite its evocation of "industrial" sounds via various rattles & resonances (from clear ringing to screeching). There are also sophisticated, if usually short-lived, harmonic implications as well as evocations of e.g. Chinese string technique. So the allusions range widely. I've noted in the past that it seems to be difficult to do something really interesting with the piano trio these days, and whereas I still think that's true, many people do seem to be managing, including Weber & her trio on It Rolls.25 June 2015
As noted "way back" on Wednesday, I had yet to listen to Kris Davis's new album, Save Your Breath with the octet Infrasound. Unfortunately, the expectations I had for this album did not help my appreciation, and I should have just listened to it right away. I enjoyed it at first, but kind of got tired of it by the time I'd finished the first hearing. Like her 2011 album Tony Malaby's Novela, Save Your Breath features Davis's arranging for what is essentially a "big band" in the contemporary context. The group of four clarinetists obviously recalls something like James Falzone's The Room Is, supplemented by Davis with organ, her own piano, guitar & drums. The result is six long pieces that often feature smaller sets of players, and generally with what seems to be very clear compositional direction. (The drama of the individual tracks clearly derives from the composed sequence.) There are some interesting textural combinations, and some clever progressions, but it mostly comes off as easy listening music to me. I can literally imagine some of these tracks playing in a supermarket, even if (especially as) parts of it sound like rock music. This album isn't for me, but maybe some people will enjoy it. I'll end by noting the reappearance of "Whirly Swirly" from her trio album, Waiting For You To Grow.28 June 2015
I'm not sure what I expected from Sonic Communion, but it's a quintet album with Joëlle Léandre involved, so I was going to hear it. Also in the quintet, on the French side, is Jean-Luc Cappozzo (who has appeared in this space with the albums Live at Total Meeting & Grey Matter) and Bernard Santacruz. I was not previously familiar with the latter, but he also plays double bass. Sonic Communion is the first document of an ongoing musical exchange between USA (so far, Chicago) & France, and the musicians from Chicago who came to tour France in 2013 (and so, are represented on this document) are Douglas R. Ewart (b.1946, Jamaica) & Michael Zerang. So it's an interesting group, and Ewart really "steals" the show here — perhaps by design, in order to highlight Chicago music for French musicians & audience. I don't hear too much of Léandre, specifically (particularly with the two basses) until the uncredited vocals on the last track, but Ewart is unmistakable right from the start. (Such a collaboration reminds me a bit of 28 Rue Dunois Juillet 1982, as I mentioned in the June 21st entry, albeit there with half English musicians, and of course not oriented toward including the public.) The Bridge (note that the URL is wrong on the album) is supposed to be an ongoing project, alternating visits between the two countries, with Chicago musicians already lined up to visit France again this year. (The web site names Edward Perraud, who has appeared in this space on the album Moon Fish with Jean-Luc Guionnet & Benjamin Duboc, as administrator, but he does not appear on Sonic Communion.) Anyway, although the visiting musicians had two weeks of activities, this is a recording of a single concert in Avignon. There are many fine moments, involving a spiritual sort of atmosphere throughout (framed as sublimated eroticism by the poem in the notes), so it includes sharing at that level. It's often fairly tonal too, again with the idea (presumably) to build bridges. I very much enjoy, e.g. Ewart's emerging flute on track #2, and his combination, I guess playing a didgeridoo, with trumpet & bass on track #4. Although Sonic Communion doesn't come off as a finished product, perhaps for the best in this case, it is quite worthwhile to hear. It will be interesting to hear what else might come of this ongoing project.
Somewhat in this vein, I also want to mention the recent album Pomegranate by a quintet led by Stephen Haynes (b.1955), and dedicated to Bill Dixon. It's an interesting group of musicians, building on Haynes's first (trio) album Parrhesia, which featured a poem by Warren Smith. Pomegranate doesn't include the spoken word, but Smith & Joe Morris return, and are joined by William Parker & Ben Stapp on tuba. It also involves a spiritual atmosphere, perhaps somewhat akin to Parker's playing on Telling Stories (discussed here on June 3rd), and indeed Parker plays such instruments as sintir & shakuhachi, adding variety to the ensemble sound. I particularly enjoy the trumpet & tuba interaction, and think more groups should use the two together. There's also some Asian-style string technique, etc., so a rich variety of sound. Overall, though, there is a lot of repetitive playing to support solos, so I didn't find the interaction among the musicians to be terribly compelling most of the time. Still, whereas Haynes evidently doesn't have Dixon's feel for ensemble structure, he does evoke him well on trumpet.29 June 2015
Just as I was writing, a month ago, that Joe Hertenstein had yet to appear on an album without a bassist, such an album appeared, Past the Future with Blaise Siwula & Carsten Radtke. I was not previously familiar with guitarist Radtke, but I have enjoyed Siwula's horn playing with e.g. Jeff Shurdut and on Tesla Coils. Indeed, Tesla Coils is somewhat similar to Past the Future, in that it's likewise a trio with (electric) guitar, but with electronics instead of drums. The latter is on Siwula's own No Frills Music label, with bright & resonant sound, and is an extension of his already existing Projection:Zero duo with Radtke. Consequently, there is a sense in which Joe is commenting on the activity of the duo, and indeed in which Radtke is often commenting on melodic material introduced by Siwula. The latter, according to the liner notes, constitutes a "kaleidoscope of genres" transcended into a "compositional poem." This is mostly material inspired (so it would seem) by popular or folk music, although it often becomes fragmented in the course of commentary during each freely improvised track. Joe's activity on drums encompasses a variety of sonority, but does tend to remain in the realm of commentary, in what is generally a rather blowing-oriented album. Moreover, I might add, regarding the bass observation, that the guitar does sometimes function exactly as a traditional bass would, although other times it operates more in the melodic (or noise) domain. Past the Future is an enjoyable album with a good sense of energy, even if the trio interaction itself seems rather straightforward in its layering.
Keeping to this theme, Joe didn't mention it to me, but he also appears on Eat the Air by Sean Sonderegger's Magically Inclined. Probably coincidentally, this album relates to Past the Future in that it includes Harvey Valdes, who also appeared on Tesla Coils — and has appeared with Shurdut, as well, on the same album as Sonderegger himself. So there is a bit of circularity to these connections. Eat the Air is on Skirl Records, and features one of their colorful covers, as well as their generally accessible harmonic idioms. Some tracks feature wordless vocals, but most set poems by Joanna Penn Cooper in a sort of Steve Coleman-esque style, with singer Areni Agbabian in the Jen Shyu role. Agbabian is an appealing singer as well, and the various interlocking "Caribbean" rhythms leave much to the drummer, just as they do on Coleman's albums in this style. Joe has a drum solo e.g. to start track #4, and has much activity throughout to support the horns & voice, turning in quite a tour-de-force, even if it's in the context of Sonderegger's composed music. There's a bit of subject displacement from Sonderegger here, which I hear in terms of Shurdut, but beyond the interlocking rhythms, it's mostly straightforward melodic & "sophisticated" twentieth-century classical harmonic material compatible with or in the service of (sometimes likewise dislocated) poetry.
Also appearing recently on Skirl is Pictorial Atlas of Mammals by Simon Jermyn's Trot a Mouse. Besides engaging Ingrid Laubrock, Mat Maneri & Tom Rainey, musicians whose work I often enjoy, Jermyn's own compositions are supplemented by two from John Dowland, giving it a bit of an "early music" slant. Indeed, other textures on the album sometimes project a fairly unified "consort" feel, with straightforward (Romantic) tight harmonies only occasionally breaking into more independence (most conspicuously on track #9). Jermyn's guitar also changes roles from front line to bass, as Radtke does on Past the Future, and the conception supports some rather slow material at times (partly in keeping with the melancholy Dowland influence), in contrast to the nominal implication of an electric rock sonority that can reappear at any moment. Both of these Skirl discs, along with Devin Gray's Relative Resonance, which I heard at the same time, often come off as highly composed.6 July 2015
I actually have an easy answer to my (somewhat rhetorical) question from last month, about what music scenes I am still ignoring: There are many world music styles that feature improvisation, completely (or not so completely these days) independent of music arising from the European or USA tradition. I was already threatening, in May, to include discussions of such material here, and indeed this is what I intend to do. I've posted an update in the world section on this site, and created a new page there for more recent additions. As I say there, I intend to include some further thoughts on releases in that area in this space.
As I had already broached in May, the category "world music," taken as a whole, is already a dubious one. Such a notion might suggest some kind of "borrow something from everyone" style, where e.g. a Chinese string technique sits next to an African rhythm. Indeed, to some degree, this is exactly what we get from contemporary "jazz" albums: Individuals learn various techniques over the years, from a wide variety of sources, and incorporate both techniques & sonic ideas from music they've heard into their improvisations. To do otherwise, that is to learn only from specific sources or to exclude some set of auditory influences, actually requires effort. Of course, it's also true that no one has the same familiarity with or affinity for all music, so different people have different influences. That's fine, and in a sense, it's all world music. However, on this site, I've mostly used the label to indicate traditional styles from different parts of the world, and in that sense, there is no "world music," but rather there is Carnatic music, Persian music, guqin, etc. — and even these can be divided into schools, periods, etc. So whereas, as indicated in the discussions I've written over in the world music section of the site, I don't want to focus on such categories as much here in 2015, I'm also not looking to consider "music" as an undifferentiated mass. (For instance, I saw a call on another site for a "roots music expert" to confirm or discuss some details about some rather different traditions, as if it seems natural on the web for one person to be an expert in various traditions. Perhaps some people are, but that level of experience is not acquired easily.) I want to consider its relations or vectors, so to speak. Such a comment also relates to some of the rather harsh comments I've made regarding "fusion" efforts already in this space: I've met some smaller-scale influences, such as adapting a tune or a string technique into a broader improvisatory canvas, with appreciation, and remark on them often (although not always). However, I've also bristled at some of the more consciously framed "jazz" fusion efforts. I'm not going to attempt to justify my choices in this area as somehow objective, but there are times when I do feel an affinity for the "other" music, and do not feel that it is met by the contemporary effort in turn. This is partly a matter of goals & desires, of course, and in any case, perhaps discussing some albums that fall more clearly within a non-Western tradition will help to set a broader context for such remarks. It will also provide me with some mental space, so to speak, to consider albums that somehow aren't any of the things I just mentioned. What else can be done? I won't promise to be a gentle critic, but I do intend to (continue to) focus discussion on items I actually enjoy, rather than the reverse. So let's make fusion and/or borrowing between traditions a more explicit topic of discussion, particularly within the political & economic context of globalization — but more on that later.
The above comments, as well as those on the new pages in the world music section proper, are coordinated with the appearance of a couple of new albums, so let me discuss those....
Wasla — named simply after a kind of suite once popular in Egypt — is a duo album by Tarek Abdallah (b.1975) & Adel Shams El-Din. Using only 'ud & riqq, it's fairly sparse in texture, in comparison to the large Egyptian ensemble productions of the early twentieth century. (I should also note that, unlike in the jazz space, I have no prejudice against duos in the world music domain. To some degree, I'll take what I can get there, but I've mostly preferred smaller ensembles, due to the clearer individual sounds.) Indeed, this album is something of a revival of that earlier style, which fell out of fashion in the mid-twentieth century, and became confined to academia during the 1970s-90s, from which it made a return to the public ear. Abdallah, working in France, has set out to reinvigorate the style, not simply reconstruct it. So he presents a small-scale instrumental wasla, incorporating asymmetric rhythms from the muwashshah form. The rhythmic facility by the musicians is amazing here, and these odd rhythms would have been much more difficult to execute in the large ensemble settings of a century ago. Let me make a little digression on improvisation, because I'm unsure of the readership for this entry: As is typical of various Arabic suites of this general type, these wasla include specific song arrangements that incorporate some improvisation, as well as more open improvised tracks. In that sense, it is similar (although not in "head" form) to a fairly "inside" jazz album in the way it uses composition & arrangement. Moreover, Abdallah has chosen what he considers to be quintessentially Egyptian modes (maqamat) for the program (and the relationships to the Persian modes can be considered — they are all closely related to Persian modes, of which there are fewer than the Arab). His innovations, then, serve in some sense to forge a new conversation with history, not to recapitulate it. Wasla is an impressive album for technique, but also for this conversation, which is, of course, in part a political conversation. In that sense, it is a living contemporary album, to the same degree that a jazz album using historical Western tonality is contemporary.
Having already mentioned Persian music, the other album to discuss now is Tambour inopiné, by the Ensemble Moshtaq, led by Reza Ghassemi (b.1950, Isfahan), who is also listed as composer. Similar to the comments on improvisation above, there are song arrangements on Tambour inopiné that include improvised accompaniment, as well as tracks more freely improvised within their modes (dastgah-e). As opposed to the high abstraction of Wasla, the album begins by establishing a folksy mood, and branches out from there. Indeed, Ghassemi claims to be seeking the "lost joy" of Persian music — an obviously political reference. Indeed, this politics extends technically into the musical field in Iran, not only in events of the past four decades, but back a century with the establishment of the Radif: The Radif, the semi-official system-repertory of modern Persian classical music, collected a variety of material, while excluding some. (The resulting set of tunes implies improvised elaboration.) Albums from Iran have appeared featuring music from outside the Radif for some time, so that part is not unusual, but Ghassemi makes the different material fit together naturally. (One "folk" addition here is the laleveh flute.) Tambour inopiné features the amazing voice of Sepideh Raissadat — and regular readers (of the world music section) will know that I greatly enjoy some of the Persian (and related) singers — as well as virtuoso technique throughout the ensemble. I have not generally featured ensemble recordings of this sort, largely because the additional performers have tended to play in unison & "muddy" the textures, but here different instruments get to take their own solos, and come off with an independent character (even if they do spend time reflecting back the vocal lines, as e.g. the violin would in a Carnatic vocal performance). The singing engages in a fairly explicit alternation of registers, something I was taught reflected, at least in the Persian ney, different origins: The higher pinched register is called Egyptian, whereas the lower breathy register is called Turkish. (It might be more accurate to call the latter Chinese, but that is not what they say in Iran.) After "retiring" to work in the field of literature for a couple of decades, this is actually Ghassemi's third new album, the second with Raissadat, after 14 Cheerful Pieces. Here we have, again, an album that incorporates multiple traditional or historical contexts into a buoyant contemporary conception. Finally, let me note explicitly that Persian medieval poetry, i.e. that by Rumi et al., continues to have a reputation in the West, in spite of politics, and so here is some music that further connects these eras.
Hopefully, these & future discussions will bring some other influences & connections into the improvised music arena more broadly. That's a big reason I want to start discussing this material here, although I do not know how frequent such discussions will be. Also, as already indicated above, I want to explore the political implications: The albums just discussed sit in highly politicized contexts, particularly from the USA perspective. That's a topic I will explore slowly, perhaps in conjunction with some more extended articles.
A few final comments regarding both of these albums, and more generally: Why are the recording dates so vague? (Especially in the "traditional" arena, I would think that documentation is important.) Is it true that fewer "world traditional" albums are being released these days, or simply that I don't see them? How might I become better informed regarding such album releases?7 July 2015
When reconfiguring my "world music" discussion into this space, I mentioned the possibility of revisiting archival recordings. Indeed, correspondent Rami Bärman in Finland had already motivated me to spend some time listening to some albums by North Indian santur master Shiv Kumar Sharma (b.1938), and these are not new albums. (First, I should step back and say that I'm being very broad in using a term like "archival" here: To be more specific, I mostly listened to recordings from the 90s & 00s. So, call it the archive of the final glory days of CD production. Obviously, there is much older recorded material extant from India, and elsewhere.) I listened to recordings by the esteemed santur player, in particular the Nimbus series, back when I was first studying Hindustani music, circa 1990. However, I was listening very much in the context of Hindustani music per se, and Indian classical music is oriented on vocals. Sharma's achievement has been to adapt the santur, an instrument played by striking strings, to the slurs & ornaments of vocal music. It is not well-suited to this, naturally speaking, so this is the context of his achievement. It also meant that, in studying Hindustani music specifically, his work seemed more like something of a curiosity to me rather than a core articulation of the tradition. That may be true, but today I'd like to offer a few thoughts regarding Sharma's music as fusion, and thereby open other avenues of appreciation.
Sharma's father, Uma Dutt Sharma was from Kashmir, but learned vocals from the Benares Gharana. However, he decided that Shiv Kumar should take up the native "folk" instrument, the santur, after he had learned vocal music & tabla. Of course, the santur is — more or less, pace both some regional adjustments, as well as the Indian music-specific adjustments made by Sharma himself — an Iranian instrument, one of the most prestigious in that tradition. Similar instruments appear in Europe as the cimbalom or hammered dulcimer, and extend as far as China, with the yang qin (foreign zither, signifying its Persian origins). It apparently originated earlier within the boundaries of what would become the Persian Empire (in Babylonia, according to Wikipedia). The instrument itself thus represents something of a diaspora (of music, if not people), centered on the Near East, even if Sharma himself has thoroughly adapted it to Hindustani style. Despite the latter, its (non-exclusive) Persian roots are rather evident at times in his playing, based simply on the character of the instrument itself: Playing some figures in folk songs, or in faster climactic passages, the percussive quality of the instrument emerges clearly from attempts at rendering vocal style, even if the resonances are somewhat different from the Iranian configuration. The santur is, after all, a percussion instrument in a real sense (and ancestor-cousin of the piano). Perhaps I should also note that e.g. the prominent Hindustani sitar has, in name at least, a Persian influence too. In both cases, it is largely native Indian ragas that are played with foreign-influenced technology. (The same is true of the Carnatic violin.) The extended raga presentations of the North may also be influenced by the grand Shash Maqam tradition, but such a history becomes more controversial. We can, however, learn at least some aspects of the music the medieval Sultanates and/or Mughals would have known prior to arriving in North India. (For Western readers, note that e.g. Avicenna was born under Persian rule in the territory of present day Uzbekistan. His father was a governor within what would become present day Afghanistan.)
Regarding Shiv Kumar Sharma, and recorded albums specifically, his discography is vast. I am not sure what to suggest in detail, but I did enjoy listening to his music within a Persian context — a context I did not yet have the first time I heard it. (If I recall correctly, I wrote my first discussion of Persian music in 1992, so these events were not so distant in time, but they had been compartmentalized in my mind.) I might suggest, for instance, listening to Sharma's Divinity at Dawn (Raga Bairagi, recorded in 1993) on Navras Records — and I do have a fondness for Hindustani music of the morning — in succession with Parviz Meshkatian's Dawn (a recording, amazingly from 1982, released in USA in 1996 — how time flies). The album that Rami first mentioned to me was Sympatico, a 2002 recording on Sense World Music: The exposition of Raga Charukeshi (a Carnatic raga, rather than Hindustani, just like his Kirvani on The Inner Path, on the same label, furthering the fusion aspect) is indeed outstanding, and this may be the final recorded performance (I am told) by Kishan Maharaj of Benares Gharana, one of the most widely esteemed tabla players of his generation. Sharma's own contribution is thus fairly secondary to the two gats that make up the bulk of the album. Sharma has also been a generous & tireless teacher, so his influence is likely to appear more before the public eye in years to come.15 July 2015
Rounding out a series of entries involving musical styles beyond what is typically included in "jazz," and marking that the "world music" changes here have already been noticed, I had the chance (this past week) to listen to Utzaka by Rema Hasumi from Japan, on Ruweh Records. Hasumi engaged some well-known New York improvisers for the album: Todd Neufeld, Thomas Morgan, Billy Mintz, & Ben Gerstein — as well as Sergio Krakowski (with whom I was not previously familiar) on various world (i.e. not Japanese) percussion. The idea behind the album was to meet the Japanese Gagaku repertory without taking a Western perspective, and specifically outside of the Western idea of the chromatic scale. Gagaku has generally been regarded as quite dissonant in the West, and hence something of a surprise as ritual music. One current theory regarding its origins is that the repertory formed from the ornaments or passing tones, slowed down, of Chinese ceremonial music of the Tang Dynasty. If true, such a process might be analogized to the formulation of the medieval motet as extracted from the extended & complex cadences (clausulae) of multi-voice organum. In any case, the process might be described as one of distillation, in the case of Gagaku, a distillation of dissonance. What the repertory starts making us wonder, and what Utzaka in particular started making me wonder, was about the nature of dissonance per se. I was surprised by how "tonal" it sounded, and wondered how this could possibly result from taking a non-Western look at Gagaku. (The "New York sound" of many of the players is sometimes palpable, and this lends something of a sense of familiarity in itself.) The featured piano only underscored my confusion, but upon listening to it interspersed with some actual Gagaku music, I realized that it was my very concept of dissonance which was the Western aspect to be disclaimed. There simply isn't a Western concept of dissonance in the various, usually sparse, piano chords & the way the players interact. Or rather, one might say, there is no dissonance, but a group of sounds that are already inherently unified as sounds, as aspects of the world. The distillation of dissonance becomes the freeing of dissonance to be non-dissonant, i.e. removed from the context in which it is dissonant. The music takes on a dramatic quality, almost as if adrift at sea — plus the more specific imagery named in some of the tracks, which at a few points also take on (what is to me) a Chinese feel. Sometimes not a lot happens. Beyond the piano chords setting the scene, Hasumi's voice evokes an overtly dramatic quality: In many ways, her vocal performance is the highlight of the album, with its piercing sense of reality, ending finally with a lullaby. I had originally taken Utzaka to be something of an exploratory effort, and it is indeed searching, but upon further listening, I hear a remarkably mature musical statement.
Of course, Japan is probably the Asian country whose musicians have participated most in the New York (and by extension, US) jazz scene over the years, and various Japanese musicians are found on various albums, "free" & otherwise. These contributions have run the gamut, even with all-Japanese ensembles, from rather sparse piano-based as here, to styles inflecting American popular music, to "noise" per se. So I've been reflecting on Japanese contributions in this space for a while, such as by Tatsuya Nakatani on 3 on a Thin Line, although often without discussing them as Japanese per se.
This also seems like a good place to mention The Road of Hasekura Tsunenaga by Spanish shakuhachi player, Rodrigo Rodríguez (b.1978, Argentina). The album was actually released in 2013, and brought to my attention in late 2014, partly for its "early music" connection. Hasekura Tsunenaga (c.1571-1622) was a Japanese diplomat who made a mission to the Vatican, via Mexico & Spain, from 1613 to 1620. The album depicts some significant events in Spain & Rome, as well as before & after in Japan. The emphasis is very much on the shakuhachi flute, sometimes in duo, only bolstered by harp in a couple of the more "Spanish" pieces. It is thus a depiction of this historical interaction from the Japanese perspective, including classical Honkyoku repertory, and indeed, Rodríguez is formally trained in shakuhachi of the Mu-Ryû school. Although the shakuhachi can be very austere, this is a fascinating album depicting a fascinating historical experience.19 July 2015
After enjoying It Rolls, and seeing Fred Frith's introduction, I decided to have a listen to Radical Empathy, an album improvised in New York (but mixed & mastered in Oakland) by Thollem McDonas, Nels Cline, & Michael Wimberly. This is another piano-guitar-drums album, something I positioned in the earlier discussion as a variant on the piano trio, but here instead of the classical preparations & background of Katharina Weber, we have the West Coast rock & "new age" of Cline & Thollem. (Michael Wimberly has worked with more mainstream jazz musicians, such as Charles Gayle.) I first discussed (in 2012) Thollem (as well as Cline) in this space with The Gowanus Session, a somewhat similar trio with William Parker. The other obvious historical ensemble reference in the present case is the organ trio: Although the word "organ" does not appear for Thollem's instruments, the sorts of "preparations" he is engaging often yield an organ-like sound. Such an evocation also fits Cline's rock background, as the (gospel) organ trio format infused early blues-based rock. Frith notes the internal logic & emergent structures on Radical Empathy, and indeed there are various interesting developments: The performers range from "metal" to ballads, or maybe metal ballads, different instrumental resonances correspond in different ways, and by the last track, we get more of what sounds like bells. The resulting exploration of textures is not unlike Joe Morris's Mess Hall (and their relationship to ostinato is similar). What is the purpose or focus of this exploration? I wrote regarding The Gowanus Session that "for people in a different place, it could be more meaningful," contrasting it to my own response. I have some more specific thoughts on this notion regarding Radical Empathy, an album that evokes "outer space" both with its cover and in its references. I've not gotten into this "space" music much, and I think I can both explain why & note something of its positive basis. Space evocations are clearly gestures toward transcendence, desire pointing away from the reality of life on Earth. I've long considered such gestures to be dangerous distractions, letting people ignore the real conditions of our world. Maybe you see the two views now? For many of the people I've known, space & sci-fi allow them to escape the consequences of their own actions, and live in a fantasyland — a fantasyland that does nothing to improve the world, in my experience, and likely rationalizes profit-seeking behavior. (I can make a similar note about the Kennedy space program specifically: It was intended to draw the nation together on a goal that wasn't war, but whereas drawing people together sounds nice enough, it also reinforced social hierarchy, both implicitly & explicitly. In that sense, it was a distraction.) However, for those who have far too much "reality" already, the closing of possibility is one of the biggest conceptual dangers, and space provides a platform of possibility: Specifically, it yields a way to think a radically different future. (We are regularly & repeatedly told that no other society is possible. Demands for change are met with an absolute denial of possibility, in such corrupt disciplines as economics.) This is Afro-Futurism, epitomized of course by Sun Ra. (On this point, Jeff Shurdut is soon to release his massive 2005 double album, Stargazers featuring Marshall Allen, on his Creative Music for Creative Listening label. That album traverses a similar duality of perspective to the one I'm describing here, underscored by the subtitle "This is the Music of Life," in a direct way.) So I certainly support thought of open possibility, and radical empathy is as good a future as any. The music itself has a therapeutic quality in this sense.
Let me also mention the Chris Pitsiokos Trio's Gordian Twine here, released recently on New Atlantis Records, in particular for the way it also aligns instrumental resonances differently at different times. I discussed Pitsiokos's trio album Maximalism with Weasel Walter back in August of 2013, and noted his rather distinctive technique on alto sax. Gordian Twine (Pitsiokos's 4th album, the others being duos), including Max Johnson & Kevin Shea, two other prominent New York musicians, is more of a composed suite, however. Although the rock influence lurks, the suite evokes ancient Greece in its titles, and shows a creative sense of ensemble interaction. Some of this seems to be generated out of an extended hocket technique, where periods of silence (or rest) for one or two musicians continue to hold structural relevance. This concept drives much of the formal movement, lending it a kind of alternating sonic feel in which solos emerge from & blend back into the trio form. So, whereas there are quick & fractured sax notes, even evoking loud traffic at times, jangling bass strings wedded to bowed harmonics, and a sometimes raucous atmosphere, these techniques are wedded formally to periods of quiet where almost nothing happens. These developments are linked timbrally in the way that the instrumental resonances align or not, and move into different sorts of alignments. It's an interesting concept & exploration, although it does come off here as very composed.
Finally, I also want to mention Lake Monsters, a duo by Sandy Ewen & Henry Kaiser, and the third in the series of duos featuring those musicians & Damon Smith to appear on Balance Point Acoustics, as recorded in November 2013. (I should also note that the Confront label from the UK has just released a duo album, Valle de México, recorded by Smith & Ewen in Mexico in 2012.) Readers will know that I'm not really into duos — the possible interaction styles are simply fewer — and have never managed to really enjoy Henry Kaiser's music — although he seems to enjoy some of the same music I do, so I guess that's our proper relationship. Lake Monsters is another long album, and quite a journey from moment to moment. Are they switching guitars for the different tracks? Anyway, there's a lot happening, and quite a range of sounds & references (surf guitar & Korean sanjo, for instance, plus plenty of Japan-rock). They seem to go ahead & do everything they have a mind to do.20 July 2015
Entropy / Enthalpy (recorded in France in February 2014) is the next album in The Bridge series, as discussed last month around the album Sonic Communion. This next album is on Rogueart (rather than the new label of Sonic Communion), and indeed Alexandre Pierrepont appears to be closely involved with the project: The stylistic priorities & musical combinations fit his label rather well, in any case. Having two bassists for the previous album seemed like something of a curiosity, particularly as Ewart was so prominent, but Entropy / Enthalpy uses at least two basses throughout, and indeed the whole first CD of the double album consists of Benjamin Duboc & Harrison Bankhead with Hamid Drake & Ramon Lopez on drums & percussion — a quartet apparently named The Turbine! For the second CD, Jean-Luc Cappozzo returns (as the only performer on both of these albums) for one track, another is played with Lionel Garcin (with whom I was not otherwise familiar, making his the most engaging track for me — a contribution imitating the harmonics of a bowed bass for much of the first several minutes, before erupting into more classic free blowing & groove) on alto saxophone, and William Parker makes it a trio of bassists for the other two. There is again an emphasis on accessibility, communicative interplay, tonality, groove, etc. The result is an enjoyable double album, but I do confess to being confused by the emphasis on bassists in this ongoing musical exchange between France & the US (mostly Chicago so far). This is jazz as defined by its bass line, as in bebop, then? The approaches to the bass certainly vary, while mostly retaining the accessible quality of the series. The goal here, I guess, is to have the bassists play seamlessly together, channeling some power beyond.26 July 2015
Confront Recordings certainly has an interesting approach to packaging, with their metal trays & plastic-wrapped postcard inserts. (The cases have the air of durability, but I've already had one smashed in transit, and the interior plastic is rather flimsy.) I've listened to a few items since they started appearing, mostly archival, but in keeping with my recent interest in English improvisation, as generated by Whitewashed with lines, I decided to hear a couple of recent releases involving John Butcher. These items might be described as ea or lowercase or the like, i.e. they're improvisational without an orientation toward traditional concepts of melody & harmony. Membrane was recorded last spring, and features a couple of tracks of shifting resonance, investigations of breath & struck or rubbed materials. In some sense, the percussion dominates in that Mark Wastell (who operates Confront) drives the proceedings on amplified tam-tam, and Burkhard Beins combines the resonances of a bass drum with feedback & electronics. (I had heard Beins before in e.g. the recent Traces of Wood, a rather composition-oriented album by Polwechsel, with whom Butcher has also recorded. This was my first encounter with Wastell, at least that I remember.) However, the breath does factor strongly into this interaction, and indeed one might view such an exploration as akin to the Japanese shakuhachi repertory (mentioned here a week ago). In any case, the electronics seem mainly to function to align the volumes/intensities between the different material resonators, without a lot of feedback, in order to explore close interactions of the different resonances themselves. There's a metallic quality that underscores much of this interaction, starting with the tam-tam, serving to structure the contributions of wood & breath. The music might proceed from a quiescent state to a throbbing surge, with some resonances emerging as distinct (countable) beats. In this, it's somewhat slower & less intense than e.g. Five Lines, which is based more on feedback per se via "broken electronics" & mixing boards, as discussed here back in March. Membrane also doesn't have the overt human communication aspect of Butcher's work on e.g. The Apophonics On Air. It's probably more engaging of that part (the part that also apprehends speech, I imagine) of one's listening mind than e.g. Keith Rowe's recent Contour album from Saint Petersburg, though. Membrane thus does have a background quality to it, but draws one's attention explicitly to such background vibrations. It's an exercise for one's attention in that sense, an exercise that may be figured broadly, and never particularly overwhelming in any dimension.
Also recently released on Confront is The Contest of (More) Pleasures, featuring a wind trio that has at least two previous albums: Butcher with Axel Dörner & Xavier Charles. Here the orientation is more exclusively toward winds & breath, obviously, but in terms of exploring the space around the musicians. Previous "Contest of Pleasures" albums intentionally moved between different architectural acoustics, some with weather effects, for different explorations. The trio has thus been rather technical in that sense, but incorporating a variety of individual wind articulations into that exploration. The Contest of (More) Pleasures is the most recent, but not a particularly new recording, made in 2009. In this case, the wind trio is joined in the credits by Laurent Sassi (who also recorded their "architecture" album, Alibi Days) on "phonographies," mixing & diffusion plus Jean-Léon Pallandre on "phonographies" & microphones. The layers of musical production involved are thus more explicit, or at least collapsed into one list of credits. (Yet, Sassi & someone else are also credited separately with making the recording, so I'm still unsure what this means.) This is another album that is more subdued in its tone, i.e. less conversational in its impression than is Whitewashed with lines, often rather quiet or singular, but does explore an interesting path of interaction & resonance for differently articulated breaths. The "scientific" component of both albums ends up making them interesting, but also limits their personal impact. (I am still pondering how to relate to such "impersonal" music. Once one learns it, i.e. hears what is being demonstrated, what is left? This sort of demonstration is also very different live, I should probably add.) The result is raising consciousness in this direct, yet impersonal, sense. The music can thus be considered a significant aspect of the posthuman turn.27 July 2015
I guess I had the impression that Organic Modernism would be the final album of the Daniel Levin Quartet: It was already their sixth album, there hadn't been a new one in at least a few years, and Levin himself seemed to be concentrating on other sorts of musical projects, particularly improvising duos. However, a seventh album, Friction, appeared in the most recent batch of Clean Feed releases — another large batch, right on the heels of the large batch discussed here in June. (Friction was only just recorded in April of this year, so it came before the public rather quickly, at least compared to many releases.) My first impression was that it almost seems like an "introduction" to Organic Modernism, or perhaps even a set of preludes, a more fundamentally gestural approach to some of the busier earlier material. Upon consideration, there's both more gestural & busier material on both albums, so that doesn't make for a great summary, but Friction does often present a more "chiseled" approach, i.e. gestures distilled from (presumptive) layers of activity. Organic Modernism was an album I discussed here back in May of 2011, so not even a year after I started this project. It was a new album at the time, and I was also able to go back & hear Levin's previous work, so that it formed one of the earlier layers of influence for me in the vague contemporary "jazz" (specifically "chamber" jazz) realm. I was undoubtedly attracted not only to the musicians' technique & feel for quartet interaction, but by the sense of classicism in the ensemble formation itself: That attraction elicited a discussion of the "organic modernism" concept as transplanted into the 21st century, rather than from its early 20th century origin specifically in architecture. The transplant notion might have been poorly articulated (by me) at the time, but I think the idea does reflect the reality of new modernist impulses arising from the ecological movement, i.e. a different sort of contemporary organic modernism that seems to fit the music fairly well. This sort of modernist impulse, perhaps (re)invoking the 1960s artistically, is also conveyed in the cover for Friction, and indeed the "clean" sounds of the quartet continue to provide a contrast ("mod," one might say) to the "dirty" rock sounds around which many creative ensembles orient today. (Another Clean Feed album that made a big impression on me at the time, Pool School, might be named as an example of this other side of such a duality.) So, recorded almost exactly five years after Organic Modernism, Friction uses the same basic ensemble, now with Torbjorn Zetterberg (who had improvised with Levin & Ivo Perelman on Soulstorm) on bass: Once again, there are no cymbals or other instruments occupying the high overtones, allowing for a different alignment of pitch areas, focused on the middle registers. The chiseled gestures, while not usually atonal, convey a kind of stripping away to the essence of what the group is about, in some ways similar to e.g. Clarino on Cookbook (with its calm sense of stillness) or Baloni. The stylistic result is unique, however, and one can rather quickly appreciate why Levin (& Wooley & Moran) wanted to return to this project — even, or especially, if they didn't want to return quickly: They have taken a step toward purifying their earlier stylistic impulses. Although (quasi-)tonality often softens the music on Friction a bit, as opposed to the otherwise natural comparison with Webern, there is still a sense of musical economy that involves stripping away superfluous & repetitive elements, and indeed something of the "situatedness" of the music itself, in turn: In other words, if dance is rhythm is repetition is ostinato, then ostinato evokes a sense of place as territory via the repetitive (physical) gesture of dance. In this sense, Friction is very far from "groove" music, and takes on a kind of generic quality that would seem to let it fit anywhere & nowhere at once. As on Organic Modernism, the opening track is very active, setting the stage for what is to come, but then, more minimal music often intervenes, although not exclusively, sometimes pulling down to e.g. improvised duos (in the manner of e.g. Josquin five hundred years ago, where intricate duos might articulate the climactic passages of larger four-part works), serving to articulate something of an album-length form. There's still a fair amount of composed material involved, but Friction does manage to create its own unique utopian (in the literal, theoretical sense) world. Is it (still) also modern, in the sense of contemporary, or in the sense of the twentieth century? I guess that remains to be seen. What's next for our world, particularly for the generic (to which I'll oppose the universal, per Laruelle)?
The mod-rock tension of the 1960s — a tension that played out within jazz as well — does seem to reappear in contemporary music at times, perhaps marking points of nostalgia — or perhaps for other reasons, including dialectic interrogation (i.e. "alternate history" in a Hegelian sense). Samuel Blaser's Spring Rain, discussed here in June, specifically explored some "classicist" jazz of the 60s, as did e.g. James Falzone's Brooklyn lines, Chicago spaces (from 2012), and more recently, there is Falzone's collaboration with Tim Daisy (who was on the former, & also recorded a duo album with Daniel Levin) & Fred Lonberg-Holm, Vox Arcana Caro's Song on Relay Recordings. There Daisy plays the marimba at times, and so I have to wonder, to what extent are these impressions derived from sonorities per se, i.e. the "clean" striking of a mallet versus the "dirty" feedback of electric guitar? The latter might still be chiseled or essentialized, as on Camino Cielo Echo, or it could be more groove or ostinato based, the latter as explored by e.g. Joe Morris. Is an ostinato more aggressive somehow? It does suggest a territory, and not only a timbre. These are only a few, somewhat arbitrary, examples, of course.
So, not only speaking of Morris & ostinato, but also Nate Wooley, we get to hear the latter as a sideman with the former on another Clean Feed album from this recent batch, Ninth Square, on which they form a trio with Evan Parker. As an illustration of a general trend toward musical "polyamory," let me also mention Moran joining Wooley on Battle Pieces (discussed here in April), and note that Joe Morris was actually the first bassist for the Daniel Levin Quartet (presumably in more of a mentor role, at that time). Morris & Wooley had recorded as a duo on Tooth and Nail (2010), in a trio on From the Discrete to the Particular (an album that probably reminds me most of Ninth Square), and yet again in Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten's New York Quartet. Parker appears with Wooley on World of Objects, a recording discussed here in September, and which does have some of the same "swirling" quality as Ninth Square, but takes on a non-repetition-based intensity, in part via post-processing. As far as I could tell, this was the first time (9/14) that Morris & Parker recorded together. Although no priority is given in the credits, and information is generally minimal, I definitely hear Ninth Square as Morris's album: He starts the album playing alone, and the emphasis on swirling ostinato (i.e. repeated figures) reminds me of his style elsewhere. Here, Morris also employs more of a "prepared guitar" extended technique, at times with a kind of blunted-tilted resonance that evokes some of Cage's piano sounds (or maybe even the Indonesian gender), and at others with a sort of "truncated" (to the last part) picking that doesn't quite ring out in Morris's more usual way. The other performers add various extended & non-extended (since melody is not entirely absent) material, sometimes taking their own solos, and at times e.g. it seems as though Parker (I think) is making sounds characteristic of a bowed string. The emphasis on lines (as opposed to harmonies) seems very much like a concern of Morris's, and the various extended effects & alterations of sonority don't really modify the charged underlying impulse or ostinato basis of the music. Since the classic bebop bass is a particular sort of ostinato, such an emphasis can be taken as a link to the jazz tradition in general, and indeed all three performers are known for retaining connections to classic jazz in their playing (rather than adopting the polished modernism of e.g. the Daniel Levin Quartet, or the idioms of other sorts of free styles), and the degree of activity that the ostinato generates — including a few ecstatic passages — underscores such a connection. What I've been calling the "swirling" on Ninth Square maintains something of a unity, so one might compare it with e.g. the close interaction on Hunt at the Brook, which invokes more of a polyphonic (multi-pulse) temporality. Maybe I've said just about enough regarding ostinato for now: Is it about finding a connection to the jazz ethos today? While repetition projects a kind of spatial territory, what then are the politics of ostinato more broadly? Is it about political connection, or something else? I think it's worth asking these questions explicitly.
The other new Clean Feed album that I want to mention is Too Many Continents, by Toronto drummer Nick Fraser, in a trio with Kris Davis & Tony Malaby. This is a production that, strangely, omits all information as to when it was recorded, but Fraser was obviously able to enlist some top players for his leader album debut, playing half improvisations & half his own compositions. The result is an album that covers a broad stylistic range, and although not all of its material is terribly compelling to me personally, I did find Fraser's drumming to be interesting throughout. What might he do in a more specific, or more free, context? He does seem to have developed a personal style in what is (it must be remembered) one of North America's biggest metropolises.
(I was tempted to add some footnotes to this entry, but believe that I'll save some expanded thoughts on some of the topics introduced here for another time. I ask the reader's indulgence in continuing some explorations over multiple weeks or months.)3 August 2015
I was not familiar with Steve Olson previously, but apparently he has already had a fine career as a drummer in Baltimore, and has now released a trio album with Denman Maroney & Oscar Noriega, The Ruthless Shapes of Paradise, recorded in Brooklyn only two months ago (June 2015). As so much good music is released with suspect (or just weird [*]) packaging these days, I want to note that here it's done very well: Sturdy, legible, the CD itself is secure yet easy to take out.... Anyway, the trio opens immediately with an interesting & distinctive sound. There are other enjoyable moments, but it's also a long (seventy minutes) album, and the uniqueness of the textures is exhausted pretty quickly, often falling back onto fairly simple melodies from the horn. Olson says in the liner notes that in the months leading up to the recording, he listened to the music of several prominent twentieth century "classical" composers, but that it was Feldman who really struck him. It seems strange to me that a long-time musician would be discovering Feldman & others in 2015, particularly as Olson says he had been influenced by Rothko "for decades." This confuses me, but maybe this album is a new beginning for Olson, and there are indeed some original textural ideas here. He says that what he enjoys about Feldman's music is the sense of space, and that it reminded him of his youth in Iowa & Kansas. Particularly with Maroney's use of the "hyperpiano," which sets the mood early, the textures & spaces remind me a bit of Maroney with Josh Sinton on Anomonous. Although the latter album sounds more "industrial," and certainly has a sharper edge, it evokes a similar sense of (breath & rattle) spatial exploration.
Speaking of Sinton, as it happened, the same batch of releases at DMG included the album Signal Gain (on OutNow), featuring Sinton in a duo with Dominic Lash, and variously including other musicians on the different improvised tracks: Ingrid Laubrock, Nate Wooley, Kyoko Kitamura, & Alex Ward. Laubrock & Wooley appear often in this space, and I've more recently started appreciating Ward (who mixed the album), in such releases as Compost (which does not have convenient packaging). I was unfamiliar with Kitamura, who vocalizes on one track, and I haven't written much about Lash, who nonetheless has a substantial discography. Anyway, whereas Sinton & Lash form something of a bass duo — that is, Sinton most often plays "amplified contrabass clarinet" — throughout the album, including exclusively on two of the eight tracks, other musicians come & go in various combinations. I found it appealing, although can't really say that it develops a coherent style. In fact, Signal Gain was actually recorded in 2011 (also in Brooklyn), prior to Anomonous, and I can't help but hear Sinton's approach here as a prequel (so to speak) to Anomonous. Although the latter album kind of came out of nowhere for me a couple of years ago, apparently I not only still enjoy it, but hear its echoes elsewhere. On Signal Gain, those echoes come out in shorter tracks of various different characters, rather than the full-length symphonic-industrial sweep of Anomonous.
[*] What with music downloads, and the way the retail industry is changing, I do think that getting creative with packaging can be a good idea. After all, it's an (art or design) object per se. However, I also appreciate the low stress experience of simply popping a CD into the stereo, and low stress packaging helps with that. (And using twenty-first century computer software, such as the various music "managers" & players, is not at all low stress: That stuff gets to be more obnoxious by the day.) Creative packaging can start to seem like a burden, that is, if I want to keep hearing the album! Of course, creativity certainly does not rule out practicality....12 August 2015
Jeff Shurdut continues to make a lot of different music with a lot of different people, and much of that activity finds its way onto record. Jeff is re-launching his Creative Music for Creative Listening label with items from its preliminary launch last year, new items he's only recently recorded, as well as selected albums from his dozens of Ayler & Jazz Tapes releases. (He's even talking about reissuing some items from his old Nolabel label. So yes, Jeff is already relaunching CMCL, and that isn't even the first time he's decided to create his own label.) Not only does Jeff have a lot of ideas, but he gets "out there," and does things, and so creates a lot in response. It's a lot to hear, and beyond that, a lot to take in more generally, but in this entry I am going to focus on his recent House Music Live Off-Broadway album. (I can't even call it his latest album, because he's already sent me Orch-OR, which was recorded this June — but more on that below.) This particular focus is how I'll draw lots, then, so to speak.
The Live Off-Broadway album started life, at least in my experience of it, in the Kitchen Music project: This was the first project to come out of my relatively new performance fellowship offering, and so I've been involved with it in that small way. I liked the Kitchen Music idea, obviously, but it was Jeff's (and the other musicians') doing: I was a person to say yes (as were the other performers, of course), to put up that little promo page, and now to write this. In this space, my intention isn't to defend (or even really to discuss) my fellowship decisions, but rather to talk about music, and in particular, music I especially like or simply find intriguing. Having even a small involvement with the project compromises that intention somewhat, because I start having thoughts & feelings that aren't derived from the result (album) itself. That's one disclaimer that I feel I need to make here, and it's really not so different from a disclaimer on expectations more generally: It's difficult to listen to something without expectations, and it was particularly difficult in this case. Let me just sum up, then: Live Off-Broadway is a weird album, but I like it. And I spent some time trying to separate the latter thought from my expectations — perhaps it was wasted time, I don't know.
Jeff had mentioned the "house music" idea to me before I even had the fellowship operating, so it was an idea he had had for a while. Basically, many of his albums had used the sounds of the outdoor urban environment, but there had been some indoor sounds as well (e.g. wind under the door), and he wanted to explore more of them. I believe that Jeff is still interested in doing other house music — and Jeff loves those double meanings, which is why he enjoys calling the grant from me, "MM&A" (and he would have happily left off the ampersand) — but the kitchen is obviously a room with many sounds, sounds of local production & social activity (as opposed to sounds coming from elsewhere, e.g. over television or from outside). As you can read in his conversation with Jan Ström on the Kitchen Music page, Jeff views his dishwasher as sort of his guru for kitchen sounds. (My own dishwasher is so loud that I don't use it, but it does have some distinctive & varying sounds.) Personally, I have mostly social associations with the kitchen, around cooking & eating, and earlier in my life, around building houses. Jeff reminded me early on that cooking & eating also mean violence & death, so there are layers. That said, Live Off-Broadway doesn't appear to feature either violence or a dishwasher (or if it does, it's subtle). Nor does it feature much overt depiction of sociality: It's a quiet album, where whatever cooking or eating might (metaphorically) occur is rather blunted, transformed, decentered of its animality. Indeed, I'm fairly sure that the album is quieter than an actual commercial kitchen — which this was — in operation, and with much less human language occurring. (The occasional vocals barely emerge from the overall texture.) A fragile ensemble sociality emerges from the solitude of individual improvisatory decisions, then, rather than from any simple depiction or analogy. To return to the issue of expectations, I need to ask (aloud), why am I even listening for the kitchen per se? Is it something an unoriented listener would even pick out? Perhaps not.
One possible way of sorting Jeff's large discography is according to the instrument he plays. The first album that caught my attention was Yad (2012), and there he plays alto saxophone. (I also noticed this album in part because it was recorded at DMG.) The sax plunges Jeff right into the middle of the musical activity, immersed with the other musicians, and that has an impact on the way the ensemble interaction unfolds: I've been emphasizing the immanent-transcendent duality in this space, and in some other writing, and so this kind of immersive perspective appeals to me. A similar perspective is found on his first CMCL albums, what I had called here The Music of Everything — but these two releases are now named The Creative Music For Creative Listening Ensemble (July & August, 2013), and Things (2014). Whereas The Creative Music For Creative Listening Ensemble might be more aggressive than Yad, and more evocative of e.g. alternative rock (as part of its "everything"), Things takes on a smoother & more classical air. All three of these albums employ a prominent violin, one that starts things going aggressively on Yad, evoking a symphonic conception via their instrumentation as well. Indeed, it's hard not to hear Things as a symphony — and the new edit works well in this regard — of both twentieth century classical technique & urban sounds. I described it that way back in September, and I still find it to be one of the most classically balanced of Jeff's albums, with an elegant sweep. (Jeff's sense of symphonic tapestry here might be compared to e.g. The Core Trio on Featuring Matthew Shipp.) A symphony is, in its linguistic origin, a sounding together, a combination, and this is often Jeff's mentality, even if the result doesn't evoke the traditional symphony. His most recently released album on alto sax, although recorded shortly before The Creative Music For Creative Listening Ensemble, is UMBI (April 2013), and there we find Jeff in the mode of "protest music" that shaped a component of his box set on Ayler. It's a loud, energetic quartet album, evoking an Ornette Coleman configuration to some degree, although with Vinnie Paternostro joining Jeff on tenor sax & Moog, rather than trumpet: The opening, aggressively "spacey" Moog scene isn't quite my thing, but the album very much carries the listener along in that transcendent-free way. It's more traditionally jazzy, as is Stargazers (2005), a double album I mentioned last month, in that case with Jeff on keyboards (as, I suppose, Sun Ra). Jeff playing keyboard, or more specifically piano, has been another major thread in his recent music-making. He has also reissued Everybody's Music Orchestra (2007), previously on Ayler, in which he drives a relatively large ensemble from the piano: The piano seems to put Jeff more explicitly in the position of conductor than does the alto. In its relentless drive to incorporate almost everything into itself, Everybody's Music Orchestra has something of the character of Anthony Braxton's Echo Echo Mirror House, with its almost overwhelming overlapping of activity — it's an exhausting album. The Mini-Grand Marching Band (2008), another new issue on CMCL, makes this drive more explicit in the march concept, yet (perhaps paradoxically) softens the result a bit: There are even some identifiable tunes, and Jeff's approach to forward momentum on the piano reminds me a bit of Scelsi in his own piano mode. (I might mention Mahler's marches as well.) Both could be described as symphonic improvisation (and even The Creative Music For Creative Listening Ensemble could be described as a tone poem). So, yes, Jeff can convene an impromptu ensemble and improvise a symphony.
On Live Off-Broadway, however, Jeff returns to playing guitar. This is the instrument on which he discovered his "etuning" concept — basically letting the guitar tune itself to the resonances of the environment, rather than forcing it into some standard tuning — and indeed he's reissued his Etuning album from his Ayler set on CMCL. As per the conversation with Jan Ström, the guitar becomes the point of inflection or circularity for the performance: The guitar is tuned to the environment, which is itself being played musically. There are seven musicians present (plus some tape material by Mr. Dorgon, controlled by Brian Osborne), and all are listed as playing pots & pans. Three are percussionists by profession, Lukas Ligeti & Kevin Shea joining Osborne in that. There are two reed players in Guillermo Gregorio & Marcus Cummins, plus Motoko Shimizu on voice, and of course Jeff on guitar. So it's an unusual ensemble, in part reflecting the percussive capacity of a real commercial kitchen. Indeed, the extended moment on the third track when they coalesce into semi-synchronized metallic chiming might be the most magical sequence on the album: It's unique. Although the resonances might have some superficial resemblance to gamelan, it ends up sounding completely different. These sorts of percussive moments, which come & go throughout the album, also have a bit of similarity to e.g. Pail Bug or Common Objects in the quality of their sounds, but again, I'm grasping for similarities, because Live Off-Broadway sounds like nothing else, including (at least what I've heard) within Jeff's vast output. Allow me to list a few comments from my listening notes, without further context: Work is happening? Ringing overtones, ghostly invocation, resonance of boiling? Dinner conversation with a siren? Rattling breath. Here comes the world & humanity, swelling, subsiding. Skittering chimes, somehow beyond the environment. (I just deleted the rest of those notes as part of writing this entry. I need my own space of creative forgetting.) I listened to it one day alongside a reciprocating saw being operated outside my window — a situation I certainly didn't solicit, but with which I did have to cope. There's no finality to the album, modest clapping aside, but it does leave one listening to the environment, feeling good, and wondering what's next.
Live Off-Broadway doesn't project the overt symphonic tapestry of some of Jeff's other recent albums, but it does involve what I'll call an immanent sense of symphonic time. (We might even declare the symphony, generally, as an act of creating a new or composite temporality.) It's almost mild in its demeanor, yet so different in sound: Just as the album itself challenges subject position in its circularity (i.e., by redoubling the etuning concept), I had difficulty finding a position from which to listen to it. Nothing seemed quite right, but perhaps that's a reflection of my own minor involvement in the project. So as a listener, I'm there, but not there: It somehow demands a "medium" amount of attention. It's quite a sonic experiment in that sense, if I do say so myself, and so ultimately a musical experiment. It surely transcends the kitchen, which is both omnipresent, and in some reciprocal sense, inaudible, because the album presents itself as human music, if rather decentered. (And a kitchen is typically a rather hot room, but here it is cool.) What, then, is the human language involved? Perhaps we should envision Charles Ives' sense of walking down a hallway with different music emerging from each room, but now incorporating the house itself into house music, saturating & dispersing sociality. The human sits alongside the house, in some other unphysical space. Much "architectural" music seems to be about exploring spaces that are mostly empty. Here we have an intimate space that is rather full. The sense of community is thus rather different from what one gets from a cityscape, and so we get some of Jeff's quietest music, evoking an open territory from its close quarters. That opening becomes the space for humanity & its (musical) language within the general realm of sound, a space the listener can occupy only with care.
One aspect of this project that immediately enthused me was Jeff's plan to bring in some different musicians, notably Guillermo Gregorio (b.1941, Argentina) & Lukas Ligeti (b.1965, Austria). Of course, I've also heard various engaging music from Kevin Shea & Brian Osborne, and was happy for their participation as well. I know of Marcus Cummins & Motoko Shimizu only via Jeff, the latter only here (although it appears that she participated in a never-released? album with Jeff & Luther Thomas). All of the musicians do make notable contributions, and so the rather unusual ensemble ends up working well. I had actually mentioned a Chicago quartet album with Gregorio, Sack of Rice, in this space back in 2013, and he has another 2013 release, Window and Doorway, with Steve Swell & Pandelis Karayorgis. The latter is a rather composed, minimalist album featuring drones & a chiseled atonality: It has a poise that I do hear reflected in Live Off-Broadway. Gregorio doesn't appear to have any more recent releases in this general genre, but his training was in architecture, which he has taught, and in fact, his (musical) scores have been presented as visual art in museums. So, appropriately, he brings an architect's sensibility to the house music. Ligeti, son of the famous composer, doesn't have very many recordings in this general genre either, but he did just release a guitar trio album on Tadzik earlier this year, Hypercolor with Eyal Maoz & James Ilgenfritz (the latter having been mentioned multiple times in this space). That album is a mix of skronky rock guitar, incorporating some popular clichés, & ballads, but I do find the drumming to be interesting throughout. Ligeti also released a duo album with Thollem on Leo, Imaginary Images (2014).
As already mentioned, Orch-OR is also appearing soon on CMCL, and it features the Everybody's Music Orchestra, with Jeff on piano again, and with Gregorio & Shea & Cummins returning from Live Off-Broadway. The septet is filled out with horn players Welf Dorr & Nick Gianni & Pete Dragotta. Orch-OR thus features a horn-dominated lineup, with Jeff pushing things from the piano & Shea interjecting. Whereas the type of ensemble is rather different, Orch-OR is likewise rather less urgent structurally, and involves vaguely discursive lines & even harmonies from the winds. In fact, there's a sort of "tonal wheezing" that spews jazzy lines, with perhaps a bit of the echo of banging in a kitchen. Although it doesn't have the overwhelming urgency of some of Jeff's previous improvisations from the piano (or the metaphorical scream, one might say, of some of his sax music), it does involve periodic insistence from the horns, and the reflective sequences continue to generate more activity, until the last one doesn't. (Reflection doesn't usually generate activity per se on Live Off-Broadway. It's more dispersed than that.) It's another interesting album — and perhaps I'll return to it later, but want to finish the present entry now — reminding me just a bit of Boulez's Dérive series, both in the way the lines spin off, and in the subtly maintained background continuity. Jeff's Creative Music for Creative Listening label name (as well as his music itself, of course) reminds me of Roland Barthes' concept of the readerly & writerly text — the latter (which Barthes calls "a perpetual present") beckoning readers themselves to engage in the simultaneous act of creation. Perhaps here we also get an evocation of Jeff as a twenty-first century situationist? (I'm going to ask him this question only after I post it.)
Anyway, I think that's enough to say for now. (Jeff is also in the process of releasing a new series of duo albums, called 10cm, and has already re-released his Ayler album, This is The Music of Life with Luther Thomas, from 2007.) All of these albums will soon be available widely, both via the Naxos Music Library & various online retailers. I'll update the "purchasing information" when I have something more concrete.22 August 2015
FMR Records continues to release albums regularly, and a couple caught my eye (or ear) from the latest batch. Chamber 4 is another quartet with Luís Vicente & the Ceccaldi brothers, after For Sale by Deux Maisons. Actually, Chamber 4 was recorded four days prior to For Sale, also in Lisbon in May 2013, even if it took a few months longer to appear. In this case, instead of including drummer Marco Franco, Chamber 4 appears to have been formed by Portuguese guitarist Marcelo dos Reis (b.1984) — or at least he's the one who does the mixing & mastering. Whereas For Sale presented something of a double duo, Chamber 4 displays a much more integrated sound, with more of a classical orientation. Indeed, it evokes various classical textures, including orchestral textures (facilitated by the multiple instrument families). I particularly enjoy the eerie contrapuntal opening, and the first track is my favorite. From there, we get a more static pieced based on a "harp" ostinato, some rather aggressive Bartokian sonorities, transforming into his "night music" mode, and even evoking Scelsi, before moving more firmly into a melancholy register. The final track, with its slow melody on the strings, gong sounds, and trumpet recitative giving way to sighing voices has a distinctly "new age" feel. In short, it's something of a tour through Western music history, vaguely analogous to the work of e.g. the Jan Klare 1000 on Shoe & elsewhere (although dealing more with colors). The retrospective stance can also be compared to Hunt at the Brook, as can the ensemble constitution itself (almost), but Chamber 4 doesn't emphasize quick, contrapuntal interaction throughout — it's more often atmospheric & haunting. The music is credited to all four performers, which often means that it is improvised, but the transitions between the various scenes are so sophisticated here, it's hard to believe that there wasn't a preconceived plan. Besides the evocation of symphonic textures, and again a bit like Hunt at the Brook, there are themes of trees & wood, and indeed the different material quality of the strings between the violin & cello (steel) & guitar (nylon) seems to play a musical role. There's an overall materiality that's underscored by the guitar preparations (which aren't always present), as well as the percussive quality derived from ostensibly non-percussion instruments. I particularly enjoyed it the first time I heard it.
Another album I want to note from the same batch of releases is Blood Samples by Frode Gjerstad (on clarinet, as well as alto), Roger Turner, and Borre Molstad (tuba). I was attracted to this album, one thirty minute track recorded in Oslo, also in 2013, in part because of the tuba. Whereas Gjerstad & Turner sound very much like themselves, and are in fine form in this high energy, yet fractured, performance, I was unfamiliar with Molstad otherwise, and so can't make a similar claim. There is some interesting material from the tuba, and an effort to make it an equal partner in the trio, but for the most part, it doesn't have the quickness to keep up, at least in the context of this free/rock-inspired wind duo format as supported by drums. Still, as noted, some interesting ideas do emerge in the interaction.
Although it's more composition-oriented than most of what I mention here, as indicated by its subtitle, "contemporary percussion music," I couldn't resist having a listen to Glück, recorded in March & April 2014 by a quintet of percussionists. For one thing, Mikroton Recordings of Moscow has been releasing some interesting material, and I'm starting to pay more attention. For another, Burkhard Beins fronts the ensemble, and I recently discussed his album Membrane with Mark Wastell & John Butcher. The other member of Glück that I recognized is Christian Wolfarth — I had heard him, for instance, with his longstanding "piano trio," WWW on Willisau (on Hat Hut). The other percussionists on Glück are Enrico Malatesta, Michael Vorfeld & Ingar Zach. The style is not unlike Polwechsel, the originally Swiss quartet, since joined by Beins (and, for a time, Butcher): Again, an emphasis on materiality, the sounds of different materials, etc. In this case, the ensemble is all "percussion," so this involves all manner of rubbing, resonances, striking gongs, etc. The title track is by Wolfarth, and I find it quite enjoyable in its episodic form. The second & fourth tracks are by Beins, two parts of a more forceful & forward-directed composition, while the third is by Zach, and is generally quite slow & quiet. The latter fades into the background easily. There are some appealing ideas here, and the all-percussionist format does not seem the least bit limiting.
Also outside my usual emphasis here is Look with thine ears, a solo album by Pascal Niggenkemper on Clean Feed, recorded on unspecified dates during 2014. I relate to the trans-sensory idea, in this case inspired by King Lear, and the album is recorded very closely, so that when the various extended techniques suddenly shift the resonance of the instrument to a different location, it comes through audibly. Moreover, this shifting of where the bass resonates suggests to me more than merely looking with our ears, but also with our sense of touch: It becomes a tactile album in that way, and I'm sure the bass itself feels very distinctive as its resonances shift. There are various "process" ideas along those lines, and a bit like Frantz Loriot's Reflections on an Introspective Path, a range of technique incorporating Scelsi's string ideas. Now that I've heard Niggenkemper play this material so starkly here, I hear it anticipated on e.g. the second HNH. Baloni continues to cultivate somewhat similar material, but it would be interesting to hear Niggenkemper's ideas from Look with thine ears in a different intimate ensemble format, somehow incorporating the close miking & tactile sense. The techniques will likely develop with more interactive dialog.11 September 2015
Ernesto Rodrigues & Creative Sources continue to release albums at a fast pace, and there are four more I want to discuss since the last, long Creative Sources-themed entry in April. (Other recent releases have included solos, duos, orchestras, etc.)
Cloud Voices, recorded in Lisbon in March of this year, was perhaps the most distinctive of the past six months of releases for me. The title references (perhaps) the theme — or half of it — from Clocks and Clouds, an album out of Portugal that made a bit of a splash last year. Cloud Voices, a rather long quartet album at more than an hour, eschews the mechanical (or discrete) while focusing on the cloudy. It might even be said to open with thunder, although the viola-bass-trombone combination, combined with Abdul Moimême on prepared guitar, sticks to mostly acoustic material. (The boundary for a "pickup" isn't clear to me, since a recording inherently involves a microphone.) Whereas Rodrigues's Nor album, recorded in Berlin & featuring half Berlin-based improvisers, might be said to feature some similar sonorities, those sometimes halting & episodic tracks convey more of a human response, if only in protest (of bogus choices). Cloud Voices constructs a different sense of time, which is part of its charm, even if it can seem overly long at times. Indeed, this album leads me to posit time-scale as a basic difference between the generalized "clock" & "cloud" phenomena, with the clock occupying a temporality that makes ready sense at the human perceptual scale. In its exploration of nonlinear process, Cloud Voices also reminds me of Triple Point's Phase/transitions, although there the sound — the immersion, one might say — is more consistent. Although not superficially similar, listening to the two albums together seems to reveal some similar motivations. In the case of Cloud Voices, such exploration leads to more fragile activity, however, as processes struggle to gain momentum. (Perhaps the cloud becomes a social metaphor at that point.)
Surfaces is a quintet album featuring regular Rodrigues collaborators Guilherme Rodrigues on cello, Nuno Torres on alto (also paired with Rodrigues in the Lisbon half of the quartet on Nor), Eduardo Chagas on trombone (also on Cloud Voices, which includes the previously unknown to me João Madeira on bass), and Carlos Santos on computer & synth (who does Creative Sources's recent graphic design): So it's a quintet of players rather close to the elder Rodrigues, and was recorded a mere six days after Cloud Voices, also in Lisbon in March. Surfaces — whose title I don't really understand, given the sound production from volumes & (one-d) strings — projects something of a similar sound world, but here it really pushes forward, rather than evoking the fragility of a cloud. The momentum can be slow & subtle, perhaps largely from the electronics, but inexorable, and becomes both the strength & weakness of the album (at least within its context). The liner notes explicitly invoke the "writerly" text, and there's a kind of Scelsian continuity, perhaps suggesting political emergence: The focus here is on emergence, then, rather than the disavowal of Nor. For all of its sporadic echoing, it comes off as ultimately irresistible.
Creative Sources continues to publish Alexander Frangenheim's music extensively, most recently with Berlin Kinesis, an album by the WTTF Quartet: Philipp Wachsmann (violin), Roger Turner (percussion, also on the recently discussed in this space Blood Samples), Pat Thomas (piano), & Frangenheim. The album, recorded in August 2014, somewhat unusually for Creative Sources, features tracks with titles, and also continues (also true of Cloud Voices) the move to packaging without plastic. (Although I respect the latter, I'm not thrilled with the naked cardboard sleeves when it comes to either convenience or preservation.) The WTTF Quartet is the result of Frangenheim's time in London in the 1990s, and indeed their first & previous album, Gateway '97 (recorded in 1997) was released (for the first time) on Creative Sources in 2013. So this is something of a reunion item, and the English trio of the quartet spent time years ago with Derek Bailey, et al. Compared to the albums Rodrigues creates & typically publishes, Berlin Kinesis features a prominent & fairly traditional piano part, and its discrete character does color the interaction: The album has a distinctly "classical" sound with its typical dodecaphonic licks & string creaking set against insistent chords. It comes off as somewhat industrial (not so unlike Anomonous, although Berlin Kinesis has no horn, and sounds more classical) in its clanks & creaks. The shifting rhythms even become clock-like at times, marking a real dual to Cloud Voices in the music of this very different quartet. I expect this album will please a broader audience, particularly people who enjoy the older English scene.
Exaíphnes (apparently meaning "suddenly") was recorded in Lisbon this past January, and features Aural Terrains label leader Thanos Chrysakis on piano & harp, together with Ernesto Rodrigues, his son Guilherme, Moimême again, and Miguel Mira on bass. It's a short album, clocking in at 27 minutes, and features Chrysakis's classical sense of form, in a three movement work: There are ringing tones, trying to mark time, fading into a mythical past: A booming foghorn yields to jingling, a distant caravan comes closer: Squeaks shudder, buzzes whistle, and the event moves into the past before we ever seem to catch up with it. Exaíphnes thus has a rather distinctive sound for a Rodrigues album, but Chrysakis's sonorities are also given something of the "cloud" treatment. It's an enjoyable, sometimes sudden(?) ride.29 September 2015
I just posted an interview with Jeff Shurdut. We cover a number of topics, so hopefully it'll be interesting reading for others.1 October 2015
I had never heard of Sandra Weiss (Swiss, born in South Africa, studied at Berklee), but decided that I wanted to hear Ramble by the Sandra Weiss Quintet, largely because the quintet includes three fourths of the Carlo Costa Quartet, whose album Sediment from last year I had very much enjoyed. Ramble could have been something entirely different, as far as I knew — and the only prior mention of Sandra Weiss that I could find at the usual improvised sites was in the orchestra on Frantz Loriot's Urban Furrow album — but indeed it has many resemblances to Sediment. In fact, the brief (online) notes for Ramble suggest that it developed from performances of the quintet during Weiss's earlier visits to New York, so even though Ramble was recorded 14 months later, it's unclear in which direction the influence might go — likely both. One thing I've particularly enjoyed about Sediment is how well it zaps earworms, and Ramble is similarly effective, even if the final (and jazziest) track continues to evoke Led Zeppelin's "Ramble On" for me (and my time & place is such that I still hear Led Zeppelin constantly in public spaces — it's inescapable): The other quintet member who was new to me, trumpeter Kenny Warren, has the one traditional solo on that track, and it is subsequently obliterated. Like Sediment, Ramble specifically conjures "processes" with most of its track titles — and of course process music is very much in vogue right now — in this case, not so much water-driven: In the "Transition Suite," diffusion, scattering & dispersion name more general physical mechanisms, for instance (and one can perhaps perceive the intended effect on earworms). These are specific sorts of deconstruction, one might say. However, the most engaging track is perhaps the opening "Water in Tubes," and besides naming water, it suggests Weiss's bassoon, which is in many ways a big tube. (The cover photo of the "organ bicycle" manages to be rather evocative as well, even if we never hear this contraption.) What I find so engaging about Ramble, however, is the polyphony: These processes aren't pared down to some sort of essence, but rather invoke a hectic & highly interactive music: Besides some distinctive bassoon (and Weiss is also often on alto sax), some of the clanking from Costa reminds me a bit of kitchen music, and a suddenly held note by one player might yield a wide variety of other interaction. Although it includes some of the now-standard extended sonorities of e.g. Ernesto Rodrigues's recent Surfaces, thunder & squeaking say, there is a bustling familiarity to the interaction on Ramble that I've found consistently engaging. Even within a heavily populated contemporary genre, it's an impressive & ultimately very musical improvised debut.4 October 2015
Clean Feed seems to have found their album release groove again, and among the recent batch, the most interesting for me was Left Exit by the Scandinavian duo Mr. K (Karl Nyberg & Andreas Winther), joined by Michael Duch (b.1978) & Klaus Holm (b. 1979) to form a quartet at times. It's probably fair to say that I've yet to get a real picture of the Scandinavian scene, although I've certainly mentioned it in this space: There are the well-known & aggressively rhythmic protest styles of Gustafsson, Nilssen-Love, even Gjerstad — the latter featured here in a somewhat more reflective mode on Live Tipple — and the more new age-ish & atmospheric releases on e.g. ECM. I've also featured the Scandinavian quartet album Eye of the Moose, and besides Backer's intriguing vocal technique, that album has the sort of fractured textural density & ensemble interplay that I enjoy. I still think it's a great debut album. Left Exit is also a debut album, and includes some creative ideas of the general "process" sort (as just discussed around Ramble); bassist Duch (who appears to be using his middle name, followed in solidarity by everyone on Left Exit, in order to distinguish himself from the central figure in the Silk Road case) might be the best known player here, having recorded composed music with Rhodri Davies & John Tilbury, and a duo album with Joëlle Léandre. However, the duo of Nyberg & Winther is very much central to the album, having composed much of the music, and framing the basic textural interaction: The other players do seem like invited guests, even in the improvised quartet tracks. As opposed to the Sandra Weiss Quintet, here the musicians pare the "process" style down to its basics much of the time. This approach does yield a Scelsian sense of emergence (another common theme these days), but without the poetic evocations of e.g. Baloni. There's also a sense of limited light coming through in these pieces somehow (perhaps evoking short northern days?). They do a take on gamelan music, for instance, that focuses on timbre & allocates the sounds in different (instrumental) layers than in a traditional ensemble: The result is a strangely minimal shimmering blur, but it's a creative idea. I'm somewhat surprised that Clean Feed took on this rather contemporary album, but there are also some jazz ostinato ideas given similar treatment, although they're generally quiet & not terribly obvious. Mr. K has an interesting & original approach, with a wide variety of influences, and I'd personally like to hear them develop these ideas into more of a fully interactive ensemble context. The minimal approach does make it more accessible, however, I'm sure.5 October 2015
Having just discussed both Ramble & Left Exit, let me discuss Benoit Delbecq's recent 14 rue Paul Fort, Paris & Ink, released respectively in the same label batches as those albums. 14 rue Paul Fort, Paris, on Leo Records, is the earlier recording of the two, and obviously invokes the Jimmy Giuffre Trio in its instrumentation — a French Giuffre trio, as opposed to e.g. the German trio of Geäder. Indeed, this is a "monster" lineup with Joëlle Léandre & François Houle: Houle & Delbecq had appeared together in multiple albums on Songlines, and Houle & Léandre had appeared together on Red Toucan & Ayler, but as far as I could find, this was the first album with Léandre & Delbecq together. (Actually, I see now at the EFI site that those two recorded together, also in 2013, a trio with someone called Carnage The Executioner.) Although I've oriented this entry around Delbecq, I'm interested in most anything Léandre does, so hearing this album was an easy decision. The result is rather easy-going & equality-oriented in its interactions, often rather more melodic & tonal than much of what I feature here. Indeed, there is a distinct post-Romantic vibe, at times suggesting something of a nostalgic mood — a Proustian lost time, perhaps. (In this, it is perhaps comparable to Hunt at the Brook, although the latter is more overtly dynamic.) We get, then, a transformation of Giuffre-an neoclassicism into a strange post-romantic idiom, i.e. an alternate temporality, if not a lost one. (Geäder is more akin to Giuffre in its jazzy neoclassicism, and much more aggressive.) Although a trio such as Baloni engages a similar sense of harmony & interaction at times, e.g. Belleke also has tracks that are more rugged & raw, maybe inhuman. 14 rue Paul Fort, Paris, however, continues to converse within its beautiful twentieth century garden, even as the sun sets on an era.
Ink, recorded last July, and released on Clean Feed, reprises the trio from Delbecq's highly regarded The Sixth Jump from 2010 on Songlines, with Miles Perkin (mentioned here last December in the context of the bass quartet album Rotations) substituting in for the late Jean-Jacques Avenal (1948-2014). The Sixth Jump is one of those albums that had a distinct effect on me rather early in my exploration of this music. In this case, the effect had much to do with how the description of my reaction was received. Whereas I don't think I explained myself all that badly, obviously my knowledge of how people discuss this music, among other things, was lacking: I talked about the other performers seeming incidental to Delbecq, who got to negotiate all the "juicy" commentary in reaction to the rhythm team. Indeed, I can't help but perceive that Delbecq had much more freedom — in his own music, after all — than the others, who were mostly asked to set the scene. That characterization is somewhat less true of Ink, but it's still obviously Delbecq's album. The other major thing I didn't understand about The Sixth Jump is that having Congolese drummer Emile Biayenda involved was a rarity, and indeed I've heard few African drummers in this music in the meantime. So his participation was clearly a feature, and served to make my other (earlier) comments make less sense. Biayenda appears to have more leeway on Ink, and Perkin also has something of an affinity for the African rhythms (as did Avenal). Anyway, Delbecq's continued freedom to comment & negotiate relative to the rest of the trio mirrors, to some extent, the way he negotiates physical obstacles in his piano preparation (although the album also features some dreamy slow movements that don't seem to have much in the way of obstacles). So those aspects fit together. There's also a sort of mathematical-emotional nexus to the negotiations that I find engaging, with doubling & tripling rhythmic insertions handled in a fairly technical yet original way. Delbecq still seems to be in a world of his own sometimes, relative to the rest of the trio, but there's no denying the ready appeal & personality of his piano trio style. (I don't think that reenacting French hegemony, so to speak, sends the political message I want to send in world fusion music, though.)6 October 2015
I've been reluctant to discuss some of the more mainstream releases here, in large part because I just end up feeling grumpy. After all, these albums aren't really made for me anyway, right? I've felt particularly ambivalent on that point regarding Pi, however, since the label began with Henry Threadgill, and has featured various AACM performers that I admire. So maybe their albums are for me? That they record younger musicians seems like a good thing in principle, including that their albums automatically get mainstream press by being on Pi, but I've had an uneasy relationship there too: Some of these albums just don't seem like finished products, and even those that do in some sense, I wonder what the point is. I guess one can retort that the point is music for the sake of music. Where's the social consciousness, though, other than some abstract support of the arts? (I suppose there's a bit of "diversity & inclusion" going on too, which is an approach that explicitly keeps fundamental social structures intact.) Are we trying to prove that "our economic system" can support musicians making creative music? That does need proving — it certainly does beyond a small handful of people (since that's how things work here), but that's not really something Pi itself can address (although the various granting institutions involved with their albums could do more in that direction). Anyway, with or despite all of that, I want to say a few things more specifically about Vista Accumulation, the new double album by pianist Matt Mitchell.
I skipped Mitchell's first leader album, a duet with Ches Smith based on etudes Mitchell had created for himself, but had heard him on both Alloy & Blue Dialect (along with Tyshawn Sorey), as discussed here. Going well beyond some personal etudes, Vista Accumulation is a massive album (about a hundred minutes long), and utilizes a prototypical jazz quartet — horn, piano, string bass, drums — or what we'd call in a different context, a broken consort. It's also fair to say that, as opposed to some of my criticism noted above, it's "a finished product": It's basically a series of symphonic poems for those reduced forces, integrating a wide variety of musical allusions into a unified tapestry of post-romantic harmonies. Given the quantity of allusions, which include both classical & popular music, and the rather seamless integration, I found Vista Accumulation exhausting to hear: That reaction fits the title, and would undoubtedly mellow with subsequent hearings. The harmonic style — which stays rigorously within the traditional European 12-tone scale, i.e. no "funny business" with what's a note, etc. — reminds me a bit of Malcolm Arnold with The Moody Blues, and indeed the later twentieth century English symphonists in general, in its extended harmony with modal coloring. As opposed to The Moody Blues use of orchestra, however, the different influences are much more integrated on Vista Accumulation, and the ensemble itself remains the jazz quartet, rather than an alternating style (including jazz "alternation" via solos). So I want to emphasize that the music can readily be heard as "tone poems" for jazz quartet, and that within that heading, the pieces feature an impressive economy of forces projecting some rather dense, modally-inflected music. (There is a lot of chordal thinking, in the post-romantic mode.) So I think I've already indicated what makes the music appealing, and why: It integrates many musical (cultural) references, and does so with an impressive technique, and without rough edges. It takes postmodern pastiche to another level of mastery, but what does integrating cultural references get you? You know what else integrates a lot of cultural references? The inane TV sitcom, Family Guy. These kinds of efforts are basically affirmative of the status quo — although, again, one might cite "diversity & inclusion." Still, it's a lot of modernist nostalgia with no critique: In fact, the last track, called "The Damaged Center" (wow!), even starts explicitly with classic jazz, i.e. critique, only to integrate it into a similar symphonic tapestry, i.e. inclusion. Hurray, no more racism! In other words, the album comes off as pro-establishment (imperializing) music, and aggressively so.23 October 2015
I wanted to make a note of Four Girls, a more popularly inflected album than I often mention here, recently released on Umlaut Records by the European quartet Peeping Tom, fronted by Berlin trumpeter Axel Dörner. The quartet is configured like the classic Ornette Coleman Quartet, and applies a variety of postmodern musical procedures to tunes or material from popular culture. The latter description could be applied to classic jazz itself, if one substitutes "modern" for postmodern, and indeed Four Girls has a similar level of density — meaning a similar amount of activity — and does not eschew ostinato (a technique critical to the development of bebop) as a valid musical procedure, even as it also includes extended techniques in the squeak & squawk mold. In its use of popular material, and variety & density of procedure, Four Girls might be compared to Left Exit by Mr. K, as discussed here earlier this month, or indeed some of Mostly Other People Do The Killing's albums. Somewhat like Peter Evans, formerly of the latter band, Dörner is known for a "deconstructive" approach, in his case, immanence-based. On Four Girls, again somewhat like Left Exit, one can hear the deconstructed timbres of "alternative" rock, for instance, but combined with other procedures to form a sound that seems unique to Peeping Tom: There is excellent, but not intimidating focus, and variations in tension derived from popular genres. The result is an interesting approach to polyphony, or one might say, musical simultaneity, balanced between the extended techniques associated with deconstruction & musical procedures (such as ostinato) that invoke continuity. Most, or perhaps all, of the tracks are compositions, so the album has a level of spontaneity typical of traditional jazz "head" technique, and gets to be a bit repetitive at times, but I enjoyed hearing Dörner & his fellow musicians in this very different setting.24 October 2015
Anomic Aphasia, an hour-plus album recorded in New York in 2013, and released on Slam Productions, features guitarist Han-earl Park in two overlapping trios. The first, named Eris 136199, includes guitarist Nick Didkovsky & saxophone player Catherine Sikora, while the second (with no name) includes Sikora with Josh Sinton on bass clarinet and baritone sax. I noticed the album in part due to Sinton, and indeed it has some of the "industrial" quality — together with a similar name — to his Anomonous. Perhaps in keeping with his strange "eris" ensemble name, Park has also developed a machine improviser that participates on two tracks: It makes suggestions to expand upon improvisational strategies, according to "tactical macros," but a musician must accept the suggestion or not. The result is a "noise" (or "organ?") part, I think (if I am hearing what is what), that is something of a timbral extension of the electric guitar, and expands the pallet. Compared to Phase/transitions, another album involving both a machine improviser and some similar sonorities, Anomic Aphasia is not as immersive: The sounds remain more fractured, despite their relatively high density, and usually involve variations on short figures, in an approach somewhat evocative of Feldman, but without projecting a layered rhythmic tapestry. The quick & fractured interplay reminds me a bit of Ewen / Smith / Walter. The last track returns to the two-guitar trio, and takes on an air of rock nostalgia. It's a somewhat exhausting album, particularly due to its fast exchanges, but features quite a few worthwhile ideas. None of it really calls out to me on the personal level — I find the dialog to be kind of repetitive with its narrow temporal interplay — but these are some interesting directions, and I took some time listening to Anomic Aphasia. I also enjoyed the mock music survey that makes up the interior of the liner notes (is that based on something in particular?): The handwritten additions to the latter also imply expanding (improvisational) strategies.28 October 2015
I first heard Portuguese acoustic guitarist Marcelo dos Reis on Chamber 4, an album that seems to be getting more attention already, and which was discussed here in September as itself something of a followup to For Sale, discussed in April. Dos Reis also started his own label, Cipsela Records, earlier in the year, and another quartet album, Flower Stalk was one of its first releases. The latter actually has no musicians in common with For Sale, and was recorded in Lisbon a year before the other two albums. So, in some sense, it's more of an introduction. Dos Reis leads the Open Field string trio with José Miguel Pereira (double bass) & João Camões (viola), which is joined on Flower Stalk by Chicago pianist Burton Greene (b.1937) in a cross-generation collaboration. It's an immediately appealing album, and I was particularly struck by violist Camões (who also plays the double reed "mey" on the last track), whom I hadn't heard previously & whose playing reminds me a bit of Portuguese free music icon Carlos Zingaro. Flower Stalk comes off as a group conversation, with many of its most appealing moments being in lengthy solos — Greene plays solo for an entire track, for instance — while the other musicians wait or provide subtle accompaniment. They do exchange some shorter phrases at times, and play march-like unisons in the final (more folksy) track, but it's not the sort of ensemble interaction I've come to prioritize here. Still, there are many enjoyable ideas, and it will be exciting to hear more from this growing (to my perspective, anyway) generation of Portuguese improvisers.9 November 2015
Since early in my exploration of contemporary improvisation, I've been focusing on interesting ensemble interaction, for at least some (possibly arbitrary) values of interesting. Such a focus has led me to eschew solos & duos, for instance, and increasingly to prioritize improvised interactions: I continue to discuss various composed music here, but that's also been figured against an immanent-transcendent duality, and basically a consideration of how or where (and for what purpose) musical structures arise. I haven't claimed — or thought — that compelling interactions can arise only from improvisation, largely because improvisation requires a context, and by the time I hear it, has been "staged" (which one might call composed, in some sense) to a great degree, and correspondingly because composition can create different contexts or stages for improvised interaction. Moreover, since my interest in improvised musical interaction mirrors my interest in improvised life interaction, such a tension between improvisation & composition (which is often recapitulated in naked terms, i.e. simply juxtaposed as such) reflects the vagaries of self-formation, the subconscious, etc. In other words, even when we believe that we're acting entirely of our own accord, there are various influences of which we might be more or less aware. So what sorts of spontaneous personal interactions are "interesting?" That's been a topic to explore in a variety of registers, including musically here.
A recent trio album that furthers such an exploration of improvised musical interaction is Interstices, fronted by Thomas Heberer on Nuscope, with Achim Kaufmann & Ken Filiano. Given the personnel, Interstices presents some obvious points of comparison with other albums discussed here: Geäder featuring Kaufmann has been a favorite since it came to my attention late last year, and indeed that style of chamber interaction — with both Interstices & Geäder using a no-drums ensemble, the latter that of the classic Jimmy Giuffre trio — is a ready reference point, particularly in Kaufmann's piano playing: I continue to question the pitch limitations of the piano, and just how engaging it can be given its lack of flexibility, yet musicians continue to find ways to explore. Particularly with Interstices, an album recorded at Firehouse 12 earlier this year, the limitations of the piano itself serve to create a physical perspective from which to interact musically. Very much in contrast is the technical capacity of Heberer's trumpets & cornet, which often soar over the texture, interrogating their own sense of staccato & legato microtonality. Of course, I just mentioned Heberer on account of his participation in the second HNH, and as he makes his second appearance in this space this year, his personal style continues to be distinctive. Interstices, which also includes a composition each by Kaufmann & Filiano, along with five collective improvisations, illustrates two of Heberer's "cookbook" compositions as well, a form of composing that has proven quite open to spontaneous & relaxed interaction, as heard on e.g. the Clarino Cookbook album. (I find that album to be rather freeing, mentally, although I'm not always calm enough to listen.) Heberer & Kaufmann also released a duo album recently, Knoten (recorded in 2011) on Red Toucan, which likewise features a variety of different tracks illustrating different concerns & characters, and have even known each other since college. They've both known Filiano since the 1980s in Köln too, and even if there have been few albums illustrating their interaction, that history likely contributes to the charged yet relaxed mood. This is actually the first I've mentioned Ken Filiano (b.1952) in this space, although he was the bassist on Bill Dixon's Tapestries album (surely a classic), and also spent some time playing in Joe Hertenstein's Future Drone NYC trio — so there are multiple connections. Whereas the horn often stands out above the texture (of the recorded sound, anyway), the quieter bass can be the last instrument heard. However, it is the technical differences among the instruments that produce the character of the ensemble interaction on Interstices: The very different tendencies of the physical instruments are given free individual expression, both in their characteristic motions & sonorities, and into some extended technique. (Piano & bass are both "prepared" at times, for instance, but rarely very percussive.) The three musicians thus occupy rather different "spaces" within the trio, such that they can all be expressing themselves simultaneously & independently, while also listening & reflecting on material. When material is borrowed from one performer by another, it sounds very different according to the inherent characteristics (or limitations) of the instrument. So whereas — not so unlike Cookbook — it took me a while to really open up & listen to this interaction, I find it quite freeing. It generates its own, multiple sense of space: Such a generation of space from different angles, space that specifically accommodates & respects its inhabitant, is exactly the kind of personal interaction I find appealing out in the world: Extreme physical differences come together to forge not only something more, or not even something more in the additive sense, but rather respectful mutual freedom of expression without imposed roles. (One could describe the roles as emerging immanently from the nature of the instruments. While not a novel idea, such emergence is especially believable here.) Whereas Interstices can be a bit sparse at times, in keeping with its "interstitial" sense of space, the world it opens becomes increasingly lively & compelling.
Ken Filiano also appears on The Fictive Five (recorded in New York last December), a new album on Tadzik by Larry Ochs. The music is all rather composed (by Ochs), and reminds me a bit of Ken Vandermark's work with "Made to Break," i.e. forges a style in which individual pieces might be quite long, and go through an unpredictable sequence of moods & influences. (The overall style then, as what one might call a structural form of postmodern collage, is about transforming musical elements on the fly, such that a figure that played one role in one idiom is seamlessly performing another role in another idiom. Some musicians have called such ideas modular.) It's a boisterous & enjoyable album, and I would imagine that navigating the changes is fun for the musicians. In any case, Ochs uses a quintet with two basses, such that Filiano plays alongside Pascal Niggenkemper, further underlining connections among the musicians above.
As long as I'm writing about bassists, let me also mention two new releases by Damon Smith on his Balance Point Acoustics label: A Place Meant for Birds (recorded in 2013 in Albuquerque) is a followup album to Desert Sweets (2002) by Smith with Swedish horn player Biggi Vinkeloe & New Mexican Mark Weaver on tuba & didgeridoo. (I had heard Vinkeloe on something from DMG, although I've forgotten what, but Weaver was previously unknown to me.) I've had a bit of a soft spot for tuba, and was also intrigued by the nativist connotations of the album (the cover depicts a cowboy with wings, among other things), but didn't find it speaking to me all that much. I enjoyed Vinkeloe more playing flute, but somehow the jazzy sax riffs just didn't satisfy me, and the poem track is more of a recitation — not much ensemble interaction there, but rather accompaniment. Anyway, it's something different. Pulled from deeper in Smith's archive is Burns Longer (recorded in 2008 in Belgium), a live trio album fronted by Fred Van Hove with Peter Jacquemyn as another bassist. It's a long album that reminds me somewhat of Pail Bug, but there's also a lot of post-romantic rambling on the piano, which largely retains the lead role. I can't get into it in a sustained way, although I thought the brief section with accordion was interesting. Still, it was enjoyable enough on first hearing. (And many listeners are probably more open to the piano limitations than I am.) I'm very much interested in what Smith will do going forward, as e.g. his North of Blanco album (with Jaap Blonk) is very distinctive, and of course Spill Plus was the release on the Texas-based Nuscope immediately prior to Interstices.15 November 2015
When it comes to "interesting" ensemble interaction, and in particular, independent & simultaneous expression & interaction, the Tom Rainey Trio made quite an early impression on me with Pool School. In keeping with my discussions earlier this year regarding my own history of listening, Pool School places me in a strange position relative to my own preferences: When I first heard it, it sounded very unusual to me, but my own background was so limited that I had no real way to contextualize its appeal. Now that the trio has released its third album, Hotel Grief (recorded live in New York in December 2013, by Amandine Pras as part of doctoral research on free improvisation), the history complicates my ongoing appraisal: But whereas personal aesthetic narrative is a complication, I certainly do not mean to characterize it as negative: Obviously Pool School had a big impact on me, but the question now is how to compare its relative novelty with the perceived non-novelty of Hotel Grief, when much of that initial novelty arose from lack of experience more broadly. I continue to hear Pool School as illustrating a highly engaging & creative sense of trio interaction, in which the musicians operate somewhat independently & in their own distinctive instrumental-technical domains, yet with respect & communication. Pool School also went to press very quickly, appearing only a couple of months after it was recorded in 2010. With their second album, Camino Cielo Echo (recorded not so long afterward, in May 2011, also in studio — and as quite a lengthy album), what had seemed to be a rather spontaneous style became more formalized: I called it "more stiff" at the time, and Camino Cielo Echo is also the trio's only album to feature attributed compositions. (In retrospect, whether anything changed between that album & Pool School in regard to the creative process is unclear, but the way it was documented was different.) So whereas Pool School very much had that "diving into the deep end" character for me, in part for personal reasons as discussed, Camino Cielo Echo seemed more formalized: Yet, it also remains compelling in its further exploration of styles of interaction between the musicians, particularly more relaxed interactions, even as the separate domains for the different instruments seemed to become more rigidly defined. Hotel Grief comes a few years later, after regular concerts & tours by the trio, a third album that is also their first live album. (Given the remarks on doctoral research, it's unclear what actually motivated the release.) In any case, the instrumental roles seem far more typical, and the spontaneity much less: I get the impression of listening to a variant on a fairly conventional sax trio at times. (Indeed the extent to which Laubrock comes off as the leader on this album is surprising.) The sonorities used were mostly developed on the earlier albums (although there are a couple of short drum-guitar interactions that seem a little different, plus some taps at the end), and there are more conventional solos & taking turns, rather than fluid roles. (Obviously, taking turns as a model of social behavior has its place, but I personally find simultaneous expression to be more exciting, both in music & in life.) The result is a yet more accessible album, so that's likely a positive for many potential listeners, but the previous exploratory character of the trio seems to have been transplanted (as track #4's botany title might suggest) into an established style. I don't think I'm fooling myself in this assessment, and it's a style I do still enjoy, even if the polyphony is rather less taut, and even if it mostly seems to evoke the (not very distant) past. The whole approach seems more consciously individualized & patient, perhaps more in keeping with a traditional jazz context. Such normalization might even be taken as an achievement in itself.
I recently had a chance to listen to Princess Izumrud, a 2014 release on Fancy Music (recorded in Moscow in 2013) by the trio Metro 3, based on some recommendations by Bruce at DMG. I've decided to mention it here, because the trumpet, guitar & drums trio of Metro 3 — whose website describes them as an "improv, noise, minimalism trio" — reminds me of the Tom Rainey trio sonically. Their sound evokes post-rock at times, together with something of an ambient slant, and seems to take a similar approach to simultaneous ensemble interaction. In this case, much of the energy on the two long (interspersed with three short) tracks come from repetitive (ostinato) arpeggios, which conjure a bit of an Eastern aura at times, juxtaposed with a mostly rather Western orientation. Princess Izumrud is well worth a listen, and leaves me wondering about other music in Russia & Eastern Europe more generally.
Finally, as long as I'm discussing third albums by trios — and I'll note that Geäder is actually a fourth album by a trio, albeit one that manages to seem even more intense somehow — I should mention Ripples, the (also live, recorded in Berlin in 2013) vinyl release by Baloni. Because of its vinyl "barrier," I didn't have the opportunity to hear it until recently, but want to mention that it continues many of Baloni's experiments in simultaneous interaction, often seemingly from a "process" perspective. In this case, perhaps in keeping with the LP format, and as opposed to the CD albums, there are only four (longish) tracks: I particularly enjoyed the opening, which is the longest, for its gritty, almost Scelsian drama. Other pieces come off more as tone poems, with more variation in style & mood within one movement than on their earlier albums. The trio continues to evolve timbrally as well, incorporating more percussive whacks & twangs, even if there are fewer distinct ideas articulated on Ripples overall. (I still don't appreciate the vinyl trend, but I do accept the reasons it exists.) So what to make of these "third album" trends? I'll decline to posit anything universal.16 November 2015
After a slow start to the year, Clean Feed is in high production, with another eight releases. Half of them are solos or duos, but there are a couple of albums that jumped out at me to discuss, in part because they seem like departures for the label, which appears to be consciously pushing its own boundaries.
Bury My Heart, by the Richmond Virginia-based Scott Clark 4tet, is already attracting attention. Whereas it's a very accessible album — i.e. it's easy to follow, despite its novel combination of influences — it still warrants some thoughts here. I've wondered about Native American influences on "jazz" since early in this project. A problem with that wondering is that it doesn't really go anywhere: Native American genocide & cultural suppression has meant that there's little real information on the topic. Whereas the recent fad for genetic testing has provided something of a picture of the remaining biological connections to pre-Columbian Americans, and that includes connections to many African-Americans according to anecdotes & news stories, I certainly don't want to jump on the corresponding bandwagon for biological reductionism. Whether so-and-so has native blood — and Scott Clark, who "looks white," does identify that way — is secondary to cultural transmission: What is preserved of native music? What sort of impact did it have on early jazz? (I continue to believe that there must have been an impact, although perhaps we'll never know details.) In some cases, that might simply mean that someone heard something, and I think it's fair to ask what cultural appropriation means when the culture being appropriated was already largely destroyed.[1] I don't mean to imply an easy answer, and in any case, Clark & his group are attempting to revive that culture in a jazz context. Bury My Heart is overtly nativist with its titles, as well as its stories of American history (which can be found on Clark's website). I find the resulting music fairly theatrical: Indeed, some of it sounds as though it could be from the soundtrack to a classic Western.[2] It has the character, moreover, of "protest music," which has been an aspect of both jazz & rock, and so is very American.[3] In that vein, Clark's quartet, as do so many others these days, has the same configuration as the classic Ornette Coleman Quartet — and so I guess I'll use that opening (which I hope isn't disrespectful) to wonder about native influence there. Whereas there's e.g. more pentatonic material than is typical on a jazz album, and that appears to be motivated by native practice, the string bass is definitely not a native instrument. Yet, the bass solos have some of the most interesting instrumental technique on the album.[4] The trumpet is probably the most evocative of those old Westerns, but so are the drums at times: There's a "native" slant there, which in practice (at least here) often means rather simple rhythms with a big sound. Harmonic progressions also tend toward the straightforward, but do combine horn sonorities in interesting ways at times (often in unison, almost like an organ). Are these really "the rawest sounds," as the notes suggest? I don't know about that, but I welcome more explicit exploration of Native American style. Where is the USA record label to do it? What would a sonic update for 2015 be like?
In a completely different direction is Di Lontan, by a group called Powertrio, which is Eduardo Raon (harp), Joana Sá (piano), and Luís José Martins (guitar) — with the performers also credited with electronics & idiophones. (Powertrio's first recording, from 2008, is on Creative Sources, but I haven't heard it: What We See While We Walk And What We Walk While Thinking.) Like Bury My Heart, Di Lontan contains no recording date, although it does say it was recorded in Lisbon: Is this music produced in layers over time? I don't know. In any case, it's rather minimalist, with isorhythms, ostinati, arpeggios, etc. It reminds me a bit of some of the minimalist post-rock one can hear on e.g. Cuneiform, and is a joint release for Clean Feed with Shhpuma, marking something of an entry for them into this other genre — whatever it is. The interest to Di Lontan isn't so much in drones or in continuity between styles — it doesn't consciously move through a series of styles like e.g. The Necks — but in the different percussive attacks & decays of the string instruments. Although it slows down at times, the various tinkling & squeaks can be lively, and there are often many individual notes being manipulated at once. I enjoy the more "grating" articulations, reminding me somewhat of Repose and vertigo (which has other dimensions), but the more crystalline plucking also appeals. I wouldn't call the sound "emergent," and it can be a bit repetitive at times (with perhaps an "emergent pattern"), but I found listening to Di Lontan to be mentally refreshing. So that's always welcome.
[1] I should also note that Native American culture was never monolithic, and I don't mean to suggest that it was. Moreover, not only have some tribes maintained identity & continuity to pre-Columbian times, but various tribes have released music albums. I saw & heard a fair number of those releases circa twenty years ago, but the flow seems to have slowed considerably. (I guess there was limited interest?) Some seemed to be based more firmly on tradition, and some seemed more speculative, even if produced by people who identify with that tribe today. I feel as though I'm rambling on this point a bit, but I've yet to see any real analysis of native impact on jazz or other modern forms, and I very much expected that I would by now. So, basically, I'm writing from ignorance, and continuing to wonder who knows what. I feel as though it's important to ask, and I keep thinking that someone will show up & set me straight.
[2] How authentic was the music in the old Westerns? Not at all? Very? I don't know the answer to that, but they also represent some sort of "documentation," for better or worse, from the first half of the twentieth century. (For context, I should note that although I'm not a movie buff at all, I've seen e.g. classic movie scenes that were supposed to include African drumming, but one actually hears Indian drumming. Asian Indian, I mean. So I don't know about popular filmmakers and musical documentary.) Even if the film music has some basis in native traditions, it's still in a very specific context, usually a traumatic context, and also had to fit with what viewers would expect or accept.
[3] In contrast, I wonder about "native" Western sounds on e.g. Hotel Grief, with its surf guitar & desert landscapes, to pick an album I only recently discussed. (I hope it's obvious that the two albums sound very different.)
[4] I don't want to imply that a "native" jazz album needs to stick to native instruments — which would have been winds & percussion. After all, it's been centuries. If Italian food can be associated with tomatoes, or Asian styles with hot peppers, Americans can play string bass. And they do.17 November 2015
To favorite recordings list.
To early music thoughts.© 2010-15 Todd M. McComb

subset: commoncrawl