Aus

Live in Nickelsdorf
Jazzwerkstatt JW 051

Dörner/Schröder/Thomas/Steidle

Das Treffen

Jazzwerkstatt JW 059

Musicians of all stripes frequently relocate to make a better living and find a more sympathetic playing situation. But few literally travel as far as bassist Clayton Thomas, who a couple of years ago traded his home in Sydney, Australia for one in Berlin. It’s a testament to improvised music’s contemporary universality that Thomas’ trek was to Europe rather than the United States and a tribute to the German capital’s burgeoning improv scene that the bassist from Oz is constantly busy in his adopted city.

Das Treffen was recorded in Berlin, while Aus dates from a triumphant performance during 2007’s Konfrontationen in Nickelsdof, Austria. Besides Thomas’ slap bass thumps and staccato string-slices, the personnel on each CD are different as well. Peripatetic trombonist Johannes Bauer, who has played with everyone from bassist Barry Guy to saxophonist Peter Brötzmann is another-third of the Aus trio, while drummer Tony Buck – another Australian turned Berliner, best-known for his membership in The Necks, completes the triangle. Thomas’ cohorts on the other CD are all German. Trumpeter Axel Dörner balances reductionism with straight-ahead jazz in bands like Monk’s Casino; while percussionist Oliver Steidle in the band Soko Steidle with two of Dörner’s colleagues from Monk’s Casino.

Evolving their interaction over the course of seven live performances, each AUS-er contributes his share to the outstanding performances. Polyphonic and polyrhythmic all the pieces connect instantly and remain sutured throughout each musical twist, turn and wiggle. Bauer, for instance, slurs in the bass clef, quivers higher-pitched timbres and is snakily discursive most of the time, slipping from one tone to another with a full complement of grace notes. Buck clips, clops, rumbles and cymbal squeals when necessary, but also bears down on the beat with bass drum pops. Furthermore, Bauer’s command of the ‘bone is such that at times it appears as if he’s constructing palindromes that are both allegro and moderato.

Drawing out capillary lines in an elastic fashion, Bauer brays one minute and evacuates plunger textures from deep within his horn’s body tube the next. Sometimes he verbalizes at the same time as he blows, creating a secondary sound stream. Bauer’s grace notes can be so silvery and speedy that they’re almost as weightless as bell pings; at other points his triple tonguing and gutbucket smears wildly vibrate up to the stratosphere.

While all this is happening Buck rolls his cymbals and uses opposite sticking on his drum tops, while his pacing encompasses drags, ruffs and scatter-shot pumps. Available with muscular slaps and string ratcheting from sharp objects, Thomas also doesn’t neglect walking when it’s needed to move the piece forward. Finally, when each improvisation decelerates to diminuendo, clockwork pacing falls into place as each player follows the other in timbral downsizing.

Adding a chordal instrument played by John Schröder to brass, strings and percussion doesn’t upset the balance on Das Treffen either. However Dörner’s electronics and Steidle’s percussion and chaos pad introduce novel and sometimes brittle oscillations. On their own, the blurry grinds and sideband undulations seem to move the pianist from creating meditative inside piano string plucks to outputting a high frequency discursive fantasia that includes kinetic be-boppy runs. As attached as he is to distant microtonal whooshes and barely-there tonguing elsewhere, Dörner doesn’t miss an opportunity to respond to Schröder’s rhythmic comping with staccato upper-register melody snatches that could come from “Ko Ko” or “Shaw Nuff”. As well Thomas’ contributions are more than just plucks and slaps. Sometimes he stops the strings as much as he snaps them; at points he creates Morse-code-like pulses. Meanwhile Steidle chimes in with pops, ratamacues and rasping typewriter-like rim and cymbal clattering.

Sporting a title that would comfortably fit on any Bebop session, “Baby Doll” is the centrepiece of this CD, although at more-than-28-minutes it’s more Baby Huey than Baby Doll. The track features fluttering wave forms, voltage extended trumpet wisps, woody pops and sul ponticello squeaks from Thomas, dramatic low-frequency piano chording, plus rim shots and pops from the drummer. With Dörner growling and sounding unvarying tones – often creating his own ostinato – Schröder’s hunt-and-peck pianism is no more prominent than the oscillating flanges and processed signals. During a final variation some of these panning vibrations turn out to originate with Dörner’s valve manipulation as well. Timbre distortion accounted for, the quartet members return to the acoustic properties of their instruments for the finale.

Overall these two CDs demonstrate not only the many unique tonal properties being explored on the Berlin scene, but also the improvisational skills of the six musicians featured. Considering these are only two of the many aggregations to which bassist Thomas lends his skills, his decision to trade shrimp on the barbie for curry wurst on the bun appears to have been a wise one.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Live: 1. Aus 1 2. Aus 2 3. Aus 3 4. Aus 4 5. Aus 5

Personnel: Live: Johannes Bauer (trombone) Clayton Thomas (bass) and Tony Buck (drums)

Track Listing: Das: 1. Res Res 2. Baby Doll 3. Nautic Walking

Personnel: Das: Axel Dörner (trumpet and electronics); John Schröder (piano); Clayton Thomas (bass) and Oliver Steidle (drums, percussion and chaos pad)

February 21, 2010

The Necks

Silverwater
Fish of Milk/ReR Necks 9

Aptly described as mesmerizing, the sonic currents created by Australian trio The Necks sweep listeners along without complaint during any one of the band’s hour-long, time-suspending performances. The audience at the trio’s Music Gallery show in late January could testify to that. Yet Silverwater – named for an industrial suburb of Sydney – pulses with even more textures, since with overdubbing and granualization multiple and fungible sonic layers can be exposed.

That means that the swelling and jabbing organ tones played by Chris Abrahams that quiver throughout this one-track CD to reach a crescendo of almost visual three-dimensional polyphony, sometimes operate in tandem with knife-sharp piano chording – also played by Abrahams. Additionally, samples and patching split Tony Buck’s percussion skills so that rhythmic tambourine shakes, thick press rolls, ratcheting wood scrapes and a steady backbeat are heard all at once. Holding the bottom are the rhythmically powerful and chromatic spiccato runs of bassist Lloyd Swanton, occasionally doubled by overdubbing.

Suffused with contrapuntal clinking, chording and clattering, the extended improvisation here becomes a nearly opaque interlude of frozen time made up of bonded organ washes, bass thumps and percussion cracks. That is until steadying piano chords and the drummer’s shuffle beat isolate the different tinctures of this musical color wheel, allowing the narrative to loosen and separate into sections. The ultimate straight-ahead theme is then divided among low-frequency keyboard tinkles, spanked cymbals and solid bass string plucks.

--Ken Waxman

-- For Whole Note Vol. 15 #5

February 6, 2010

Rob Mazurek Quintet

Sound Is
Delmark DE 586

Regenorchester XII

Town Down

Red Note RN 14

Although these similarly structured quintets play what could loosely be termed electric jazz, the complex patterns and unexpected strategies shouldn’t be confused with clichéd fusion sounds.

For a start the chief protagonists aren’t guitarists, but brass players – Sao Paulo via Chicago’s cornetist Rob Mazurek on one, Vienna’s Franz Hautzinger on the other. Another reason is that the inspiration for these sound-collages was as one way out of a conundrum, not towards fusion. As a matter of fact Sound Is doesn’t even feature jazz-rock’s most distinctive icon: a six-string electric guitar.

Briefly, Mazurek has put together different variations of his Chicago Project to free himself from the constraints of contemporary mainstream jazz. Hautzinger on the other hand, had become so involved in the minutia of unorthodox solo techniques that he almost lost contact with cooperative musicality. He’s trying to work his way towards playing well with others with this band and his trio with saxophonist Bertrand Gauguet and synthesizer player Thomas Lehn.

In truth, both of the discs are fusion efforts relating to the real meaning of the word, since many other sonic currents are present along with so-called jazz.

On Sound Is, for instance, percussionist John Herndon is a member of Tortoise, plus bass guitarist Matthew Lux and bassist Josh Abrams are affiliated with different Midwestern post-rock bands. Vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz has done his share of non-jazz playing as well. Meanwhile The Regenorchester includes bassist Luc Ex, familiar from his appearances with the anarcho-punk-improv band The Ex; turntablist/guitarist Otomo Yoshihide, who leads his own New Jazz Ensemble; The Necks drummer Tony Buck; plus guitarist Christian Fennesz better known for his forays into electronica

In short, kinetic string flanges, contrapuntal harmonies and arena rock-style pummeling can’t be escaped on Town Down. However the challenge the five face lies in shaping the material. For instance on “37rd Rainday” the opaque pulses and drones are reconstituted into cross-pulsed sequences while different currents of brass braying are heard – as if an entire trumpet section was present. Moderato and allegro most instruments’ pulses seep into one another as the result is further muddied by agitated loops and guitar distortion. Eventually singular trumpet grace notes materialize out of the sonic mulch.

In contrast to the vociferous percussion rebounds, rasping needle scratches on vinyl and ringing guitar licks that characterize other tracks, “SSS” is built up from nearly inaudible crackles, clinks and cracks from the turntable and blurry electronic loops plus spatial dislocation from one channel to another of Aboriginal-like drum beats. Faint Harmon-muted trumpet slurs become more prominent as Hautzinger’s tonguing is framed by twin guitar frails and delay. Finally dissipating the collective tension, the percussionist introduces gamelan-orchestra-styled pinging that is quickly matched with speedy tongue trills from Hautzinger. Finally programmed tape flanges bury the affiliated note flurries.

No turntables are in use on Sound Is, although as in Town Down some post-production legerdemain is involved. Mazurek does introduce the occasional brass riffs, plus some of the less identifiable tones are from Herndon’s Tenori-on. It’s a matrix instrument whose 16 layers of 16 tracks allow sounds to be input, stored, combined or separated and switched instantaneously.

Nevertheless, the most persistent sound heard are silvery mallet resonation from Adasiewicz’s vibes, Abrams’ or Mazurek’s piano comping or chording and the feathery timbres of Mazurek’s cornet. It may come as a surprise to the brass man, but the performance would probably be described as jazz-like by even the most conservative listener. A track such as “Microraptagonfly”, for instance, taken largo, features lyrical cornet grace notes that float above programmed tone blocks, lazily bringing out sfumato-like timbres without stress. “The Hill” on the other hand, includes a heavy shuffle beat, a contiguous walking bass line plus slurring color waves vibrating, as Mazurek fires off choruses of presto-patterned triplets. Painting the melody in tremolo whorls and circles, the measures advanced by Mazurek are further toughened with rim shots, as simultaneously Lux picks out a counter melody on the strings of his bass guitar.

Finally “Dragon Kites” and “The Star Splitter” which follow one another encompass a catalogue of effects. There are patterns bowed from the bass; the twinge and slides of electronic delay; scattered steel-drum-like rebounds and clicks; plus rococo tonguing from the brass man. As one piece dissolves into the next and the lyricism seems endemic, repeated hand-clapping and vibraphone thwacks toughen the beat and speed the tempo up a half step. Soon ringing bells, slapped bass strings and rhythmic piano comping shove the melody to a higher pitch then down again, with the synchronized climax blending bass and piano timbres.

Both Mazurek and Hautzinger have evidentially worked their way out of their respective sound conundrums. With the exceptional help of equally proficient friends they have done so while producing notable music.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Sound: 1. As if an Angel Fell from the Sky 2. The Earthquake Tree 3. Dragon Kites 4. The Star Splitter 5. The Hill 6. Le Baiser (The Kiss) 7. The Lightning Field 8. Cinnamon Tree 9. The Dream Rocker 10. Beauty Wolf 11. Microraptagonfly 12. Aphrodite Rising 13. The Field 14. Nora Grace.

Personnel: Sound: Rob Mazurek (corner, synthesizer and piano); Jason Adasiewicz (vibraphone); Josh Abrams (bass and piano); Matthew Lux (bass guitar) and John Herndon (drums, percussion and Tenori-on)

Track Listing: Town: 1. Town Down 2. Delis 3. 37rd Rainday 4. BBB 5. Sand 6. SSS

Personnel: Town: Franz Hautzinger (trumpet); Christian Fennesz (guitar and electronics); Otomo Yoshihide (turntables and guitar); Luc Ex (bass) and Tony Buck (drums)

December 12, 2009

Regenorchester XII

Town Down
Red Note RN 14

Rob Mazurek Quintet

Sound Is

Delmark DE 586

Although these similarly structured quintets play what could loosely be termed electric jazz, the complex patterns and unexpected strategies shouldn’t be confused with clichéd fusion sounds.

For a start the chief protagonists aren’t guitarists, but brass players – Sao Paulo via Chicago’s cornetist Rob Mazurek on one, Vienna’s Franz Hautzinger on the other. Another reason is that the inspiration for these sound-collages was as one way out of a conundrum, not towards fusion. As a matter of fact Sound Is doesn’t even feature jazz-rock’s most distinctive icon: a six-string electric guitar.

Briefly, Mazurek has put together different variations of his Chicago Project to free himself from the constraints of contemporary mainstream jazz. Hautzinger on the other hand, had become so involved in the minutia of unorthodox solo techniques that he almost lost contact with cooperative musicality. He’s trying to work his way towards playing well with others with this band and his trio with saxophonist Bertrand Gauguet and synthesizer player Thomas Lehn.

In truth, both of the discs are fusion efforts relating to the real meaning of the word, since many other sonic currents are present along with so-called jazz.

On Sound Is, for instance, percussionist John Herndon is a member of Tortoise, plus bass guitarist Matthew Lux and bassist Josh Abrams are affiliated with different Midwestern post-rock bands. Vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz has done his share of non-jazz playing as well. Meanwhile The Regenorchester includes bassist Luc Ex, familiar from his appearances with the anarcho-punk-improv band The Ex; turntablist/guitarist Otomo Yoshihide, who leads his own New Jazz Ensemble; The Necks drummer Tony Buck; plus guitarist Christian Fennesz better known for his forays into electronica

In short, kinetic string flanges, contrapuntal harmonies and arena rock-style pummeling can’t be escaped on Town Down. However the challenge the five face lies in shaping the material. For instance on “37rd Rainday” the opaque pulses and drones are reconstituted into cross-pulsed sequences while different currents of brass braying are heard – as if an entire trumpet section was present. Moderato and allegro most instruments’ pulses seep into one another as the result is further muddied by agitated loops and guitar distortion. Eventually singular trumpet grace notes materialize out of the sonic mulch.

In contrast to the vociferous percussion rebounds, rasping needle scratches on vinyl and ringing guitar licks that characterize other tracks, “SSS” is built up from nearly inaudible crackles, clinks and cracks from the turntable and blurry electronic loops plus spatial dislocation from one channel to another of Aboriginal-like drum beats. Faint Harmon-muted trumpet slurs become more prominent as Hautzinger’s tonguing is framed by twin guitar frails and delay. Finally dissipating the collective tension, the percussionist introduces gamelan-orchestra-styled pinging that is quickly matched with speedy tongue trills from Hautzinger. Finally programmed tape flanges bury the affiliated note flurries.

No turntables are in use on Sound Is, although as in Town Down some post-production legerdemain is involved. Mazurek does introduce the occasional brass riffs, plus some of the less identifiable tones are from Herndon’s Tenori-on. It’s a matrix instrument whose 16 layers of 16 tracks allow sounds to be input, stored, combined or separated and switched instantaneously.

Nevertheless, the most persistent sound heard are silvery mallet resonation from Adasiewicz’s vibes, Abrams’ or Mazurek’s piano comping or chording and the feathery timbres of Mazurek’s cornet. It may come as a surprise to the brass man, but the performance would probably be described as jazz-like by even the most conservative listener. A track such as “Microraptagonfly”, for instance, taken largo, features lyrical cornet grace notes that float above programmed tone blocks, lazily bringing out sfumato-like timbres without stress. “The Hill” on the other hand, includes a heavy shuffle beat, a contiguous walking bass line plus slurring color waves vibrating, as Mazurek fires off choruses of presto-patterned triplets. Painting the melody in tremolo whorls and circles, the measures advanced by Mazurek are further toughened with rim shots, as simultaneously Lux picks out a counter melody on the strings of his bass guitar.

Finally “Dragon Kites” and “The Star Splitter” which follow one another encompass a catalogue of effects. There are patterns bowed from the bass; the twinge and slides of electronic delay; scattered steel-drum-like rebounds and clicks; plus rococo tonguing from the brass man. As one piece dissolves into the next and the lyricism seems endemic, repeated hand-clapping and vibraphone thwacks toughen the beat and speed the tempo up a half step. Soon ringing bells, slapped bass strings and rhythmic piano comping shove the melody to a higher pitch then down again, with the synchronized climax blending bass and piano timbres.

Both Mazurek and Hautzinger have evidentially worked their way out of their respective sound conundrums. With the exceptional help of equally proficient friends they have done so while producing notable music.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Sound: 1. As if an Angel Fell from the Sky 2. The Earthquake Tree 3. Dragon Kites 4. The Star Splitter 5. The Hill 6. Le Baiser (The Kiss) 7. The Lightning Field 8. Cinnamon Tree 9. The Dream Rocker 10. Beauty Wolf 11. Microraptagonfly 12. Aphrodite Rising 13. The Field 14. Nora Grace.

Personnel: Sound: Rob Mazurek (corner, synthesizer and piano); Jason Adasiewicz (vibraphone); Josh Abrams (bass and piano); Matthew Lux (bass guitar) and John Herndon (drums, percussion and Tenori-on)

Track Listing: Town: 1. Town Down 2. Delis 3. 37rd Rainday 4. BBB 5. Sand 6. SSS

Personnel: Town: Franz Hautzinger (trumpet); Christian Fennesz (guitar and electronics); Otomo Yoshihide (turntables and guitar); Luc Ex (bass) and Tony Buck (drums)

December 12, 2009

Magda Mayas/Tony Buck

Gold
Creative Sources CS 153 CD

Piotr Zabrodzki/Arthur Lawrenz

Trylobit

MultiKulti Project MPI 001

Superficially, the most obvious difference between Warsaw-based pianist Piotr Zabrodzki and Berlin pianist Magda Mayas is that he confines his improvisations to the piano keys, while she’s comfortable exploring the instrument’s innards.

In fact what’s revealed in these duo sessions – Zabrodzki’s playing partner is Polish drummer Arthur Lawrenz and Mayas’ is Australian drummer Tony Buck – is an antithetical view of the pianist’s role. Firmly in the contemporary jazz mode, Zabrodzki’s high-energy performance places him in the lineage of showy keyboard-pounders that encompasses Chick Corea, McCoy Tyner and Gonzalo Rubalcaba and goes back at least as far as Art Tatum. His presence is always felt and he always appears to be front-and-centre.

A student of Dutch pianist Misha Mengelberg and German pianist George Gräwe, Mayas flirts with microtonalism and minimalism, but is mainly concerned with what sounds can be stressed, pressed, strummed, drummed and twanged from the piano’s internal workings. At points she almost disappears within the instrument’s mechanism itself.

Someone who also plays the electric piano, double bass, bass guitar, organ and noise generator, Zabrodzki’s other projects run the gamut from grind core to chamber music. But even seconded by jazz drummer Lawrenz on the six selections here, the emphasis is on fortissimo and staccatissimo runs, with the output resolutely tonal no matter how frantic it appears.

Locked hands, and cross-pulsing with high frequency clips, recurrent glissandi, arpeggio runs and a tendency to work his way up to cascading cadenzas and fantasias characterize this program. Clicking and clattering ride cymbals plus blunt and echoing strokes are the ways the drummer keeps up with the piano man and comments on the proceedings. Throughout this unleashing of note torrents, there are points at which Zabrodzki is kinetically and metaphorically chasing his own tail – or tales. A knock-out as piano playing, a surfeit of undigested content and technique hampers appreciation.

In contrast, reverberations and rebounds into the soundboard, capotes and escapement are Mayas’ stock-in-trade, as she abrasively vibrating the strings’ speaking length so that additional partials and other tinctures are revealed. Meantime Buck fingernail scrapes along the taunt drum head skins, whacks woodblocks, ratamacues and drags other parts of his kit and worries cymbals to help build the irregular tonality into polyrhythms.

While both timbre-foraging undertakings here expose the same sort of sonic fragments and abrasive echoing partials, “Golden” is preferable because the interaction is more compact and thus more intense. At one point here the pianist launches a single reverberating key thump abutting the soundboard and expands it with foot pedal power while continuous zither-like frails from the strings echo chromatically and sympathetically. Before she moves to hunt, pecks and concluding glissandi, Buck’s mallet pops and stick twisting resonate as much in the air as on his drums. Smacked cymbals and sharp string slashes signal the conclusion.

Wide-ranging rubs and smacks plus ghostly cymbal asides are delineated in greater detail on “Mercury Machine”, as are complementary stop points radiating from the sounded string partials. Some of the isolated chords are further strained when Mayas tool dampens the steel wire. Meanwhile Buck’s percussiveness advances the longer, chromatic improvisation with big top-like drum rolls and woody rebounds.

Like Oscar Peterson, Zabrodzki proves that he’s someone who can dazzle with his technique and technical command of the keyboard. Moderating his execution plus re-thinking his judgment will hopefully change his performances in the future. For her part, Mayas inner-piano risks and atonality, which Zabrodzki eschews, make her CD more striking. But she too can change. In the future perhaps, she could raise her head up higher than the string set and add more tone colors to her improvising than the monochromatic Gold.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Trylobit: 1. Otoczak 2. Banda Skorupiaków 3. Ordowik 4. Nil Admirandum 5. AX 900-C 6. Tadek Niejadek kontra Jurek Ogórek

Personnel: Trylobit: Piotr Zabrodzki (piano) and Artur Lawrenz (drums)

Track Listing: Gold: 1. Mercury Machine 2. Golden

Personnel: Gold: Magda Mayas (piano) and Tony Buck (percussion)

September 14, 2009

Piotr Zabrodzki/Arthur Lawrenz

Trylobit
MultiKulti Project MPI 001

Magda Mayas/Tony Buck

Gold

Creative Sources CS 153 CD

Superficially, the most obvious difference between Warsaw-based pianist Piotr Zabrodzki and Berlin pianist Magda Mayas is that he confines his improvisations to the piano keys, while she’s comfortable exploring the instrument’s innards.

In fact what’s revealed in these duo sessions – Zabrodzki’s playing partner is Polish drummer Arthur Lawrenz and Mayas’ is Australian drummer Tony Buck – is an antithetical view of the pianist’s role. Firmly in the contemporary jazz mode, Zabrodzki’s high-energy performance places him in the lineage of showy keyboard-pounders that encompasses Chick Corea, McCoy Tyner and Gonzalo Rubalcaba and goes back at least as far as Art Tatum. His presence is always felt and he always appears to be front-and-centre.

A student of Dutch pianist Misha Mengelberg and German pianist George Gräwe, Mayas flirts with microtonalism and minimalism, but is mainly concerned with what sounds can be stressed, pressed, strummed, drummed and twanged from the piano’s internal workings. At points she almost disappears within the instrument’s mechanism itself.

Someone who also plays the electric piano, double bass, bass guitar, organ and noise generator, Zabrodzki’s other projects run the gamut from grind core to chamber music. But even seconded by jazz drummer Lawrenz on the six selections here, the emphasis is on fortissimo and staccatissimo runs, with the output resolutely tonal no matter how frantic it appears.

Locked hands, and cross-pulsing with high frequency clips, recurrent glissandi, arpeggio runs and a tendency to work his way up to cascading cadenzas and fantasias characterize this program. Clicking and clattering ride cymbals plus blunt and echoing strokes are the ways the drummer keeps up with the piano man and comments on the proceedings. Throughout this unleashing of note torrents, there are points at which Zabrodzki is kinetically and metaphorically chasing his own tail – or tales. A knock-out as piano playing, a surfeit of undigested content and technique hampers appreciation.

In contrast, reverberations and rebounds into the soundboard, capotes and escapement are Mayas’ stock-in-trade, as she abrasively vibrating the strings’ speaking length so that additional partials and other tinctures are revealed. Meantime Buck fingernail scrapes along the taunt drum head skins, whacks woodblocks, ratamacues and drags other parts of his kit and worries cymbals to help build the irregular tonality into polyrhythms.

While both timbre-foraging undertakings here expose the same sort of sonic fragments and abrasive echoing partials, “Golden” is preferable because the interaction is more compact and thus more intense. At one point here the pianist launches a single reverberating key thump abutting the soundboard and expands it with foot pedal power while continuous zither-like frails from the strings echo chromatically and sympathetically. Before she moves to hunt, pecks and concluding glissandi, Buck’s mallet pops and stick twisting resonate as much in the air as on his drums. Smacked cymbals and sharp string slashes signal the conclusion.

Wide-ranging rubs and smacks plus ghostly cymbal asides are delineated in greater detail on “Mercury Machine”, as are complementary stop points radiating from the sounded string partials. Some of the isolated chords are further strained when Mayas tool dampens the steel wire. Meanwhile Buck’s percussiveness advances the longer, chromatic improvisation with big top-like drum rolls and woody rebounds.

Like Oscar Peterson, Zabrodzki proves that he’s someone who can dazzle with his technique and technical command of the keyboard. Moderating his execution plus re-thinking his judgment will hopefully change his performances in the future. For her part, Mayas inner-piano risks and atonality, which Zabrodzki eschews, make her CD more striking. But she too can change. In the future perhaps, she could raise her head up higher than the string set and add more tone colors to her improvising than the monochromatic Gold.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Trylobit: 1. Otoczak 2. Banda Skorupiaków 3. Ordowik 4. Nil Admirandum 5. AX 900-C 6. Tadek Niejadek kontra Jurek Ogórek

Personnel: Trylobit: Piotr Zabrodzki (piano) and Artur Lawrenz (drums)

Track Listing: Gold: 1. Mercury Machine 2. Golden

Personnel: Gold: Magda Mayas (piano) and Tony Buck (percussion)

September 14, 2009

Kapital Band 1

Playing By Numbers
Mosz 017

The Necks

Townsville

ReR Necks 8

With terms such as ambient and minimalist sloppily and frequently bandied about, their correct connotation becomes as blurred as the sound often is during purported performances of the musical genre they’re supposed to represent.

The advantage of CDs such as The Necks’ Townsville and Kapital Band 1’s Playing By Numbers, however is that they’re ingeniously designed by musicians who concentrate as much on the details of creation as the overall structure. The discs also demonstrate that homespun, unfussy and discreet sonic creations should be expansive, not static or flimsy. Furthermore, although each band may be slotted in the same sub-section of musical creation, each pursues a different itinerary to reach its defined objective.

Australians, the three members of The Necks have been operating within the restricted freedom of unpremeditated improvisation for almost two decades. Yet the nearly 54-minute, single track that makes up Townsville is both consistent and unique. The consistency relates to the high standard which the band has set for itself over the years. However this floating nocturne is unique because it’s gradually revealed as a showcase for pianist Chris Abrahams, with the in-the-pocket groove of bassist Lloyd Swanton and inventive percussive fills, courtesy of drummer Tony Buck, subtly coloring his keyboard fantasia. Most other Necks’ discs focus on Swanton’s sturdy string stropping.

Although the applause is excised, Townsville was actually recorded live in concert and merely mixed and mastered afterwards. In contrast, Playing By Numbers is a totem to recording studio wizardry. Vienna-based Nicholas Bussmann, initially a cellist, and Berlin resident Martin Brandlmayr, ordinarily a percussionist, play all the instruments on the CD’s three tracks, except for flute. The resulting timbres from cello, guitar, marimba, voice and drums were sutured in the studio and extended with found urban street sounds. Wisely, the two have decided that when they perform live, contributions from other instrumentalists – including Buck, who is now a Berliner – will fill out the presentation.

That astute realization is likely why Playing By Numbers impresses while many other studio creations reek of dial and DAT manipulation. More to the point, both men have a history of playing live, Brandlmayr, with among others, the bands Radian, Trapist and Polwechsel; and Bussmann, who also composes for radio, theatre and film, with no-input mixing board manipulator Toshimaru Nakamua as Alles 3.

Conversely, mixing board manipulations are seamless and buried within the presentation in the Playing By Numbers. That means that among the harmonic confluence of cello swipes, vibraphone patterning and guitar plinks, triggered electronic wave forms that resemble winds whistling through a deserted ghost town, watery seascape and advancing and receding beach front tides color, but don’t overpower the presentation.. Unconnected ripples, retreating footfalls and languid sound snatches also play a part in creating sfumato-like transitions on the tracks.

Hypnotic minimalism arising from a bell-and-vibe configuration, percussive rhythms that encompass a single slap, or a descending, distracted rim shot. Meanwhile sweeping guitar string rotation enlivens the proceedings enough to confirm that humans are behind the CD’s creation.

Another human process detracts from the overall presentation however. On the final track a disembodied voice that sounds as if it’s broadcasting from beyond the grave repeatedly verbalizes a series of banal phrases in a monotone. Only when electric piano slides, bass guitar plucks and a final drum tap replaces the vocal mumbles dopes the tune to come back to life. For some reason appending deadpan vocals to a performance has become popular with many Teutonic reductionists.

Happily no one attempts to sing on The Necks CD, recorded in an arts centre in Thuringowa, Australia. In contrast, with the audience response deleted, this instant composition seems to be solidly of and about itself. Suspended in aural ether, it undulates through a series of intricate twists and turns as it meanders to the finale. Interconnections among the trio members are such however, that the piece manages to inventively accelerate from adagio to andante and beyond without any noticeable interruption or showboating.

Beginning with Abrahams’ organic note clusters in almost equal temperament, framed by Buck’s cymbal rattling and Swanton’s thumping bass the initial shape seems both romantic and impressionistic. Yet as the pianist’s tremolo cadences rustle and are rearranged harmonically, the portamento waves quicken and harden. While all trio members subtly shift the rhythm, this isn’t done in harmony, but in triple counterpoint, which each instrument’s line polyphonically unique. Never static, the performance gets busier and thicker until Abrahams’ overlay of cascading rococo detailing from one hand, and low-frequency chording from the other becomes evident.

Constantly in motion, the fragile theme advances not just because of the pianist’s waterfalls of notes, but also from the bassist’s rubato string shifting and the drummer’s drum top slapping. Guitar-like reverberations and echoes characterize the penultimate variation which depends on the confluence between the shifting, strummed chords from Abrahams’ piano and Swanton’s thick bass string patterns. Meanwhile, as the resulting cadences get denser, it’s apparent that underneath the others’ output Buck’s bounces and ruffs have made the tune louder, faster and more assured – almost double the tempo at which it began. Brought to a fitting climax with the pianist’s multiphonic arpeggios, the finale is signaled by a quick theme recapitulation and cymbal reverberations that melt timbres into suspended silence.

Although these are two notable efforts of prototypical modern improv, Townsville has the edge, since no one raises a voice in a song variation.

-- Ken Waxman

.

Track Listing: Townsville: 1. Townsville

Personnel: Townsville: Chris Abrahams (piano); Lloyd Swanton (bass) and Tony Buck (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Playing: 1. Playing By Numbers* 2. Playing By The Night in Vienna 3. Counting the Waves

Personnel: Playing: Erik Drescher (flutes)*; Martin Brandlmayr and Nicholas Bussmann (live and remixed cello, guitar, vibraphone, bass, marimba, voice, drums and pre-recorded live sounds)

March 6, 2008

The Necks

Townsville
ReR Necks 8

Kapital Band 1

Playing By Numbers

Mosz 017

With terms such as ambient and minimalist sloppily and frequently bandied about, their correct connotation becomes as blurred as the sound often is during purported performances of the musical genre they’re supposed to represent.

The advantage of CDs such as The Necks’ Townsville and Kapital Band 1’s Playing By Numbers, however is that they’re ingeniously designed by musicians who concentrate as much on the details of creation as the overall structure. The discs also demonstrate that homespun, unfussy and discreet sonic creations should be expansive, not static or flimsy. Furthermore, although each band may be slotted in the same sub-section of musical creation, each pursues a different itinerary to reach its defined objective.

Australians, the three members of The Necks have been operating within the restricted freedom of unpremeditated improvisation for almost two decades. Yet the nearly 54-minute, single track that makes up Townsville is both consistent and unique. The consistency relates to the high standard which the band has set for itself over the years. However this floating nocturne is unique because it’s gradually revealed as a showcase for pianist Chris Abrahams, with the in-the-pocket groove of bassist Lloyd Swanton and inventive percussive fills, courtesy of drummer Tony Buck, subtly coloring his keyboard fantasia. Most other Necks’ discs focus on Swanton’s sturdy string stropping.

Although the applause is excised, Townsville was actually recorded live in concert and merely mixed and mastered afterwards. In contrast, Playing By Numbers is a totem to recording studio wizardry. Vienna-based Nicholas Bussmann, initially a cellist, and Berlin resident Martin Brandlmayr, ordinarily a percussionist, play all the instruments on the CD’s three tracks, except for flute. The resulting timbres from cello, guitar, marimba, voice and drums were sutured in the studio and extended with found urban street sounds. Wisely, the two have decided that when they perform live, contributions from other instrumentalists – including Buck, who is now a Berliner – will fill out the presentation.

That astute realization is likely why Playing By Numbers impresses while many other studio creations reek of dial and DAT manipulation. More to the point, both men have a history of playing live, Brandlmayr, with among others, the bands Radian, Trapist and Polwechsel; and Bussmann, who also composes for radio, theatre and film, with no-input mixing board manipulator Toshimaru Nakamua as Alles 3.

Conversely, mixing board manipulations are seamless and buried within the presentation in the Playing By Numbers. That means that among the harmonic confluence of cello swipes, vibraphone patterning and guitar plinks, triggered electronic wave forms that resemble winds whistling through a deserted ghost town, watery seascape and advancing and receding beach front tides color, but don’t overpower the presentation.. Unconnected ripples, retreating footfalls and languid sound snatches also play a part in creating sfumato-like transitions on the tracks.

Hypnotic minimalism arising from a bell-and-vibe configuration, percussive rhythms that encompass a single slap, or a descending, distracted rim shot. Meanwhile sweeping guitar string rotation enlivens the proceedings enough to confirm that humans are behind the CD’s creation.

Another human process detracts from the overall presentation however. On the final track a disembodied voice that sounds as if it’s broadcasting from beyond the grave repeatedly verbalizes a series of banal phrases in a monotone. Only when electric piano slides, bass guitar plucks and a final drum tap replaces the vocal mumbles dopes the tune to come back to life. For some reason appending deadpan vocals to a performance has become popular with many Teutonic reductionists.

Happily no one attempts to sing on The Necks CD, recorded in an arts centre in Thuringowa, Australia. In contrast, with the audience response deleted, this instant composition seems to be solidly of and about itself. Suspended in aural ether, it undulates through a series of intricate twists and turns as it meanders to the finale. Interconnections among the trio members are such however, that the piece manages to inventively accelerate from adagio to andante and beyond without any noticeable interruption or showboating.

Beginning with Abrahams’ organic note clusters in almost equal temperament, framed by Buck’s cymbal rattling and Swanton’s thumping bass the initial shape seems both romantic and impressionistic. Yet as the pianist’s tremolo cadences rustle and are rearranged harmonically, the portamento waves quicken and harden. While all trio members subtly shift the rhythm, this isn’t done in harmony, but in triple counterpoint, which each instrument’s line polyphonically unique. Never static, the performance gets busier and thicker until Abrahams’ overlay of cascading rococo detailing from one hand, and low-frequency chording from the other becomes evident.

Constantly in motion, the fragile theme advances not just because of the pianist’s waterfalls of notes, but also from the bassist’s rubato string shifting and the drummer’s drum top slapping. Guitar-like reverberations and echoes characterize the penultimate variation which depends on the confluence between the shifting, strummed chords from Abrahams’ piano and Swanton’s thick bass string patterns. Meanwhile, as the resulting cadences get denser, it’s apparent that underneath the others’ output Buck’s bounces and ruffs have made the tune louder, faster and more assured – almost double the tempo at which it began. Brought to a fitting climax with the pianist’s multiphonic arpeggios, the finale is signaled by a quick theme recapitulation and cymbal reverberations that melt timbres into suspended silence.

Although these are two notable efforts of prototypical modern improv, Townsville has the edge, since no one raises a voice in a song variation.

-- Ken Waxman

.

Track Listing: Townsville: 1. Townsville

Personnel: Townsville: Chris Abrahams (piano); Lloyd Swanton (bass) and Tony Buck (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Playing: 1. Playing By Numbers* 2. Playing By The Night in Vienna 3. Counting the Waves

Personnel: Playing: Erik Drescher (flutes)*; Martin Brandlmayr and Nicholas Bussmann (live and remixed cello, guitar, vibraphone, bass, marimba, voice, drums and pre-recorded live sounds)

March 6, 2008

BlankDisc Trio

U ĈudnojZemlji im KomikerLand
Nurnichtnur 107 04 29

Buck/Fuhler/Zaradny

Lighton

Musica Genera mg 011

Serendipity can often work as efficiently as scheduling when putting together improvised ensembles, as these two top-quality Eastern European-focused CDs prove.

Lighton, which matches the talents of Polish alto saxophonist Anna Zaradny with those of Dutch keyboardist Cor Fuhler and Berlin-resident, Australian percussionist Tony Buck, was formally organized for a performance at the 2006 Musica Genera festival in Szcezin, Poland. On the other hand, U ĈudnojZemlji im KomikerLand, which was recorded in the equally exotic location of Zrenjanin, Serbia, came about because veteran German reedist Georg Wissel, whose wife is Serbian, was looking around for sympathetic playing partners during one of his frequent trips to that country. Introduced to the sounds of guitarist Srdan Muc and Róbert Rózsa, who manipulates no-input mixing and electronics, he felt that a collaboration would be fruitful.

Wissel, whose playing experience encompasses everything from rock-punk, brass bands, large ensembles that include turntables and electronics and the string-oriented Canaries on the Pole quartet, can meet any challenge. So the Serbs’ noise-oriented electronica is easily absorbed by the alto saxophonist. Don’t forget that his hometown of Köln is also where composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s electronic and spatial experiments evolved over a protracted period and where this electronic ethos is still prominent.

On the other disc, although classically trained and with a background in noise rock and computer music, Zaradny’s reed improvisations hew close to minimalism. This trait is probably appreciated by Buck, whose day job is as the drummer of Australian reductionist band The Necks. Fuhler works both sides of the stave himself, with his own large Corkestra as well as micro-improvisations with the likes of British saxophonist John Butcher.

During one uninterrupted, more-than-30-minute performance, Buck, Fuhler and Zaradny appear to have designed a superlative division of duties. With all sounds unrolling pianissimo, the flattement and irregularly vibrated intensity of the horn sluices easily among the similarly lubricated timbres of the other two instruments. Buck prefers uncomplicated cymbal taps or having a drum stick abrasively skate across the cymbal’s surface. Meanwhile Fuhler’s strategy includes unveiling a version of new century comping that unites key clipping with equivalent sound board echoes, plus what sounds at first like random keyboard bangs and jumps.

Ultimately the trio so firmly solders the sound of dispassionate, side-slipping tones from the horn, pan-tonal, bell-pealing clusters from the percussionist and vibrating internal strings from the pianist that a mood is established. Jumbled tremolo slurs and vibrations dissolve into silence for the piece’s finale, with a concluding piano thump providing the compositional postlude.

If the other trio’s improvisation are all-of-a-piece than the BlankDisc trio’s output is divided into two purported suites, with each subdivided into many more short pieces. Awkwardly, the initial eight “pieces + shortcuts” appear to be framed mostly so that layered electronic sound exposes a series of inchoate timbral expressions. Triggered output signals produce either blurry flutters or audibly spiraling video game-like chirps, while Muc flanges and scrapes his guitar strings and Wissel confines himself to tongue slapping or blowing colored air through his horn.

Relief from the dial-twisting and harsh shrills arrives with “Tropic 4”, as the reedist uses what’s probably an obone [sic] to simulate bagpipe chanter-like split tones, providing a context for the crackle, sputter and slurps from the others’ electronics. Finally “ĉupav” showcases interactive cooperation, as the saxophonist’s reed biting jumps and growls are mirrored by bubbling short-wave radio-like oscillations from Rózsa’s electronic interface and Hard Rock-like descending chords and flanging buzzes from Muc.

The maturing feints and interpolations suggested by the eight inventions that begin the CD reach fruition in the seven-part “Zrenjanin Suite” that makes up the remainder of this recital. Ascending and descending from “Zvonĉići”, the 10½-minute track that serves as the suite’s climax, it locks each player into a harmonizing role. Muc’s guitar licks become more melodic at points and more abrasively chromatic elsewhere literally accompanying the other players’ windy flutters, as Rózsa’s knob-twisting and crackling buzzes animate Wissel’s understated hollow tube intonation and near flat-lined split tones. Meantime the reedist’s bagpipe hints from “pieces + shortcuts” redefine themselves as minor key overblowing, adding sparkle and shape to the tracks.

“Zvonĉići” provides enough of a canvas to display the sonic bravado the three previously developed: Mercurial friction and abrasions synthesized from Rózsa’s drones and pulsating signals underscore the contrapuntal interaction between Muc and Wissel. Amp distortion, cranked up runs and singular strums provide enough aural friction to lubricate the throat-tightening altissimo squeak, tongue slaps and reed-biting trills from the saxophonist. The end result is unsettling but affecting at the same time.

Two ways of approaching interlocking trio improvisation are showcased on these discs. The choice between them depends on a preference for a minimalist or maximal approach.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: KomikerLand: Pieces + Shortcuts: 1. Tropic 3 2. Trop 1 3. ĉu 4. ĉeš 5. Tropic 2 6. Ĉudo 7. Tropic 4 8. ĉupav Zrenjanin Suite: 9. Intro 10. Fata Morgana 11. Zvonĉići 12. Magla 13. Wolfsmagen 14. ZahnArt 15. Epilog

Personnel: KomikerLand: Georg Wissel (prepared alto saxophone, obone and other reeds); Srdan Muc (electric guitars) and Róbert Rózsa (no-input mixing and electronics)

Track Listing: Lighton: 1. Lighton

Personnel: Lighton: Anna Zaradny (alto saxophone); Cor Fuhler (piano and preparations) and Tony Buck (percussion)

December 23, 2007

Buck/Fuhler/Zaradny

Lighton
Musica Genera mg 011

BlankDisc Trio

U ĈudnojZemlji im KomikerLand

Nurnichtnur 107 04 29

Serendipity can often work as efficiently as scheduling when putting together improvised ensembles, as these two top-quality Eastern European-focused CDs prove.

Lighton, which matches the talents of Polish alto saxophonist Anna Zaradny with those of Dutch keyboardist Cor Fuhler and Berlin-resident, Australian percussionist Tony Buck, was formally organized for a performance at the 2006 Musica Genera festival in Szcezin, Poland. On the other hand, U ĈudnojZemlji im KomikerLand, which was recorded in the equally exotic location of Zrenjanin, Serbia, came about because veteran German reedist Georg Wissel, whose wife is Serbian, was looking around for sympathetic playing partners during one of his frequent trips to that country. Introduced to the sounds of guitarist Srdan Muc and Róbert Rózsa, who manipulates no-input mixing and electronics, he felt that a collaboration would be fruitful.

Wissel, whose playing experience encompasses everything from rock-punk, brass bands, large ensembles that include turntables and electronics and the string-oriented Canaries on the Pole quartet, can meet any challenge. So the Serbs’ noise-oriented electronica is easily absorbed by the alto saxophonist. Don’t forget that his hometown of Köln is also where composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s electronic and spatial experiments evolved over a protracted period and where this electronic ethos is still prominent.

On the other disc, although classically trained and with a background in noise rock and computer music, Zaradny’s reed improvisations hew close to minimalism. This trait is probably appreciated by Buck, whose day job is as the drummer of Australian reductionist band The Necks. Fuhler works both sides of the stave himself, with his own large Corkestra as well as micro-improvisations with the likes of British saxophonist John Butcher.

During one uninterrupted, more-than-30-minute performance, Buck, Fuhler and Zaradny appear to have designed a superlative division of duties. With all sounds unrolling pianissimo, the flattement and irregularly vibrated intensity of the horn sluices easily among the similarly lubricated timbres of the other two instruments. Buck prefers uncomplicated cymbal taps or having a drum stick abrasively skate across the cymbal’s surface. Meanwhile Fuhler’s strategy includes unveiling a version of new century comping that unites key clipping with equivalent sound board echoes, plus what sounds at first like random keyboard bangs and jumps.

Ultimately the trio so firmly solders the sound of dispassionate, side-slipping tones from the horn, pan-tonal, bell-pealing clusters from the percussionist and vibrating internal strings from the pianist that a mood is established. Jumbled tremolo slurs and vibrations dissolve into silence for the piece’s finale, with a concluding piano thump providing the compositional postlude.

If the other trio’s improvisation are all-of-a-piece than the BlankDisc trio’s output is divided into two purported suites, with each subdivided into many more short pieces. Awkwardly, the initial eight “pieces + shortcuts” appear to be framed mostly so that layered electronic sound exposes a series of inchoate timbral expressions. Triggered output signals produce either blurry flutters or audibly spiraling video game-like chirps, while Muc flanges and scrapes his guitar strings and Wissel confines himself to tongue slapping or blowing colored air through his horn.

Relief from the dial-twisting and harsh shrills arrives with “Tropic 4”, as the reedist uses what’s probably an obone [sic] to simulate bagpipe chanter-like split tones, providing a context for the crackle, sputter and slurps from the others’ electronics. Finally “ĉupav” showcases interactive cooperation, as the saxophonist’s reed biting jumps and growls are mirrored by bubbling short-wave radio-like oscillations from Rózsa’s electronic interface and Hard Rock-like descending chords and flanging buzzes from Muc.

The maturing feints and interpolations suggested by the eight inventions that begin the CD reach fruition in the seven-part “Zrenjanin Suite” that makes up the remainder of this recital. Ascending and descending from “Zvonĉići”, the 10½-minute track that serves as the suite’s climax, it locks each player into a harmonizing role. Muc’s guitar licks become more melodic at points and more abrasively chromatic elsewhere literally accompanying the other players’ windy flutters, as Rózsa’s knob-twisting and crackling buzzes animate Wissel’s understated hollow tube intonation and near flat-lined split tones. Meantime the reedist’s bagpipe hints from “pieces + shortcuts” redefine themselves as minor key overblowing, adding sparkle and shape to the tracks.

“Zvonĉići” provides enough of a canvas to display the sonic bravado the three previously developed: Mercurial friction and abrasions synthesized from Rózsa’s drones and pulsating signals underscore the contrapuntal interaction between Muc and Wissel. Amp distortion, cranked up runs and singular strums provide enough aural friction to lubricate the throat-tightening altissimo squeak, tongue slaps and reed-biting trills from the saxophonist. The end result is unsettling but affecting at the same time.

Two ways of approaching interlocking trio improvisation are showcased on these discs. The choice between them depends on a preference for a minimalist or maximal approach.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: KomikerLand: Pieces + Shortcuts: 1. Tropic 3 2. Trop 1 3. ĉu 4. ĉeš 5. Tropic 2 6. Ĉudo 7. Tropic 4 8. ĉupav Zrenjanin Suite: 9. Intro 10. Fata Morgana 11. Zvonĉići 12. Magla 13. Wolfsmagen 14. ZahnArt 15. Epilog

Personnel: KomikerLand: Georg Wissel (prepared alto saxophone, obone and other reeds); Srdan Muc (electric guitars) and Róbert Rózsa (no-input mixing and electronics)

Track Listing: Lighton: 1. Lighton

Personnel: Lighton: Anna Zaradny (alto saxophone); Cor Fuhler (piano and preparations) and Tony Buck (percussion)

December 23, 2007

Ned Rothenberg

The Fell Clutch
Animul 105

Playful and profound at the same time, this CD by multi-reedman Ned Rothenberg’s well-paced trio confirms that the separation between cerebral improvisation and body conscious grooves is narrower than most would imagine – as long as there’s a singularity of purpose.

Usually dedicated to highly technical woodwind explorations and collaborations with the likes of saxophonist Evan Parker, or World music inferences with like-minded players such as tabla player Samir Chatterjee, Rothenberg, the New York-based clarinetist and saxophonist adopts harder beats here. Featuring drummer Tony Buck, of the Australian trance-jazz band The Necks and fretless electric bass player Stomu Takeishi, who is in trumpeter Cuong Vu’s punky jazz trio, plus slide guitarist Dave Tronzo on three tracks, there’s a rock-like sensibility present.

Luckily the excess and irrationality associated with electric instruments and fusion is absent. Instead Rothenberg and company spend time playing with the conventions of tougher, electric-oriented sounds before ascending to out-and-out Free Impov. During his appearances, Tronzo makes the case that flanged, guitar bites, wah-wah pedal tones and fuzz-tone reverb can be legitimate responses to a reed’s portamento and glissandi as long as bass guitar reverb and steady drum beats keep the sound on course. “Paint Drum” in fact, gains its character from Tronzo’s and Rothenberg’s sympathetic double counterpoint. True to form while the reed player’s timbres indicate that he could be playing a musette or a raita, Tronzo’s resonation suggests he’s finger-picking an oud or a shamisen.

On his own Rothenberg adapts such extended techniques as circular breathing to successfully interact with Takeishi’s double stops and string-patting and Buck’s rattles, snaps and foot stomps. The drummer’s most distinctive outing appear on “Brainy and Footsy” when the reedist’s woody tongue slaps and the bassist’s note thumping frame inverse pulsations, cross patterns and hard sticking. These polyrhythms layer additional beats onto the program without negating reductionist scene-setting that lurks beneath the surface.

Both the minimal and maximal impulses get full exposure on the more than 15 minute “Epic In Difference”. Resonating slaps from the bass guitar; clattering beats that could variously come from finger cymbals or tam-tams; and thin, electric shaver-like buzzing from the bass clarinet combine in such a way that hocketing overtones and echoes are exposed as well as primary nodes. Advancing from a series of chalumeau lines, by the conclusion Rothenberg’s continuous, overblowing reed buzzing is replaced by highly rhythmic tongue slaps that meld with bass guitar wallops and cymbal friction.

Commencing with over-riding rhythms and ending with unexpected improvisational ploys, in a way the band reflects the history of jazz. Less metaphorically, the CD satisfies because no member rejects any musical current when it can be meshed with others.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Moment of Reloading 2. Life in Your Years* 3. Food for A Rambling 4. No Memes, Mom* 5. Paint Drum* 6. Brainy and Footsy 7. Dream by Day 8. The Violet Sheds 9. Epic in Difference 10. Ashes+

Personnel: Ned Rothenberg (clarinet and bass clarinets and alto saxophone); Dave Tronzo (slide guitar)*; Stomu Takeishi (fretless electric bass); Joe Williamson (bass) + and Tony Buck (drums)

October 25, 2006

MAP

Six Improvisations for Guitar, Bass and Drums
H&H Productions HH-1

OLAF RUPP/TONY BUCK/JOE WILLIAMSON
Weird Weapons
EMANEM 4119

Put aside the associations you have developed for conventional guitar trios like those lead by Jim Hall or the late Charlie Byrd. Similarly exploratory, the title of MAP’s CD could work for either band. At the same time both sessions –serendipitously recorded two months apart – additionally highlight the global reach of free music.

Both trios are made up of musicians from three different countries. MAP is an American/Australian/Japanese trio; Rupp, Buck and Williamson are respectively from Germany, Australia and Canada. While you can’t ascribe merit to internationalism, it’s possible that different experiences and a communal exhibition of technical dexterity have gone into producing these dazzling CDs.

American guitarist Mary Halvorson plays in Anthony Braxton’s sextet and has an improvising duo with violist Mary Pavone; Australian bassist Clayton Thomas has worked with players ranging from multi-instrumentalist Cooper-Moore of Manhattan to trumpeter Axel Dörner of Berlin; and Kobe-born percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani, who now lives in Easton, Penn. has partnered explorers like French saxophonist Michel Doneda.

Self-taught, Saarlouis-born guitarist Olaf Rupp has worked with representative figures of the international avant garde, from American saxophonist John Zorn to Tuvan vocalist Sainkho Namtchylak. Vancouver-born, now London-based Williamson plays with improvisers from the Netherlands like drummer Han Bennink and reedist Ab Baars. Sydney-born Buck has played with people like Zorn and Amsterdam-based The Ex. One-third of Australian microtonal The Necks band, another member is pianist Chris Abrahams, who has also recorded with bassist Thomas.

MAP’s six improvisations are laid-back and succinct compare to WEIRD WEAPONS’ two in-your-face note explosions. The first, “Naugahyde”, which times in at nearly 34 minutes, is almost as lengthy as the other band’s entire CD, which is about 37 minutes long.

Partitioning this brevity, Halvorson mostly sticks to patterning, gentle strumming and finger taps on the guitar’s neck. Col legno, sul tasto and sul ponticello thrusts characterize Thomas’ responses. Meanwhile Nakatani extends the pitches and accents available from his drum set with, gongs, cymbals, singing bowls and metal objects plus various sticks and bows.

Because of this it’s often the guitar melodies and rhythms that link these compositions, as the bassist and percussionist rattle, ratchet and rasps their parts. Throughout, timbre melding amplifies many of the trio’s individual gestures. Of the improvisations the final track is the most singular. An example of how concentrated pulsations can replicate electronic-like patterns without plugged-in instruments, an interlude featuring Halvorson’s overloaded buzzing amp is actually an anomaly. Instead flanged pulses evolve from absolute music with the percussionist producing gongs or tam tam-like sounds, and Thomas applying col legno pressure that turns mechanized as the guitarist contributes distinctive slack-key-like tones.

Earlier, on the third and longest improv, it appears that Thomas’ spiccato strokes are intensified with horizontal sticks rammed between the strings, Nakatani’s bell-ringing involves echoing resonation with its placement on top of a cymbal, and Halvorson’s shuffling, single-note placement, enlarged with amp distortion suggests a parallel but contrapuntal line. With all three performing veloce, the percussionist exposes cymbal claps plus ruffs and bounces on the drums. As the finger-picked guitar notes become faster, wider and more splayed, the guitarist ratchets up the tempo to slur them into one another. MVP here, the bassist not only walks but batters the waist and ribs of the instrument’s wood.

With the pulses reaching a blurred crescendo of distorted speed, the piece downshifts to reverberating twangs that sound as if they migrated from the first Pink Floyd LP, finally climaxing as Nakatani jabs sticks at every part of his drums but the tops, producing a fortissimo but final crash.

Such barely constrained sonic violence also predominates on WEIRD WEAPONDS. The entirety of both tracks is almost made up with the kind of dissonant intensity which characterize MAP at its most engaged. Distinctively enough, Rupp thrusts his tough arpeggios and distinctive tremolo into the dense playing situation with an acoustic, nylon-string guitar.

Clusters of sound and energy predominate – agitato, prestissimo and fortissimo – with the sweeping guitar string patterns, pressured bass notes and chain shaking and ratcheting percussion reminiscent of an early Derek Bailey trio, if the British guitarist had worked with, say, drummer Roger Turner as well as bassist Barry Guy.

Organized around hard, repetitive down strokes from Rupp, cross-patterning frails and fills from Buck and basement echoing col legno spans from Williamson, the effect is what you imagine the soundtrack would reflect if a trio of mad scientists were foraging through a combination laboratory and junk shop.

Tapping and slapping tones on the bridge and up the neck, the guitar is a perpetual motion machine with its tremolos and diamond-hard string snaps often turning to note clusters. Retorts take the form of rammed floor kettle and snare tops and drumstick dragged across the ride cymbal, as well as J. Arthur Rank-like gong soundings. Blunt, irregular patterns take up another portion of the tracks, with the bassist seemingly intent on never appending a continuum.

Eventually, at about the half-way point, when it appears that no more muscle could be applied to any of the instruments the polyphonic cooperation reaches a crescendo. Rupp turns to banjo-like chromatic effects, Buck to accelerating metallic-splashes and slashes, and Williamson to constantly changing patterning and accents. With every aural cavity crammed all have to slam on the metaphorical brakes, which they do with gradual s sul ponticello bass lines, rigid string snapping and scrapped and patted drum bounces.

Each of the overlong tracks – “Spandex” counts in at a smidgen less than 24 minutes – evolves the same way, with the contrapuntal dynamics reaching such a pitch of unrestrained excitement that you hardly noticed the passing of time – although each independently reaches a satisfactory cool down and conclusion.

MAP and Rupp, Buck and Williamson use supplementary implements and a mind set that takes unexpected timbres and electronics into the mix when improvising. Yet the results – especially for the musically adventurous – are as satisfying as any conventional guitar-bass-drum trio session you may have heard in the past.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Weird: 1. Naugahyde 2. Spandex

Personnel: Weird: Olaf Rupp (guitar); Joe Williamson (bass); Tony Buck (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Six: 1. Improvisation 1 2. Improvisation 2 3. Improvisation 3 4. Improvisation 4 5. Improvisation 5 6. Improvisation 6

Personnel: Six: Mary Halvorson (guitar); Clayton Thomas (bass); Tatsuya Nakatani (drums and percussion)

December 12, 2005

COR FUHLER

Corkestra
Data 044

Quirkiest of the Netherlands’ collection of third generation improvisers, Amsterdam-based keyboardist Cor Fuhler strives to advance beyond the admixture of new classical, jazz and cabaret sound that characterize Dutch improv, especially when created by its best-known practitioners – Misha Mengelberg’s ICP Orchestra and Willem Breuker’s Kollektief.

Fuhler, who studied counterpoint with Mengelberg, has long dabbled in electronics, as well, adding string stimulators, self-made modifications and antiquated electronic keyboards to his presentations. Here, using the talents of his nine-piece so-called Corkestra, he intertwines unique electronic oscillations with timbres from expected – saxophone, flute, clarinet, bass, guitar – and unexpected – cymbalom, singing saw and hammer dulcimer – instruments. Reminiscent of some of John Zorn’s game pieces, he also divides the ensemble into sub-groups, while handing them a collection of riffs, vamps, and melody lines.

Top-flight improvisers, the band includes ICPer Ab Baars and Available Jelly’s Tobias Delius on saxophones and clarinets, contemporary classical flautist Anne La Berge, Ex guitarist Andy Moor, Necks percussionist Tony Buck, bassist Wilbert de Joode and traps man Michael Vatcher who work with everyone, plus cymbalom player Nora Mulder. Given the Fuhler motifs, the players then assemble, combine and superimpose solos and riffs on them, helping the pianist to create group or solo real time performances.

The result, recorded live, creates responses that run from admiration to queasiness. Sometimes the instant compositions sound like cartoon music from the Netherlands, other times like field recordings from some unknown country. Ruefully a few tunes resemble little more than a set of aural ingredients lobbed into a mixing bowl, but not given enough bonding material to set properly into an admirable form.

Regretfully Fuhler has also fallen victim to the more-is-more concept. Little damage would have been done to CORKESTRA by cutting out some of the 11 tracks and beefing up some of the others. At points it appears as if certain sounds, timbres or instruments are included because they were present in the studio rather than used to build up the musical interface.

Manipulating tonal vibrations from his organ, clavinet or piano, Fuhler can blend with either the oddball or the conventional instruments. The resulting generated textures thus resemble, on different tracks, the background music for the antics of perverted marionettes – he has written musical-theatre pieces – straight MOR sounds with massive organ tremolos swelling on top – Jimmy Smith he ain’t – or incidental big top music from a calliope.

Somehow vague Balkan inflections inhabit the tracks as well, no doubt brought forward by Vatcher hammered dulcimer and Mulder’s tabletop zither. But these are never overriding motifs, neither are the intimation of European mandolin bands created by spiccato, chromatic chording from Moor and DeJoode. Alternately, when all the string and pseudo string players unite, the abrasive effect is often that of sharp-teethed mice chewing on the music and the instruments – one octave at a time. More frequently the bassist lets loose with a vigorous crossbow-like twang, confirming his simultaneous foreground and background status. Distorted guitar flanging is at a minimum as well –

Moor is a group player, not a showoff. When it does appear, it’s in concordance with trebly electric piano fills.

Lack of brass means that when kiddie show-like marches appear they’re conveyed by clattering bounces from the two percussionists and soaring honks and smears from the two tenor saxophonists. Otherwise the saxophonists – inventive players both – are shamefully kept under wraps. More prominence is given to the clarinets combined in counterpoint with the flute for focused moderato cadences, accompanied by low- frequency organ licks.

For her part the flutist’s output ranges from high-pitched contrapuntal peeps to one section of a two-part composition where the pauses between her legato output, mixed with a bass drum march tempo and harpsichord-like fills suggests one of those instructive Meet the Orchestra compositions for children. Fuhler also performs the odd piano intermezzo, but is this a glimpse of post-modernism or burlesque?

What is apparent is that the one overtly electronic piece sounds like nothing more than loops of fluttering, shrilling sine wave that pitiably coalesce into a jello-like mass.

With as much to celebrate as condemn, CORKESTRA can charm Fuhler followers and be welcomed with cautious praise by others. Time for a studio session, Cor.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Zand I 2. Triangle Sun 3. Green Peppers 4. Zwerfduin 5. Lollipops/Woestijntrol 6. Dromedaris 7. Cosinus 8. Zand II 9. Zout I 10. Rockpool 11. Water Supply

Personnel: Ab Baars and Tobias Delius (tenor saxophones and clarinets); Anne La Berge (flutes); Cor Fuhler (organ, clavinet and piano); Andy Moor (guitar); Nora Mulder (cymbalom); Wilbert de Joode (bass); Tony Buck (percussion); Michael Vatcher (percussion, singing saw and hammer dulcimer)

June 6, 2005

THE NECKS

The Boys - music for the feature film
ReRNECKS4

HOUSE BAND
Cycle Maintenance
Louie Records 033

Coming from completely different places -- not to mention continents -- because of a similar instrumental make up, these CDs end up with more similarities than differences.

What is even odder, however, is that THE BOYS is a studio amplification of the music Australian trio The Necks improvised for the 1998 feature film of the same name, while CYCLE MAINTENACE resulted from spontaneous sessions from a quartet of Portland, Ore. musicians early in 2004.

Both CDs have a similar number of short and medium length tunes -- a departure for the Necks who usually play one composition for an hour at a time -- and all 15 pieces encompass the same sort of rhythmic impetus. With overdubbing the Necks play a couple of instruments each -- Chris Abrahams piano and organ, Lloyd Swanton bass and electric bass and Tony Buck drums and percussion. That gives the group similar textures to those produced by the House Band featuring Mark Bjoklund on piano, keyboard and percussion, Page Hundemer on bass and loops, Mike Klobas on drums and Dave Storrs on drums, keyboard and briefly trombone.

In the end, however, BOYS is a more pleasurable listen than MAINTENANCE. Shorter by almost 18 minutes, soundtrack demands seem to have given the trio a shape and structure often missing in the American quartet’s live work. Described as being the results of “recorded sessions” that took place from January to April, judicious editing could have produced a much stronger disc.

Not unlike what would happen at a Necks performance today, the soundtrack CD’s main theme is stated by Abrahams’ piano. But the short, hypnotic cadenzas keep repeating and recapitulating here because of soundtrack necessities. Furthermore, in retrospect, it appears that the sound is more wedded to early jazz-rock than what the band produces today.

Because of this concept, Swanton adds echoing fuzz-tone electric bass lines at certain junctures, while Buck’s rat-tat-tat percussion includes the sort of strident back beat he would now avoid. Oscillating reverb from add-on electronics is still part of his repertoire, though, and here it brings additional color to the alternately menacing and atmospheric tones that outline the theme.

What’s most surprising, though germane to the performance, is the organ washes that the keyboardist uses as pedal point ostinato beneath his trebly chord groupings. Scene setting, the quivering tones bring back memories of 1960s rock organists, most intimately the riff construction of Traffic’s Stevie Winwood.

Recapitulation of the sparse four-note theme extended by floating piano chords saves the CD from a faux rock banality. A lighter rhythmic impetus courtesy of Swanton’s unvarying bass line and Buck’s shaken and scraped percussion add sophistication to the foot tapping.

Foot tapping and plenty of percussion adventures characterize the other CD as well. But as proficient as some of the playing is, the overlong structure and constant noodling from all concerned weaken the performance. Especially unfortunate is the decision to let the pieces on the second half of the CD run overly long. Nine minutes plus is pushing it for the penultimate three, while 16 minutes is far too long for the final track.

Close associates, the four musicians have been involved in local rock, pop, jazz and improv contexts over the past 20-odd years. Each is more than a fewer steps elevated from journeyman rockers, which is what also makes a track like “Commotion in the Ocean” so frustrating. Between the wah-wah bass line, keyboard glissandi and overcooked drum pulse you’d think one of those rock-funk-(pseudo)jazz bands like the Dixie Dregs or Sea Level had been reborn. Going from foot tapping to head banging is a poor strategy for the four and nothing -- not even Storrs’ brief, spewing trombone solo -- can rescue a tune whose every note seems electronically overloaded.

Luckily among the incessant vamps there are some memorable moments. If “Push and Pull” didn’t appear to want to camp out in jam band territory most of the time, there could be more appreciation of its virtues. These include Native Indian-like percussion slaps and the rattles of cymbals and small instruments, not to mention phrase-making comping from one keyboardist and high frequency riffs from another. And are those references to John Coltrane’s “Cousin Mary” and Herbie Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage” that are briefly audible among the licks?

Spooky lines that merge tick-tocking concussions with glass armonica-like sounds are elsewhere as are portamento pitchsliding from the dual keyboards and extended percussion workouts on woodblocks, gongs and bells that bring forth suggestions of gamelan ensembles and other ethnic groupings. Additionally, Bjoklund’s showcases on his own and the group compositions highlight some bright, impressionistic cadenzas. He’s very capable of producing flashing lines and contrasting dynamics, whose seesaw rhythms are set off by sine wave reverb from higher pitched keyboards vamps, plus percolating friction and scratches from the double drummers. But too often when his output isn’t wedded to standard funk patterns, it turns dainty and impressionistic, downshifting the entire band to disconnected licks.

All of the musicians -- especially Storrs -- have been involved in superior sessions. It would appear that the maintenance needed for this cycle should have included more of a game plan. That organization is likely what make THE BOYS, while imperfect as well, much more notable.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Boys: 1. The Boys I 2. He Led Them Into the Wold 3. Headlights 4. The Boys II 5. The Steps of Champions 6. Fife and Drum 7. The Boys III

Personnel: Boys: Chris Abrahams (piano and organ); Lloyd Swanton (bass and electric bass); Tony Buck (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Cycle: 1. Wide Wise 2. Sideways Portal 3. Commotion in the Ocean 4. Wind Down Summit 5. Push and Pull 6. See Look Stare There 7. Big Stretch 8. Full Cycle

Personnel: Cycle: Mark Bjoklund (piano, keyboard and percussion); Page Hundemer (bass and loops); Mike Klobas (drums); Dave Storrs (drums, keyboard and trombone)

January 17, 2005

WILL GUTHRIE

Building Blocks
Antboy Music

INGAR ZACH
Percussion Music
SOFA

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Berlin drums
Absinth

By Ken Waxman

September 14, 2004

Antipodean and Northern European drummers are the focus of these essays in solo percussion. But the sociology of why these particular stick men should choose to go it alone is not part of this study. What is generic is how similarly -- and how differently -- six improvisers choose to pursue a solo course.

If there’s one process in common, it’s that all add a physical codicil to their regular kit. Thus, whether they say so or not, it appears as if some sort of electronic interface meets the trap set. Most open about it are Amsterdam-based, Melbourne-born Steve Heather -- featured on Berlin Drums -- and Norwegian Ingar Zach. Heather, who often works with keyboardist Cor Fuhler and reedist Jorrit Dijkstra, uses a sampler as well as found percussive objects, while Zach -- who plays with everyone from Swiss violinist Charlotte Hug to British guitarist Derek Bailey -- extends his drums and percussion with gongs, motors and a zither.

Berlin-based Eric Schaefer, an Eno look-alike who has worked with the chamber ensemble Camera Obscura as well as with jazzers like reedist Gebhard Ullmann, also relies on the zither for extra timbres. Meanwhile Will Guthrie, who still resides in Heather’s hometown, features motor-based toys and machines plus electronics in his improvisations. Only Burkhard Beins, the fourth participant in Berlin Drums, who collaborates with guitarist John Bissett and Keith Rowe; and Aussie in Berlin, Tony Buck known for his work with The Necks, claim they limit themselves to acoustic objects that can be hit.

Appreciation for the end result can also be limited by length, and here Zach is at a disadvantage. His recital, recorded live in an abandoned Oslo chocolate factory lasts almost 44 minutes. Guthrie’s combination of live and studio tracks is longer, but divided into three parts. Meanwhile each Berlin drummer is showcased on a separate three-inch mini-CD, the longest of which reads out at less than 22 minutes.

Perhaps to overcome this perceived attention span demand, the Oslo-resident introduces as many different tones and timbres as he can and only gradually augments his sounds from indistinct rumbles that result from the kit moving along the tattered floorboards to stentorian rain storm and grinding industrial replications.

Following the creation of a tugboat whistle by gliding a stick along a snare top, cymbal shimmers and rolling metallic screeches enter the soundscape. Oscillating cathedral organ-like tones mix with approximation of bells pealing as looping sine waves -- sounding somewhat like a mini dust buster -- make their presence felt. Soon you can make out other percussion entries real and imagined. There’s what could be the swish of a swizzle stick and the vibrating friction of a glass armonica. Cymbals are rapped and zither strings resonate. Then what could be the rumble of thunderclouds becomes louder and more threatening. After the storm subsides into press rolls, a single thwack on a cowbell plus melodic xylophone or glockenspiel inflections appear.

All the while, a hypnotic, electro-acoustic drone, sort of like what the band AMM produces, comes in and out of focus; sometimes in front of the other instrumental sounds, sometimes just behind them. Other reverberations include a gong smash that would impress J. Arthur Rank, a shrill whistle, sharp knife stropping and wooden thwacks on drum rims.

Are the motors creating what could be inside piano rumble mixed with jackhammer tones? And when this timbre quickly gives way to diffuse vibrations from other parts of the kit, and are succeeded by a crescendo of motorized tones should you link the sound to what you’d hear from the assembly line of a sawmill or other heavy industrial outlet? Introducing a touch of primitivism, abrasive ratchet and woodblock scrapes are subsumed by the diminuendo of the lockstep motor, with the performance ending as wetted fingers stroked on a taut drum skin create faux Swiss alp horn tones.

Guthrie, who is also involved in dance, film, theatre and jazz projects, creates a similar panoply of real and imagined sounds on the two longer tracks of his CD.

The more than 22-minute “Westspace”, done live, finds similar electronic drones throughout. Beginning with creaking door squeaks and bell-like ring modulator input, he’s soon mixing regular paradiddles, ruffs and flams on the snares and tom toms with bounce pressure on what sounds like tam tams, gongs and a bell tree. Using loops to make the bell ringing more clangorous and insistent, he ends up with an aural percussion picture midway between the vibrations from Roscoe Mitchell’s percussion cage and the resonation from Ellen Fullman’s bronze wire long string instrument. Slapping away the ultimate reverb, the piece dissolves into silence.

A similar AMM-influenced electronic wash covers the 19½-minute “Blanket” where the buzzing drone from a ride cymbal is extended with sampling and vibrating loops. Not only does a spinning wheel of flanged metallic tones meet a resonating drum beat, but the thunder storm, turbo accelerations and cathedral bell ringing seems to have migrated over from Oslo to Melbourne. However, the concluding manipulations bring the sounds of scraped and gyrating items on an immovable surface, upfront.

Guthrie’s homeboy Heather has a completely antithetical approach to the others’ conceptions. His “Electric Bongo Bongo” features a near hand-clapping beat with enough bass drum accents to move into a disco. The rhythmically powerful sampled beats aren’t that simple however, since they have to vie for aural space with what sounds like tambourine oriented reverb, burbling dentist drill drones and other tones that resemble paper being crumbled, drum top cleaning cloth echoing swipes and raps on the wooden sides of the kit.

In contrast Aussie-turned Berliner Buck turns out the most dissonant, yet individualized program in his one-second-over-21-minute disc. His European residency has resulted in close associations with unique sound seekers like German minimalist trumpeter Axel Dörner. Melding scraped ratchet or güiro timbres with the undertow of electronic buzzes, it appears he’s scratching and shifting all sorts of items along and over the sides and tops of the drums.

The only drummer here who seems to vary his drum beats with cross sticking, at points he doubles the tempo and uses the bass drum punch as punctuation. When he’s not exploring its sections as if he was loosening and tightening the connectors in his kit as he plays, he could be dropping and picking up chains, rotating them on drum tops and using the top of a drumstick to scratch out elephant trumpeting tones on a cymbal. Building up to locomotive-like blaring, he uses mallets and sticks to eventually resonate individual kit parts, letting the natural vibrations serve as a climax and coda.

Dividing his contribution into seven sections gives Schaefer more improvisational scope, yet most of the time his pitter patter paradiddles, snare rat tats and cymbal buzzes aren’t that different from what the others create. Ingenuity is most apparent on the three-part “Don’t tell Morton”. Here his combination of zither and percussion manages to produce celeste-like, high-pitched plucked textures. Further on, what could be keyboard manipulated church bells resonate in tandem with wooden stick reverberations and the splish splash on cymbal tops.

Beins’ oddly titled “Nadir” begins inventively as a thin midst of cymbal drizzle commingles with flutters of sequenced sounds. He too appears to be tossing percussive items on the floor, at least until a feedback-rich electrical outlet sound interrupts the impulse. Shrilled sequencer timbres get louder in the penultimate moments, cutting in and out of the watery drumbeats. Coda is the sound of small bell repeatedly tinkling.

Six percussionists, six ways of handling the kit, and all worth examination should new approaches to the drum set hit it off with your listening program.

September 14, 2004

SABINE ERCKLENTZ/ANDREA NEUMANN

Oberflächebspannung
Charhizma 024

TONY BUCK/AXEL DÖRNER
Durch Und Durch
TES/Vitamin TES CD0103

Well it had to happen eventually and it finally has: the emergence of trumpeters taking Berlin brassman Axel Dörner’s microtonal sound sculpture as a base on which to build their own improvisations.

Expanding in the 1990s from a Free Jazz base Dörner has gradually concentrated his efforts on an idiosyncratic melange of minimal techniques that neatly translate electro-acoustic elements without electronic instruments. For the past little while, he and Boston trumpeter Greg Kelley operated in similar spheres, mostly apart, but sometimes in the same group, as the Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis of the style. Now, as OBERFLÄCHEBSPANNUNG demonstrates, Berlin-based Sabine Ercklentz is another brass player to adopt the concept.

Someone who has played in The United Women's Orchestra as well as with salsa and jazz bands, Ercklentz, is a much more in-your-face soloist. She’s sort of a Lee Morgan to Dörner’s Gillespie. Interestingly enough, she’s paired with German inside piano specialist Andrea Neumann here, who has played alongside Dörner in larger groups like the No Spaghetti Edition, BSC and Phosphor.

On the other hand, Dörner’s duo partner on DURCH UND DURCH is The Necks drummer Tony Buck. Now Berlin-based, the Australian adds an Antipodean intent to this European genre as well as real percussion timbres that contrast with Neumann’s faux percussion on the other disc.

Consisting of one 40-minute improvisation, DURCH UND DURCH is also a lower-key affair than OBERFLÄCHEBSPANNUNG. Comfortable with one another’s textures, there are times that all sounds seem to have been put through a food processor to create multi-tonal, blended colors. At the top it even takes a while to realize that one sound is that of pure air being passed through the trumpet without depressing the valves. Is this a version of Arnold Schoenberg’s Klangfarbenmelodie?

Between silences, intermittent drum top resonation and the scrape of a drumstick across cymbal tops soon detach themselves from the sine wave timbres created by the trumpeter. So do the sounds of chains and other unattached percussion being rolled and spun along drum tops. Added to the mix are static-impregnated tones and a secondary hiss from circuitry, presaging a midpoint exhibition from Buck that replicates a subway train entering a busy station -- clattering along the tracks

Later, as computer-generated waveform loops threaten to take over the foreground, wire brush constrain on cymbal tops maintains the human element in what could be a modulator completing its cycle. When machine-like buzzing threatens to become stentorian, the rolling of unselected cymbals on the ground and glottal, chromatic growls redirect the acoustic output. Finally, as Buck worries a persistent bicycle bell-like tone, Dörner completes the piece as he begun it: with a guttural, cavernous expelling of air.

When “Pünktlich” and “Der kleine farmer”, the other CD’s first two tracks, follow one another seamlessly, it almost seems as if OBERFLÄCHEBSPANNUNG will be another DURCH UND DURCH. It isn’t. But neither is the piano-trumpet expression something that would be familiar to followers of Ruby Braff and Ellis Larkins duos, or one between Cecil Taylor and Bill Dixon.

Unlike all those players, and with the use of electronics (Ercklentz) and a mixing desk (Neumann), the duo here deliberately ignore the pianism and brassiness of their respective instruments. Both become simple -- or maybe more properly complex -- sound sources, nothing more.

On the first tune, for example, sounds from what seems to be the spinning of an automated circular tool in a cavernous vault are broken up with internal trumpet blows that more resemble reed tongue slaps than what can be created with a brass mouthpiece. Chirping vibrations then push into the forefront, vying for aural space with rumbling tones that could be pinball flippers or wood sawing gestures.

The second piece finds fluttering modulations from the piano harp evolving with the mixing desk to tiny cross wire interfaces and the tones of a spinning CD player. In response, Ercklentz creates baby animal whimpers that expand into jackhammer sonics as she scrapes the trumpet bell with the mike. While she whinnies chromatically fingered tones, Neumann creates celeste-like plucked string counterpoint.

Pivotal to their expression, though are the unique timbres on “Rost”, the nearly 12-minute longest track. Neumann scrapes and skims along the speaking length of the piano innards, abrasively vibrating the overtones so the mixing desk and electronics transform the tone into that of a string section. Interrupting with falsetto buzzes -- also extended with electronics -- Ercklentz’s loops eventually interact with the piano’s mechanized crashes and scrapes. Together they suggest how Miles Davis-like choked valve effects would meet percussive tones, which in the pianist’s hands resonate like a slap bass amplified to the nth degree. Building to a miasmic crescendo, the sound is cut off abruptly as if a knife had severed the musical feed.

Gestures such as that prove that there are plenty of surprises left to expose from the output of extended trumpet techniques. And Ercklentz is joining Dörner and others to express them.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Ober: 1. Pünktlich 2. Der kleine farmer 3. Pruh 4. Rost 5. Oberflächenspannung

Personnel: Ober: Sabine Ercklentz (trumpet and electronics); Andrea Neumann (inside piano and mixing desk)

Track Listing: Durch: 1. Durch

Personnel: Durch: Axel Dörner (trumpet and electronics); Tony Buck (drums and percussion)

August 16, 2004

COOPER-MOORE/TOM ABBS/CHAD TAYLOR

Triptych Myth
Hopscotch 14

THE NECKS
Drive By
Fish of Milk RER NECKS3

Piano, bass and drums combos have been one of the defining configurations of improvised music for more than five decades. But as these two exceptional trio sessions prove, with the right ideas and techniques, there’s still plenty that can be done with this traditional form.

Microtonalists, Australians The Necks do cheat a little bit on DRIVE BY. Using all the resources of a modern studio, keyboard man Chris Abrahams is able to doubletrack himself on piano, electric piano and organ, while drummer Tony Buck adds different percussion and samples. But seemingly tireless bassist Lloyd Swanton still uses his acoustic model to shape the rhythmic foundation of the one, more than hour-long piece that makes up the CD.

Triptych Myth, a trio of committed New Yorkers doesn’t stray that far out. Although the three -- pianist Cooper-Moore bassist Tom Abbs and drummer Chad Taylor -- have shown off their skills on additional instruments in the past, the instrumentation on their debut CD is as strict as on one of Oscar Peterson’s 1960s LPs.

Hypnotic as all get out, multi layered DRIVE BY begins with a snaking electric piano lines and whistling electronics, succeeded by metronomic, repeated acoustic piano cadenza, a throbbing organ vamp and a kicking drum backbeat. And that’s all in the first five minutes.

Soon, over a background of hollow, echoing tones, the pianist introduces the theme and its ancillary variations, while pulsating Morse code-like organ riffs soon segment the descending piano clusters. As the sounds intensify there’s much tension and very little release. With studio wizardry Abrahams -- and the others -- plays both soloist and accompanist roles.

Masters of understatement, mostly unobtrusive Buck and steady fingered Swanton are able to shift and accelerate the tempo almost inaudibly. That is until you realize that the backing instrumental riffs have become different when the sampled sounds of yelling and shouting children’s voice are added to the mix.

Warmer and still slightly quicker, the kids’ sounds presage intensified rhythmic tautness that accompanies the reoccurring piano motif that holds the piece together. Soon, as Buck begins cross sticking and Swanton’s beat stays forthrightly solid, the pianist redoubles his dynamics and feeds harder organ or electric piano chords into the mix. Oblique and unidentified oscillating waves shoot from one side of the soundfield to the other, as Abrahams ends his solo with repeated right handed piano flourishes. Shortly afterwards the bassist and drummer gear down the rhythm. It’s succeeded by what sounds like some exotic fowl warbling, and that continues for another 30 seconds after the formal music fades away

Listeners should feel as if they’ve gone on a physical journey, and one that is so mesmerizing that it has cleansed them in the process.

If DRIVE BY starts off slowly, then the other CD explodes like a blaze in a firecracker factory. Reminiscent of the go-for-broke rhythmic lyricism of Herbie Nichols, pianist Moore begins with blurred right handed runs that with extra pressure evolve to strummed and cascading chords. Soon he’s covering the keyboard with high- frequency repeated phrases, Abbs counters with a walking bass line and Taylor with flams and ruffs.

At intervals varying the production with reggae backbeats or Monkish runs, the three exhibit their facility with ballads, burners and rhythm tunes. Both the bassist ands the drummer get solo tracks to themselves, but ones which fit in with the overall conception rather than excuses to flaunt technique. Throughout the CD, you hear how Triptych manages to utilize the jazz tradition without being enslaved by it.

On “Spencer’s Eyes”, fort instance, the pianist shows that in spite of his fire elsewhere, he can capably handle a mid- tempo ballad. He plays a simple, light-fingered rondo while most of the action is expressed in Taylor’s busy paradiddles, cymbal smacks and understated mallet work.

“Susan”, on the other hand, is a carefully voiced and modulated swing fest, featuring jaunty interface between the three musicians. Using repetitive chording the pianist hunkers down on vibrating note clusters as he increases his dynamics, piling half-remembered quotes from other tunes into the mix, before cycling back to the main (Herbie) Hancockian theme. Finally this distinctive foot taper ends with drum rebounds and a powerful bass line.

“Spatter Matter” is more exciting still, as Moore, intent on subtle swing, unveils

flashing chords and chiming runs, then after double timing produces a waterfalls of splayed notes. His finger pressure is so fine that high frequency tremolos seem to dance off the black and white keys. Before a quick, to-the-point solo from Abbs, Moore sneaks over to the right hand side for some quick jabs, then using contrasting dynamics, reprises the theme one last time even quicker than before.

Musically there’s practically nothing displeasing on the trio’s debut CD. If there are bungles, it’s that the tracks have been numbered incorrectly, so that a couple of the “Stop Time” minute-long, break tunes appear out of sequence.

Other than that, either of these sessions can be held up as an indication that old forms like piano trios can certainly learn new tricks.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Drive: 1. Drive By

Personnel: Drive: Chris Abrahams (piano, electric piano, organ); Lloyd Swanton (bass); Tony Buck (drums, percussion, samples)

Track Listing: Triptych: 1. Stem Cell 2. Nautilus 3. The Fox 4. Stop Time #1 5. Ricochet 6. Harare 7. Stop Time #2 8. Raising Knox 9. Spatter Matter 10. Stop Time #3 11. Spencer’s Eyes 12. Susan

Personnel: Triptych: Cooper-Moore (piano); Tom Abbs (bass); Chad Taylor (drums)

April 5, 2004

THE NECKS

Athenaeum, Homebush, Quay & Raab
Fish of Milk FOM 0008

For the uninitiated, hearing performances and CDs by the Australian trio The Necks are somewhat akin to looking at those cartoon quizzes that ask you to find the differences between two nearly identical pictures. Everything sounds very similar. But more contemplative exposure to the band’s work -- like careful examination of those pictures -- reveals a host of singular details, making The Necks’s creations not only exciting, but unique as well.

So it is with this oddly titled, 4-CD collection of live tracks. About 3¼ hours of music, each instant composition takes up one complete disc. Three of the shows were recorded in the band’s native Australia, one in Austria, and were transferred to CD with minimal postproduction and editing work. All can be heard as mesmerizing examples of ritualistic minimalism.

In common with some contemporary classical works, the idea seems to be that when subtle variations of certain patterns are repeated often enough, and for a long period of time, new formations and patterns suggest themselves. What’s more, any description of the band that tries to slot it into the ambient category is almost laughable. The soaring tumult the Necks bring to the tunes has about as much connection with so-called ambient sounds as laborers do with computer programmers.

Granted purported influences from experimenters as different as composers Erik Satie and Alexander Scriabin; British improv mainstay AMM; cosmic jazzers Sun Ra and Julius Hemphill; plus the earliest Pink Floyd instrumentals inform the band sound. But what else would you expect from three men whose playing experience has encompassed rock band Midnight Oil for pianist Chris Abrahams, jazzers like cornettist Nat Adderley and saxophonist Bernie McGann for bassist Lloyd Swanton and turntablist Otomo Yoshide and saxophonist John Zorn for drummer Tony Buck?

That said, the mesmerizing performance that best defines one aspects of the trio’s art is “Quay”, at nearly 54 minutes, the longest track -- and disc -- here. Recorded in Sydney, it also allows Abrahams more time in the forefront than the others. Beginning andante with piano chords that elongate while Buck scrapes a drum stick across ride cymbal to create shimmering, metallic sounds, flickering figures soon turn the theme to diminution as Swanton’s bass strings pick out a standard 4/4 beat. Between the cymbal echoes and scratches and wire brush pressure on drumheads, what sounds like sand slowly shifting and a foghorn (!) slowly move into audibility. Meanwhile, the pianist’s output moves from unabashed romanticism to jazz piano trio suggestion in a Keith Jarrett mold.

Midway through, the tempo starts to pick up as bass and drums break into a shuffle rhythm and Abrahams introduces a modern variant on boogie woogie, with his right hand repeating a rhythmic blues theme and his left producing a perpetual rhythm of eight notes per bar. Easing from andante to staccato, he begins to pitch slide as Buck pounds out an evenly accented rock-style rhythm. Soon arpeggios are flying from the piano with each note heard seemingly exhibiting its own overtones. The drummer and bassist combine for a funky variation on the Bo Diddley beat as Abrahams appears to be pounding every key he can, skipping over the molten flame of a beat created by Swanton and Buck.

“Raab”, recorded in Austria, provides a much different experience. Abrahams actually sounds as if he’s rephrasing a child’s rote piano lesson for a time. You can almost hear suggestions of “Frère Jacques” and “Baa Baa Black Sheep” making appearances. Embellishments come from a simple bass round and what’s probably a mallet occasionally striking a ride cymbal. Abrahams begins creating tremolo accents while advancing a four-note pattern with his left hand, as Swanton’s woody pizzicato motion allows Buck to construct a new percussive figure. At this point, the pianist is embellishing the theme, playing the melody with one hand, then commenting on it with the other. Eventually, he gets into repetitive chords presaging the home stretch, as the theme gradually diminishes and pliant drum beats underline the final diminuendo.

Silences broken by a two-handed motion from Abrahams characterizes “Athenaeum” as well, though the overall theme seems more impressionistic than the others. Here the bassist’s foursquare beat is most prominent, with low frequency tremolos from the keyboard expanding as the piece advances. Midway through, a waterfall of keyboard notes introduces a high-pitched, sprightly new theme, with Swanton adding rococo ornamentation to the melody. Pressure from Buck’s bass drum and the bassist’s string tugging, contrast with Abrahams’ tinkling high notes to such an extent that at times you wonder if he’s playing variations on “Chopsticks”. Ultimately the four-beat rhythm disappears into descending motifs from all three musicians.

Most abstract and rhythmic of the four discs, “Homebush” builds to a crescendo from thunderous bass lines, repeated piano arpeggios and heavily accented drumbeats. Almost orgasmic in its centre, with glissandos from the piano turning modal, woody buzzes from the bass morphing into guitar-like strumming and Buck producing what appear to be Native American Indian tom tom rhythms. The end result seems to exist midway between Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive” and the all-encompassing space chord that Sun Ra sometimes demanded from his Arkestra. However, the near military style tempo mixed with a foot-tapping beat advanced from the bass also characterizes the piece.

Summary definitions of The Necks’ art, the four-CD program is probably too much to absorb at one sitting, except for the most rabid Necker. However anyone interested in out-of-the-ordinary improvisations will find much to like -- and be impressed by -- on any of the discs.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Disc 1. Athenaeum Disc 2. Homebush Disc 3. Quay Disc 4. Raab

Personnel: Chris Abrahams (piano); Lloyd Swanton (bass); Tony Buck (drums)

February 24, 2003

THE NECKS

Hanging Gardens
RerNECKS1

THE NECKS
Aether
Fish of Milk FOM 007

Australia’s The Necks seem to occupy a musical space somewhere between the jam band groove of the U.S.’s Medeski, Martin & Wood (MM&W) and the ambient intellectualism of the U.K.’s AMM.

Deft at mood creation, the band’s CDs and live shows are all of a piece, consisting of only one composition that takes about an hour to reveal its many facets. Like AMM’s conception, the time period allows the band members to take a piece through all its possible permutations before it’s exhausted. Unlike the British group, though, they maintain a constant, often foot-tapping beat. While the endproduct isn’t as outrightly intellectual or discerning as AMM’s, it also isn’t submerged into an almost endless, unvarying groove like many of MM&W’s compositions, which often clock in at a radio-friendly few minutes.

Consisting of three of Down Under’s most in-demand musicians, the Neckers are also consummate studio pros, and on these sessions use this technical expertise to capacity, allowing the sounds of the more than one instrument which each plays to be heard live or overdubbed. Either of these discs could be a good starting point for Necking, but each highlights different facets of the group’s identity.

HANGING GARDENS, for instance, recorded in 1996 and 1999, is the prototypical trance-dance disc with repeated note patterns from each of the three recalling the sort of funk-jazz keyboard specialists like Herbie Hancock and Les McCann pioneered in the early to mid-1970s. AETHER, created in 2000, uses reverberating tones, amplified discordant noises and perfectly timed silences to build an ambient sound field, though with none of the bloodlessness associated with that term.

Although contemporary jazz figures in all of the band members backgrounds, together they temper that bedrock of instrumental virtuosity with the virtues that can be added from rock, pop, ethnic, pure improv and cinema soundtrack music,

Chris Abrahams has recorded solo piano albums and worked with rock groups, most notably nine months spent in 1993 as keyboard player with Australia’s political-rock export Midnight Oil. Bassist Lloyd Swanton, who also produces CDs and writes film music, leads his own group, The catholics, as well playing in Australian alto saxophonist Bernie McGann’s trio. Other employers have ranged from British pop star Sting to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, American blues singer Jimmy Witherspoon and such mainstream Yank jazzers as pianist John Hicks and tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan. Drummer Tony Buck has not only played with local -- pianist Paul Grabowsky and saxophonist Dale Barlow -- and American -- saxophonists Jordan and Ernie Watts -- jazz musicians, but has worked and recorded with adventurous musicians in Europe and Japan such as turntablist Otomo Yoshihide, violinist Jon Rose and saxophonist John Zorn.

If 60-minute CDs made the charts, HANGING GARDENS, with its hypnotic ornamentation could be a genuine pop hit. But then that would demand that Top 40 followers listen for 57 minutes more than usual. Awash with the sort of electric gestalt that characterized BITCHES BREW and other Ur-fusion efforts, the CD is even more impressive, considering that all the sounds are made by three musicians, not the 13 Miles Davis used. The instant composition is also built up from the bottom with the basso ostinato supplied by Abrahams’ six-note, right-handed piano cluster and Swanton’s almost concrete-strong 4/4 time keeping. With the theme fading in and out, coloration comes from brushes used on Buck’s cymbals, some outright jazzy drumming elsewhere on the kit and later (overdubbed) organ washes and higher-key, offbeat, piano melodies. As the vamp intensifies, the tune, in a perverse way, suggests all that was right about disco music: the feeling that the rhythm is all-encompassing and like the yellow brick road will go on forever. Eventually after an electric piano coda, the music does fade to silence. But what a roller coaster ride it was while it lasted.

Relating HANGING to the speedy hedonism that’s associated with clubbing, makes AETHER a disc for romantic late-night pleasure, or maybe one to play the morning-after-the-night-before. Languid to the point of near-stasis, the tune which begins with ghostly Hawaiian guitar-like rustles and protracted periods of pure, non-Cagean silences, unfolds like a ripening blossom.

With elongated treble organ tones, simple keyboard decorations, deliberate bow scratch on cymbals and insistent bell-like metallic blows developing over a four-note continuum, it’s probably arco bass strokes which alternately create the violin-like or electric guitar sounds you hear, sense and feel. Cinematic in an amorous, soft-focus -- or it is soft-porn -- sort of way, the constant repetition of different, intersecting themes, recalls the unhackneyed early drone pieces of Terry Riley, LaMonte Young and other 1960s New York experimenters. Remember, of course, that at the time their music was used to accompany the many so-called underground films exhibited. As for the piece here though, by the time it vanishes into a vortex of swirling percussion, the music has literally occupied all possible hearing spaces.

AETHER, which is very likely a peculiar antipodean mineral or perhaps medieval spelling of ether, is surely meant to suggest the upper regions of the solar system, not flammable liquid. Taken into the ear all at once, the impression left is that it’s a film soundtrack waiting to be linked to a sprocket.

Whatever the intent of both discs, it seems accurate to say that the members of The Necks have created their own outstanding and original Down Under take on improvised music. For non-pop types at least, it’s these three, not three Brothers Gibb of the Bee Gees who make up Australia’s most noteworthy group musical export.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Hanging: 1. Hanging Gardens

Track Listing: Aether: 1. Aether

Personnel: both discs: Chris Abrahams (piano, Hammond organ, Rhodes electric piano, other keyboards); Lloyd Swanton (bass, electric bass); Tony Buck (drums, percussion, samples)

July 13, 2002