Elliott Sharp

The Age of Carbon
Intakt CD 188

By Ken Waxman

From 1984 to 1991 guitarist/composer Elliott Sharp stood the conventions of rock, improv and notated music on their heads with his percussion-heavy Carbon band. Using overdubs to add greater density to the match of his double-neck guitar and reeds with at least three percussionists, plus brass players, an electric harpist and sampler exponents, he created a sound that was uniquely audacious. This three-CD set captures Carbon’s history. It also suggests why once Carbon solidified into a beat-driven combo, with a sound close to contemporary rock bands, Sharp turned to composing on a larger scale, intimate improvising and his Terraplane blues band.

Listening to the 49 tracks here which last from 31 seconds to more than 18 minutes, the suspicion remains that the band’s salad days were at its beginnings. Certainly the early arrangements which encompass polyrhythmic positions from each of three drummers – Mark Miller, Charles K. Noyes and David Linton – introduce a refreshing variety to the lengthier tunes. But by the 1990s, when Joseph Trump and Samm Bennett were more often behind the kit, the relentless thumping could easily have been transferred onto any stripped-down pop-rock session of the day without disruption. Other players’ contributions make a difference however. “Singularly” on Disc 3 for instance, manages to be both abstract and authoritative in a sparse set up when drummer Bobby Previte’s paradiddles and thumps intensify Sharp’s power-chording.

The early Carbon was also more daring, as Sharp utilized his reeds almost as frequently as his guitar. Echoing riffs from overdubbed horns mix with strident guitar licks on a tune such as “Iso” for instance, even while the hefty beats from the live drummers separate and unite throughout. What would be guitar heroics elsewhere are also used intelligently by Sharp. Inspired by fractal geometry, “Self-Squared Dragon” finds Sharp’s fuzz tones and reverb extended with banjo-like fills and bass-string buzzes in a stop-time extravaganza enlivened by brays from Jim Staley’s trombone.

Staley and Ken Heer on trombones, tubaist Dave Hofstra and additional percussionists also help define the multi-part “Sili/Contemp/Tation”, recorded live at The Kitchen. As the percussionists bang away in different tempos, Hofstra’s pedal-point blasts provide the continuum, while Sharp’s trebly guitar distortion slowly moves up the scale. The interjection of glottal stops from the brass keeps the percussion backbeat from overwhelming the narrative; so does steady string friction from the guitarist.

With Carbon later on adopting repetitive organ-like lines from a sampler/keyboardist, stylized guitar riffs and seemingly inexhaustible multiple percussion beats, other memorable tracks stay far away from rock-like replication, by introducing novel concepts. For example “Not-Yet-Time”, a score to a dance piece from 1985, uses electronic distortions to mold and color the underlying theme. While the drummers’ shuffles are still dense, they’re lightened by mulched textures from the overdubbed reeds, as well as Sharp’s distinct finger-styled runs. Plus there’s a vague overlay of East Indian-styled textures. With the use of a graphic score and instruction sets, “Jump Cut” from 1990, shows another path the band could have followed. Percussive clip-clops and what sounds like hammering on a thunder sheet are balanced by a sluicing electric bass solo, a wash of keyboard harmonies, and guitar pyrotechnics which push the final theme variant both to higher pitches and to a satisfying conclusion.

The tracks on The Age of Carbon can be split in half. Many are admirable enough to stand up to repeated listening. However a high majority of the others relate so clearly to the big beat obsessed musical ideas of their time that carbon dating wouldn’t be necessary to situate them historically.

Tracks: Disc 1: Geometry; Iso; Helicopters; As Diversity Disappears; Inverse Proportions; Vicious Cycle; Last Laugh; Intervention; CIA Pope; Self-Squared Dragon; Sili/Contemp/Tation; No Prob; Alveoli Disc 2: Turbulence; Squig; Lacunar; Dusts; Not-Yet-Time; Diffractal; Bean; Unks; Quack; Nest of Saws; Point & Shoot Kipple; D-Cipher; Chapter 11; Cenobites; Augury; Inter; Gigabytes Disc 3: Singularity; Raptor; Freeze Frame; X-Talk; Jump Cut; Paper Trail; Good for Business; Wex; Sockets; Morphing; Tox; Contradiction in Terms; My Blood Is Boiling; Ossuary; Big Lie; Chilly Necessity; Highrise; Running on Cafohol

Personnel: Disc 1: Lesli Dalaba: trumpet (4); Jim Staley trombone (10, 11); Ken Heer: trombone, bass (10, 11); Dave Hofstra tuba (10); Elliott Sharp: doubleneck guitarbass, saxophones, clarinets, slab, pantar, vocals; Bobby Previte: drums (10, 11); Jim Mussen: drums (6-2); M. E. Miller drums, percussion (1-5); Charles K. Noyes: drums, percussion, saw (1-5, 10, 11, 13); David Linton: drums, metal, electric talking drum (1-5); Jane Tomkiewicz: slab, pantar, percussion (6-12); Katie O’Looney: slab, snare drum (10, 11) Disc2: Elliott Sharp: doubleneck guitarbass, electric guitar, lapsteel guitar, saxophones, clarinets, sampler, slab; Zeena Parkins electric harp (9-13, 17, 18); Bobby Previte: drums (1, 4, 5, 7); Charles K. Noyes: drums, percussion, saw (2, 3, 6); David Linton: drums, metal (9-15, 17, 18); Samm Bennett: electronic drums, percussion (8-18) Disc 3: Elliott Sharp: doubleneck guitarbass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, saxophones, clarinets, sampler, slab; Zeena Parkins electric harp, slab (2-5, 7-18); David Weinstein: sampler, keyboard (2, 6-18); Marc Sloan: electric bass (2, 6-18); Joseph Trump: drums; Bobby Previte drums (1); David Linton: drums, metal (3, 5); Samm Bennett electronic drums, percussion (3-5)

--For New York City Jazz Record July 2011

July 7, 2011

Elliott Sharp

Binibon
Henceforth Records 110

Theatrically gripping and sonically sophisticated, this modern opera by composer Elliott Sharp and librettist/narrator Jack Womack reflects the events surrounding a 1981 killing in New York’s East Village. That flashpoint was the genesis for a musical meditation on Manhattan, where “everyone has a favorite murder”.

Through studio wizardry Sharp creates all the instrumental sounds on reeds, guitars, bass, percussion, synthesizer and programmed samples. With the score providing leitmotifs for the story, Sharp’s instincts are note-perfect, whether backing the narrator’s hard-boiled sardonic drawl with overblown saxophone vibrato à la Harlem Nocturne or using menacing guitar flanges to underline Jedediah Schultz’s dialogue as protagonist Jack Henry Abbott boasting how he can gut a victim while knifing him. Later echoing industrial sound accelerates to synthesizer and drum-beat disco-funk, when waitress Susie (sung by Queen Esther) defiantly describes her street smarts, then in funky R&B mode, vocalizes her view of the tragedy.

A 24-hour Bohemian hang-out, the Binibon restaurant was where manager/actor Richie Aden (sung by Cy Fore) was murdered by Abbott, a writer and psychopathic criminal. While the libretto makes clear that the brutal murder presaged the city’s gentrifying to become “Ground Zero Disneyland”, as Womack states deadpan while samples of ecclesiastical organ music pump in the background, Sharp’s music evocatively recreates the 1980s sound milieu.

Whether it’s the jerky pulsating electronics that backs Ryan Quinn’s campy rap as drag queen and eyewitness Fabuluscious or the hard-C&W styled guitar twangs that frame the showdown and eventual murder – escalating to motor-driven grinds and scrapes during the act itself – the music is appropriately illustrative. Binibon is a momentous achievement, because Sharp and Womack have not only recreated a particular time and place, but also recast it in the form of top-flight musical drama.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For Whole Note Vol. 16 #7

April 8, 2011

Baron/Chevillon/Sharp/Vigroux

Venice, Dal Vivo
D’autre Cords doc 5005

Diatribes & Barry Guy

Multitude

Cave 12 Orchestra 1 c12 o 01

With advanced rock-influenced and so-called noise musicians increasingly adding free improvisation to their programs, a new hybrid is being showcased. At the same time the amount of sonic clamor added means that any resulting interpretation has to negotiate a fine line between incoherence and inventiveness. Although the volume of these sessions is somewhat stentorian, and their coherence sometimes spotty, the cleverness of the participants involved helps avoid major pitfalls.

Venice, Dal Vivo is a live session featuring two American and two French free improvisers. Drummer Joey Baron has been an integral part of projects by guitarist Bill Frissell and saxophonist John Zorn among others. Elliott Sharp, on both guitar and reeds here, is as apt to showcase own compositions with chamber ensembles, as be involved with free improv in smaller settings or present full-out blues-rock guitar solos with electric combos. French bassist Bruno Chevillon moves in many of those same circles, playing with clarinetist Louis Sclavis and guitarist Marc Ducret, for example. So does fretless guitarist and turntablist Franck Vigroux, another Frenchman, having worked with figures as disparate as the instrumental ensemble Ars Nova and harpist Hélène Breschand.

More unusual is Multitude, which features a collaboration between veteran British bassist Barry Guy and two young Swiss noise makers, known as Diatribes. Drummer Cyril Bondi is a member of different Jazz and so-called Post-Jazz combos, having played with bassist Christian Weber and pianist Jacques Demierre – another frequent Guy collaborator – among others. Member of Geneva’s Audioactivity Collective, laptop and objects manipulator d’incise (sic) has used his textural dislocation in situations featuring sonic explorers such as guitarist Keith Rowe or electronic instrument maker Norbert Moslang. Guy, of course, has, over a three-decade career, partnered other major Free Music players such as saxophonist Evan Parker,

Almost from Multitude’s beginning the overriding textures are abrasive, multiphonic and staccato. Bondi appears to be distractedly hitting anything he can – hard – spiraling pulses and harsh ricochets characterizing d’incise’s content; while Guy’s sprawling sul ponticello lines or steel guitar-like reverb help muddy the fray. Ironically, when altissimo reed bites from Benoît Moreau’s clarinet are added to the mix on “Corrosion du Possible”, the resulting textures sound neither more complete, complex, nor corrosive than those created by the other three on their own.

Guy, on the other hand, is more assertive on a track such as “Un Peu Plus Rouge”, where his resonating string picks and tough strums dominate. During his solo he grippingly works his way upwards to the bass’s scroll and downwards to its spike. However, with Bondi’s weighty beats resemble the thumps produced by clog-dancers, and the sequenced electronic impulses excessively droning, the bassist’s string strategy must also move with lute-like precision. Just as notably, his reverberating spiccato and sul tasto strokes also stand out among the electronics’ crackles, buzzes and grinds on the conclusive “Exil”. Suspicion remains though, that some of the contrasting string pulls may be the result of computer sampling playback.

If Multitude ends with timbres that are traditionally legato, then the concluding live track on the other CD is just the opposite. Entitled “Mitch Mitchell”, and named for the bass guitarist of the Jimi Hendrix Experience who died that day, the track is rife with heavy backbeats from Baron; repetitive thumps from bassist Chevillon; and ever-shifting patching and distorted flanges from the two guitarists. With LP-like scratches and sampled dialogue fed back into the mix, the knob-twisted, multi-string effects join with the drummer’s heavy drags and flams to create a solid sound block. After the piece climaxes with pseudo-blues licks, warped echoes and vocal shouts, Sharp name checks the dedicatee to the audience.

The preceding four numbers are a menacing admixture of ProgRock and advanced Fusion -- that is if either of those genres would have a place for Sharp’s oddly linear saxophone shrills. Throughout, the guitarists concentrate on supersonic jet-like swooshes and oscillated twangs, as the drummer exposes nerve and martial beats and Chevillon’s bass licks shudder on the bottom. As solid and impenetrable in performance is “Veronese”, another defining track. Before the final downturned textural slurps, the piece showcased tone arm and needle scratches, turntable-propelled voices from album tracks, signal processed oscillations, whistling tones and crunching contrapuntal friction.

While no one should look to these CDs for melodic subtly, they do prove that clever riffs and textures can still arise from concentrated noise creations such as these.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Venice: 1. Acqua Alta 2. Cannaregio 3. Fondamenta Nouve 4. Veronese 5. Mitch Mitchell

Personnel: Venice: Elliott Sharp (soprano saxophone, bass clarinet and guitar); Franck Vigroux (turntables and guitar); Bruno Chevillon (bass and electronics) and Joey Baron (drums)

Track Listing: Multitude: 1. Le Grand Jeu Financier 2. Le Poids des Humeurs 3. Corrosion du Possible+ 4. Pour Les Hommes du Port 5. Ne Plus Avoir Peur des Monstres 6. Un Peu Plus Rouge 7. Exil

Personnel: Multitude: Benoît Moreau (clarinet)+; Barry Guy (bass); Cyril Bondi (drums and percussion) and d’incise (laptop and objects)

February 17, 2011

Elliott Sharp

Abstraction Distraction
D’autre cordes dac 181

Thomas Ankersmit

Live in Utrecht

CD Ash International 8.8

Two accomplished sound explorers – a veteran New York-based American and a younger Dutch-born, Berlin resident, independently probe the timbral limits of electronically processed saxophones. Both CD’s are engrossing, with the American’s probably more so, since he’s primarily known as a guitarist.

That person is Elliott Sharp, who during the past couple of decades has evolved a individual catalogue of works touching on Blues, Jazz, Rock, Improv, Contemporary Classical and electronic music. He has played solo, in the Terraplane combo and in collaborations with players as different as guitarist Scott Fields, violist Charlotte Hug and turntablist Christian Marclay. Someone who occasionally adds reed lines to his improvisations, on the seven tracks here Sharp concentrates on tenor and soprano saxophone, modulating the woodwind output through computer-processed analog and digital synthesizers and adding drum samples from Joseph Trump, Sim Cain or Tony Lewis.

Live in Utrecht on the other hand consists of one extended track played by Thomas Ankersmit on alto saxophone, altered and amplified with pre-recorded saxophone and tape parts enhanced by a computer and analog modular synthesizer timbres. Someone who often works with New York minimalist and film-maker Phil Niblock and Sicilian electro-acoustic improviser Valerio Tricoli, this CD captures an installation piece from Ankersmit that depend on the space’s acoustic characteristic.

During the course of this almost 39-minute performance, Ankersmit varies his saxophone line and various whirling, spluttering wave forms through episodes of unexpected fortissimo timbres and chapter-marking protracted silences. At times propelling the aural grisaille to sonic three-dimensional results, he simultaneously mixes reed shrills, mirrored and concentrated sonic asides, plus all the properties that arise from engendering a soundscape consisting of, among other timbres, accelerating wave-form crescendos, signal processed rattles and flanged, and almost aviary flitters, in addition to circular pulses. The oscillations gradually diffuse and granulate while crowning a connective ostinato of pure resonance, until interrupted by dead silence, and then replaced by reductionist crackles, distracted air bubbles and solid drones.

Eventually reed sounds vanish to be replaced by identical reverberating buzzes and what sounds like typewriter key clacks mixed with bird chirps. Eventually, following other pauses, echoing harmonica-like reed parts reappear, building up to harsher and more atonal timbres. Climatically the nasal reed tone and its related partials dissolve into strident, chanting whines.

Conversely, with his creations spread over a few tracks, Sharp has no need of time-marking silences. At the same time his layered and granulated multiple reed lines not only quicken and narrow to sluices and flutters, but also gain additional shape from thumping drum samples and the coarse friction of machine-processed warbles.

A piece such as “Vortex Field”, for instance melds robotically accompanies drum machine pulses with a broken chord set of saxophone split tones. Eventually as the fluttering wave forms downshift, snorting rumbles are modified into ney-like reed trills. Similarly a rock music-like backbeat from the percussion on “Metelegy” accompanies a series of splayed and layered saxophone vibrations. Then a miasma of distorted guitar flanges, processed whirls and altissimo reed cries attain a common finale of pressurized, twisted squeaks.

“Manaus”, the lengthiest and concluding track, draws on variants of all these strategies. Balanced are low-pitched, resonating drum samples, dial-twisting and tumbling synthesizer whistles and Orientalized soprano saxophone reed chirps. As supplementary smears of colored sounds are added, a tapestry of Art Nouveau-like sonic decorations and timbral palindromes enter into the equation, with flutters, shrills and aviary-like chirps predominating. The concluding variation diminishes the oscillations for an emphasized series of squeaking, irregular vibrations.

More than unaccompanied saxophone showcases, with enough breadth to affix reed sounds to pre-recorded samples or outright electro-acoustic sequences, Ankersmit and Sharp may have created unique sonic forms. They’re certainly sounds that should be heard.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Live: 1 Live in Utrecht

Personnel: Live: Thomas Ankersmit (alto saxophone, analog modular synthesizer, computer, pre-recorded saxophone and reel-to-reel parts)

Track Listing: Abstraction: 1. Quadrantids 2. Limbium 3. Boot the Plute 4. Metelegy 5. Vortex Field 6. Blown Away 7. Manaus

Personnel: Abstraction: Elliott Sharp (soprano and tenor saxophones and analog and digital synthesizers with computer processing) plus Joseph Trump, Sim Cain and Tony Lewis (drum samples)

January 18, 2011

Elliott Sharp

Octal: Book Two
Clean Feed CFG 004 CD

Derek Bailey

Lot 74

Incus CD 57

By Ken Waxman

Respectively the alpha and the omega of guitar free improvisation, the late London-based Derek Bailey (1930-2005) and the very much alive New Yorker, Elliott Sharp, offer two variants on a solo program with these notable discs.

Recorded in 1974, Lot 74, demonstrate Bailey’s mastery of free music, which he had helped midwife into existence a few years earlier. The reissue is particularly notable, because on two tracks he uses an un-amplified 19-string instrument.

In contrast, on Octal, Sharp’s axe is an 8-string electro-acoustic guitar-bass. Furthermore, the seven tracks use no electronic effects except for an e-bow and some valve compression and reverb added during mix-down. That phrase pinpoints the difference between Sharp’s 2009 improvisations and Bailey’s, recorded 35 years earlier. The British guitarist’s tracks were taped at home then transferred to LP at a plant where the cutting engineer initially played the tape upside-down. With modern technology, Sharp recorded, mixed and mastered Octal in his home studio.

Although Octal’s texture is more aggressive and percussive than Lot 74’s Bailey proves that he can crunch notes, frail lines and snap strings on the two tracks featuring the 13 additional strings. Plus on “Together” he not only distorts and flanges guitar lines into fuzzy fortissimo, but also vocally howls high-pitched enough to give metal singers competition. Bailey’s instantly identifiable style is most broadly showcased on the 22-minute title track. Contrapuntally intertwining tones while simultaneously deconstructing them, his banjo-like plucks and flattened twangs resonate. Using slurred fingering and flattened licks, he separates each tone so that it vibrates inwardly.

If Bailey’s improvisations appear inner directed, then Sharp’s are mercurial and tough. Twenty years Bailey’s junior, Sharp’s playing is informed by rock as well as jazz and notated sounds. For example he mixes blues-rock thump with stately polyrhythms on “Fluctuations of the Horizon”, exposing a pedal-point continuum after the folksy exposition. With piezo pickups isolating each string, his waterfall of notes divides on “P-branes and D-branes” so that the agitato lines seems to come from two guitars at once – one high-pitched and the other basso – as percussive rebounds provide added weight. Finally two-handed tapping meets near-flamenco strumming. Alternately ramping wave-form oscillations and vibrating fortissimo pitches animate “Inverted Fields” with feedback loops giving the piece an industrial edge. Eventually metal-slider impelled string licks narrow the theme to undulating drones.

While much has changed in improvised music during the past 25 years, the discordant guitar experiments Bailey pioneered helped create the sonic climate within which Sharp operates.

Tracks: Lot 74; Together; Pain in the chest; Planks; In joke [take 2]; Improvisation 104[b]

Personnel: Derek Bailey: solo guitar and voice

Tracks: Graviton The Boson; Relevant; Fluctuations of the Horizon; Sequent; Eukaryon; P-branes and D-branes; Inverted Fields

Personnel: Elliott Sharp: Koll 8-string electro-acoustic guitar-bass

-- For All About Jazz-New York August 2010

August 12, 2010

Derek Bailey

Lot 74
Incus CD 57

Elliott Sharp

Octal: Book Two

Clean Feed CFG 004 CD

By Ken Waxman

Respectively the alpha and the omega of guitar free improvisation, the late London-based Derek Bailey (1930-2005) and the very much alive New Yorker, Elliott Sharp, offer two variants on a solo program with these notable discs.

Recorded in 1974, Lot 74, demonstrate Bailey’s mastery of free music, which he had helped midwife into existence a few years earlier. The reissue is particularly notable, because on two tracks he uses an un-amplified 19-string instrument.

In contrast, on Octal, Sharp’s axe is an 8-string electro-acoustic guitar-bass. Furthermore, the seven tracks use no electronic effects except for an e-bow and some valve compression and reverb added during mix-down. That phrase pinpoints the difference between Sharp’s 2009 improvisations and Bailey’s, recorded 35 years earlier. The British guitarist’s tracks were taped at home then transferred to LP at a plant where the cutting engineer initially played the tape upside-down. With modern technology, Sharp recorded, mixed and mastered Octal in his home studio.

Although Octal’s texture is more aggressive and percussive than Lot 74’s Bailey proves that he can crunch notes, frail lines and snap strings on the two tracks featuring the 13 additional strings. Plus on “Together” he not only distorts and flanges guitar lines into fuzzy fortissimo, but also vocally howls high-pitched enough to give metal singers competition. Bailey’s instantly identifiable style is most broadly showcased on the 22-minute title track. Contrapuntally intertwining tones while simultaneously deconstructing them, his banjo-like plucks and flattened twangs resonate. Using slurred fingering and flattened licks, he separates each tone so that it vibrates inwardly.

If Bailey’s improvisations appear inner directed, then Sharp’s are mercurial and tough. Twenty years Bailey’s junior, Sharp’s playing is informed by rock as well as jazz and notated sounds. For example he mixes blues-rock thump with stately polyrhythms on “Fluctuations of the Horizon”, exposing a pedal-point continuum after the folksy exposition. With piezo pickups isolating each string, his waterfall of notes divides on “P-branes and D-branes” so that the agitato lines seems to come from two guitars at once – one high-pitched and the other basso – as percussive rebounds provide added weight. Finally two-handed tapping meets near-flamenco strumming. Alternately ramping wave-form oscillations and vibrating fortissimo pitches animate “Inverted Fields” with feedback loops giving the piece an industrial edge. Eventually metal-slider impelled string licks narrow the theme to undulating drones.

While much has changed in improvised music during the past 25 years, the discordant guitar experiments Bailey pioneered helped create the sonic climate within which Sharp operates.

Tracks: Lot 74; Together; Pain in the chest; Planks; In joke [take 2]; Improvisation 104[b]

Personnel: Derek Bailey: solo guitar and voice

Tracks: Graviton The Boson; Relevant; Fluctuations of the Horizon; Sequent; Eukaryon; P-branes and D-branes; Inverted Fields

Personnel: Elliott Sharp: Koll 8-string electro-acoustic guitar-bass

-- For All About Jazz-New York August 2010

August 12, 2010

United Brassworkers Front

In Between Stories
Evander Music EM 040

Antoine Berthiaume/Elliott Sharp

Base

Ambiances Magnétiques AM 178

Quinsin Nachoff/Bruno Tocanne Project

5 New Dreams

Cristal CD 0824

Michel Lambert-Rakalam Bob Moses

Meditations on Grace

FMR Records CD 256-0108

Face Off –Extended Play

By Ken Waxman

Sonic battles involving musicians who play the same instrument facing off against one another are part of a tradition that goes back to Kansas City jam sessions. This sort of competition isn’t unique to jazz. Probably the first cutting contest took place when one medieval troubadour restrung his lute to best others playing “Greensleeves”.

Now that improvised music is international however, players can test themselves against musicians from other countries. That’s what four Canadians do here. Two, former Torontonian reedist Quinsin Nachoff and ex-Burlington, Ont. trumpeter Darren Johnston do so in group situations. Two others – both Montrealers: guitarist Antoine Berthiaume and drummer Michael Lambert – go mano a mano.

Results are particularly spectacular in Berthiaume’s case. On Base

Ambiances Magnétiques AM 178, his partner is New York guitarist/composer Elliott Sharp whose instrumental prowess involves equal facility in blues, noise, rock, jazz, improvised and notated music. Raging over 11 free improvisations, the two use the tactile capabilities of guitars’ attachments and properties as much as its strings to tell stories.

In cahoots not conflict, Sharp and Berthiaume crunch, crash and pan across the sound field, combining watery flanges, slurred fingering and twanging resonation into pulsations that are simultaneously wedded to electronic distortion and acoustic elaborations. When Sharp’s bottle-neck facility is mixed with clawing oscillated tones, “Station” could be Delta Blues on Mars. “Freed” on the other hand, manages to work inchoate fuzz-tone delay and dial twisting into lyrical sprays of sound.

The duo’s essence is best expressed on “Essence”. Here one intermittently plunks bass strings alongside jagged resonation created by scratching strings below the bridge, until the piece concludes with throbbing drones reaching needle-in-the-groove concordance.

Similarly blending rhythms so there are no perceptible transition between one and another’s improvising on Meditations on Grace FMR Records CD 256-0108 are percussionists Lambert and Boston’s veteran Rakalam Bob Moses, both of whom are also visual artists. Overlaying a Pop-Art-like jumble of beats they reference ethic rhythms as frequently as those associated with conventions of so-called legit music and jazz.

Cunningly blending in double counterpoint the throbs and tinkles available from cross patterning and inverted sticking, octave jumps, staccato runs, march tempos and sudden rebounds, they understate, but never abandon heart-beat rhythms. Meanwhile bell trees are sounded, maracas shaken, ride cymbals scratched, steel pans popped and tension lugs tightened and loosened to produce multi-colours.

Subtlety is the watchword here with whisks and brushes in use more than sticks and mallets. Cognizant of each other every second, one drummer produces rim shots when the other ratchets; or one bluntly whack the bass drum when the other pounds Indian tom-toms. Chromatically shifting the tonal centre, they advance left-and-right in tandem. Gauge the joy in the proceeding, by noting the ecstatic shouts frequently heard from the participants.

This joy is also apparent on Johnston’s United Brassworkers Front In Between Stories Evander Music EM 040. This Bay- area band of two trumpets, two trombones, tuba, guitar, bass and drums plays mostly Johnston’s compositions, while echoes of Balkan marches, brass chorals, Dixieland and mariachi music abound. As burbling tuba provides the pedal-point bottom, shuffle drum beats and walking bass lines add an R&B feel.

Johnston is surprisingly expressive and romantic on the sardonic “Long Live the Yes Men”, yet breaks up the initially stately “In Between Stories” with splattering triple-tonguing, jazz shakes and rubato slurs. Chunky rhythm guitar licks and half-honk/half-hip-hop from tuba adds to the transformation. Elsewhere Johnston’s arranging skills showcase polyphonic undulations, ensuring the massed brass braying is neither protracted nor gratuitous.

Brass band-inflected jazz is also the raison d’etre on Quinsin Nachoff/Bruno Tocanne Project 5 New Dreams Cristal CD 0824, although clarinetist/tenor saxophonist Nachoff’s co-leader is a French drummer, as are the other two trumpeters and another saxophonist. Eschewing chordal instruments the unbridled power of Tocanne’s drumming manages makes the band evoke drummer Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. With nearly every tune a foot-tapper, Tocanne’s ruffs and flams encourage doubled brass triplet, so that the trumpeters often sound like an intertwined Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard.

Lionel Martin often confines himself to ostinato slurps from the baritone saxophone, except for some flutter-tongued exchanges with Nachoff. Otherwise space is left open for the Canadian who makes good use of it. On “Soulèvement” he plumbs his tenor saxophone’s depth with a wide vibrato and irregular diaphragm breaths, buzzing upwards into waves of altissimo before Tocanne’s press rolls surgically cut off the exposition. In contrast, “Goodbye Lullaby” benefits from the baritone saxophone’s bass undercurrent as Nachoff shades the andante melody with coloratura and moderato clarinet obbligatos.

While cutting contests may be a relic of the past, international musical cooperation continues to set high standards.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 14 #6

March 1, 2009

Michel Lambert-Rakalam Bob Moses

Meditations on Grace
FMR Records CD 256-0108

United Brassworkers Front

In Between Stories

Evander Music EM 040

Antoine Berthiaume/Elliott Sharp

Base

Ambiances Magnétiques AM 178

Quinsin Nachoff/Bruno Tocanne Project

5 New Dreams

Cristal CD 0824

By Ken Waxman

Sonic battles involving musicians who play the same instrument facing off against one another are part of a tradition that goes back to Kansas City jam sessions. This sort of competition isn’t unique to jazz. Probably the first cutting contest took place when one medieval troubadour restrung his lute to best others playing “Greensleeves”.

Now that improvised music is international however, players can test themselves against musicians from other countries. That’s what four Canadians do here. Two, former Torontonian reedist Quinsin Nachoff and ex-Burlington, Ont. trumpeter Darren Johnston do so in group situations. Two others – both Montrealers: guitarist Antoine Berthiaume and drummer Michael Lambert – go mano a mano.

Results are particularly spectacular in Berthiaume’s case. On Base

Ambiances Magnétiques AM 178, his partner is New York guitarist/composer Elliott Sharp whose instrumental prowess involves equal facility in blues, noise, rock, jazz, improvised and notated music. Raging over 11 free improvisations, the two use the tactile capabilities of guitars’ attachments and properties as much as its strings to tell stories.

In cahoots not conflict, Sharp and Berthiaume crunch, crash and pan across the sound field, combining watery flanges, slurred fingering and twanging resonation into pulsations that are simultaneously wedded to electronic distortion and acoustic elaborations. When Sharp’s bottle-neck facility is mixed with clawing oscillated tones, “Station” could be Delta Blues on Mars. “Freed” on the other hand, manages to work inchoate fuzz-tone delay and dial twisting into lyrical sprays of sound.

The duo’s essence is best expressed on “Essence”. Here one intermittently plunks bass strings alongside jagged resonation created by scratching strings below the bridge, until the piece concludes with throbbing drones reaching needle-in-the-groove concordance.

Similarly blending rhythms so there are no perceptible transition between one and another’s improvising on Meditations on Grace FMR Records CD 256-0108 are percussionists Lambert and Boston’s veteran Rakalam Bob Moses, both of whom are also visual artists. Overlaying a Pop-Art-like jumble of beats they reference ethic rhythms as frequently as those associated with conventions of so-called legit music and jazz.

Cunningly blending in double counterpoint the throbs and tinkles available from cross patterning and inverted sticking, octave jumps, staccato runs, march tempos and sudden rebounds, they understate, but never abandon heart-beat rhythms. Meanwhile bell trees are sounded, maracas shaken, ride cymbals scratched, steel pans popped and tension lugs tightened and loosened to produce multi-colours.

Subtlety is the watchword here with whisks and brushes in use more than sticks and mallets. Cognizant of each other every second, one drummer produces rim shots when the other ratchets; or one bluntly whack the bass drum when the other pounds Indian tom-toms. Chromatically shifting the tonal centre, they advance left-and-right in tandem. Gauge the joy in the proceeding, by noting the ecstatic shouts frequently heard from the participants.

This joy is also apparent on Johnston’s United Brassworkers Front In Between Stories Evander Music EM 040. This Bay- area band of two trumpets, two trombones, tuba, guitar, bass and drums plays mostly Johnston’s compositions, while echoes of Balkan marches, brass chorals, Dixieland and mariachi music abound. As burbling tuba provides the pedal-point bottom, shuffle drum beats and walking bass lines add an R&B feel.

Johnston is surprisingly expressive and romantic on the sardonic “Long Live the Yes Men”, yet breaks up the initially stately “In Between Stories” with splattering triple-tonguing, jazz shakes and rubato slurs. Chunky rhythm guitar licks and half-honk/half-hip-hop from tuba adds to the transformation. Elsewhere Johnston’s arranging skills showcase polyphonic undulations, ensuring the massed brass braying is neither protracted nor gratuitous.

Brass band-inflected jazz is also the raison d’etre on Quinsin Nachoff/Bruno Tocanne Project 5 New Dreams Cristal CD 0824, although clarinetist/tenor saxophonist Nachoff’s co-leader is a French drummer, as are the other two trumpeters and another saxophonist. Eschewing chordal instruments the unbridled power of Tocanne’s drumming manages makes the band evoke drummer Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. With nearly every tune a foot-tapper, Tocanne’s ruffs and flams encourage doubled brass triplet, so that the trumpeters often sound like an intertwined Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard.

Lionel Martin often confines himself to ostinato slurps from the baritone saxophone, except for some flutter-tongued exchanges with Nachoff. Otherwise space is left open for the Canadian who makes good use of it. On “Soulèvement” he plumbs his tenor saxophone’s depth with a wide vibrato and irregular diaphragm breaths, buzzing upwards into waves of altissimo before Tocanne’s press rolls surgically cut off the exposition. In contrast, “Goodbye Lullaby” benefits from the baritone saxophone’s bass undercurrent as Nachoff shades the andante melody with coloratura and moderato clarinet obbligatos.

While cutting contests may be a relic of the past, international musical cooperation continues to set high standards.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 14 #6

March 1, 2009

Antoine Berthiaume/Elliott Sharp

Base
Ambiances Magnétiques AM 178

United Brassworkers Front

In Between Stories

Evander Music EM 040

Quinsin Nachoff/Bruno Tocanne Project

5 New Dreams

Cristal CD 0824

Michel Lambert-Rakalam Bob Moses

Meditations on Grace

FMR Records CD 256-0108

Face Off –Extended Play

By Ken Waxman

Sonic battles involving musicians who play the same instrument facing off against one another are part of a tradition that goes back to Kansas City jam sessions. This sort of competition isn’t unique to jazz. Probably the first cutting contest took place when one medieval troubadour restrung his lute to best others playing “Greensleeves”.

Now that improvised music is international however, players can test themselves against musicians from other countries. That’s what four Canadians do here. Two, former Torontonian reedist Quinsin Nachoff and ex-Burlington, Ont. trumpeter Darren Johnston do so in group situations. Two others – both Montrealers: guitarist Antoine Berthiaume and drummer Michael Lambert – go mano a mano.

Results are particularly spectacular in Berthiaume’s case. On Base

Ambiances Magnétiques AM 178, his partner is New York guitarist/composer Elliott Sharp whose instrumental prowess involves equal facility in blues, noise, rock, jazz, improvised and notated music. Raging over 11 free improvisations, the two use the tactile capabilities of guitars’ attachments and properties as much as its strings to tell stories.

In cahoots not conflict, Sharp and Berthiaume crunch, crash and pan across the sound field, combining watery flanges, slurred fingering and twanging resonation into pulsations that are simultaneously wedded to electronic distortion and acoustic elaborations. When Sharp’s bottle-neck facility is mixed with clawing oscillated tones, “Station” could be Delta Blues on Mars. “Freed” on the other hand, manages to work inchoate fuzz-tone delay and dial twisting into lyrical sprays of sound.

The duo’s essence is best expressed on “Essence”. Here one intermittently plunks bass strings alongside jagged resonation created by scratching strings below the bridge, until the piece concludes with throbbing drones reaching needle-in-the-groove concordance.

Similarly blending rhythms so there are no perceptible transition between one and another’s improvising on Meditations on Grace FMR Records CD 256-0108 are percussionists Lambert and Boston’s veteran Rakalam Bob Moses, both of whom are also visual artists. Overlaying a Pop-Art-like jumble of beats they reference ethic rhythms as frequently as those associated with conventions of so-called legit music and jazz.

Cunningly blending in double counterpoint the throbs and tinkles available from cross patterning and inverted sticking, octave jumps, staccato runs, march tempos and sudden rebounds, they understate, but never abandon heart-beat rhythms. Meanwhile bell trees are sounded, maracas shaken, ride cymbals scratched, steel pans popped and tension lugs tightened and loosened to produce multi-colours.

Subtlety is the watchword here with whisks and brushes in use more than sticks and mallets. Cognizant of each other every second, one drummer produces rim shots when the other ratchets; or one bluntly whack the bass drum when the other pounds Indian tom-toms. Chromatically shifting the tonal centre, they advance left-and-right in tandem. Gauge the joy in the proceeding, by noting the ecstatic shouts frequently heard from the participants.

This joy is also apparent on Johnston’s United Brassworkers Front In Between Stories Evander Music EM 040. This Bay- area band of two trumpets, two trombones, tuba, guitar, bass and drums plays mostly Johnston’s compositions, while echoes of Balkan marches, brass chorals, Dixieland and mariachi music abound. As burbling tuba provides the pedal-point bottom, shuffle drum beats and walking bass lines add an R&B feel.

Johnston is surprisingly expressive and romantic on the sardonic “Long Live the Yes Men”, yet breaks up the initially stately “In Between Stories” with splattering triple-tonguing, jazz shakes and rubato slurs. Chunky rhythm guitar licks and half-honk/half-hip-hop from tuba adds to the transformation. Elsewhere Johnston’s arranging skills showcase polyphonic undulations, ensuring the massed brass braying is neither protracted nor gratuitous.

Brass band-inflected jazz is also the raison d’etre on Quinsin Nachoff/Bruno Tocanne Project 5 New Dreams Cristal CD 0824, although clarinetist/tenor saxophonist Nachoff’s co-leader is a French drummer, as are the other two trumpeters and another saxophonist. Eschewing chordal instruments the unbridled power of Tocanne’s drumming manages makes the band evoke drummer Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. With nearly every tune a foot-tapper, Tocanne’s ruffs and flams encourage doubled brass triplet, so that the trumpeters often sound like an intertwined Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard.

Lionel Martin often confines himself to ostinato slurps from the baritone saxophone, except for some flutter-tongued exchanges with Nachoff. Otherwise space is left open for the Canadian who makes good use of it. On “Soulèvement” he plumbs his tenor saxophone’s depth with a wide vibrato and irregular diaphragm breaths, buzzing upwards into waves of altissimo before Tocanne’s press rolls surgically cut off the exposition. In contrast, “Goodbye Lullaby” benefits from the baritone saxophone’s bass undercurrent as Nachoff shades the andante melody with coloratura and moderato clarinet obbligatos.

While cutting contests may be a relic of the past, international musical cooperation continues to set high standards.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 14 #6

March 1, 2009

Quinsin Nachoff/Bruno Tocanne Project

5 New Dreams
Cristal CD 0824

United Brassworkers Front

In Between Stories

Evander Music EM 040

Antoine Berthiaume/Elliott Sharp

Base

Ambiances Magnétiques AM 178

Michel Lambert-Rakalam Bob Moses

Meditations on Grace

FMR Records CD 256-0108

Face Off –Extended Play

By Ken Waxman

Sonic battles involving musicians who play the same instrument facing off against one another are part of a tradition that goes back to Kansas City jam sessions. This sort of competition isn’t unique to jazz. Probably the first cutting contest took place when one medieval troubadour restrung his lute to best others playing “Greensleeves”.

Now that improvised music is international however, players can test themselves against musicians from other countries. That’s what four Canadians do here. Two, former Torontonian reedist Quinsin Nachoff and ex-Burlington, Ont. trumpeter Darren Johnston do so in group situations. Two others – both Montrealers: guitarist Antoine Berthiaume and drummer Michael Lambert – go mano a mano.

Results are particularly spectacular in Berthiaume’s case. On Base

Ambiances Magnétiques AM 178, his partner is New York guitarist/composer Elliott Sharp whose instrumental prowess involves equal facility in blues, noise, rock, jazz, improvised and notated music. Raging over 11 free improvisations, the two use the tactile capabilities of guitars’ attachments and properties as much as its strings to tell stories.

In cahoots not conflict, Sharp and Berthiaume crunch, crash and pan across the sound field, combining watery flanges, slurred fingering and twanging resonation into pulsations that are simultaneously wedded to electronic distortion and acoustic elaborations. When Sharp’s bottle-neck facility is mixed with clawing oscillated tones, “Station” could be Delta Blues on Mars. “Freed” on the other hand, manages to work inchoate fuzz-tone delay and dial twisting into lyrical sprays of sound.

The duo’s essence is best expressed on “Essence”. Here one intermittently plunks bass strings alongside jagged resonation created by scratching strings below the bridge, until the piece concludes with throbbing drones reaching needle-in-the-groove concordance.

Similarly blending rhythms so there are no perceptible transition between one and another’s improvising on Meditations on Grace FMR Records CD 256-0108 are percussionists Lambert and Boston’s veteran Rakalam Bob Moses, both of whom are also visual artists. Overlaying a Pop-Art-like jumble of beats they reference ethic rhythms as frequently as those associated with conventions of so-called legit music and jazz.

Cunningly blending in double counterpoint the throbs and tinkles available from cross patterning and inverted sticking, octave jumps, staccato runs, march tempos and sudden rebounds, they understate, but never abandon heart-beat rhythms. Meanwhile bell trees are sounded, maracas shaken, ride cymbals scratched, steel pans popped and tension lugs tightened and loosened to produce multi-colours.

Subtlety is the watchword here with whisks and brushes in use more than sticks and mallets. Cognizant of each other every second, one drummer produces rim shots when the other ratchets; or one bluntly whack the bass drum when the other pounds Indian tom-toms. Chromatically shifting the tonal centre, they advance left-and-right in tandem. Gauge the joy in the proceeding, by noting the ecstatic shouts frequently heard from the participants.

This joy is also apparent on Johnston’s United Brassworkers Front In Between Stories Evander Music EM 040. This Bay- area band of two trumpets, two trombones, tuba, guitar, bass and drums plays mostly Johnston’s compositions, while echoes of Balkan marches, brass chorals, Dixieland and mariachi music abound. As burbling tuba provides the pedal-point bottom, shuffle drum beats and walking bass lines add an R&B feel.

Johnston is surprisingly expressive and romantic on the sardonic “Long Live the Yes Men”, yet breaks up the initially stately “In Between Stories” with splattering triple-tonguing, jazz shakes and rubato slurs. Chunky rhythm guitar licks and half-honk/half-hip-hop from tuba adds to the transformation. Elsewhere Johnston’s arranging skills showcase polyphonic undulations, ensuring the massed brass braying is neither protracted nor gratuitous.

Brass band-inflected jazz is also the raison d’etre on Quinsin Nachoff/Bruno Tocanne Project 5 New Dreams Cristal CD 0824, although clarinetist/tenor saxophonist Nachoff’s co-leader is a French drummer, as are the other two trumpeters and another saxophonist. Eschewing chordal instruments the unbridled power of Tocanne’s drumming manages makes the band evoke drummer Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. With nearly every tune a foot-tapper, Tocanne’s ruffs and flams encourage doubled brass triplet, so that the trumpeters often sound like an intertwined Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard.

Lionel Martin often confines himself to ostinato slurps from the baritone saxophone, except for some flutter-tongued exchanges with Nachoff. Otherwise space is left open for the Canadian who makes good use of it. On “Soulèvement” he plumbs his tenor saxophone’s depth with a wide vibrato and irregular diaphragm breaths, buzzing upwards into waves of altissimo before Tocanne’s press rolls surgically cut off the exposition. In contrast, “Goodbye Lullaby” benefits from the baritone saxophone’s bass undercurrent as Nachoff shades the andante melody with coloratura and moderato clarinet obbligatos.

While cutting contests may be a relic of the past, international musical cooperation continues to set high standards.

-- For Whole Note Vol. 14 #6

March 1, 2009

Carlos Zíngaro/Dominique Regef/Wilbert De Joode String Trio

Spectrum
Clean Feed CF 110CD

ZPF Quartet

Ulrichsberg München Musik

Bruce’s Fingers BF 67

T.E.C.K. String Quartet

T.E.C.K. String Quartet

Clean Feed CF 089CD

Three plus one times two or two plus one times one. These may seem like ambiguous mathematical formulae, but they’re actually the personnel make-up of these exceptional string-informed CDs.

The “one” here, is Portuguese violinist Carlos Zingaro. His associates include three different bassists: American Ken Filiano (on T.E.C.K.), Englishman Simon H Fell (on Ulrichsberg) and on Spectrum, Wilbert De Joode from the Netherlands; two different cellists: London-based Marcio Mattos (on Ulrichsberg) and New York’s Tomas Ulrich (on T.E.C.K.); plus odd-ball instruments – for string groups – of drums (London’s Mark Sanders on Ulrichsberg); acoustic guitar (New York’s Elliott Sharp on Spectrum); and hurdy-gurdy (France’s Dominique Regef on Spectrum).

Divorced from the conventions of even modern chamber-music ensembles, the three CDs realize a variety of propositions, Each confirms that sophisticated, string compositions are still being crafted – even if the genesis involves instant composition; that profound string-oriented chamber pieces don’t have to be limited to the standard quartet instrumentation that has remained unchanged since the 18th century: first and second violin, viola, and cello; and that Zingaro’s inventiveness is unfazed by numerous situations.

The Lisbon-based fiddler, who has had lengthy or briefer associations with fellow sound explorers such as French bassist Joëlle Léandre and American composer Richard Teitelbaum plus developed scores for theatre, dance and film projects, adapts without strain to the presence of unconventional chamber music instruments.

Of course the percussive asides from Sanders are rather individual themselves, considering that the drummer usually makes a point finding a place for himself within other advanced settings, such as in saxophonist Evan Parker’s bands. Furthermore, on Ulrichsberg, the other three players use extended techniques and electronics to expose and alter the tessitura of the strings, exposing partials and overtones as well as the expected timbres and dynamics.

That frequently means that wood block pops, resonating configurations of bells and gongs plus cymbal clattering and the gentle patting of stretched skin tops replaces steady beat patterns on the percussionist’s part. This dovetails harmonically with the others’ output which includes angled spiccato from Zingaro; sul ponticello lines from Mattos – whose background includes work with dance companies and electronic ensembles – and low-pitched slaps and cumulative adagio sweeps from Fell, who has also composed notated works and is a member of the London Improvisers Orchestra.

The resulting striated polytones and abrasive string action provide intermittent thematic alteration to the sometimes chiaroscuro interface. Eventually though, as the strings’ timbres veer towards higher pitches and become more fragmented, the bassist’s pedal-point stopping leads to a harmonic convergence of four-way, multi-part affiliation.

Similar bonding strategies appear from the different cast on T.E.C.K., although the non-chamber quartet instruments are played by Sharp, a guitarist with extensive immersion in contemporary New music as well as blues and jazz; plus bassist Filiano, who not only plays in improvising groups with Zingaro and Portuguese reedist Rodrigo Amado but is bassist of choice for a number of American jazz men. Additionally, cellist Ulrich, the other string-slinger, holds his own in bands including the likes of Léandre and Zingaro.

T.E.C.K.’s nine selections provide additional wave form scope for everyone, especially the violinist, whose sounds often take on the trilling character of woodwinds. For his part Sharp’s protracted bottleneck-like rasps and chromatic rasgueado prove more rhythmic than anything Sanders projected on the preceding CD, while the larger stringed instruments pile on sul tasto strokes, thick and striated pitch-slides and tough, focused passing chords. The results range from discordant double-and-triple-stopping to a striated intermezzo of grinding oscillations, colored by splintered clinks and pinched, fortissimo runs.

When the four simultaneously decide to investigate the pizzicato mode, the resulting mash-up metaphorically at least suggests the sounds those swollen, 100-instrument balalaika or mandolin philharmonics of the late 19th or early 20th Century made. However the harsh resolution, broken octaves, down-stroked frail and snapped ricochets are definitely post-modern and 21st Century.

Highly rhythmic and rife with fiery cries that are equally POMO are the interludes from Regef’s hurdy-gurdy on Spectrum. Still when the chordophone instrument isn’t producing peeping spetrofluctuation as if Regef was playing a reed, or sounding organ-grinder-like tremolo drones, the hurdy-gurdy’s history as a vertical viola is evident. Regef, who has used the hurdy-gurdy to accompany singers as well as improvise with saxophonist Michel Doneda among others, impressively – and singularly – adapts the ratcheting recoils of his medieval-styled cranked instrument to modern times.

Here the hurdy-gurdy’s harsh whirring both contrasts and complements Zingaro’s sometimes sweetly legato pulses, while De Joode – who imperturbably plays with everyone from pianist Michiel Braam to saxophonist Ab Baars – merely digs into his instrument’s thick tones to keep the other two on an even keel. Regef’s almost oonomatopoeic impulses frequently swell to become both intense and opaque, which leads the others to create antipodal thumps and strokes.

With the hurdy-gurdy squeezes as pressured as they are buzzing, new strategies emerge. At one point Zingaro triple-stops a protracted pressured line that is as dense and staccato as Regef’s output, while De Joode thumps and walks his bass. These basso chords echo long enough so that they adhere to the cumulative sounds from the others.

Later, as constant chordophone drones reverberate on hard surface, creating a blurry, neo-primitive electro-acoustic texture, the response from the fiddler is lyrical and gently pitched to break up the nearly ceaseless continuum. Then the bassist responds with plucked jazz inflections including finger-tip taps and harmonically advanced bent notes. At the climax the hurdy gurdy’s reverberating overtones first resemble electronically-triggered oscillations, then dissolve into familiar organ-grinder tones, and are finally subsumed by the harmonic union of the real strings.

Whether modern chamber music or Zingaro’s advances are your chief interest, there is much to impress and edify listeners on these discs.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Spectrum: 1. Spectra 01 2. Spectra 02 3. Spectra 03

Personnel: Spectrum: Carlos Zíngaro (violin); Dominique Regef (hurdy gurdy [or sanfona or vielle à roue]) and Wilbert De Joode (bass)

Track Listing: T.E.C.K.: 1. Levitation 2. Intuitive reduction 3. If not now, when 4. Ripples 5. Swapfield 6. Memory hanging 7. Hard evolution 8. Still not easy 9. As hard as it comes...

Personnel: T.E.C.K.: Carlos Zíngaro (violin); Elliott Sharp (National Tricone guitar); Tomas Ulrich (cello) and Ken Filiano (bass)

Track Listing: Ulrichsberg: 1. Ulrichsberg 1 2. München 3. Ulrichsberg 2

Personnel: Ulrichsberg: Carlos Zingaro (violin and electronics); Marcio Mattos (cello and electronics); Simon H. Fell (bass) and Mark Sanders (drums and percussion)

October 18, 2008

ZPF Quartet

Ulrichsberg München Musik
Bruce’s Fingers BF 67

T.E.C.K. String Quartet

T.E.C.K. String Quartet

Clean Feed CF 089CD

Carlos Zíngaro/Dominique Regef/Wilbert De Joode String Trio

Spectrum

Clean Feed CF 110CD

Three plus one times two or two plus one times one. These may seem like ambiguous mathematical formulae, but they’re actually the personnel make-up of these exceptional string-informed CDs.

The “one” here, is Portuguese violinist Carlos Zingaro. His associates include three different bassists: American Ken Filiano (on T.E.C.K.), Englishman Simon H Fell (on Ulrichsberg) and on Spectrum, Wilbert De Joode from the Netherlands; two different cellists: London-based Marcio Mattos (on Ulrichsberg) and New York’s Tomas Ulrich (on T.E.C.K.); plus odd-ball instruments – for string groups – of drums (London’s Mark Sanders on Ulrichsberg); acoustic guitar (New York’s Elliott Sharp on Spectrum); and hurdy-gurdy (France’s Dominique Regef on Spectrum).

Divorced from the conventions of even modern chamber-music ensembles, the three CDs realize a variety of propositions, Each confirms that sophisticated, string compositions are still being crafted – even if the genesis involves instant composition; that profound string-oriented chamber pieces don’t have to be limited to the standard quartet instrumentation that has remained unchanged since the 18th century: first and second violin, viola, and cello; and that Zingaro’s inventiveness is unfazed by numerous situations.

The Lisbon-based fiddler, who has had lengthy or briefer associations with fellow sound explorers such as French bassist Joëlle Léandre and American composer Richard Teitelbaum plus developed scores for theatre, dance and film projects, adapts without strain to the presence of unconventional chamber music instruments.

Of course the percussive asides from Sanders are rather individual themselves, considering that the drummer usually makes a point finding a place for himself within other advanced settings, such as in saxophonist Evan Parker’s bands. Furthermore, on Ulrichsberg, the other three players use extended techniques and electronics to expose and alter the tessitura of the strings, exposing partials and overtones as well as the expected timbres and dynamics.

That frequently means that wood block pops, resonating configurations of bells and gongs plus cymbal clattering and the gentle patting of stretched skin tops replaces steady beat patterns on the percussionist’s part. This dovetails harmonically with the others’ output which includes angled spiccato from Zingaro; sul ponticello lines from Mattos – whose background includes work with dance companies and electronic ensembles – and low-pitched slaps and cumulative adagio sweeps from Fell, who has also composed notated works and is a member of the London Improvisers Orchestra.

The resulting striated polytones and abrasive string action provide intermittent thematic alteration to the sometimes chiaroscuro interface. Eventually though, as the strings’ timbres veer towards higher pitches and become more fragmented, the bassist’s pedal-point stopping leads to a harmonic convergence of four-way, multi-part affiliation.

Similar bonding strategies appear from the different cast on T.E.C.K., although the non-chamber quartet instruments are played by Sharp, a guitarist with extensive immersion in contemporary New music as well as blues and jazz; plus bassist Filiano, who not only plays in improvising groups with Zingaro and Portuguese reedist Rodrigo Amado but is bassist of choice for a number of American jazz men. Additionally, cellist Ulrich, the other string-slinger, holds his own in bands including the likes of Léandre and Zingaro.

T.E.C.K.’s nine selections provide additional wave form scope for everyone, especially the violinist, whose sounds often take on the trilling character of woodwinds. For his part Sharp’s protracted bottleneck-like rasps and chromatic rasgueado prove more rhythmic than anything Sanders projected on the preceding CD, while the larger stringed instruments pile on sul tasto strokes, thick and striated pitch-slides and tough, focused passing chords. The results range from discordant double-and-triple-stopping to a striated intermezzo of grinding oscillations, colored by splintered clinks and pinched, fortissimo runs.

When the four simultaneously decide to investigate the pizzicato mode, the resulting mash-up metaphorically at least suggests the sounds those swollen, 100-instrument balalaika or mandolin philharmonics of the late 19th or early 20th Century made. However the harsh resolution, broken octaves, down-stroked frail and snapped ricochets are definitely post-modern and 21st Century.

Highly rhythmic and rife with fiery cries that are equally POMO are the interludes from Regef’s hurdy-gurdy on Spectrum. Still when the chordophone instrument isn’t producing peeping spetrofluctuation as if Regef was playing a reed, or sounding organ-grinder-like tremolo drones, the hurdy-gurdy’s history as a vertical viola is evident. Regef, who has used the hurdy-gurdy to accompany singers as well as improvise with saxophonist Michel Doneda among others, impressively – and singularly – adapts the ratcheting recoils of his medieval-styled cranked instrument to modern times.

Here the hurdy-gurdy’s harsh whirring both contrasts and complements Zingaro’s sometimes sweetly legato pulses, while De Joode – who imperturbably plays with everyone from pianist Michiel Braam to saxophonist Ab Baars – merely digs into his instrument’s thick tones to keep the other two on an even keel. Regef’s almost oonomatopoeic impulses frequently swell to become both intense and opaque, which leads the others to create antipodal thumps and strokes.

With the hurdy-gurdy squeezes as pressured as they are buzzing, new strategies emerge. At one point Zingaro triple-stops a protracted pressured line that is as dense and staccato as Regef’s output, while De Joode thumps and walks his bass. These basso chords echo long enough so that they adhere to the cumulative sounds from the others.

Later, as constant chordophone drones reverberate on hard surface, creating a blurry, neo-primitive electro-acoustic texture, the response from the fiddler is lyrical and gently pitched to break up the nearly ceaseless continuum. Then the bassist responds with plucked jazz inflections including finger-tip taps and harmonically advanced bent notes. At the climax the hurdy gurdy’s reverberating overtones first resemble electronically-triggered oscillations, then dissolve into familiar organ-grinder tones, and are finally subsumed by the harmonic union of the real strings.

Whether modern chamber music or Zingaro’s advances are your chief interest, there is much to impress and edify listeners on these discs.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Spectrum: 1. Spectra 01 2. Spectra 02 3. Spectra 03

Personnel: Spectrum: Carlos Zíngaro (violin); Dominique Regef (hurdy gurdy [or sanfona or vielle à roue]) and Wilbert De Joode (bass)

Track Listing: T.E.C.K.: 1. Levitation 2. Intuitive reduction 3. If not now, when 4. Ripples 5. Swapfield 6. Memory hanging 7. Hard evolution 8. Still not easy 9. As hard as it comes...

Personnel: T.E.C.K.: Carlos Zíngaro (violin); Elliott Sharp (National Tricone guitar); Tomas Ulrich (cello) and Ken Filiano (bass)

Track Listing: Ulrichsberg: 1. Ulrichsberg 1 2. München 3. Ulrichsberg 2

Personnel: Ulrichsberg: Carlos Zingaro (violin and electronics); Marcio Mattos (cello and electronics); Simon H. Fell (bass) and Mark Sanders (drums and percussion)

October 18, 2008

T.E.C.K. String Quartet

T.E.C.K. String Quartet
Clean Feed CF 089CD

Carlos Zíngaro/Dominique Regef/Wilbert De Joode String Trio

Spectrum

Clean Feed CF 110CD

ZPF Quartet

Ulrichsberg München Musik

Bruce’s Fingers BF 67

Three plus one times two or two plus one times one. These may seem like ambiguous mathematical formulae, but they’re actually the personnel make-up of these exceptional string-informed CDs.

The “one” here, is Portuguese violinist Carlos Zingaro. His associates include three different bassists: American Ken Filiano (on T.E.C.K.), Englishman Simon H Fell (on Ulrichsberg) and on Spectrum, Wilbert De Joode from the Netherlands; two different cellists: London-based Marcio Mattos (on Ulrichsberg) and New York’s Tomas Ulrich (on T.E.C.K.); plus odd-ball instruments – for string groups – of drums (London’s Mark Sanders on Ulrichsberg); acoustic guitar (New York’s Elliott Sharp on Spectrum); and hurdy-gurdy (France’s Dominique Regef on Spectrum).

Divorced from the conventions of even modern chamber-music ensembles, the three CDs realize a variety of propositions, Each confirms that sophisticated, string compositions are still being crafted – even if the genesis involves instant composition; that profound string-oriented chamber pieces don’t have to be limited to the standard quartet instrumentation that has remained unchanged since the 18th century: first and second violin, viola, and cello; and that Zingaro’s inventiveness is unfazed by numerous situations.

The Lisbon-based fiddler, who has had lengthy or briefer associations with fellow sound explorers such as French bassist Joëlle Léandre and American composer Richard Teitelbaum plus developed scores for theatre, dance and film projects, adapts without strain to the presence of unconventional chamber music instruments.

Of course the percussive asides from Sanders are rather individual themselves, considering that the drummer usually makes a point finding a place for himself within other advanced settings, such as in saxophonist Evan Parker’s bands. Furthermore, on Ulrichsberg, the other three players use extended techniques and electronics to expose and alter the tessitura of the strings, exposing partials and overtones as well as the expected timbres and dynamics.

That frequently means that wood block pops, resonating configurations of bells and gongs plus cymbal clattering and the gentle patting of stretched skin tops replaces steady beat patterns on the percussionist’s part. This dovetails harmonically with the others’ output which includes angled spiccato from Zingaro; sul ponticello lines from Mattos – whose background includes work with dance companies and electronic ensembles – and low-pitched slaps and cumulative adagio sweeps from Fell, who has also composed notated works and is a member of the London Improvisers Orchestra.

The resulting striated polytones and abrasive string action provide intermittent thematic alteration to the sometimes chiaroscuro interface. Eventually though, as the strings’ timbres veer towards higher pitches and become more fragmented, the bassist’s pedal-point stopping leads to a harmonic convergence of four-way, multi-part affiliation.

Similar bonding strategies appear from the different cast on T.E.C.K., although the non-chamber quartet instruments are played by Sharp, a guitarist with extensive immersion in contemporary New music as well as blues and jazz; plus bassist Filiano, who not only plays in improvising groups with Zingaro and Portuguese reedist Rodrigo Amado but is bassist of choice for a number of American jazz men. Additionally, cellist Ulrich, the other string-slinger, holds his own in bands including the likes of Léandre and Zingaro.

T.E.C.K.’s nine selections provide additional wave form scope for everyone, especially the violinist, whose sounds often take on the trilling character of woodwinds. For his part Sharp’s protracted bottleneck-like rasps and chromatic rasgueado prove more rhythmic than anything Sanders projected on the preceding CD, while the larger stringed instruments pile on sul tasto strokes, thick and striated pitch-slides and tough, focused passing chords. The results range from discordant double-and-triple-stopping to a striated intermezzo of grinding oscillations, colored by splintered clinks and pinched, fortissimo runs.

When the four simultaneously decide to investigate the pizzicato mode, the resulting mash-up metaphorically at least suggests the sounds those swollen, 100-instrument balalaika or mandolin philharmonics of the late 19th or early 20th Century made. However the harsh resolution, broken octaves, down-stroked frail and snapped ricochets are definitely post-modern and 21st Century.

Highly rhythmic and rife with fiery cries that are equally POMO are the interludes from Regef’s hurdy-gurdy on Spectrum. Still when the chordophone instrument isn’t producing peeping spetrofluctuation as if Regef was playing a reed, or sounding organ-grinder-like tremolo drones, the hurdy-gurdy’s history as a vertical viola is evident. Regef, who has used the hurdy-gurdy to accompany singers as well as improvise with saxophonist Michel Doneda among others, impressively – and singularly – adapts the ratcheting recoils of his medieval-styled cranked instrument to modern times.

Here the hurdy-gurdy’s harsh whirring both contrasts and complements Zingaro’s sometimes sweetly legato pulses, while De Joode – who imperturbably plays with everyone from pianist Michiel Braam to saxophonist Ab Baars – merely digs into his instrument’s thick tones to keep the other two on an even keel. Regef’s almost oonomatopoeic impulses frequently swell to become both intense and opaque, which leads the others to create antipodal thumps and strokes.

With the hurdy-gurdy squeezes as pressured as they are buzzing, new strategies emerge. At one point Zingaro triple-stops a protracted pressured line that is as dense and staccato as Regef’s output, while De Joode thumps and walks his bass. These basso chords echo long enough so that they adhere to the cumulative sounds from the others.

Later, as constant chordophone drones reverberate on hard surface, creating a blurry, neo-primitive electro-acoustic texture, the response from the fiddler is lyrical and gently pitched to break up the nearly ceaseless continuum. Then the bassist responds with plucked jazz inflections including finger-tip taps and harmonically advanced bent notes. At the climax the hurdy gurdy’s reverberating overtones first resemble electronically-triggered oscillations, then dissolve into familiar organ-grinder tones, and are finally subsumed by the harmonic union of the real strings.

Whether modern chamber music or Zingaro’s advances are your chief interest, there is much to impress and edify listeners on these discs.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Spectrum: 1. Spectra 01 2. Spectra 02 3. Spectra 03

Personnel: Spectrum: Carlos Zíngaro (violin); Dominique Regef (hurdy gurdy [or sanfona or vielle à roue]) and Wilbert De Joode (bass)

Track Listing: T.E.C.K.: 1. Levitation 2. Intuitive reduction 3. If not now, when 4. Ripples 5. Swapfield 6. Memory hanging 7. Hard evolution 8. Still not easy 9. As hard as it comes...

Personnel: T.E.C.K.: Carlos Zíngaro (violin); Elliott Sharp (National Tricone guitar); Tomas Ulrich (cello) and Ken Filiano (bass)

Track Listing: Ulrichsberg: 1. Ulrichsberg 1 2. München 3. Ulrichsberg 2

Personnel: Ulrichsberg: Carlos Zingaro (violin and electronics); Marcio Mattos (cello and electronics); Simon H. Fell (bass) and Mark Sanders (drums and percussion)

October 18, 2008

Franck Vigroux, Elliott Sharp

Hums 2 Terre Signature SIG

About as far away from a standard guitar duo as possible, Hums 2 Terre is a post-modern mash up of timbres, textures and tones stretched to their limits by New York composer Elliott Sharp and French improviser Franck Vigroux. Eschewing formality and melodies, the two frame the 10 sonic duals with minidisks, turntables, computer processing and electronics to trigger warbling pulses and squeaky, pitch-sliding friction.

Sardonically mutating sound samples as well, sampled French and English voices are shaved down to syllabic sound shards. They in turn transform into percussive ostinatos, backdrops for irregular vibrated saxophone trills, piano key fanning or internal string stopping plus guitar flanges that resemble knife-style scrapes or key-strumming harpsichord vamps. In other spots, loops of triggered electronics pulsate and chime until they dissolve into silence. Many tracks postulate a fanciful meeting between sloppy, arena-rock guitar fuzz tones and laboratory-synthesized antiseptic sequenced pulses.

“Sebald” is probably the best example of this interface where crunching, blurry oscillations soon turn into shrilling squeals and squiggles. Reed bites and a sampled Gallic voice provide contrapuntal riffs until every output – including string palm tapping – combines for defining percussion concussions.

By subverting the guitar’s traditional role and expected sounds with add-ons and unexpected techniques, Sharp’s and Vigroux’s binary creations excitingly transfigure their instruments while providing a memorable listening experience.

--Ken Waxman

In MusicWorks Issue #101

July 2, 2008

Elliott Sharp

Octal: Book One
Clean Feed CFG002

Elliott Sharp’s Terraplane

Forgery

Intuition INT 3411 2

Looking up a definition of polymath in a dictionary should produce a picture of Elliott Sharp. For many years the New York-based guitarist and reedist has been so involved in myriad activities that it’s impossible to classify him. He’s someone whose work encompasses both notated and improvised music, who has composed for large ensembles and small bands, and been involved with electro-acoustic and so-called serious music, plus variants of jazz and rock-blues.

Each of these notable CDs shows off a single facet of Sharp’s musical persona. Others such as his duets with turntablist Christian Marclay or violist Charlotte Hug are more involved with Free Music. Forgery is a blues-rock album, pure, but not simple. Featuring the guitarist’s band Terraplane, it yokes standard blues-rock progressions played by trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, saxophonist Alex Harding, bassist/tubaist David Hofstra, Sharp and drummer Tony Lewis, to post-modern and socially progressive lyrics sung mostly by Eric Mingus and on one track by Tracie Morris. All in all, it’s a CD you can tap your foot to while following the social commentary embedded in the song lyrics..

In contrast, Octal is solo Sharp wringing timbral variations created by using his Koll eight-string electro-acoustic guitar-bass. Custom-made, this arch-top, hollow-bodied electric guitar with two extra bass strings is rigged up with piezo pick-ups and other add-ons, and is miked so that every sound is heard.

Possessed of a gravelly voice tailor-made for the blues, Mingus’ vocal range on Forgery encompasses B. B. King-like grit and a Howlin’ Wolf-styled falsetto. Along the way, Mingus, who is also a poet, brings proper gravitas to the lyrics, though printing them in the booklet notes would have added to comprehension. All around him the baritone sax of Harding, who has been Sun Ra’s Arkestra and the tuba of Dave Hoftra, who have played with William Parker’s large bands, provide suitable R&B vamps. In blue parlance the harmonica is known as the “Mississippi trumpet”. Here, however, Fowlkes, who has also worked with Bobby Previtte among many others, has such a command of his trombone that he outputs both the gutbucket slurs of a brass instrument and the reedy wistfulness of the harmonica.

Adding crunching fuzz-tone, ringing chords and echoing frails, Sharp shoehorns post-Hendrixian knob-twisting into the sort of guitar-slinging that has characterized this sort of blues-rock since the early days of Mike Bloomfield and Eric Clapton. At points, however sitar-like resonations or punk-metal riffs are used as contrast. Meantime Lewis lays on heavy backbeats or shuffles as needed.

Interesting enough, Morris’ one outing, “Katrina Blues/How The Crescent City Got Bleached” frames its broadsides with the context of psychedelic blues, rather like the backing Marvin Gaye had on his later records. Weaving around her voice, sometimes double-tracked to create a call-and-response effect, Sharp pulses like guitarist Melvin “Wah Wah Watson” Ragin, Lewis channels Richard “Pistol” Allen and Hofstra’s electric bass recalls James Jamerson. Settling into the groove, Harding and Fowlkes could be any number of Motown stalwarts.

Not surprisingly for a group of mostly jazz improvisers playing roots music, the all-instrumental tracks are even more sophisticated. “Badlands”, for instance not only features snapping, penetrating steel-guitar fills from Sharp, but also a honking, smoking solo from Harding that seems to be two parts Leo Parker and one part Maceo Parker.

Even better is “Haditha”, in which the guitarist’s triggered pulsations contrapuntally expand and contract as he plays. Including some diatonic recapitulation, Sharps manages to reference South Asian scales and blues lines, constructing string inventiveness within the framework of foot-tapping blues-rock.

Subtract the other musicians and augment the number of technical gizmos brought to the session, including plug-ins and ProTools, and you get Octal. However it’s a tribute to Sharp’s dexterity and ingenuity that a soupçon of blues tonality is added to the sonic mash-up here.

With the piezos allowing him to construct various rhythm and lead lines, power chording can be matched with tough rasgueado as often as legato and dissonant lines can be kept separate from one another. One minute it appears as if Sharp is playing bottleneck guitar with a bow, in another, droning friction gives way to percussive hand-tapping and nearly endless string snaps and tremolo patterns.

He can be folksy, as on “Through the Wormhole”, when Sharp takes on the guitar roles of both Doc and Merle Watson – that is until slashing pulses in double time turn the track urban, if still melodic. On the other hand “Strange Attractor”, wallows in its vibrating sul ponticello pulses, as droning fuzz-tone distortion finally subsumes fiddle-like bow strops and stops, muting fuzzy oscillated waveforms to such an extent that you can hear the fingers fretting as they slide up and down the guitar neck.

As well, “On the Brane” mixes downwards sliding delay and arpeggiated runs with low-frequency reverberations and echoing pick guard scrapes. Sounding as if a fretless guitar is in use, two-handed tapping and slurred fingering mesh to such an extent that three timbres seem to be created from one note. Eventually as the moderato pulsations become more obvious, steady and deliberate strums retard the progression even further so that every chromatic run is isolated.

Forgery and Octal are merely two of Sharp’s many roles, but they’re ones worth investigating if you’re a veteran Sharp fan, or one experiencing his talents for the first time.

-- Ken Waxman

.

Track Listing: Forgery: 1. Smoke And Mirrors+ 2. Tell Me Why+ 3. Katrina Blues/How The Crescent City Got Bleached^ 4. Badlands 5. Dance 4 Lance+ 6. Juke 7. Long Way To Go+ 8. War Between The States 9. Haditha 10.How Much Longer Blues+ 11. Boom Baby Boom+*

Personnel: Forgery: Curtis Fowlkes (trombone and background vocals*); Alex Harding (baritone saxophone and background vocals*); Elliott Sharp (guitars, console steel guitar, glissentar, tenor saxophone and vocals*); David Hofstra (bass and tuba); Tony Lewis: (drums); Eric Mingus+ and Tracie Morris^ (vocals)

Track Listing: Octal: 1. Through The Wormhole 2. Symmetree 3. Modulant 4. On the Brane 5. Intrinsic Spin 6. Strange Attractor 7. Antitop and Charm 8. Quaternion

Personnel: Octal: Elliott Sharp (eight-string electro-acoustic guitar-bass)

June 27, 2008

Elliott Sharp’s Terraplane

Forgery
Intuition INT 3411 2

Elliott Sharp

Octal: Book One

Clean Feed CFG002

Looking up a definition of polymath in a dictionary should produce a picture of Elliott Sharp. For many years the New York-based guitarist and reedist has been so involved in myriad activities that it’s impossible to classify him. He’s someone whose work encompasses both notated and improvised music, who has composed for large ensembles and small bands, and been involved with electro-acoustic and so-called serious music, plus variants of jazz and rock-blues.

Each of these notable CDs shows off a single facet of Sharp’s musical persona. Others such as his duets with turntablist Christian Marclay or violist Charlotte Hug are more involved with Free Music. Forgery is a blues-rock album, pure, but not simple. Featuring the guitarist’s band Terraplane, it yokes standard blues-rock progressions played by trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, saxophonist Alex Harding, bassist/tubaist David Hofstra, Sharp and drummer Tony Lewis, to post-modern and socially progressive lyrics sung mostly by Eric Mingus and on one track by Tracie Morris. All in all, it’s a CD you can tap your foot to while following the social commentary embedded in the song lyrics..

In contrast, Octal is solo Sharp wringing timbral variations created by using his Koll eight-string electro-acoustic guitar-bass. Custom-made, this arch-top, hollow-bodied electric guitar with two extra bass strings is rigged up with piezo pick-ups and other add-ons, and is miked so that every sound is heard.

Possessed of a gravelly voice tailor-made for the blues, Mingus’ vocal range on Forgery encompasses B. B. King-like grit and a Howlin’ Wolf-styled falsetto. Along the way, Mingus, who is also a poet, brings proper gravitas to the lyrics, though printing them in the booklet notes would have added to comprehension. All around him the baritone sax of Harding, who has been Sun Ra’s Arkestra and the tuba of Dave Hoftra, who have played with William Parker’s large bands, provide suitable R&B vamps. In blue parlance the harmonica is known as the “Mississippi trumpet”. Here, however, Fowlkes, who has also worked with Bobby Previtte among many others, has such a command of his trombone that he outputs both the gutbucket slurs of a brass instrument and the reedy wistfulness of the harmonica.

Adding crunching fuzz-tone, ringing chords and echoing frails, Sharp shoehorns post-Hendrixian knob-twisting into the sort of guitar-slinging that has characterized this sort of blues-rock since the early days of Mike Bloomfield and Eric Clapton. At points, however sitar-like resonations or punk-metal riffs are used as contrast. Meantime Lewis lays on heavy backbeats or shuffles as needed.

Interesting enough, Morris’ one outing, “Katrina Blues/How The Crescent City Got Bleached” frames its broadsides with the context of psychedelic blues, rather like the backing Marvin Gaye had on his later records. Weaving around her voice, sometimes double-tracked to create a call-and-response effect, Sharp pulses like guitarist Melvin “Wah Wah Watson” Ragin, Lewis channels Richard “Pistol” Allen and Hofstra’s electric bass recalls James Jamerson. Settling into the groove, Harding and Fowlkes could be any number of Motown stalwarts.

Not surprisingly for a group of mostly jazz improvisers playing roots music, the all-instrumental tracks are even more sophisticated. “Badlands”, for instance not only features snapping, penetrating steel-guitar fills from Sharp, but also a honking, smoking solo from Harding that seems to be two parts Leo Parker and one part Maceo Parker.

Even better is “Haditha”, in which the guitarist’s triggered pulsations contrapuntally expand and contract as he plays. Including some diatonic recapitulation, Sharps manages to reference South Asian scales and blues lines, constructing string inventiveness within the framework of foot-tapping blues-rock.

Subtract the other musicians and augment the number of technical gizmos brought to the session, including plug-ins and ProTools, and you get Octal. However it’s a tribute to Sharp’s dexterity and ingenuity that a soupçon of blues tonality is added to the sonic mash-up here.

With the piezos allowing him to construct various rhythm and lead lines, power chording can be matched with tough rasgueado as often as legato and dissonant lines can be kept separate from one another. One minute it appears as if Sharp is playing bottleneck guitar with a bow, in another, droning friction gives way to percussive hand-tapping and nearly endless string snaps and tremolo patterns.

He can be folksy, as on “Through the Wormhole”, when Sharp takes on the guitar roles of both Doc and Merle Watson – that is until slashing pulses in double time turn the track urban, if still melodic. On the other hand “Strange Attractor”, wallows in its vibrating sul ponticello pulses, as droning fuzz-tone distortion finally subsumes fiddle-like bow strops and stops, muting fuzzy oscillated waveforms to such an extent that you can hear the fingers fretting as they slide up and down the guitar neck.

As well, “On the Brane” mixes downwards sliding delay and arpeggiated runs with low-frequency reverberations and echoing pick guard scrapes. Sounding as if a fretless guitar is in use, two-handed tapping and slurred fingering mesh to such an extent that three timbres seem to be created from one note. Eventually as the moderato pulsations become more obvious, steady and deliberate strums retard the progression even further so that every chromatic run is isolated.

Forgery and Octal are merely two of Sharp’s many roles, but they’re ones worth investigating if you’re a veteran Sharp fan, or one experiencing his talents for the first time.

-- Ken Waxman

.

Track Listing: Forgery: 1. Smoke And Mirrors+ 2. Tell Me Why+ 3. Katrina Blues/How The Crescent City Got Bleached^ 4. Badlands 5. Dance 4 Lance+ 6. Juke 7. Long Way To Go+ 8. War Between The States 9. Haditha 10.How Much Longer Blues+ 11. Boom Baby Boom+*

Personnel: Forgery: Curtis Fowlkes (trombone and background vocals*); Alex Harding (baritone saxophone and background vocals*); Elliott Sharp (guitars, console steel guitar, glissentar, tenor saxophone and vocals*); David Hofstra (bass and tuba); Tony Lewis: (drums); Eric Mingus+ and Tracie Morris^ (vocals)

Track Listing: Octal: 1. Through The Wormhole 2. Symmetree 3. Modulant 4. On the Brane 5. Intrinsic Spin 6. Strange Attractor 7. Antitop and Charm 8. Quaternion

Personnel: Octal: Elliott Sharp (eight-string electro-acoustic guitar-bass)

June 27, 2008

Elliott Sharp & Charlotte Hug

pi:k
Emanem 4143

Not your father’s string duo, these 14 gripping, tough and abrasive duets by American guitarist Elliott Sharp and Swiss violist Charlotte Hug shove any memory of Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti or Stéphane Grapelli and Django Reinhardt aside.

Sharp, a polymath, equally comfortable with blues, rock, New music and improv, and Hug, whose associates range from Quebec laptoppist Chantale LaPlante to the London Improvisers Orchestra, do for their popular traditional instruments in the early 21st Century what those other duos did for them in the early 20th – create an up-to-date context for profound improvisation. To that end, while both use electronic to contrapuntally extend the sounds with pulsating wave forms and power-outage-like flanges on the final six tracks, the initial eight improvisations show that contemporary techniques can create almost the same effects acoustically.

Thus Sharp’s knife-style bottleneck licks and Hug’s accelerated spiccato bowing may be antiphonal at times, but their in-the-moment connections create textures which frame his nails-scrapping rasgueado motion and her sul ponticello leaps and flying staccato in polyphonic accord. Whether the performances involve coagulated harmonies or raspy portamento runs the finale ends with purposeful reflection of one another’s ideas.

Able to subdivide timbres still further with electrical add-ons, sounds become more spacious and metallic on the last tracks. Yet despite thunderstorm-like drones and piercing string whistles, the result is never inchoate. Traditional techniques, ranging from dobro-like frailing from one side and impressionistic portamento stroking on the other, combine with the signal processed spluttering and grinding into satisfying distinctive inventions.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For CODA Issue 337

January 15, 2008

Elliott Sharp & Reinhold Friedl

Feuchtify
EMANEM 4133

Probably what it could have sounded like when Liszt and Chopin got together after hours over the pianoforte; or how Cage and Feldman exchanged musical concepts in Manhattan cafeterias, Feuchtify is made up of 13 improvisations by composers who are also part of the so-called serious musician world.

Describing Elliott Sharp this way may be a bit of a misnomer. A prototypical New York polymath – who plays soprano saxophone, dobro, electric fretless guitar, eight-string guitar-bass and computer here – Sharp may have an impressive academic background in serious music, but his recorded efforts are more far-ranging. Some of his collaborators include Downtowner par excellence alto saxophonist/composer John Zorn as well as Hubert Sumlin, who played lead guitar for bluesman Howlin’ Wolf.

Berlin-based Reinhold Friedl is also prodigiously educated and the recipient of various European fellowships. Nevertheless, Friedl – who plays inside piano and prepared piano here – has also collaborated with a wide variety of musicians ranging from avant-rock guitarist Lee Ranaldo to minimalist trombonist Radu Malfatti. He’s also involved with computer music, and is the artistic director of the Zeitkratzer Ensemble, for which Sharp has also composed.

Anything but stiff and decorous, the notable performances on this CD, recorded at New York’s now-defunct Tonic club, are concerned with pointillism and timbral interaction, and dedicated to cross pollinating the textures from the varied instruments.

One prime example of this is “Ify”, the CD’s almost 11½-minute final track. Initially focused on celesta-styled single-note plucks from Friedl and slurred clatters from Sharp’s fretless guitar, a secondary variation includes dense, yet staccato guitar tones with Friedl’s response characterized by occasional string slaps from the piano harp. Eventually mooing sound pressure from the computer subsumes the harsh polyrhythmic reverb, creating a conclusive blend.

Elsewhere, as on “Pend”, kinetic but low-frequency chording is created as stopped piano string intonation is mirrored by fretless guitar licks. But this outcome is then used as an opportunity for Sharp to agitate and thicken his playing, turning his output to an infinitely sustained drone.

Although heavy metal-like staccatissimo licks also figure into the duo’s interaction, the guitarist appears more comfortable exploring what could only be termed an avant-blues style. Mixing knife-edge bottleneck whines with slurred microtonal feints and beneath-the-bridge scraping on “Pel”, Sharp appears to be detuning the guitar as he plays. Meantime Friedl thrusts individual keyboard pitches forward, stopping and striking the strings to create a multi-hued carpet on which the sharp guitar notes gleam like embroidered gemstones.

Other subtle musical coloration include saxophone snorts and trills, metronome-like, clipped piano notes that reference vibraphone bar pressure, piezo-extended frenetic guitar licks and the resonating pressure of what sounds like aluminum plates placed on top of the piano strings. Yet since many of the other wide-ranging timbres are nearly mulched within blurry, triggered signals and computer samples, Feuchtify avoids individual musical braggadocio for essays in sound cooperation.

Agile Free Improvisation of the highest standard, the CD exemplifies the strategy of the more adventurous of 21st Century notated composers. Rather than burrowing in their own (usually academic offices) communing only with themselves and their muse, outward looking types are out-and-about, experimenting with individual concepts in the company of other musicians in galleries, restaurants, clubs and even bars.

-- Ken Waxman

.

Track Listing: 1. Dict 2. Duc 3. Gress 4. Ject 5. Pel 6. Pend 7. Por 8. Scrib 9. Tract 10. Vert 11. Sub 12. Dis 13. Ify

Personnel: Elliott Sharp (soprano saxophone, dobro, electric fretless guitar, eight-string guitar-bass and computer) and Reinhold Friedl (inside piano and prepared piano)

November 2, 2007

TAMURA+SHARP+KATO+FUJII

In the Tank
Libra Records Libra 104-11

Analyzed like the arrangement of officials in the podium at a Beijing May Day parade, the way the personnel is displayed on IN THE TANK probably means that it’s more Natsuki Tamura’s session than one headed by Satoko Fujii. Usually in the past, his CDs have included broad, near-atonal intervals and harsh, electronic instruments, while hers, although sometimes featuring rock-styled musicians usually encompass classic jazz forms like the piano trio and the big band.

That doesn’t mean that pianist Fujii contributes any less to this aggressive free improv than Tamura, her trumpet-playing husband. Yet when you mix in the contributions of guitarist Takayuki Kato member of the Free Jazz Shibusashirazu Orchestra, who participated in a later Fujii quartet session where she first recorded on synthesizer, and New York guitarist and soprano saxophonist Elliott Sharp, whose eccentric outpourings have ranged from noise-rock to futuristic classical themes, her playing is the most distanced from electronics.

Really one 68-minute improv, the CD is divided into four tracks that should be listened to as a whole. Mixing the trumpeter’s bravura expressiveness and the techniques of the two guitarists who can replicate bass and percussion timbres, this is no laid-back jam session. It does have a particular shape however, with introductory passages and an elongated coda, both linked with the individualist playing of Tamura. Instructively, with all the dissonant, near-ghostly tones exhibited, IN THE TANK also implies traditional Japanese textures of koto-like plinks and finger-cymbal or rei pings at several junctures.

Still, as the exposition develops, distorted sine-wave pulsations and steady slide-guitar abrasions quickly subsume these delicate textures. Added to this is slashed flutter-tonguing and heaving echoes from Tamura’s horn, plus a low-pitched repetitive counter line from the pianist.

Developing this first-time meeting of equals, Sharp’s serpentine sax vibrations and the trumpeter’s tremolo wah wahs and bright, silvery pulse accelerate contrapuntally as percussion clusters – from Fujii or Kato? – rattle in the background, until a climax of layered guitar harmonics loudly crescendo in what sounds like multiple ring modulator tones. Soon a spray of curved licks and watery bird-like snaps are heard from the guitars implying an underwater fowl pool game has been captured in the studio. The pianist counters with measured single notes and Tamura spews heightened grace notes and flourishes, accelerating so that the sound melds with rolling, high frequency chords from Fujii. Thick fuzz-tone reverb are then heard from one guitarist and sharp resonating bottleneck licks from the other, with rasgueado strums ushering in the next variations.

Here, growling wave forms and dynamic contrasting runs from trumpet flow polyphonically only to stop short by the sound of breaking glass that bonds forced glottal timbres with steady rhythmic cadences from the piano – and chromatic thumps and movement from the guitars. Muddying the interface, Fujii explores the piano’s insides as Tamura spits out coarse braying textures. Another part of the improvisation’s development to the concluding section features one guitarist – probably Kato – pummeling his bass strings so rhythmically that this could be a solo by bass guitarist Jaco Pastorius.

Longer than the other tracks, the piece’s concluding variations are set up with bell-ringing guitar strums and Sharp’s vibrating soprano saxophone split tones that bring out boppy trumpeting from Tamura, an additional thumping bass part and polyphonic layering that causes Fujii to start pummeling high-frequency vibrations from the keys. Noh theatre-like growls and manipulated electronic hums reintroduce Orientalism as do pitches reminiscent of taku bells sounding. Taking an abrupt left turn, Fujii’s cadences finally turn almost impressionistically 19th century classical as the others fixate on atonality. The finale finds the brassman purring low-frequency adagio accents as the pianist comps behind him – as if these two are in one space, and the highly amplified guitars are in another. Coda is a double tongued-trumpet drone that dissolves into single whispering notes.

Created in Tokyo in 2001, this impressive, ever-shifting performance suggests a repeat should soon be in order.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Walking Squid 2. Flying Jellyfish 3. Sinking Shrimp 4. Crawling Crab

Personnel: Natsuki Tamura (trumpet); Elliot Sharp (soprano saxophone and guitar); Takayuki Kato (guitar); Satoko Fujii (piano)

January 16, 2006

CHRISTIAN MARCLAY/ELLIOTT SHARP

High Noon
Intakt CD 063

Gary Cooper must be spinning in his grave like a turntable.

That's because this duo session by Sharp and Marclay -- named for High Noon, the classic 1952 western in which Cooper starred -- isn't a comfy C&W celebration but a face-to-face throwdown by the sort of sonic explorers who populated sci-fi flicks in Cooper's heyday. Worse, not only does Sharp wield an effects-laden guitar like a mean gunslinger -- he probably couldn't properly perform "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'" if he wanted to -- but Marclay also isn't playing Tex Ritter 78s on his machine, but improvising with it.

Yep, Cooper is dead and so are Cold War ideas of what's involved in improvisation. But idea-driven CDs like this only succeed if the musicians involved go beyond gimmickry to produce legitimate sonic soundscapes. Luckily Sharp, who has functioned as a so-called "legit" composer, and Marclay, who has been experimenting with turntables for more than 20 years, are more than capable of doing that.

Too often DJs-come-lately use LP samples to comment on other music with a sort of adolescent snarkiness. Marclay is beyond that. He manipulates pure sound as well as song snatches, shoehorning them into unexpected places. Layered upon Sharp's "Telstar" guitar-style timbres the Western-titled tunes often become otherworldly creations from untraceable sources.

Open-minded listeners who enjoy being challenged will love this disc. More conservative ones will likely hate it. Is it jazz? Maybe. Is it impressive improvisation? Very definitely.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1: Binding Shadow 2. Wait 3. Ghosts Town 4. Tin Stars 5. Deadeye 6. I'll come out ... let her go! 7. So Short So Long 8. The Noon Train

Personnel: Christian Marclay (turntables); Elliott Sharp (guitars)

September 11, 2000