John Butcher Group

Somethingtobesaid
Weight of Wax WOW 02

Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble

The Moment’s Energy

ECM 2066

Now that a large portion of improvised music is deliberately moving further away from its swing-blues roots and into an accommodation with New music, a few far-sighted so-called classical festivals have made a place for improvisers. Tellingly, both these captivating CDs featuring ensembles performing large-scale compositions by significant British saxophonists, were commissioned by the United Kingdom’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. More importantly, neither work is a jazz-classical cameo, but expansive enough to allow the composers’ ideas to be figuratively painted on a larger canvas, using an extended sonic palate.

Although Evan Parker, who sticks to soprano saxophone on The Moment’s Energy, and John Butcher, who plays tenor and soprano saxophones plus samples on Somethingtobesaid, are probably the U.K.’s best-known Free Music saxophonists, the range and organization of the other instruments here highlights their differing approach to orchestral creativity. The Moment’s Energy, for instance, is an electro-acoustic exploration and to this end six electronics-manipulators are part of the group, in addition to percussionist Paul Lytton and violinist Philipp Wachsmann – two long-time Parker associates – utilizing live electronics. On the acoustic side, Barcelona’s Agustí Fernández plays both acoustic and prepared piano; New York’s Ned Rothenberg clarinet and bass clarinet; and Peter Evans, another American, trumpet and piccolo trumpet.

Along with Parker, bassist Barry Guy and shô player Ko Ishikawa produce singular acoustic tones. But during the course of the suite, sound processing, sampling remixing and layering predominates, emanating from Lawrence Casserley’s signal processing instrument, Joel Ryan’s sampler and signal processor, Walter Prati’s computer processor plus the live electronics of Richard Barrett and Paul Obermayer – who perform as Furt – and the sound projection of Marco Vecchi.

Somethingtobesaid on the other hand is nearly all acoustic, despite Butcher’s pre-recordings, Thomas Lehn’s analog synthesizer, Adam Linson’s bass and electronics and Dieb13’s turntables. Performed live at Huddersfield, sonic pleasure derives from trying to decipher which pulses are created electronically and which are the product of sophisticated extended techniques from Chris Burn’s piano, John Edward’s bass, Clare Cooper’s harp and guzheng and Gino Robair’s percussion and so-called energized surfaces.

Energized is a fine overall description for the CD, consisting of one long improvisation/composition, since gestures encompassing rubs, scraps, shuffles, plinks and strokes – usually fortissimo and staccatissimo – are layered into the piece. From the very beginning unvarying synthesized and oscillated peeps and pumps – not to mention captured voice replayed from the turntable or pre-recordings – reflectively pulse alongside clipped and sul ponticello swipes, slaps and wood-rending sounds from the bassists and guzheng player, plus piano glissandi and buzzing reed partials and tongue slaps. Often the sonic tautness is such that when Butcher plays a few measures in the common saxophone range, backed by Edwards’ slap bass, the effect is as upsetting as if a Renaissance harlequin had made a brief appearance in a Sci-Fi tale.

Although a collective work, space is also made for individual expression that never quite become solos or duos in the traditional sense. Around the seventh track indicator, for example, Burn compresses choruses of cascading keyboard runs and sweeping portamento notes in order to harmonically face off with electronic pulses and voltage vibrations from Lehn’s synthesizer. Afterwards he abruptly pumps out some quasi-stride-piano runs to accompany Butcher’s quacking reed timbres.

Earlier Robair’s crashes, bangs, cymbal slaps and bell-pealing plus freight-train shrills and resonating vibraharp strokes break through the blurry sound field to challenge the super-fast dial-twisting, in-and-out-stop-start flutters, clangs and flanges from the turntable and synthesizer. His energized surfaces as well as Lehn’s ring-modulator-like whooshes also serve as backdrop for curt, sparrow-like sibilant tweets and caws from Butcher. Subsequent reed-biting vibrations hook up with clattering from hard objects placed on and swept aside from the piano strings plus echoing cymbal crashes

Whether involved in pumping counterpoint in front of dense signal-processed crackling or circular-breathing alongside tremolo piano runs, Butcher’s unshaken aplomb while playing directs than concentrates the layers chromatically. Finally the various pitches and tones complete the sound circle.

Mixing live and processed tracks, The Moment’s Energy – recorded one year earlier in Huddersfield as well – is no less notable. Neither is Parkers playing any less self-possessed and energizing. But the other acoustic instruments are prominent as well, slashing holes in the quivering electronic pulses for their instruments’ textures, without upsetting the electro-acoustic balance.

Moving through the sixth and seventh variations on “The Moment’s Energy”, for instance, Guy’s spiccato rubs and pops evolve in double counterpoint with Wachsmann’s sul ponticello scratches and squeaks. As the fiddler’s cumulative timbres roll from the strings, processing exposes parallel violin lines which double and intersect with Wachsmann’s live sweeps. Meanwhile as the vector changes, Guy’s plucks and wood shaking are mixed with equivalent electronic melodic pulses. Later, after triggering signal processing – that is so sophisticated that together with the piano and horns it creates a wide-screen-like cinemascope-like coloration – Evans slurs low-key grace notes and accelerating pitch-slides as fungible organ-like electronic tones pulse beneath him.

Shortly before that Fernández’s extended interlude mixes low-frequency keyboard pitter-patter with stopped and strummed internal string vibrations as clouds of humming electronics splutter beside him. Sailing along harmonically, the pianist also riffs and rustles the keys, the resulting sounds of which are accompanied by rubbed drum tops and cymbals from Lytton.

Fernández’s sparkling glissandi meld with growling and snorting electronic blurs plus variable pitches loop at the top of “The Moment’s Energy II”. But the other timbres soon recede as Rothenberg’s a capella vibrations on bass clarinet accede to flying tongue slaps and affiliated renal resonance. As the undercurrent of buzzing reverb and processed oscillations simmer, the clarinetist is briefly joined by diaphragm vibrato from Parker, and then Rothenberg moves forward with growls and smears alongside hissing, blurry electro pulses, a cascade of plucked stops from Wachsmann and Guy, as well as fleet glissandi from the pianist.

Already celebrated for his playing, the strength of Parker’s composition and presentation is confirmed on “Incandescent Clouds”, one of two tracks recorded live. Here, the staccato, polytonal interaction between bubbling electronics, piano patterning and clipped bass lines is no more or less vivid than what is played on the tracks that mix live improv and electronics.

One can only hope that Huddersfield will continue to commission magnificent larger-group creations such as these from committed improvisers. The first-class creations Butcher and Parker produce on these CDs confirm the wisdom of earlier initiatives.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Moment: 1. The Moment’s Energy I 2. The Moment’s Energy II 3. The Moment’s Energy III 4. The Moment’s Energy IV 5. The Moment’s Energy V 6. The Moment’s Energy VI 7. The Moment’s Energy VII 8. Incandescent Clouds

Personnel: Moment: Peter Evans (trumpet and piccolo trumpet); Ned Rothenberg (clarinet, bass clarinet and shakuhachi); Evan Parker (soprano saxophone); Ko Ishikawa (shô); Philipp Wachsmann (violin and live electronics); Agustí Fernández (piano and prepared piano); Barry Guy (bass); Paul Lytton (percussion and live electronics): Lawrence Casserley (signal processing instrument); Joel Ryan (sample and signal processing); Walter Prati (computer processing); Richard Barrett and Paul Obermayer (live electronics) and Marco Vecchi (sound)

Track Listing: Somethingtobesaid: 1. (08.14) 2. (07.47) 3. (05.26) 4. (09.48) 5. (06.36) 6. (06.01) 7. (02.14) 8. (09.07) 9. (04.12)

Personnel: Some: John Butcher (tenor and soprano saxophones and pre-recordings); Chris Burn (piano); Thomas Lehn (synthesizer); John Edwards (bass); Adam Linson (bass and electronics); Clare Cooper (harp and guzheng); Gino Robair (percussion) and Dieb 13 (turntables)

February 1, 2010

Evan Parker Electro-Acoustic Ensemble

The Moment’s Energy
ECM 2066

John Butcher Group

Somethingtobesaid

Weight of Wax WOW 02

Now that a large portion of improvised music is deliberately moving further away from its swing-blues roots and into an accommodation with New music, a few far-sighted so-called classical festivals have made a place for improvisers. Tellingly, both these captivating CDs featuring ensembles performing large-scale compositions by significant British saxophonists, were commissioned by the United Kingdom’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. More importantly, neither work is a jazz-classical cameo, but expansive enough to allow the composers’ ideas to be figuratively painted on a larger canvas, using an extended sonic palate.

Although Evan Parker, who sticks to soprano saxophone on The Moment’s Energy, and John Butcher, who plays tenor and soprano saxophones plus samples on Somethingtobesaid, are probably the U.K.’s best-known Free Music saxophonists, the range and organization of the other instruments here highlights their differing approach to orchestral creativity. The Moment’s Energy, for instance, is an electro-acoustic exploration and to this end six electronics-manipulators are part of the group, in addition to percussionist Paul Lytton and violinist Philipp Wachsmann – two long-time Parker associates – utilizing live electronics. On the acoustic side, Barcelona’s Agustí Fernández plays both acoustic and prepared piano; New York’s Ned Rothenberg clarinet and bass clarinet; and Peter Evans, another American, trumpet and piccolo trumpet.

Along with Parker, bassist Barry Guy and shô player Ko Ishikawa produce singular acoustic tones. But during the course of the suite, sound processing, sampling remixing and layering predominates, emanating from Lawrence Casserley’s signal processing instrument, Joel Ryan’s sampler and signal processor, Walter Prati’s computer processor plus the live electronics of Richard Barrett and Paul Obermayer – who perform as Furt – and the sound projection of Marco Vecchi.

Somethingtobesaid on the other hand is nearly all acoustic, despite Butcher’s pre-recordings, Thomas Lehn’s analog synthesizer, Adam Linson’s bass and electronics and Dieb13’s turntables. Performed live at Huddersfield, sonic pleasure derives from trying to decipher which pulses are created electronically and which are the product of sophisticated extended techniques from Chris Burn’s piano, John Edward’s bass, Clare Cooper’s harp and guzheng and Gino Robair’s percussion and so-called energized surfaces.

Energized is a fine overall description for the CD, consisting of one long improvisation/composition, since gestures encompassing rubs, scraps, shuffles, plinks and strokes – usually fortissimo and staccatissimo – are layered into the piece. From the very beginning unvarying synthesized and oscillated peeps and pumps – not to mention captured voice replayed from the turntable or pre-recordings – reflectively pulse alongside clipped and sul ponticello swipes, slaps and wood-rending sounds from the bassists and guzheng player, plus piano glissandi and buzzing reed partials and tongue slaps. Often the sonic tautness is such that when Butcher plays a few measures in the common saxophone range, backed by Edwards’ slap bass, the effect is as upsetting as if a Renaissance harlequin had made a brief appearance in a Sci-Fi tale.

Although a collective work, space is also made for individual expression that never quite become solos or duos in the traditional sense. Around the seventh track indicator, for example, Burn compresses choruses of cascading keyboard runs and sweeping portamento notes in order to harmonically face off with electronic pulses and voltage vibrations from Lehn’s synthesizer. Afterwards he abruptly pumps out some quasi-stride-piano runs to accompany Butcher’s quacking reed timbres.

Earlier Robair’s crashes, bangs, cymbal slaps and bell-pealing plus freight-train shrills and resonating vibraharp strokes break through the blurry sound field to challenge the super-fast dial-twisting, in-and-out-stop-start flutters, clangs and flanges from the turntable and synthesizer. His energized surfaces as well as Lehn’s ring-modulator-like whooshes also serve as backdrop for curt, sparrow-like sibilant tweets and caws from Butcher. Subsequent reed-biting vibrations hook up with clattering from hard objects placed on and swept aside from the piano strings plus echoing cymbal crashes

Whether involved in pumping counterpoint in front of dense signal-processed crackling or circular-breathing alongside tremolo piano runs, Butcher’s unshaken aplomb while playing directs than concentrates the layers chromatically. Finally the various pitches and tones complete the sound circle.

Mixing live and processed tracks, The Moment’s Energy – recorded one year earlier in Huddersfield as well – is no less notable. Neither is Parkers playing any less self-possessed and energizing. But the other acoustic instruments are prominent as well, slashing holes in the quivering electronic pulses for their instruments’ textures, without upsetting the electro-acoustic balance.

Moving through the sixth and seventh variations on “The Moment’s Energy”, for instance, Guy’s spiccato rubs and pops evolve in double counterpoint with Wachsmann’s sul ponticello scratches and squeaks. As the fiddler’s cumulative timbres roll from the strings, processing exposes parallel violin lines which double and intersect with Wachsmann’s live sweeps. Meanwhile as the vector changes, Guy’s plucks and wood shaking are mixed with equivalent electronic melodic pulses. Later, after triggering signal processing – that is so sophisticated that together with the piano and horns it creates a wide-screen-like cinemascope-like coloration – Evans slurs low-key grace notes and accelerating pitch-slides as fungible organ-like electronic tones pulse beneath him.

Shortly before that Fernández’s extended interlude mixes low-frequency keyboard pitter-patter with stopped and strummed internal string vibrations as clouds of humming electronics splutter beside him. Sailing along harmonically, the pianist also riffs and rustles the keys, the resulting sounds of which are accompanied by rubbed drum tops and cymbals from Lytton.

Fernández’s sparkling glissandi meld with growling and snorting electronic blurs plus variable pitches loop at the top of “The Moment’s Energy II”. But the other timbres soon recede as Rothenberg’s a capella vibrations on bass clarinet accede to flying tongue slaps and affiliated renal resonance. As the undercurrent of buzzing reverb and processed oscillations simmer, the clarinetist is briefly joined by diaphragm vibrato from Parker, and then Rothenberg moves forward with growls and smears alongside hissing, blurry electro pulses, a cascade of plucked stops from Wachsmann and Guy, as well as fleet glissandi from the pianist.

Already celebrated for his playing, the strength of Parker’s composition and presentation is confirmed on “Incandescent Clouds”, one of two tracks recorded live. Here, the staccato, polytonal interaction between bubbling electronics, piano patterning and clipped bass lines is no more or less vivid than what is played on the tracks that mix live improv and electronics.

One can only hope that Huddersfield will continue to commission magnificent larger-group creations such as these from committed improvisers. The first-class creations Butcher and Parker produce on these CDs confirm the wisdom of earlier initiatives.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Moment: 1. The Moment’s Energy I 2. The Moment’s Energy II 3. The Moment’s Energy III 4. The Moment’s Energy IV 5. The Moment’s Energy V 6. The Moment’s Energy VI 7. The Moment’s Energy VII 8. Incandescent Clouds

Personnel: Moment: Peter Evans (trumpet and piccolo trumpet); Ned Rothenberg (clarinet, bass clarinet and shakuhachi); Evan Parker (soprano saxophone); Ko Ishikawa (shô); Philipp Wachsmann (violin and live electronics); Agustí Fernández (piano and prepared piano); Barry Guy (bass); Paul Lytton (percussion and live electronics): Lawrence Casserley (signal processing instrument); Joel Ryan (sample and signal processing); Walter Prati (computer processing); Richard Barrett and Paul Obermayer (live electronics) and Marco Vecchi (sound)

Track Listing: Somethingtobesaid: 1. (08.14) 2. (07.47) 3. (05.26) 4. (09.48) 5. (06.36) 6. (06.01) 7. (02.14) 8. (09.07) 9. (04.12)

Personnel: Some: John Butcher (tenor and soprano saxophones and pre-recordings); Chris Burn (piano); Thomas Lehn (synthesizer); John Edwards (bass); Adam Linson (bass and electronics); Clare Cooper (harp and guzheng); Gino Robair (percussion) and Dieb 13 (turntables)

February 1, 2010

Gino Robair/Birgit Ulher

Blips and Ifs
Rastascan Records BRD 062

Percussion doesn’t have to involve bombast, beats or even a full drum set. That’s the idea of Californian Gino Robair who played with Toronto improvisers at Somewhere There the last week of November.

Robair, a Free Music veteran who uses drums as resonators for bowed scraped and rubbed objects and amplifies his instrument using circuit-bending electronics, demonstrates the resulting sonic freedom on the onomatopoeically titled “Blips and Ifs”. Partnered by German trumpeter Birgit Ulher, whose understated brass timbres are processed through radio speakers, the two express the cited sounds and many others in seven improvisations.

The resulting duo recital is equal parts pressured air, droning pulses, unexpected pauses and circuitous wave forms. Throughout the two expose unique timbres which see-saw during contrapuntal improvisations. Ulher combines mouthpiece kisses, static air wafting and, tongue thumps with suggestions that she’s masticating each tone individually. Robair’s contribution includes blurry machine oscillations, intermittent rumbles, slide-whistle like peeps and percussive timbres that could arise from dominos clacking against one another, sticky door hinges yawning, or unyielding metal being rubbed by blunt objects.

Circular and contrapuntal, the CD reaches its climax with the lengthy Rings Another Rust. Mesmerizing, the Ulher-Robair face-off depends on the ramping tension engendered accelerating in short bursts and then subsiding. Since almost no instrumental timbre is instantly identifiable by its expected properties, the pleasure of this exercise in abstract improvisation lies in itemizing how frequently and how surprisingly new and unexpected connective textures are exposed.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For Whole Note Vol. 15 #4

December 7, 2009

Larry Ochs

The Mirror World
Metalanguage MLX 2007

Two profoundly different – and stirring – musical musings on the unique films of the late Stan Brakhage, saxophonist Larry Ochs’ compositions, which make up The Mirror World, sonically reach the sense of infinite variety which Brakhage achieved in his films. Neither a portrait of one cinematic creation nor designed as a soundtrack to any of Brakhage’s works, Ochs compositions stand on their own, positing as original ways of hearing sounds as the film maker found personal ways to communicate his version of seeing light.

Including notated music for a 14-piece, plus-two-interpolated-players ensemble, “Hand” includes conduction and improvisational cues. Piling tones one upon another, it resembles Klangfarbenmelodie, with several pitches expressing multiple tone colors. Impressionistic in parts, “Hand” encompasses the distinctive textural and vibrational tones available from reeds, brass, strings and electronics, extended by and resonating from the chromatic distortion of John Schott’s electric guitar and the alternately ringing, stately processional or, most originally, rub-board-like thuds of William Winant’s and Gino Robair’s percussion.

Closer to Energy music, “Wall” is less structured. At times dissonant stutters, pig-like squeals and telescoped multiphonics are expressed by the saxophones of ROVA – Bruce Ackley, Steve Adams, Jon Raskin and Ochs – joined by Winant and Robair’s steady skin pounding. Yet as the tune undulates through several sections, low-key intermezzos that match tam-tam and vibe concussions with reed division between an alto saxophone propelling the melody and a tenor sax trilling variations on it, are as prominent as slap-tongue baritone saxophone riffs and unvarying percussion ruffs, flams, rolls and cow-bell peals.

One of Brakhage’s stated goals was to organize light in the projected image to aesthetically equal the poetry, painting, and music that inspired him. Doubtless he would agree that The Mirror World achieves the same objective from a dissimilar starting point.

-- Ken Waxman

-- In MusicWorks Issue #102

November 20, 2008

Grosse Abfahrt

Erstes Luftschiff zu Kalifornien
Creative Sources CS 065 CD

Grosse Abfahrt

Everything that Disappears

Emanem 4146

Named for a German dirigible that in 1908 crashed near Berkeley, Calif. during an unsuccessful demonstration of its potential as trans-oceanic liner, both of Grosse Abfahrt’s CDs are organized around more successful European-American interfaces.

Undoubtedly it’s because the only air being distilled here are the currents propelled from the eight instruments on Erstes Luftschiff zu Kalifornien and the nine on Everything that Disappears. Also more in keeping with 21st Century improvisation, the fuel of choice – besides the musicians’ inventiveness – is electricity, not hydrogen gas. Plus, as opposed to brief duration and subsequent crash of inventor John Morrell’s disastrous flight, only one improvisation on either intriguing set is less than three minutes in length. Most clock in around the 10-minute mark, with the first disc’s “interkontinentale luftschiffahrt” proceeding for almost 19 minutes while the other session’s “geometric undulating driveway symmetrical, all the road of masters” unrolls for nearly 39 minutes. Depending on traffic, the later probably is likely a longer time-frame then it takes to drive between San Francisco and Berkeley.

Chief instigators of the project are a group of experienced Bay area improvisers whose associates involve various bands, computer music, study or teaching at nearby Mills College and work with theorist/saxophonist Anthony Braxton. Present on both discs are trumpeter Tom Djll, clarinetist Matt Ingalls, guitarist John Shiurba, percussionist Gino Robair and electronics manipulator Tim Perkis. Chris Brown on piano and electronics – member of the electro-acoustic band the Hub – joins the home team on Erstes Luftschiff zu Kalifornien, while bassist George Cremaschi, who has played with saxophonist Evan Parker, pinch-hits on Everything that Disappears.

Visitors on the first CD are Berlin-based electronics experimenters Serge Baghdassarians and Boris Baltschun, while the other CD’s out-of-town input is all French: pianist Frédèric Blondy plus Lê Quan Ninh, whose contributions are via a surrounded bass drum.

Courtesy of the Teutonic dial twisters – as well as Perkins, Brown and Robair – the first CD is more electronically oriented. Hissing and undulating pulsations coalesce and swell throughout, relieved slightly by antiphonal cork-screw like aural actions and bottle top-like pops. When clearly identifiable instrumental timbres are heard, they too exist in the furthest reaches of extended techniques. For instance, featured are low-frequency chording and metallic and metronomic key clinking from the piano, perilously plus descending reed slides from the clarinetist, with both mixed among split-second cavity tube gasps from the trumpet. Occurring alongside these pitches are scraping sideband whooshes, reverberating ramping, bubbling circular synthesized tones and what could be an electric fan whirring.

Frequently converging then breaking apart, the effects reach a crescendo midway through this session when the cumulative pulses isolate a thick rhythm which suggests a stick being scraped against a ratchet, while piano cadenzas clink and the horns alternate between tongue slaps and approximating squeak-toys.

Reconvening more-than-2½ years later, at Mills no less, the French connection widens the cynosure. Travelling in carefully measured steps, acoustic instrumentals move to the fore, with the improvisation encompassing Cremaschi’s sul tasto bow swipes and thumps, piezo-extended plinking from Shiurba and bird-whistling trills from Ingalls.

Not abandoning electronics altogether, ricocheting loops further distort the sound picture on “Admittedly, social relations This”. But in contrast to earlier tracks and the entire other CD, rather than masking them, the electronics extend the acoustic timbres. For example the tongue slurps, lip burbles and mouth cries from the horn men are strengthened with ghostly layers of preparations that spurt and fizz. Meanwhile a single guitar strum, internal piano string-stopping and mallet-powered drum thwacks are cleanly isolated.

However every imaginable timbre – both electronic and acoustic – appears to get space on “geometric undulating driveway symmetrical, all the road of masters” whose complex performance envelops capillary brays, irregular reed vibratos and funereal bass drum thumps plus dial-twisted pulsations. Subsequent developments encompass guitar string distortions, frenzied reed obbligatos and unvarying piano key pounding. Eventually, slide-whistle-like chirps and whines from the horns, give way to intermittent signal-processed burbling and chafing squeaks that could arise from either reed tones or sul ponticello string manipulation.

Next from beneath the blanket of grinding wave-form distortions and flanged electronic tones, occasional rubtao brass bursts, low-frequency piano cadences and surface percussion ruffs and slaps are highlighted. As the blurry, computer-triggered flutters distort acoustic instruments’ output, the horns’ staccato output abstracts and melds with other textures, finally disappearing into conclusive tone-matching.

Based on textural exploration rather than story telling or straightforward exposition, both CDs can be appreciated for their atmospheric qualities. Accepted on their own specialized terms, they offer rewarding listens.

-- Ken Waxman

.

Track Listing: Erstes: 1. am anfang zerstörung 2. interkontinentale luftschiffahrt 3. Morrell remained hopeful 4. riesenflugzeugabteilung 5. ein dicker ‘gas bag’

Personnel: Erstes: Tom Djll (trumpet); Matt Ingalls (clarinet); John Shiurba (guitar); Chris Brown (piano and electronics); Gino Robair (analog synthesizer) and Serge Baghdassarians, Boris Baltschun and Tim Perkis (electronics)

Track Listing: Everything: 1. The lack Americans connected What disappears* 2. negativity paradox achieved in humour realm 3. Admittedly, social relations This* 4. geometric undulating driveway symmetrical, all the road of masters*

Personnel: Everything: Tom Djll (trumpet, pocket cornet and preparations); Matt Ingalls (Bb clarinet and bass clarinet); Frédèric Blondy (piano); John Shiurba (guitar)*; George Cremaschi (bass and electronics); Lê Quan Ninh (surrounded bass drum); John Bischoff and Tim Perkis (electronics)* and Gino Robair (energized surfaces and voltage made audible)

July 15, 2008

Grosse Abfahrt

Everything that Disappears
Emanem 4146

Grosse Abfahrt

Erstes Luftschiff zu Kalifornien

Creative Sources CS 065 CD

Named for a German dirigible that in 1908 crashed near Berkeley, Calif. during an unsuccessful demonstration of its potential as trans-oceanic liner, both of Grosse Abfahrt’s CDs are organized around more successful European-American interfaces.

Undoubtedly it’s because the only air being distilled here are the currents propelled from the eight instruments on Erstes Luftschiff zu Kalifornien and the nine on Everything that Disappears. Also more in keeping with 21st Century improvisation, the fuel of choice – besides the musicians’ inventiveness – is electricity, not hydrogen gas. Plus, as opposed to brief duration and subsequent crash of inventor John Morrell’s disastrous flight, only one improvisation on either intriguing set is less than three minutes in length. Most clock in around the 10-minute mark, with the first disc’s “interkontinentale luftschiffahrt” proceeding for almost 19 minutes while the other session’s “geometric undulating driveway symmetrical, all the road of masters” unrolls for nearly 39 minutes. Depending on traffic, the later probably is likely a longer time-frame then it takes to drive between San Francisco and Berkeley.

Chief instigators of the project are a group of experienced Bay area improvisers whose associates involve various bands, computer music, study or teaching at nearby Mills College and work with theorist/saxophonist Anthony Braxton. Present on both discs are trumpeter Tom Djll, clarinetist Matt Ingalls, guitarist John Shiurba, percussionist Gino Robair and electronics manipulator Tim Perkis. Chris Brown on piano and electronics – member of the electro-acoustic band the Hub – joins the home team on Erstes Luftschiff zu Kalifornien, while bassist George Cremaschi, who has played with saxophonist Evan Parker, pinch-hits on Everything that Disappears.

Visitors on the first CD are Berlin-based electronics experimenters Serge Baghdassarians and Boris Baltschun, while the other CD’s out-of-town input is all French: pianist Frédèric Blondy plus Lê Quan Ninh, whose contributions are via a surrounded bass drum.

Courtesy of the Teutonic dial twisters – as well as Perkins, Brown and Robair – the first CD is more electronically oriented. Hissing and undulating pulsations coalesce and swell throughout, relieved slightly by antiphonal cork-screw like aural actions and bottle top-like pops. When clearly identifiable instrumental timbres are heard, they too exist in the furthest reaches of extended techniques. For instance, featured are low-frequency chording and metallic and metronomic key clinking from the piano, perilously plus descending reed slides from the clarinetist, with both mixed among split-second cavity tube gasps from the trumpet. Occurring alongside these pitches are scraping sideband whooshes, reverberating ramping, bubbling circular synthesized tones and what could be an electric fan whirring.

Frequently converging then breaking apart, the effects reach a crescendo midway through this session when the cumulative pulses isolate a thick rhythm which suggests a stick being scraped against a ratchet, while piano cadenzas clink and the horns alternate between tongue slaps and approximating squeak-toys.

Reconvening more-than-2½ years later, at Mills no less, the French connection widens the cynosure. Travelling in carefully measured steps, acoustic instrumentals move to the fore, with the improvisation encompassing Cremaschi’s sul tasto bow swipes and thumps, piezo-extended plinking from Shiurba and bird-whistling trills from Ingalls.

Not abandoning electronics altogether, ricocheting loops further distort the sound picture on “Admittedly, social relations This”. But in contrast to earlier tracks and the entire other CD, rather than masking them, the electronics extend the acoustic timbres. For example the tongue slurps, lip burbles and mouth cries from the horn men are strengthened with ghostly layers of preparations that spurt and fizz. Meanwhile a single guitar strum, internal piano string-stopping and mallet-powered drum thwacks are cleanly isolated.

However every imaginable timbre – both electronic and acoustic – appears to get space on “geometric undulating driveway symmetrical, all the road of masters” whose complex performance envelops capillary brays, irregular reed vibratos and funereal bass drum thumps plus dial-twisted pulsations. Subsequent developments encompass guitar string distortions, frenzied reed obbligatos and unvarying piano key pounding. Eventually, slide-whistle-like chirps and whines from the horns, give way to intermittent signal-processed burbling and chafing squeaks that could arise from either reed tones or sul ponticello string manipulation.

Next from beneath the blanket of grinding wave-form distortions and flanged electronic tones, occasional rubtao brass bursts, low-frequency piano cadences and surface percussion ruffs and slaps are highlighted. As the blurry, computer-triggered flutters distort acoustic instruments’ output, the horns’ staccato output abstracts and melds with other textures, finally disappearing into conclusive tone-matching.

Based on textural exploration rather than story telling or straightforward exposition, both CDs can be appreciated for their atmospheric qualities. Accepted on their own specialized terms, they offer rewarding listens.

-- Ken Waxman

.

Track Listing: Erstes: 1. am anfang zerstörung 2. interkontinentale luftschiffahrt 3. Morrell remained hopeful 4. riesenflugzeugabteilung 5. ein dicker ‘gas bag’

Personnel: Erstes: Tom Djll (trumpet); Matt Ingalls (clarinet); John Shiurba (guitar); Chris Brown (piano and electronics); Gino Robair (analog synthesizer) and Serge Baghdassarians, Boris Baltschun and Tim Perkis (electronics)

Track Listing: Everything: 1. The lack Americans connected What disappears* 2. negativity paradox achieved in humour realm 3. Admittedly, social relations This* 4. geometric undulating driveway symmetrical, all the road of masters*

Personnel: Everything: Tom Djll (trumpet, pocket cornet and preparations); Matt Ingalls (Bb clarinet and bass clarinet); Frédèric Blondy (piano); John Shiurba (guitar)*; George Cremaschi (bass and electronics); Lê Quan Ninh (surrounded bass drum); John Bischoff and Tim Perkis (electronics)* and Gino Robair (energized surfaces and voltage made audible)

July 15, 2008

Cold Bleak Heat

Simitu
Family Vineyard FV41

Jon Raskin

Quartet

Ratascan Records BRD 059

Encapsulating the differences between West Coast and East Coast Free Improv, these quartet sessions illustrate how dissimilar sounding identically constituted combos can be.

Consisting of both compositional and improvisational material, the 12 tracks of Quartet are individually shaped by score and graphic elements organized by the band leader, long-time ROVA quartet member saxophonist Jon Raskin Rougher and wilder in contrast, Simitu’s six tracks seem to be nourished by the highly emotional and theatrical Energy Music which flourished in the 1970s.

Considering that one of Cold Bleak Heat (CBH)’s main voices – Connecticut-based saxophonist Paul Flaherty – has been immersed in this sort of ardent improvising since that time period, partially explains CBH’s emotional style. Theatricalism is added because two of the other band members – bassist Matt Heyner and drummer Chris Corsano – are immersed in indie-rock as well as improvisation. In contrast, trumpeter Greg Kelley is more often found in sound-oriented, lower-case improv circles.

Oddly enough Raskin’s Bay-Area-centred band mates have similar backgrounds. Trumpeter Liz Allbee plays in experimental rock bands; percussionist Gino Robair has recorded with everyone from minimalist free musicians and composer Lou Harrison to rock singer Ton Waits; while bassist George Cremaschi’s list of collaborators range from British saxophonist Evan Parker to rock/jazz guitarist Nels Cline.

Obviously such experienced folk provide positive input on Quartet. But it’s also clear that Raskin, who also composes for film and dance projects, and whose associates range from minimalist composer Terry Riley to jazzer Tim Berne, not only has a more singular vision than that which arises from CBH, but also has greater control of the material performed.

Consider pieces like “Qupe” and “African Tulip” for instance. On the former, staccato flights from both horn teeter on top of Cremaschi’s solid arco work, further colored by Robair’s tubular bell-like resonations. When the percussionist’s rhythm extensions turn to irregular flams and knocks and the bassist reverberates thicker pulses, the saxophonist’s response is outputting wide and shaking reed tones.

Although filled with unexpected bumps, the later tune is cohesively connective, as Robair’s nimble, ping-ponging strokes set up spurts of plunger tones from Allbee and tongue-stops from Raskin. After Allbee’s seconding obbligato is inflated into circular trills and bubbles, the saxophonist’s reed slurs and slurps combine with her vibrating tremolo tonguing to cement the previous divide into unison polyphony.

Probably the tracks which best illustrate the band’s strategy however are back-to-back “Kandinsky”, a Raskin composition and “Sounding Barometer Reading”, a group improv. Weighing the results, the creations defy anyone to distinguish the composer-defined from the instantly created pieces.

“Kandinsky” features Cremaschi’s bass-string stropping, Robair’s drumstick-on-cymbal grinding and spittle-encrusted braying from Allbee – all adumbrating the saxophone’s swoops and split tones. Introduced with a reed honk and a human laugh, the second tune merely boosts the textures available with a variety of brass kisses, growls and scrapes; tongue sprinting from Daffy Duck quacks to polar bear grumbles from the saxophone; and col legno bowing from the bassist. Would Robair’s perfectly pitched miniature bell and/or cymbal slaps that guide the animal-like trumpet brays and whistling reed bites sound any different if they were scored?

Although Cremaschi and Robair are listed as also using electronics, there are only a few instances when triggered, machine-created wave forms can be sensed.

Old School to the extreme, Flaherty probably would react like a medieval priest faced with a heretic if confronted with electronics. While Kelley and Heyner at least have worked out an accommodation to quasi-instruments such as laptop computers elsewhere, the fervor associated with CBH’s performance could literally overheat those plastic hunks into melt-down mode if machine-made kilowatts were introduced. Staccato, sibilant and studded with double and triple broken counterpoint lines crossing and re-crossing one another, at junctures each member of CBH is given enough space to express himself a capella before cumulatively weaving a polyphonic whole cloth.

The saxophonist’s repertoire encompasses double-tongued shattered intonation, conclusive foghorn swells, crying and cawing banshee timbres plus altissimo smears. Pressured triplets, Donald Ayler-like smears and hand-muted shrills are Kelley’s contribution; Heyner moves from pitch-stabbing chording and spiccato runs to ostinato thumps; while Corsano mulches the results of backbeat bounces, bass drum rumbling, paradiddle extension and cymbal clapping. Throughout, the quartet appears to be building up to – and descending down from – the more than 21½ -minute “Mugged by a Glacier”, which is rather like an extended crescendo mixed with slight balladic echoes.

With the piece initially adagio, Kelley’s Harmon-muted runs gradually stretch the tempo as Flaherty’s reed tone coarsens and smears. Plucking and pumping dense bull fiddle notes and percussion press rolls provide the ostinato as the brassman’s timbres dart bird-like among the stop-time, nearly solipsistic sound shards emanating from the saxophone. Warbling and burbling, as the tempo increases, the trumpeter injects open-horn triplets and the reedist snorts accelerated split tones. Backbeats and press rolls from Corsano are the bonding glue that keeps the horn textures from escaping into the ozone. Reshaping the others’ thematic contributions Heyner suddenly slows down the pace three-quarters of the way through for a high-pitched sul ponticello solo with razor-sharp strokes that almost slice through the strings as they’re manipulated. Flaherty then contributes a dramatic moderato reading of the head spelled by plunger tones from Kelley. Soon the four are back into high-speed chromatic echoes driven by rustle and pop from Corsano and steady pounding from Heyner.

Depending on the person’s preference for musical structure and reason or deconstruction and passion, either session should impress the Free Jazz listener. While each illustrates a contradictory approach, perhaps geographically located, both are equally valid.

-- Ken Waxman

.

Track Listing: Quartet 1. Cracked Earth 2. Sounding Barometer Reading 1 3. African Tulip 4. Swing Sing 5. Kandinsky 6. Sounding Barometer Reading 2 7. Post Card 2 8. Ceilometer Reading 9. Post Card 1 10. Bleckner 11. Disdrometer Reading 12. Qupe

Personnel: Quartet: Liz Allbee (trumpet and percussion); Jon Raskin (alto and baritone saxophones); George Cremaschi (bass and electronics) and Gino Robair (percussion and electronics)

Track Listing: Simitu: 1. The Voice of the People is the Voice of God 2. Should We Destroy the Hubble? 3. Mugged by a Glacier 4. A Pound Cake 5. A White Bandaged Head in the Shadow of Death 6. To Understand All is to Forgive All

Personnel: Simitu: Greg Kelley (trumpet); Paul Flaherty (alto and tenor saxophones); Matt Heyner (bass) and Chris Corsano (drums)

January 20, 2008

Jon Raskin

Quartet
Ratascan Records BRD 059

Cold Bleak Heat

Simitu

Family Vineyard FV41

Encapsulating the differences between West Coast and East Coast Free Improv, these quartet sessions illustrate how dissimilar sounding identically constituted combos can be.

Consisting of both compositional and improvisational material, the 12 tracks of Quartet are individually shaped by score and graphic elements organized by the band leader, long-time ROVA quartet member saxophonist Jon Raskin Rougher and wilder in contrast, Simitu’s six tracks seem to be nourished by the highly emotional and theatrical Energy Music which flourished in the 1970s.

Considering that one of Cold Bleak Heat (CBH)’s main voices – Connecticut-based saxophonist Paul Flaherty – has been immersed in this sort of ardent improvising since that time period, partially explains CBH’s emotional style. Theatricalism is added because two of the other band members – bassist Matt Heyner and drummer Chris Corsano – are immersed in indie-rock as well as improvisation. In contrast, trumpeter Greg Kelley is more often found in sound-oriented, lower-case improv circles.

Oddly enough Raskin’s Bay-Area-centred band mates have similar backgrounds. Trumpeter Liz Allbee plays in experimental rock bands; percussionist Gino Robair has recorded with everyone from minimalist free musicians and composer Lou Harrison to rock singer Ton Waits; while bassist George Cremaschi’s list of collaborators range from British saxophonist Evan Parker to rock/jazz guitarist Nels Cline.

Obviously such experienced folk provide positive input on Quartet. But it’s also clear that Raskin, who also composes for film and dance projects, and whose associates range from minimalist composer Terry Riley to jazzer Tim Berne, not only has a more singular vision than that which arises from CBH, but also has greater control of the material performed.

Consider pieces like “Qupe” and “African Tulip” for instance. On the former, staccato flights from both horn teeter on top of Cremaschi’s solid arco work, further colored by Robair’s tubular bell-like resonations. When the percussionist’s rhythm extensions turn to irregular flams and knocks and the bassist reverberates thicker pulses, the saxophonist’s response is outputting wide and shaking reed tones.

Although filled with unexpected bumps, the later tune is cohesively connective, as Robair’s nimble, ping-ponging strokes set up spurts of plunger tones from Allbee and tongue-stops from Raskin. After Allbee’s seconding obbligato is inflated into circular trills and bubbles, the saxophonist’s reed slurs and slurps combine with her vibrating tremolo tonguing to cement the previous divide into unison polyphony.

Probably the tracks which best illustrate the band’s strategy however are back-to-back “Kandinsky”, a Raskin composition and “Sounding Barometer Reading”, a group improv. Weighing the results, the creations defy anyone to distinguish the composer-defined from the instantly created pieces.

“Kandinsky” features Cremaschi’s bass-string stropping, Robair’s drumstick-on-cymbal grinding and spittle-encrusted braying from Allbee – all adumbrating the saxophone’s swoops and split tones. Introduced with a reed honk and a human laugh, the second tune merely boosts the textures available with a variety of brass kisses, growls and scrapes; tongue sprinting from Daffy Duck quacks to polar bear grumbles from the saxophone; and col legno bowing from the bassist. Would Robair’s perfectly pitched miniature bell and/or cymbal slaps that guide the animal-like trumpet brays and whistling reed bites sound any different if they were scored?

Although Cremaschi and Robair are listed as also using electronics, there are only a few instances when triggered, machine-created wave forms can be sensed.

Old School to the extreme, Flaherty probably would react like a medieval priest faced with a heretic if confronted with electronics. While Kelley and Heyner at least have worked out an accommodation to quasi-instruments such as laptop computers elsewhere, the fervor associated with CBH’s performance could literally overheat those plastic hunks into melt-down mode if machine-made kilowatts were introduced. Staccato, sibilant and studded with double and triple broken counterpoint lines crossing and re-crossing one another, at junctures each member of CBH is given enough space to express himself a capella before cumulatively weaving a polyphonic whole cloth.

The saxophonist’s repertoire encompasses double-tongued shattered intonation, conclusive foghorn swells, crying and cawing banshee timbres plus altissimo smears. Pressured triplets, Donald Ayler-like smears and hand-muted shrills are Kelley’s contribution; Heyner moves from pitch-stabbing chording and spiccato runs to ostinato thumps; while Corsano mulches the results of backbeat bounces, bass drum rumbling, paradiddle extension and cymbal clapping. Throughout, the quartet appears to be building up to – and descending down from – the more than 21½ -minute “Mugged by a Glacier”, which is rather like an extended crescendo mixed with slight balladic echoes.

With the piece initially adagio, Kelley’s Harmon-muted runs gradually stretch the tempo as Flaherty’s reed tone coarsens and smears. Plucking and pumping dense bull fiddle notes and percussion press rolls provide the ostinato as the brassman’s timbres dart bird-like among the stop-time, nearly solipsistic sound shards emanating from the saxophone. Warbling and burbling, as the tempo increases, the trumpeter injects open-horn triplets and the reedist snorts accelerated split tones. Backbeats and press rolls from Corsano are the bonding glue that keeps the horn textures from escaping into the ozone. Reshaping the others’ thematic contributions Heyner suddenly slows down the pace three-quarters of the way through for a high-pitched sul ponticello solo with razor-sharp strokes that almost slice through the strings as they’re manipulated. Flaherty then contributes a dramatic moderato reading of the head spelled by plunger tones from Kelley. Soon the four are back into high-speed chromatic echoes driven by rustle and pop from Corsano and steady pounding from Heyner.

Depending on the person’s preference for musical structure and reason or deconstruction and passion, either session should impress the Free Jazz listener. While each illustrates a contradictory approach, perhaps geographically located, both are equally valid.

-- Ken Waxman

.

Track Listing: Quartet 1. Cracked Earth 2. Sounding Barometer Reading 1 3. African Tulip 4. Swing Sing 5. Kandinsky 6. Sounding Barometer Reading 2 7. Post Card 2 8. Ceilometer Reading 9. Post Card 1 10. Bleckner 11. Disdrometer Reading 12. Qupe

Personnel: Quartet: Liz Allbee (trumpet and percussion); Jon Raskin (alto and baritone saxophones); George Cremaschi (bass and electronics) and Gino Robair (percussion and electronics)

Track Listing: Simitu: 1. The Voice of the People is the Voice of God 2. Should We Destroy the Hubble? 3. Mugged by a Glacier 4. A Pound Cake 5. A White Bandaged Head in the Shadow of Death 6. To Understand All is to Forgive All

Personnel: Simitu: Greg Kelley (trumpet); Paul Flaherty (alto and tenor saxophones); Matt Heyner (bass) and Chris Corsano (drums)

January 20, 2008

Gail Brand

Supermodel Supermodel
EMANEM 4126

Both an affirmation of the benefits of unstructured first-time improvisation and a threnody of sorts for a fallen comrade, Supermodel Supermodel succeeds on its two levels.

Recorded in early 2003, in Oakland, Calif., the 13 instant compositions mark the initial collaboration between London-based trombonist Gail Brand and a group of Bay area musicians – guitarist John Shiurba, bassist Matthew Sperry, percussionist Gino Robair and laptopist Tim Perkins. Not everyone – even Brand – plays on every track of this 71-minute session, with three pieces recorded shortly after the initial dates in tribute to Sperry, who was killed in an auto accident in the interim.

An unshowy rhythm player, the versatile Sperry, who recorded with shakuhachi player Philip Gelb, composer/accordionist Pauline Oliveros and reedist Wolfgang Fuchs among others, adds some characteristic EuroImprov-style clinks and clanks here. But his skill lies in helping make this a CD of supremely group music,

Maneuvering his percussion collection, which includes a faux dax, horns, Styrofoam and an e-bow snare as well as drums, Robair takes a similar stance. Rattling and stroking his cymbals, resonating vibes-like tones and ratcheting, scraping and reverberating different sorts of friction from his trap set, the percussionist is part of the ever-shifting aural landscape, not an accompaniment to it. Surmounting the measured pitter-patter and bounces of Sperry and Robair, not to mention Shiurba’s flanged lines and snapping strings, however, both Brand’s and Perkins’ timbres prominently protrude from the mix.

On each of the eight tracks on which he plays, the electronics manipulator outputs specially designed signals of various forms. There are wave form oscillations, curving overtones, intermittent buzzes and scratchy pulses. For her part – the trombonist, who has been part of bassist Simon H. Fell’s quintet and recorded with guitarist Derek Bailey – isn’t fazed by electronics or ever-shifting rhythmic pulses. Her band Lunge usually features two players who extend their keyboard and violin textures with electronics. On the one Brand-Perkins duo here, she constructs a shuddering horizontal line on top of his triggered sound envelopes, then growls and snorts through the resonating burbles as if they are transparent.

Situations build more organically on pieces like “Stephanie Stephanie” and “Iman Iman”, inexplicably named like the other tunes for world-class fashion models. The later matches cymbal cracks, chromatic guitar licks and sliding stops from the bassist with wiggling electronic oscillations. Taking all this in stride, Brand builds a series of sensuous capillary purrs into a climax of flutter-tongued plunger tones that surmount focused guitar runs and droning electronics.

The former tune finds her using circular treble tones and lip-blubbering plunger digressions to dovetail with percussion slaps and the bare hint of arco bowing. Elsewhere her jocular brays and snorts mesh with rapid knob-twisting to germinate quivering parallel reverberations.

Sperry’s unexpected death means that this one-off aggregation can’t be reconstituted. The CD itself, however, is both an impressive memorial, as well as a bittersweet souvenir of Brand’s and the other players’ in-the-moment interactions.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Naomi Naomi 2. Christy Christy 3. Christie Christie 4. Twiggy Twiggy 5. Tyra Tyra 6. Stephanie Stephanie 7. Cindy Cindy 8. Iman Iman 9. Kate Kate 10. Kathy Kathy 11. Elle Elle 12. Linda Linda 13. Claudia Claudia

Personnel: Gail Brand (trombone); John Shiurba (guitar); Matthew Sperry (bass and preparations); Gino Robair (percussion, faux dax, horns, Styrofoam, e-bow snare) and Tim Perkins (laptop)

October 10, 2006

Birgit Ulher/Gino Robair

Sputter
Creative Sources

Birgit Ulher/Michael Zerang/Lou Mallozzi
Landscape: recognizable
Creative Sources

Punctual Trio
Grammer
Rossbin

By Ken Waxman
January 9, 2006

For years North American improvisers have gone to Europe to play with like-minded musicians; today the traffic is as frequently the other way .Sputter and Landscape: recognizable are a couple of souvenirs from Hamburg-based trumpeter Birgit Ulher’s recent American odysseys that show her interaction with similarly minded Yank music experimenters. Meanwhile Grammer captures an earlier meeting in Chicago between Portuguese violinist Carlos Zingaro and two locals, one of whom is also on one of the trumpeter’s CDs.

In Europe Ulher works in a variety of international ensembles and seems to have a particular affinity for percussionists. The UNSK quartet, of which she is a member, includes Swedish drummer Raymond Strid, while British drummer Roger Turner is with her in the PUT trio. So it makes sense that on these new CDs she’s partnered with two of the United States’ most inventive sound makers, who are also percussionists: the Bay area’s Gino Robair and Chicago’s Michael Zerang.

Just as Ulher, like countryman Axel Dörner and Boston’s Greg Kelley, is expanding the trumpet’s language, so in their own ways are the Californian and Midwesterner doing the same for the percussion family. Listed as playing energized surfaces and voltage made audible on Sputter, Robair uses synthesized live electronics to extend his kit’s capabilities. Similarly, Zerang’s expanded kit on Landscape: recognizable includes friction drum, wind whistle, xylophone bars, snare drum, bird calls and metal.

Not that anyone is nonplussed during the course of these improvisations. After all, Robair has matched wits with reed experimenters like Britain’s John Butcher and Anthony Braxton; while Zerang has done the same with Butcher and folks like Germany’s Peter Brötzmann. Encountering a metal tube with three valves merely calls for different strategies.

Expanding the aural panorama on Landscape: recognizable, is the wild card: Chicago-based audio artist Lou Mallozzi. He adds his arsenal of turntables, CDs, microphones, organ pipes and amplified voice to the sound miasma Zerang and Ulher create. Mallozzi was also on hand the year before in the same studio, when he, his dismembered and reconstituted sound sources and local cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm hosted another overseas visitor, Portuguese violinist Carlos Zingaro. Together the three make up the Punctual Trio.

Lonberg-Holm and Zingaro are two of improv’s busiest collaborators – each has played with musicians as distinctive as German trumpeter Dörner in the cellist’s case, and French bassist Joëlle Léandre in the violinist’s. Both American string players have also dabbled in electro-acoustics, attaching piezos and processing tools to their instruments for performances and recordings.

In this context, Sputter is practically an acoustic session. From the beginning of the Robair-Ulher meeting thrashing input signals, masticating impulses and hissing oscillations predominate. But you can still hear the puffs of colored air, spattering triplets and buzzing lead pipe movement that can only be created orally.

At various times Ulher bubbles near subterranean pedal tones that swell to aviary caws, throat slurs and eventually piercing shrills – then she adds yelping internal valve lesions. Rubato, often spewing microscopic tones, the trumpeter doesn’t neglect flutter tonguing, tongue-clicking, sudden volume shifts and mouthpiece kisses. She can replicate the creak of a raising coffin lid to meld with Robair’s otherworldly cymbal scrapes, or cackle crone-like to join the percussionist’s static tuning actions. For his part, Robair triggers wave forms that can be compared to a pre-recorded tape running backwards, a vacuum cleaner’s roar, Morse code and insistent doorbell buzzing.

On “A Genius of Trunnels”, for example, he outputs church organ-like striated tones that finally reveal themselves as cymbal and gong battering, while she explores plunger tones and growls from the capillary valves. Eventually, cymbal vibrations mix with the brassy duplication of distant thunder. On The Downy Monsters”, the longest track, Ulher’s near-polyphonic output reaches almost accordion-like compression as air and metal vibrate around single breaths. Completing the impulse as if he too was manipulating another part of her instrument, Robair triggers a complementary pulsating sequence, shoveling and sawing on unyielding hard surfaces.

Similar surfaces get more of a workout on Landscape: recognizable, while the addition of a third sound source makes the session both louder and livelier. Zerang adding aural percussion, plus the pre-recorded voices from Mallozzi’s pre-existing CDs, as well as his microphones and amplified voice give this session more of a verbal quality.

Frequently the pre-existing human timbres are mere gibberish, crowd noises or murky, below the hearing threshold. Sporadically between turntable rumble and mic hisses, however, full words and phrases emerge, though the significance of an announcer intoning “to wait”, “now”, “listen” or “before” in the midst of a group improvisation is a query best left to Mallozzi.

Notwithstanding this, Ulher tone appears harsher, more rhythmic and coarser than on Sputter. Sure there are twitters and warbles, but also many more growling wah-wahs, tongue slaps and stops – the better for counterpoint with Mallozzi’s triggered processed sounds plus the bounces, ruffs and general metrical impetus from Zerang’s percussion collection. Someone who can produce resonating tones from hand action on snare tops or floor creaks, Zerang’s dexterity makes him the perfect intermediary between the electric and the acoustic impulses of his partners here.

Although Zerang’s wind-whistle prowess is no more than serviceable, the chirruping effect – part penny whistle and part bird call – he creates encourages the trumpeter to respond by rubbing textures from her mouthpiece and osculating tongue slaps in a flurry of brassy notes. “Blame Pericles”, the CD’s climatic track has Zerang in proper percussive mode, albeit on metal snare drum. Stripped-down kit notwithstanding, his bull’s eye targeting of the beat, cross patterns with Mallozzi’s gamelan-like tones. Meanwhile, the latter’s organ pipe pops bring quick tongued buzzes from Ulher. Finally she snaps out coda of honks and peeps on top of murmuring and hissing tape noise from the audio artist’s palate.

Without an aural instrument in hearing range, Grammer is more overtly mechanized and electronic than Ulher’s two CDs. At the same time – maybe because of their greater experience with electro-acoustics – Zingaro and Fred Lonberg-Holm appear more assertive when faced with Mallozzi’s media collection. Even more so than on Landscape: recognizable already-existing voice and sound samples predominate. But the string slingers are hardly fazed.

“Predicate” and “Direct Object”, the mid-point tracks that also show the most expository development, are examples of this. On the former an undertone featuring the dulcet voice of a female commentator exists in the same time frame as Zingaro’s warbling partials and Lonberg-Holm’s col legno pacing – the string equivalent of reed tongue slaps. Earlier a piezo-accelerated cello string squeal makes short work of oscillating tones and electrified sine wave sequences from Mallozzi’s objects. Eventually the powerful bow action, growling portamento accompaniment and percussive string and body taps from both strings become paramount.

Similarly on the second tune, a disembodied voice dissolves into sluggish near-gibberish as chromatic cello strums and descending violin spans turn to concentrated arpeggios and scraped pitch-sliding tone layering. Rubbed mic percussion and sequences of hiss and static predominate as the fiddler double and triple stops and the cellist strikes sticks suspended horizontally among his strings. Moving at warp speed from guitar-like pizzicato to legato glissandi and spiccato node expansion, this double string virtuosity is so absorbing that you almost forget Mallozzi, until he finally vibrates jumpy electric piano-like patterns in the tune’s last minute. Elsewhere the sound sculptor’s aural vocabulary expands with replications of V8-bomb explosions, backwards-running sounds, ring modulator clangs and clicks, jaunty circus music jumps, what are evidently an infant’s cry and the plea of another pre-recorded voice for “Jesus Christ right now”.

Overall, however, his musique concrete layering of sine waves and oscillating pitches pales in comparison to the harmonic confluence and rappelling counterpoint from Zerang and Lonberg-Holm, Creating a synthetic ostinato and a droning, high-pitched tone can’t compare to acoustic techniques that amplify the snap of every ricocheting string combination and the slap of every bow movement,

Concluding with a final vibraharp key-like ping, Grammer is most memorable because it shows acoustic and electronic impulses held to a draw. Landscape: recognizable confirms that a year later Mallozzi was more assertive, but not to the detriment of the overall sound. And Sputter replicates how well two committed improvisers can think and create in a recording studio.

January 9, 2006

THE HAPPYMAKERS

The Happymakers
Balance Point Acoustics BPA 008

WOLFGANG FUCHS
Six Fuchs
Ratascan BRD 052

Part of the accelerating interchange between experimental musicians from Europe and the United States, multi-reedman Wolfgang Fuchs of Berlin has become a regular transatlantic commuter.

Known for his leadership of the King Übü Orchestrü and the all-reed Holz Für Europa group, these discs find Fuchs heading even further out. That’s a geographic reference – for the CDs were recorded with two different sets of associates in California’s Bay area during a productive visit by Fuchs in 2003.

On SIX FUCHS, the bass clarinetist and sopranino saxophonist is the only European present. His Yank buddies are percussionist Gino Robair, a collaborator with other advanced reedists like Britain’s John Butcher; Tim Perkis, a founding member of computer music group The Hub, manipulating electronics; Tom Djll on trumpet, pocket cornet, balloon [!] and hog caller [!!], who has worked with reed explorers such as Boston’s Bhob Rainey; guitarist John Shiurba, who has played with just about everyone in the advanced Bay area scene; and bassist Matthew Sperry. Sadly, Sperry was killed in a bicycle accident shortly after this recording was made. He was already advanced enough to work regularly with folks such as composer/accordionist Pauline Oliveros.

Fellow bassist Damon Smith, who plays with many of the same musicians as Sperry did, is the catalyst behind THE HAPPYMAKERS. Local reedist Jacob Lindsay, who regularly is in a combo with Smith and vocalist Aurora Josephson, is featured on Ab, Bb and bass clarinets. Adding to the European contingent is Serge Baghdassarians on guitar and electronics and Boris Baltschun on electronics, both of whom have recorded with advanced French saxophonist Michel Doneda.

Each CD is memorable in a subtly different fashion. THE HAPPYMAKERS scores because is explores the possibilities inherent in 11 short improvisations based on transformation of energy between electronic and acoustic textures. Electro-acoustic as well, SIX FUCHS string-reed-electronics interface is expanded with Robair’s energized surfaces and Djll’s brassy oral additions. Limited to six tracks, the sextet has up to 18½ minutes in which to expand every available nuance.

“Buttery Consort”, with unrolls at that length, mixes the rough with the tender. Quivering reverb, which sounds as if a dull knife blade is pressing against the strings, joins with horn tones which suggest both men are trying to blow through metal sheets held in front of their bells. On the other hand, Fuchs’s temperate, chalumeau breaths and Sperry’s legato stops are made uneven by the application of shrill, rasping loops from the electronics and bubbling slurs from the pocket cornet.

As the oscillating reverb scours sound in the background, the horns unite in broken counterpoint, with Fuchs, on sopranino, trilling aviary timbres as Djll deflates a balloon in the foreground. Sperry’s sawing jettes are reduced to near inaudibility as a distorted guitar amp buzz combines with horn textures resembling comb and tissue paper drones to buzz resonating microtones into note clusters as the electronic sideband gongs extend this even further. A final variation finds growled reed obbligatos, possibly made even more obtuse by electronics, dissolving into throaty colored air mixed with sul ponticello bowing from the bassist.

Meanwhile, the nearly 12-minute “An Illegible Memory” begins with an ululating but unattached glissando from the bass clarinet as well as quivers from the surfaces. A brassy downwards slur from Djll accentuates the rippling, metallic properties of all the instruments that are displayed on top of Sperry’s tremolo bass lines. Accumulating timbres make way for droning fretless guitar slides, strident vibration from the sopranino as well as buzzy spits from the trumpeter. Robair plugs the available spaces with side band resonation, as murmuring pulses slowly reveal themselves as flanged tones from Shiurba’s guitar and subtle leaks from the electronics and preparations. These escalate into buzzing guitar interface, wah-wahs from the brass, pinched snorts from the bass clarinet, bass string sweeps and gong-like ring modulator clanging.

Other sounds on tap include abrasive screeches that could come from guitar strings or preparations, moist balloon scrapes, vibraharp resonating suggestions from the percussionist, pulsating sequences created by guitar delay, watery brass mouthpiece kisses plus focused slurs and cuckoo clock warbling from the bass clarinet – not to mention barnyard cackles from the sopranino.

This aural miasma also enlivens THE HAPPYMAKERS. But lacking supplementary brass and percussion interjections and limiting the improvisations to 11 shorter tracks restricts the available textures and foreshortens some idea development,

Interesting enough, some of the strategies the five follow on “Ma(r)ker#10”, the more-than-eight-minutes longest track, seem to reflect those which succeed on the other disc. With two reeds, however, possibilities abound for sounding different textures simultaneously. On top of hissing electronic flutters, one reedist begins by expelling delicate breaths until they gather into chalumeau register tones, while the other quacks and flutter tongues. Shifting through the static, broken cadences allow individual solos to follow one another sequentially. Suddenly, as Smith shuffle bows up and down his strings, one of the reedists produces a rooster crow, while the other buries his notes in stentorian territory. Harsh electronic pulses mix with splattering reed pitch vibrations –

some circular breathed, others sounded for split seconds. Coda is a wavering tone from the guitar amp and a single toot from one clarinet.

This sort of basso exhalation is also a feature of “Ma(r)ker#5” until both clarinets combine to expel colored air and reed bite in the highest range. Around them, programmed waveforms, singular guitar licks and powerful scrapes on the belly of the bass push the sound downward to muted pitches again. For a finale, flutter-tongued reed lines and reverberating modulations combine than fade away.

More upfront here than Sperry is on SIX FUCHS, Smith fulfills his polyrhythmic role, manipulating spiccato swipes, low-down resonation, col legno harshness and sul ponticello squeals into intense energy to either accompany or encourage the soloists. Recorded more upfront, the equipment manages to pick up every one of his wallops and jettes as it does reed tones that range from legato to staccato and from so-called legit to indefinable.

At points, it almost seems as if pickups had been forced down the clarinets gullets so the woody strains produced take on extra vibrations as they’re played. Hocketing and multiphonics allow Lindsay and Fuchs to engender sounds both from the hollow body tubes and through reed percussion on the axe’s outsides. Electrionics, extended techniques or merely good recording also allow the reedists to often thicken their arpeggio undulations, crackling peeps and tongue slaps into wider, near bagpipe tones. Hooked up with computer-generated drones, reed and motor energy is also expressed polyphonically.

While SIX FUCHS may have a slight edge over THE HAPPYMAKERS, followers of this style could be made happy with either CD. Both offer a sound picture of recent Bay area improvisation and suggest Fuchs should continue traveling and collaborating.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Six: 1. An Impish Onus in the Vogue 2. (Loosely) Second Iridescence 3. Buttery Consort 4. An Illegible Memory 5. Ingot (Teacup) Minstrelsy 6. A Touch of Grandsire, Up Wrong

Personnel: Six: Tom Djll (trumpet, pocket cornet, balloon and hog caller); Wolfgang Fuchs (bass clarinet and sopranino saxophone); John Shiurba (guitar); Matthew Sperry (bass and preparations); Gino Robair (energized surfaces); Tim Perkis (electronics)

Track Listing: Happymakers: 1. Ma(r)ker#1 2. Ma(r)ker#2 3. Ma(r)ker#3 4. Ma(r)ker#4 5. Ma(r)ker#5 6. Ma(r)ker#6 7. Ma(r)ker#7 8. Ma(r)ker#8 9. Ma(r)ker#9 10. Ma(r)ker#10 11.Ma(r)ker#11

Personnel: Happymakers: Wolfgang Fuchs (bass clarinet and sopranino saxophone); Jacob Lindsay (Ab, Bb and bass clarinets); Serge Baghdassarians (guitar and electronics); Damon Smith (bass); Boris Baltschun (electronics)

September 19, 2005

Another Memorable Total Music Meeting

for CODA

Gradually returning to fiscal health – its artistic vigor has never been in doubt – the 37th annual Total Music Meeting will take place November 3 to November 6 at the Berlinische Galerie Landesmuseum für Moderne Kunst, Fotografie und Architektur in Berlin’s now fashionable Kreuzberg.district. Concerts begin at 8 pm and feature three to four performances each night.

Although the program has not yet been officially announced, participants definitely include British saxophonists John Butcher and Evan Parker; Americans like trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and drummer Gino Robair, the Loos ensemble from the Netherlands; the trio of Swiss saxophonist Urs Leimgruber, American bassist Barre Phillips and French pianist Jacques Demierre and German musicians like trumpeter Axel Dörner, drummer Günter Baby Sommer and multi-reedist Wolfgang Fuchs. Attendance per night is usually in the 300 person range.

Began in 1968 and running concurrently with the more mainstream Berlin Jazz Festival, the TMM is organized by a committee made up of Fuchs as artistic director, counselor G. Fritze Margull and Helma Schleif of FMP Free Music Production, who oversees the organization and the program. These three took the helm in 2000 to broaden TMM’s profile by presenting acoustic, electro-acoustic and electronic ensembles from all over the world, showcasing young improvisers as well as master musicians, and by extending the program with workshops, lectures, panel discussions and exhibitions.

That was the same year when the festival, which over the years has presented a virtual who’s who of improvised music from German bassist Peter Kowald and pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach to Canadians, pianist Paul Plimley and the Glass Orchestra, was shortened to three days as its subsidy was slashed. A more serious setback occurred in 2003 when Berlin cut off all funding. Subsidized by FMP and helped by world-renowned musicians, working for a fraction of their fees, TMM survived. Although a lump sum subsidy from Berlin is available this year, for its long-term survival the festival is also involved in fund-raising and the sale of art created by Kowald, Max Neumann, Hanns Schimansky and Urs Jaeggi and others.

This artistic component is further emphasized in 2005 as the Galerie Landesmuseum will be open until midnight during all four days, so that concertgoers also have the opportunity to view its various expositions.

As in the past, every TMM concert will be recorded for potential CD release, a situation which over the years has not only resulted in the preservation of a marathon series of concerts by Cecil Taylor in 1988, but also landmark gigs such as Fuchs’ King Übü Örchestrü’s 20th anniversary celebration and Butch Morris’ Berlin Skyscraper conduction.

With improvised music “a never ending work-in-progress and a celebration of musical creativity and spiritual power” by players prepared to live his and her music”, notes Schleif, “the TMM contributes by giving a large number of musicians a platform to perform and present their state of the art.”

-- Ken Waxman

September 7, 2005

JOHN SHIURBA

Triplicate
Spool Arc SPA402

JOHN SHIURBA
5x5 1.1=M
Unlimited Sedition ULS01

Glimpses into the inventive gray matter of composer/guitarist John Shiurba, these CDs made seven months apart in the same Oakland, Calif.-studio, show him and a nearly identical group of sidefolk exposing two leitmotifs.

The mathematically titled 5x5 1.1=M is a pure instrumental effort mixing composed and spontaneous material with echoes of Anthony Braxton’s Ghost Trance Music (GTM) -- not surprising since Shiurba has worked with the influential reedman. More daring, TRIPLICATE extends the basic band on both CDs -- reedists Matt Ingalls and Dan Plonsey, bassist Matthew Sperry and percussionist Gino Robair -- by adding trumpeter Tom Djill, trombonist Tom Yoder and more critically the voices of Lara Bruckmann and Morgan Guberman. The guitarist only conducts on the latter, though he does play on the first disc.

All and all, Shiurba -- who has also played in art rock bands and for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company -- has a more appropriate forum with which to express his ideas with the larger group. That’s as long as you hear the vocalists as other instruments and not try to impute meaning to the often Dadaist lyrics of the five original texts interpreted here. Paradoxically, this session was recorded before the other, and while 5x5 1.1=M doesn’t disappoint, TRIPLICATE seems that much more innovative and original.

Henry Threadgill and Braxton have also dabbled in vocal-oriented work, but here the words appear secondary to the soundsinging prowess exhibited by both vocalists. Lyric soprano Bruckmann also sings in cabaret and musical comedy settings and with the Oakland Lyric Opera, while tenor Guberman, is also a double bass player who has worked in one or the other role with British trombonist Gail Brand and local saxophonist Andrew Voigt. At times, the timbres of the linked vocals sound midway between what you’d hear at a New music recital and at a performance of an experimental off-Broadway musical. There are times however though that the soprano’s voice arches with such classical legitimacy that she could be understudying the lead role in Bellini’s “Norma”.

Bruckmann’s warbling soprano tones are put to good use on “Rita”, the final and longest -- almost 14 minutes -- track, which also has the shortest text. Dramatically vocalizing the atmospheric theme, she develops the tunes as the meshed polyphonic horns create near bagpipe tempos behind her.

After her voice meshes first with Tom Yoder’s sonorous trombone then Ingalls’s trilling clarinet, Guberman’s contributions include sluicing single syllables that turn into wild throat gurgles during the tune’s recapitulation. Combing tones, Bruckmann then twitters as Guberman seems to be alternately emulating reverent davening and Germanic double talk. Following an inventive drum solo from Robair -- a favorite of reedists like Braxton and Briton John Butcher -- every other player reenters for the climax. The initial theme is reprised with chromatic horn runs and close harmony from the vocalists.

Even more surrealistic is “Trainging long Hauling-Dazed” [sic]. Don’t even try to aurally follow the poetics. Instead concentrate on how the swelling and deflating vocal textures mesh with the lowing trombone line, irregular cymbal and drumbeats and smeared clarinet glissandi from both Ingalls and Plonsey. At certain points distinguishing the voices from among the contrapuntal percussion rumbles, trombone plunges and steady bass line is difficult. At points, Bruckmann cries and Guberman purrs, than a cappella appear to be reciting the alphabet. Rising up from beneath cow bell whacks, plunger trombone emphasis and trilled clarinet lines, Guberman gradually introduces scary monster-like cries, joined first by Bruckmann, then by double-stopped, spiccato bowing from Sperry and tongue stops from the horns.

Bedlam-like mumbles, operatic recital screams and undifferentiated high-pitched squeaks, spits and squeal from both singers are heard elsewhere. So are exaggerated plunger exercises from the brass plus overblowing and metallic whistles from the aviary-pitched reeds. That is, of course, when the chalumeau-pitched clarinets and heraldic trumpet and trombone aren’t allied into a resemblance to a medieval brass choir. Robair supplies cymbal sizzle and drum rolls as part of his output. At other points the versatile percussionist produces shimmering marimba accents or brief synthesizer oscillations.

His presence is germane to 5x5 1.1=M as is Sperry’s. In his foreshortened life -- he was killed in a bicycle accident at 34 in 2003 -- the bassist engendered as much respect for his skill from his contemporaries as another short-lived West Coast bassist -- Scott LaFaro -- did from his. Still, the biggest difference on 5x5 1.1=M is the absence of vocals and brass and the addition of Shiurba’s abrasive guitar licks, which often include full utilization of his distortion pedal.

What is off-putting however is the written GTM-like interludes that link each of the six compositions. Talented enough improvisers, the players don’t need these connective interjections that seem to exist on a contradictory plane than the other material.

For instance after the introductory harmonic blending at the top of “1.1.4”, the piece evolves through guitar reverb, scratched bass lines and scraped ratchet-like percussion tones. Soon, the flanged, finger picked guitar licks intersect with faint bagpipe-like sounds from Plonsey’s oboe, resting on top of more abrasive reed tones in broken counterpoint. As the oboe’s output takes on an Arabic mussette quality, and Ingalls produces slurred coloratura tones, Shiurba’s fuzztones and distortions get louder, and are joined by irregular drum pulses, screeching fiddle glissandi and woody spiccato bass. Sperry then creates ponticello double stops and clarinets twitter, while the fretman frails banjo-like timbres.

Screaming daxophone-reminiscent ejaculations, distortion pedal splashes and reverberating rock-like guitar lines are the leader’s contributions elsewhere. Oboe chirrups, chickadee peeping from higher-pitched reed and stentorian drum rumbles mix’n’match in other sections which are alternately ferocious or fey. Finally, the various instrumental tones coalesce for a recapitulation of earlier textures in “1.1.5”, a miniature coda and addendum. Before that however, real discontent sets in around the time of “1.1.2”, where quasi Braxtonian passages presage inward turning strings plus reed and percussion pulses that don’t seem to go anywhere. The only liveliness comes from buzz-saw amp noises.

Shiurba has proven his compositional talents with these releases. Considering both were recorded in 2002, one would expect that there are more surprises to be heard in his more recent music.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 5x5: 1. Intro 2. 1.1.1 3. 1.1.2 4. 1.1.3 5. 1.1.4 6. 1.1.5

Personnel: 5x5: Matt Ingalls (clarinet and violin); Dan Plonsey (alto saxophone, alto clarinet, oboe and violin); John Shiurba (guitar); Matthew Sperry (bass); Gino Robair (percussion and violin)

Track Listing: Triplicate: 1. Adobe 2. Trainging long Hauling-Dazed 3. short reels 4. I Knew You Falling 5. Rita

Personnel: Triplicate: Tom Djill (trumpet); Tom Yoder (trombone); Matt Ingalls (B-clarinet); Dan Plonsey (alto saxophone, Eb clarinet, oboe and violin); Matthew Sperry (bass); Gino Robair (percussion, marimba and analog synthesizer); Lara Bruckmann and Morgan Guberman (voices); John Shiurba (conductor and composition)

December 27, 2004

JOHN BUTCHER/GINO ROBAIR

New Oakland Burr
Ratascan BRD 051

PAAL NILSSEN LOVE/MATS GUSTAFSSON
I Love It When You Snore
Smalltown Supersound STS 063 CD

Stripping down to essentials, intrepid improvisers find solos and duos present unvarnished sounds with the fewest possible obstructions.

Especially popular are discs that match a single reedist with a single percussionist to see what sparks fly. Participants in these two short CDs recorded around the same time have frequently been involved in similar situations. While all four have the scope to display outstanding, extended techniques, nowhere is there a feeling that these aren’t just new notches in the players’ belt. They may be impressive to newbies, but they’re not near any of the player’s highest standard.

British saxophonist John Butcher and Bay-area percussionist Gino Robair score higher, but only because their instrumental range is wider. Butcher plays tenor and soprano saxophones, either acoustically or through amplified feedback, while Robair expresses himself on cymbals, toy reed, styrofoam, faux dax, ebow snare and motors. Still the varied textures they can bring to the performance are dissipated over 16 [!] tracks on the little more than 40-minute CD.

Clocking in at 32 minutes, the other session shoehorns seven tracks performed by Swedish baritone saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and Norwegian percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love onto the disc. Throughout, the pattern seems to be the saxist expelling massive sprays of buzzing, reed-biting mouth percussion, heavy on the vocalized vibrato as the drummer responds with cross sticking bounces and rolls in a variety of tempos.

Gustafsson, whose international reputation includes membership in Barry Guy’s New Orchestra and a partnership in different combos with American saxist Ken Vandermark, wastes no time showcasing his collection of intense tongue slaps, growling mouth percussion, glottal tongue stops and intense overblowing. Often his grunting effort is such that it appears as if he’s trying to resolve an intestinal blockage as he plays.

Meanwhile Nilssen-Love, who has backed a clutch of reedists including Butcher and Vandermark, gives as good as he gets.

His irregular patterning includes such extensions as focused cymbal or triangle pops, cymbal scrapes, rim shots, concentrated snare pressure, sudden breaks into march tempo, resonating cymbal lines, a split-second excursion into montuno and single bell-like peals.

Typical of the duet is “Shake Off”, where Gustafsson’s split tone slurs into false registers lead to bubbling lip smacks, pops and key percussion. Nilssen-Love soon picks up the pace with ratamacues, matching the reedman honk for honk and snort for snort. Moving from march time with inverted sticking, he makes a rapprochement with the saxist’s splintering tone by the end.

Deplorably that description could apply to most of the other tunes as well. I LOVE IT WHEN YOU SNORE could have benefited from variations in time and tempo.

Persistent sameness weakens some of the tracks on NEW OAKLAND BURR, as does the feeling that a few of the shorter ones are little more than experiments in technique. “Slug Tag’ for instance, focus on a drumstick scratch on the cymbal that with waves of widened reed tones resolves itself as a variation on ear-splitting heavy metalism. “Tucking” is little more than one minute of sluicing tones from Robair’s styrofoam leavened by harmonic breaths from Butcher; and “Pudsey Surprise” could be 44 seconds of someone blowing through a comb and tissue paper.

Far more toothsome are tracks like “One side is with a pea, the other pealess” -- who thinks of these titles? -- and “Blagovest”. The first features what are evidentially Robair’s motor dragging on top of an inflexible surface, with Butcher’s tongue slaps, doits and tongue stops providing the percussion rhythm. Robair then counters with what sounds like a robotic Bronx cheer, if a Robot did that while electricity passes through its body. Finale is the reedist’s circular breathing, plus squalling buzzing whistles from somewhere.

“Blagovest” showcases those abrasive tissue paper timbres from Butcher that link with Robair producing more lacerating tones from his toy reed, faux dax or air filled cheeks. Soon the squeals and shrieks are so incessant and higher-pitched that you’re reminded of feeding time at the puppy mill. Taking the animal metaphor farther, Butcher seems to be pulling duck calls from his reed.

“Fid” finds Butcher -- likely helped by electronics -- creating double counterpoint with himself,. Two melodies from this single source are displayed on top of undulating drones from Robair’s percussion collection. With a cornucopia of multiphonics multiplying to fill every aural space, the reverberations that remain when the track end are like those you still hear after a heavy metal guitarist has switched off his amp after a blistering solo.

Still other improvisations are illustrations of their titles, as “Cajun Squeal” which matches Butcher’s concise trilled timbre with the squeaking of Robair’s dax -- or is it a plastic toy? -- and “Whine Model” that may use a sequencer to split a continuous feedback shrill so that it becomes louder and more rasping.

Again, many of these trompe d’oreille have been exhibited elsewhere.

Completists and committed followers of these men’s works, singly or together may rate the discs higher. From this perspective, however, both CDs offer up good, but not great work. The later can be found elsewhere.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Burr: 1. Throat rust 2. Poundering 3. Wrong and Home 4. Slug Tag 5. Tucking 6. Pudsey Surprise 7. Cajun Squeal 8. Whine Model 9. Fid 10. Snub 11. 20p Uncle 12. Peal 13. Blagovest 14. Vug 15. One side is with a pea, the other pealess 16. Louche

Personnel: Burr: John Butcher (tenor and soprano saxophones plus amplified feedback); Gino Robair (cymbals, toy reed, styrofoam, faux dax, ebow snare, motors)

Track Listing: Snore: 1. I Love It 2. Come Lie Closer 3. Face Make 4. Lightning Bug 5. Shake Off 6. Snarcus Brutalis 7. When You Snore

Personnel: Snore: Mats Gustafsson (baritone saxophone); Paal Nilssen-Love (percussion)

November 15, 2004

THE SEALED KNOT

Surface/Plane
Meniscus MNSCS012

PETER KOWALD/MIYA MASAOKA/GINO ROBAIR
Illuminations (Several Views)
Rastascan BRD 049

One percussionist, one musician who plays a four-string instrument and another whose equipment is strung with many multiples of strings make up both trios featured on these improv sessions. Yet despite these points of congruence, they’re as different as hot dogs and fish-and-chips, as one featured two Americans, the others two Brits.

Actually it’s the third man -- coincidentally a German -- who probably best defines the differences. ILLUMINATIONS (SEVERAL VIEWS) features the late Peter Kowald combining his bass fiddle and basso voice with Miya Masaoka’s kotos and Gino Robair’s percussion on 16 furious, roaring take-no-prisoners sound pieces.

Kowald, whose experience went back the strum und drang noise-making of MACHINE GUN and other Free Jazz explosions, was the musical antithesis of percussionist Burkhard Beins, one-third of the band Sealed Knot with cellist Mark Wastell and harpist Rhodri Davies on SURFACE/PLANE. A proponent of the reductionist style, Beins, who ironically comes from a rock background, often tries to be as nearly noiseless as possible here and is concerned more with slides, rubs and trills than any distinctive percussive displays. With his confreres working the same territory, their CD is as much a definition of improv minimalism as one could imagine.

ILLUMINATIONS (SEVERAL VIEWS) is just one of plethora of CDs that Kowald somehow presciently recorded in the two years before his death of heart failure in September 2002. Especially after his residences in Japan and the United States, he could still stoke the old Free Jazz fire if recording with veteran New Things like drummer Sunny Murray, but his versatility meant that he could adapt himself to more freeform and cross-cultural, less jazz-based sessions like this one.

On “View Twenty-one’ for instance, the bassist supplies a countermelody of plucks and the occasional arco slide to mesh with Robair’s hard kettle drum-like sounds, as Masaoka cascades resonating tones that threatens to evolve into gagaku or court music. There’s no much change of that, though, Masaoka, whose collaborators have included guitarist Fred Frith and saxophonist Larry Ochs has fashioned new timbres for her 17- and 21-string instruments so that it can sometimes sound as if she’s playing a hammered dulcimer or a strummed 12-string guitar.

This is apparent on “View One”, where her plectrum strums on the multiple strings sets are only Oriental by inference. Robair screeches bird-like with his faux daxophone and Kowald rumbles away with tugs from the bottom of his axe. On “View Twenty-two”, the longest tune, the positions are almost reversed. To the accompaniment of rolling hand drum accents, Kowald comes up with some high-pitched violin-like -- or is it biwa-like --squeals and Masaoka moves her bridge around to create wavering, descending plucks.

Still his bass continuum isn’t limited to what Kowald can play on his bull fiddle. On a couple of the tracks he vocalizes cavernous Wicked Warlock of the West tones that at times seem to suggest Bedlam murmurs as well as sonority of the evil spirits you sometimes see and hear portrayed in Oriental films. When faced with this, Masaoka’s contributions become positively cinematic, with harp-like glissandos followed by approximations of guitar flat-picking. Robair’s rhythm arrives from unselected miniature cymbals in one spot and simultaneous bass drum action and ride cymbal reverb in another.

Elsewhere it sounds as if he’s manipulating small metal bowls and bells, buzzing tones from his e-bow and faux dax, rumbling bent pressures from his conventional drum kit parts and using trash can lids as percussion helper. The last sound brings forth garbage scow tones from Kowald’s bowed bass as well.

Between ghostly overtones produced by the bassist exploring out-of-the-way pressure points on his instrument and the kotoist’s sliding glissando that moves from impressionistic legato to discordant near reverb, both string slingers push their instruments’ output far beyond the expected.

So on SURFACE/PLANE do harpist Davies and cellist Wastell, who has been quoted as saying that he “detests” the sound of the conventional cello. Davies’ sonic hates aren’t known, but his method for dealing with traditional harp sounds is even more radical. With items ranging from unpainted doll’s heads to sticks and clothes pins placed between his strings to mutate the sound, and a use of a bow and/or split-second pizz motion to express his range, the romantic, shimmering overlay you associate with the harp is missing.

The two have been expanding their microtonal string palate for years, apart and together in groups such as the one headed up by pianist Chris Burn. Yet by making their playing more utilitarian and almost post-industrial here, they fit more closely with similar electronic impulses from, Beins. He plays in similar bands on the Continent such as Perlonex with electronics maven Ignaz Schick and Phosphor with the likes of Andrea Neumann on inside piano and Annette Krebs on guitar and electronics.

Much livelier than the first number, “Plane” finds preparations helping create a harsh interface for all three instruments. Featuring an underlying electronic sine waves -- origin unknown -- Beins symbolically steps forward scratching his ride cymbal with a drumstick, oscillating tones from what could be unselected cymbals, drum tops or even tin foil, as Wastell appears to respond with heavier and harder raps against the wood grain of his cello. Among all these timbres, understated harp string plucks resonate with cathedral like-tones as items inserted between the strings vibrating them still further. An ear-splitting metallic squeal serves as the introduction to tones that resemble sounds as different as the panting of a dog, the shaking of a guiro or perhaps a pepper mill, cap guns firing and what would be tongue slaps if any reeds were present.

As a recurrent pattern of cello strokes suggests the sounds of a motor trying to turn over on a sub-zero winter day, wood-rendering impacts and electronic-assembled woodwind-like tones appear until they vanish underneath a series of shuddering strokes on the bass drum and cymbal reverberations. Then what appears to be a bell tree, metal bowls and muffled cymbals are tapped, whacked, and scratched until the sounds get more distant and fade into pulsating electronic impulses.

Not surprisingly, unmistakable surface noises make their appearance on “Surface” with what sounds like woody slaps on the cello front and ricocheting harp-string tones. As electronic preparations create static undertones throughout, aviary shrills and doorstop reverberations lead to what could be the ghostly sounds of a heavenly choir that morphs into a sharp cymbal scratch and one final string pluck.

Developing improvisations with output several decibels lower than on the other disc is the challenge Sealed Knot face and overcome. Arriving with ears and thoughts lacking preconceptions of what improv should sound like means that either CD can offer equal delectation.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Illuminations: 1. View Fifteen 2. View Sixteen 3. View Ten 4. View Twenty-one 5. View Eighteen 6. View Twenty-two 7. View One 8. View Twenty 9. View Two 10. View Eight 11. View Nine 12. View Eleven 13. View Twelve 14. View Seventeen 15. View Fourteen 16. View Thirteen

Personnel: Illuminations: Miya Masaoka (17- and 21-string kotos); Peter Kowald (bass and voice); Gino Robair (percussion, e-bow, faux daxophone)

Track Listing: Surface: 1. Surface 2. Plane

Personnel: Surface: Mark Wastell (cello); Rhodri Davies (harp); Burkhard Beins (percussion)

December 8, 2003

GEBBIA/GIANNETTO/NUNN/PALMA/POWELL/ROBAIR/SMITH

A Night in Palermo
Rastascan Records BRD 041/Curva Minore CM04

Distinctive and unique sounds from a variety of real and invented instruments dominate this session recorded in Palermo, Italy in 1998. Often, though, over the course of the 19 selections, it appears that the strangest instrument is also the most common: the human voice.

That voice belongs to Sicilian Miriam Palma. Initially trained to sing the folk music of Sicily’s central area, starting in the 1990s she intermingled that traditional style with the diplophonies, triplephonies, overtones, shouts and low bass that characterize improvisation. Her lyrics mix inferences from dialect poetry, religious texts, Sicilian Futurism, traditional lullabies and contemporary writing, including her own.

More than a vocal showcase, however, A NIGHT IN PALERMO is also notable in showing how four musicians from California’s Bay area and two Sicilian instrumentalists could connect and reconnect in various combinations -- with Palma -- to create a form of international improvisation that is as exceptional as it is experimental.

This didn’t take place without prior planning though. All the musicians had just participated in the three-day Dreamin’ California festival in Palermo, which itself was an outgrowth of the connections Sicilian alto saxophonist Gianni Gebbia had established with the Bay area’s fertile improv community. Gebbia, who has played with the likes of German bassist Peter Kowald and British guitarist Fred Frith had also recorded a CD six months previously with a young American rhythm section.

Both bassist Damon Smith, who has recorded with Kowald and German reedman Wolfgang Fuchs, and percussionist Garth Powell, made the trip to Italy. They arrived with percussionist Gino Robair, who has played with everyone from American reedist Anthony Braxton to British saxist John Butcher; and Tom Nunn, who has designed, built and performed with original musical instruments since 1975. Nunn, who has worked with kotoist Miya Masaoko, brought along his “bug”, an electro-acoustic percussion board that is played with plastic-tubing tipped aluminum knitting needles, and sounds like a combination of marimba and thumb piano.

Palma and Gebbia had already collaborated as two thirds of the Terra Arsa band, which had toured North America. Another local added to this throng was bassist Lelio Giannetto, who is part of a group with the vocalist and other experimental Sicilian musicians like pianist Giorgio Occhipinti and cellist Domenico Sciajno.

Performing in duos, trios and quartets, these Californian-Sicilian meetings are so wholly original that it’s hard to identify a common thread outside of fine musicianship.

Take Palma’s utterances for example. Featured on eight different selections, her contributions run from undulating cries and pouts that she twists in pitch along with Smith’s bass on “Nina in Dogma”, to a chorus of lip-blown raspberries that begin “Squeeze”, matching Robair’s styrofoam manipulation and bicycle horn honks. She also vocally reenacts a panoply of women’s ages. Starting with an infant cries, she turns to a child’s singing and nursery rhyme recitation as the percussionist is replaced by Smith and Nunn on the following track, “Renatzu Riga”, and her run-on vocal reconstitutes itself into what appears to be Sicilian curses. Expostulating rhymed sounds close to synagogue davening, the bassist responds to her vocal flights with thumps, and the bug creates rolling tones.

“Aryl” mates Powell’s squeaking waterphone with mountain top yodels from the peak of Palma’s vocal range, which is further extended on “Mirgarjanni” as her clenched- throat delivery meets freak notes from old partner Gebbia’s alto and insect-like trills from the crunching saw.

Trilling a tarantella-inflected folkloric chant “Mortal Plan” she pants and coughs out the lyrics aided and abetted by piercing quacks from the bug. Finally, on “Zing Aria”, Robair’s buzzing styrofoam manipulations and Smith steel string slices take turns being abrasive, with the bass man appearing to scratch inside his instrument and the percussionist chipping out unheard of tones. Unreflective of the title, Palma’s output jumps with gymnastic moves from stuttering pigeon cooing and what could be a rhymed Sicilian hex, to the aural reflection of a warbling medieval story song.

Italo-American instrumental meetings are as fruitful. Robair’s toy reed and bicycle horn face off with the smears, chirps and multiphonics of Gebbia, while the saxman’s undulating sax lines turns claxon-like to overcome Nunn’s driving mallets. A duet between bassists in high and low pitches, pizzicato and arco, leads Nunn, as accompanist, to manipulate his self-constructed instrument so that it appears he’s sounding Minstrel show bones.

“Tngnt” [sic], a bug-bass rendezvous finds the Italian shaking Kowald-like tones from his bull fiddle, hitting the top part of his strings near the pegs, scratching below the bridge and triple stopping for more volume. All the while, Nunn is clinking his metal bars and double timing in a four-mallet exposition, as if he was Gunter Hampel playing vibes on a 1960s experimental session.

Creations like that make those tracks where Gebbia’s soaring alto lines interact with Smith’s modulated arco and pizz bass appear to be traditional avant-garde music, if that isn’t an oxymoron. And dig “Earl Ghetto” where the entire septet struts its stuff in a cacophonous display of rhythmic inventiveness.

Notwithstanding its vocals, this CD is not one to give to a Diana Krall or Norah Jones fan, or to someone who thinks improvised music got too complex when John Coltrane broke up his classic quartet. But if you have a taste for how music is evolving, this prolix disc will fascinate and enlighten.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Dossier*$@~ 2. Earl Ghetto 3. Nina in Dogma&+ 4. Hilt o Vento 5. Gabbio$&~ 6. Tngnt$@ 7. Olga Hitler (the gorilla)$~ 8. Mortal Plan@& 9. Godmania Inn*+ 10. Assai Bout$+@ 11. Squeeze&# 12. Renatzu Riga+@& 13. Goo Line$# 14. Aryl~& 15. Bangui Eng*$@ 16. Gauge$+ 17. Mirgarjanni*&~ 18. The Mint Geisha investigates a Moth*@ 19. Zing Aria&#+

Personnel: Gianni Gebbia* (alto saxophone); Lelio Giannetto$ or Damon Smith+ (bass); Garth Powell~ (percussion, saw, waterphone); Gino Robair# (styrofoam, cymbal, bike horn, toy reed); Tom Nunn@ (the bug); Miriam Palma& (voice)

May 19, 2003

BUTCHER/MASASAOKA/ROBAIR

Guerrilla Mosaics
482 Music 482-1013

A first-time collaboration between a well-travelled British saxophonist and two Californians proves that improvisational cohesiveness and empathy are often little affected by geographic distance and instrumental suitability.

While London-based reedman John Butcher’s instruments -- soprano and tenor saxophone -- are often seen as germane to improv as freedom, the others’ choices are a bit less common. Bay area percussionist Gino Robair also works out on such unusual noisemakers as the faux dax, bowed metal, and motors -- all late 20th century inventions. Meanwhile Brooklyn-based Miya Masaoka, plays not only one of the most traditional of Japanese instruments -- the 21-string koto -- but its 21st century cousin, the laser koto, with MIDI-triggering. This allows her to often double and triple the sound she produces.

Butcher and Robair have played together as a duo, most notably on the limited edition LIVERPOOL (BLUECOAT) CONCERT, recorded a few months before this June 2000 date. Meanwhile, the kotoist, who was originally trained as a pianist, has adopted her ancient instrument to work with the likes of experimenters like trombonist George Lewis, saxist Larry Ochs and jazz drummer Andrew Cyrille.

Using technology created for her at STEIM in Amsterdam and San Francisco, Masaoka amplifies the koto’s range with sounds that are reminiscent of an orchestral harp, a bottleneck blues guitar and a jazz double bass. Mixed with Robair’s junk percussion and Butcher’s duck quacks and aviary whistles, sometimes it seems as if the session is taking place in a location midway between the Imperial Court and a chicken coop.

Masaoka’s brawny plucking means that on tunes like “Glyph” she can use her lowest strings to perform as if bassist Ray Brown segued into some genteel gagaku court music, only to reverse herself by the end with clawhammer finger picking more reminiscent of the Appalachians then Mount Fuji. While all this happens, Robair strokes metal with a violin bow, while Butcher appears to be blowing his sax underwater through a snorkel. At the end the saxman’s well-articulated gritty horks are succeeded by high-pitched long-lined cadences.

The mixture of primitivism and modernity exemplified by the trio is given more play on “Recept”, where Robair’s irregular blows on his varied percussion and metals are matched with a highly mechanized yawning cartoon monster growls, probably from Masaoka’s laser treatments, while the saxophonist showcases mini-circular breathing, creating a constant underlying drone. Elsewhere, it seems that Masaoka’s ability to manipulate the moveable bridge of the instrument to change the length of the vibrating strings to produce otherworldly sounds, includes radio wave-like static that is by design neither oriental or occidental. Cohesive tongue slaps and prolonged internal reed dialogues radiating chameleon-like from Butcher’s reed mastery show that he isn’t limited to a formal Euro improvisation either.

All of this dexterity comes together on “Ariation”, the final and longest tune. Here Butcher’s wiggling, rolling, foghorn arpeggios fervidly build in intensity as the percussionist thumps his drums, rings bells, crashes hand cymbals together and appears to vibrate his faux dax for additional notes. Throughout, the koto’s plucks match his facility as the saxophonist’s key pops balance heavy electronic strums or fingerpicking guitar patterns.

A fine effort by all concerned.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Lish 2. Ouzel 3. The dodge 4. A wing 5. Glyph 6. Dipper 7. Recept 8. Cae 9. Mosaic 10. Covert 11. Sloots 12. Ariation

Personnel: John Butcher (soprano and tenor saxophones); Miya Masaoka (21-string koto and laser koto); Gino Robair (percussion, faux dax, bowed metal, and motors)

October 28, 2002

CARLO ACTIS DATO

USA Tour/April 2001/Live Splasc (H) CDH 520.2

Someone once said that Benny Goodman didn’t smile that much; it was just his embouchure. In Carlos Actis Dato’s case it’s not his embouchure. As a matter of fact, if all woodwind players had as much fun improvising as he seems to have, then most sitcoms would have wacky saxophonists as next door neighbors.

Although he brings a goofy sense of fun to the proceedings, be aware that Actis Dato is no Louis Prima or Jack Sheldon who treats the music as secondary to his singing and comedy routine. He may get high spirited enough to sing at certain points of these 13 live performances, but he never debases the music in any way. Like Charles Mingus or Rahsaan Roland Kirk, vocalizing is just his way of showing how well things are going.

In reality, USA TOUR is diary of some of the highlights of his American visit in 2001. Recorded at approximately half of his U.S. appearance that year, the tracks find him partnered with jazz-rockers, keyboardist Wayne Horvitz and bassist Rueben Radding in Seattle; freebopers, bassist Clyde Reed and drummer Dave Storrs in Portland, Ore.; and free players, bassist Damon Smith and drummer Gino Robair in Oakland, Calif. Ken Vandermark showed up with his tenor saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinet to duet in Chicago, while three outings are solo performances.

Usually wielding his largest horn -- the baritone sax -- Actis Dato excels at these match ups. Think of the colorfully costumed Italian as a lion tamer and his instrument as his feline, and you can hear how he easily puts the king of the reed family through its paces. Making it leap from its highest range down, down to its lowest, then putting it through the hoops of speedy pulsations, pseudo-nursery rhymes and jagged asides, like the best circus performer he does all this without abusing the animal and while communicating his sense of accomplishment.

Double your pleasure -- and fun -- when Vandermark shows up. Sticking to his bottom range and using tongue slaps to cement the rhythmic function, the visitor lets the homie use his higher-pitched axes to slip and slide around these instant compositions. Of course, Actis Dato is a credit to his bass (runs) when he shows that he can still come up with unexpected ways of leading from below. Sometimes, in fact. his tones push Vandermark’s to the side so that the American’s sound begins to dances to his reed ruminations.

Robair and Smith, who have experience interacting with adventurous reedists like Anthony Braxton, John Butcher and Wolfgang Fuchs, embroil Actis Dato’s bass clarinet in pure, non-stop improv. The reedist’s lower register lines are perfectly matched with Smith’s powerful strokes and Robair’s percussion. And the two are quick off the mark. When the reedman leads them into high-pitched, nonsense sounds, the drummer responds in kind -- vocally, with slide whistles, toys, shakers and miscellaneous percussion -- while Smith’s arco work keeps things on an even keel. Actis Dato is even inspired to bring out his tenor sax for a few pseudo Neapolitan operatic swells leading to several minutes of out and out swing.

Portland’s gig is just as interesting. Storrs and Reed are a seasoned bass and drums duo -- check out their trio work with fellow Northwesterner, tenor saxophonist Rich Halley -- and their exuberance clearly inspires Actis Dato. With all three of their numbers given a South American lilt, Actis Dato, on tenor producers a hearty tone midway between playful Sonny Rollins in his West Indian mode and early Gato Barbieri. Vancouver, B.C.-based Reed has played with his share of European explorers and keeps his sound powerful and unvarying, while Storrs shows that a bongo’s martillo torque and hard bop press rolls can equally be adapted to outside sounds.

Probably the weakest meeting is in Seattle, though. Horvitz’s shimmering dance- electronic synthesizer tones sounds more like Manchester (England) pop than committed improv. With Radding far in the background, it’s up to Actis Dato to inject the fortitude and soul into the proceedings, which he does. Imagine a few overdressed New Romantics being swept out of their wine bar as an R&B sax shouter clomps all over their table and you’ll get an idea of what the saxist does here. Sometimes, in fact, it appears as if he’s in a New Thing space all his own and his angry-sounding vocal interjects make be more than japes.

Although these live excursions suffer a bit from dodgy recording, too many fades in Portland and audible (!) audience cross talk on one Seattle piece, they’re a fine showcase of Actis Dato in full flight. In some cases you could say they’re the next best thing to being there.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Blue 2. Green 3. Brown 4. Poulet Fumé 5. Movin’ 6. Marina De Caribe 7. Old Time 8. Wonderful World 9. Clarbas 10. Bariten 11. Clabar 12. Witches 13. The Bay

Personnel: Carlo Actis Dato (tenor and baritone saxophones, bass clarinet); plus Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet) [tracks 9-11]; Wayne Horvitz (keyboards) and Rueben Radding (bass) [tracks 1-3]; Clyde Reed (bass) and Dave Storrs (drums) [tracks 5-7]; Damon Smith (bass) and Gino Robair (drums) [track 13]

July 13, 2002

JOHN BUTCHER & GINO ROBAIR

Liverpool (Bluecoat) Concert
Limited Sedition LS026

Brevity, it’s said, is the soul of wit. Yet, as this singular duo CD proves, it can also be the font of improvisation. After listening to the slightly more than half an hour of interaction between reedman John Butcher and percussionist Gino Robair that is this limited-edition disc, you realize that the duration couldn’t and shouldn’t be lengthened.

That’s because the British saxophonist and American drummer did all that was necessary in the time allocated to them at this concert situation in the Beatles hometown of Liverpool, England. By this time, having matched wits -- and often spit -- with a panoply of British, North American and Continental improvisers, London-based Butcher knows the drill. Using either soprano or tenor saxophone he creates whizzing reed trills, elongated sonic echoes, split tones and flutter tonguing on these tracks, broken up with key pops and the occasional note fart. When Robair brings his junk shop collection of percussion instruments into play, Butcher then decides how best to respond, and the improv dance continues.

Oakland, Calif.-based percussionist Robair, who has worked with improvisers as different as multi-reedman Anthony Braxton and turntablist Otomo Yoshihide, plus frequently with Butcher, easily gets with the program as well. Using tools that include styrofoam, a faux dax, an e-bow snare and motors as well as more (un) conventional percussion, over the course of four tracks here, he scraps, scratches, strokes, whizzes, twists and turns out an entire sound field from his instruments. Leaving very few aural spaces unaccented, the two players fabricate tones that, on the last track for instance, resemble motors grinding, garbage cans being dropped, and cash registers ringing. The climax, -- probably from Butcher’s reed -- transmutes what could be feline wailing into a hiss of pure white sound.

Other members of the animal kingdom aren't neglected either, with the saxophone producing, with almost note-perfect replication, tiny bird sounds on the third track, while the bow of Robair’s faux dax and fizzing styrofoam generate aviary cries that could be linked to larger fowl on the second. Both men have, in the past, relied on electronic aids, but this live performance shows that they’re perfectly capable of creating these sounds in real time.

In short (sic), Butcher and Robair have come with another fine, if abbreviated session. If you want to consider another condensed situation though, only 241 numbered copies of this CD-R have been burned. That means the best -- if not the only -- way to get your hands on it is at www.limitedsedition.com.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. One 2. Two 3. Three 4. Four

Personnel: John Butcher (tenor or soprano saxophone); Gino Robair (percussion, styrofoam, faux dax, e-bow snare, motors)

May 17, 2002

GINO ROBAIR

Buddy Systems
Meniscus Records MNSCS 003

For an artist, putting together a compilation of selected duos and trios over a four- year period can sometimes result in sins of inclusion rather than omission. This 74 minute souvenir of Bay Area percussionist Gino Robair's partnership with 10 local and international improvisers comes awfully close to that weakness a couple of times, but manages to finally negate those flimsy spots with superior execution.

Robair, a long time member of the Splatter Trio, with a hefty background in improv, electronic music and straight composition has amassed so many playing buddies that he apologizes in the booklet for not including more of them here. He made the right choices to maintain the proper variety, though. Additionally, by playing not only what he terms meta-percussion, but also theremin, he can amplify the proceedings past any lesser ideas from his guest(s).

Most of the time, the most powerful work here comes when the percussionist is challenged by equally forceful personalities. For instance, when he joins Bay Area clarinetist Dan Plonsey or British tenor sax explorer John Butcher -- plus computer whiz Tim Perkins -- the results are memorable in different ways. Plonsey's seemingly ceaseless circular blowing sets up a challenge, to which the percussionist responds in kind, bringing out the heavy artillery in terms of cymbals, snare and bass drums so that the reed assault is tempered. On the other hand, Butcher's flutter tonguing and ascending breath control matched with Perkins' whooshes, buzzes and rumbles allows Robair to gently color the outcome.

Nevertheless, the percussionist is too self-effacing on "Tonal Vibrations", recorded with Oakland, Calif.-multi instrumentalist Oluyemi Thomas. Thomas' soprano saxophone and clarinet are so upfront that until Robair finally asserts himself with a steadfast beat, the track begins to more resemble a solo reed(s) showcase than a duo excursion.

A similar conundrum presents itself when Robair, on theremin, begins playing off against the turntables and CD players of Japanese experimenter Otomo Yoshihide. "Inappropriations" allows the two to create an accelerated soundscape of humorous robotic intensity. But "Lead me Lord", which adds Splatter sidekick Myles Boisen on CD player to the duo nearly drowns under a cacophony of sounds which resemble a vacuum cleaner, agitated bird calls, satellite signals and snatches of a religious song. Only when the pre-recorded tune creates a bedrock theme do the instrumental pieces fall into place.

Surprisingly, considering how well the similar, spacey tones of his theremin mesh with the dusky string research of Birmingham, Ala.-violin ace LaDonna Smith on "A Mysterious Vision", their other duet, "Sklarking" ranks as the disc's least successful effort. Throughout, the two seem so intense in hitting the highest-pitched, squeakiest notes in dog whistle territory that listening becomes irritating rather than intriguing.

All in all, though, the few missteps are overcome by the better material. In fact, this disc may lead you to others where Robair plays with the same musician(s) all the way though.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Tangle 2. Inappropriations* 3. Balek Scales 4. Reckless & Sinful Extravagance 5. A Mysterious Vision* 6. Integument 7. Trnava 8.Adytum 9. Sklarking*

10. Tonal vibrations 11.Dark Pleasures 12. Lead Me, Lord* 13. Ceromancy 14. Integumentation

Personnel: Gino Robair (bowed, struck and motorized percussion, theremin*) with Dan Plonsey [track 4](clarinet); John Butcher [track 1](tenor saxophone); Oluyemi Thomas [track 10](soprano saxophone, alto clarinet, percussion); Dave Barrett [track 8] (saxes, saxcello); Carla Kihlstedt [tracks 3, 11] (violin); LaDonna Smith [tracks 5, 7, 9, 13] (violin, viola, voice); Myles Boisen [tracks 8, 12] (doubleneck guitar, bass, CD player); Matthew Sperry [tracks 3, 11] (bass); Tim Perkis [tracks 1, 6, 14](computer, synthesizer); Otomo Yoshihide [tracks 2, 12] (turntables, CD players)

October 29, 2001

JOHN BUTCHER

Music on seven occasions
Meniscus Records MNSCS 004

JOHN BUTCHER/DYLAN VAN DER SCHYFF
Points, snags and windings
Meniscus Records MNSCS 010

As amiable as he is adventurous, British saxophone explorer John Butcher rarely misses an opportunity to collaborate with similar intrepid musical explorers. Comfortable in a variety of formations, the two accomplished discs here highlight his duet work.

A superb pair, the main difference between them is choice of partners. MUSIC ON SEVEN OCCASIONS is just that, recorded over a three year period in the 1990s in different American and British studios, featuring nine partners plus four solo saxophone interludes. POINTS, SNAGS AND WINDINGS, on the other hand, has one fewer musician on board then there are nouns in the title. It's a record of duets between Butcher and Vancouver, B.C.-based percussionist Dylan van der Schyff, done last year in Vancouver.

The soprano and tenor saxophonist's improvising is always at a consistently high level and part of the fascination of these discs is to see how he reacts to different situations. Interestingly enough, despite the nine partners, OCCASIONS come across as unified as the other disc. In fact, by beginning and ending with a percussion-saxophone duet it almost becomes an infinite circle, a continuum of improvisation that starts up again after it seems to end.

More of a serial monogamist than a swinger -- in both senses of the word -- Butcher connects with the other players here on a level that, in non-musical circumstances, would be passionate. Each determines the rhythm of the other and parries and thrusts as hard or softly as warranted. Plus being considerate music lovers, neither climaxes until the other has come to a certain point as well.

Thus while the soprano entwines Jeb Bishop's macho plunger trombone notes in delicate, romantic lacy tones on "The Late Approach", swaggering, tenor saxophone ejaculations characterize Butcher going mano-a-mano with inventive percussionists Michael Zerang on "Cold That Bites".

Growling split tones enable the saxman to hold his own with the Bay area's Gino Robair, whose whacked out percussion and preparations often come on with the force of the U.S. Calvary swooping down on an armed Indian camp in a Western movie. Back in England, long time cohort, pianist Veryan Weston's rolls out a chord carpet for Butcher's elongated, reverberating multiphonics or on "Sea They Think They Hear" a miniature, sprightly sax ditty. Then, German tube terror Thomas Lehn's synthesizer rumbles, blasts and silences are met with nearly continuous, high-pitched, single note gyrations.

Coming across like an old married couple, compared to the numerous one night stands that make up the other CD, Butcher and van der Schyff's alliance proves just as arousing. Part of the Canadian group Talking Pictures, and a veteran collaborator with other improvisers, including his wife, cellist Peggy Lee, the percussionist knows when to be gentle in musical congress and when to be rough.

"Recent Realism", for instance, with Butcher on tenor, builds up to a mass of rapid percussive thrusts from the drummer with echoing double tonguing from Butcher. Between the saxophonist vibrating extended timbres that reverberate against the alloy of his horn and the steady scratch of sticks from the percussionist's cymbals, tunes like "Early Animation" and "Points" include enough heavy metal to attract the Kiss Army. Meanwhile "Under Glass" is one part breathy subterranean reed rumbles and one part restrained percussive interludes. It could be preserved in the museum case the title suggests to showcase the limits of volume and silence improvisers use.

Improv can be very low key as well, as the two demonstrate on "Attempted Delivery". Van der Schyff organizes one of the those busy solo forays, which sound as if the percussionist is using sticks and brushes to search through every part of his kit for a misplaced note, while Butcher contributes a series of tones that go from barely audible to full force.

Looking for the real deal in creative musical satisfaction? Go no further than here. Butcher's two sessions offer a veritable Kama Sutra of improv positions. The one you prefer will likely depend on your taste for variety and how agile you want each performance --and performer -- to be.

-- Ken Waxman

Seven:

Track Listing: 1. Phlogiston 2. Caloric 3. Late Impromptu 4. 1rst singularity 5. 2nd singularity 6. Routemasters 7. Sea They Think They Hear 8. Gil thread dream 9. Anomolies in the customs of the day 10. The Step Sequence 11. The Late Approach 12. The Interior Design 13. The Only Way Out 14. 3rd singularity 15. 4th singularity 16. Cold That Bites 17. Shadow play* 18. Clackchat

Personnel: John Butcher (tenor and soprano saxophones) with: Gino Robair [tracks 1, 2] (percussion and preparations); Alexander Frangenheim [track 3] bass); Veryan Weston [track 6, 7, 8] piano); Thomas Lehn [track 9] synthesizer; John Corbett [track 10] guitar; Jeb Bishop [track 11] trombone; Terri Kapsalis [track 12] violin; Fred Longberg-Holm [track 13] cello; Michael Zerang [tracks 16, 17, 18] multiple percussion, tubaphone*

Points:

Track Listing: 1. Early Animation 2. Windings 3. Pool Lights 4. Recent Realism 5. Points 6. Snags 7. Under Glass 8. Incision 9. Attempted Delivery 10. Spills 11. Combat

Personnel: John Butcher (tenor and soprano saxophones); Dylan van der Schyff percussion)

October 1, 2001

JOHN BUTCHER/GINO ROBAIR/MATTHEW SPERRY

12 Milagritos
Spool Line SPL 109

British sonic explorer John Butcher is one woodwind player who has worked assiduously on discovering every last sound he can pull out of the innards of his horns, most notably when he produces a solo session.

Mouthpiece mavens may drool when given something to like that to absorb, but others may find his interactions with other players easier to swallow. You won't think his skilled saxophone spewing all wet if you can hear it amalgamating with the deft improvising of other musicians.

This CD is particularly noteworthy since Yanks make up the other two thirds of this trio. Oakland, Calif.-based Gino Robair has internalized the British multi vibrational concept of folks like AMM's Eddie Prevost, and uses a melange of percussion to comment on the proceedings, rather than functioning as a timekeeper or a rhythm machine. Matthew Sperry of Seattle, Wash. has worked singly and together with Butcher and Robair since the late 1990s, and brings a thorough understanding of the bass as a solo as well as an accompanying instrument to the session.

Preeminently group music, 12 MILAGRITOS gives the saxophonist the proper canvas on which to express his reed brush strokes. Not that he's the only artist here. Like sculptor's associates who simultaneously work on different parts of a statute to produce the three-dimensional representation, each man contributes to the concoction, negating the hierarchical concept of soloist with rhythm section. Often the result is one of those improvisations where the precise sound source for many notes is difficult to determine. Most of the 12 pieces unroll at a frantic speed, yet with every gesture microscopically clear.

Playing either tenor or soprano saxophone, Butcher constructs little dramas out of slap tonguing, false fingering and foghorn-like reverberations. Frequently his tone could be all encompassing enough to seemingly fill an entire wind tunnel by itself; other times it may dissolve into random reed buzzes, or even what sounds like a factory gate whistle or extended passages on comb-and-tissue-paper. This way he's frequently not only able to play the note, but suggest its undertones and overtones as well.

Ignoring straight time and much of his kit, Robair concentrates on scraping his cymbals with a bow, producing triangle-like vibrations, striking wood blocks, and knocking out subterranean percussion rumbles. Sticking in most cases to the lower register of his instrument and the arco mode, Sperry creates counterpoint to the others. At times his attack is so forceful that you envision the bass bridge shaking with his exertion.

Although sometimes Sperry seems to be banging his fist to or palm to create percussive tones from the bass, he didn't have to knock on wood for luck on this date. With three experienced improvisers on tap, the entire project not only commands attention, but also hangs together as if the group performs every day as an ensemble.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Ave 2. Nervio 3. Labio 4. Cerebro 5. Bizaro 6. Codo 7. Garganta 8. Mano 9. Brazo 10. Pelo 11. Dedo 12. Pie

Personnel: John Butcher (soprano and tenor saxophones); Matthew Sperry (bass and preparations); Gino Robair (percussion, bows and motors, ebow snare, faux dax)

March 8, 2001

MARTIN ARCHER

Winter Pilgrim Arriving
DISCUS 12CD

Martin Archer/Simon H. Fell
Pure Water Construction
DISCUS 11CD

Some musicians who have already researched the outer limits of jazz and improv music are still looking for new areas to investigate. One bit of uncharted territory -- the intersection of improvisations, the mechanics of chance and electronic gadgetry -- fascinates Martin Archer. And these two quite different discs offer a glimpse into his thought processes.

Initially a free jazz saxophonist and composer, Sheffield, England-based Archer has spent most of the past decade immersing himself in the mechanics of electroacoustic music. Both these CDs involve music played by him and others in real time then twisted, turned, tweaked and mixed with other samples to create a new soundscape. When it succeeds it transports the adventurous listener who often can't identify the source of an individual tone; when it doesn't it becomes merely self-indulgent.

PILGRIM has been described as Archer's "rock" record, which is as fallacious as describing Tom Waits as a jazz singer because his backup instrumentation sometimes refers to swing. Thus this mixture of harsh electric guitars, hearty background rhythm and liner notes hommages to Nick Drake and the Soft Machine is supposed to suggest 1970s prog-rock.

King Crimson fans shouldn't get too excited though. Because if there's anything PILGRIM superficially resembles rather than a Robert Fripp epic, it's Miles Davis' post fusion period. Here Derek Shaw's ethereal cornet, snaking around unvarying synthesizer pulses, plays the Davis role. "River followers (for Nick Drake)", another rock red herring, relying more on what's probably sampled "classical" sounding piano played off against Archer's chalumeau register clarinet's then heavy guitar riffs or folksy acoustic strumming.

Not only that, but the salute to the Soft Machine, "Chemistry lock (Mike, Elton, Hugh, Robert)", doesn't seem as if it could get work at any rock festival, since it's built around electronic drums, with the melody carried on Mick Beck's bassoon.

The title track has cornettist Shaw in a more upfront mode, soling over South Asian-sounding samples. Plus the later part of "The eclipse farm heresies" could be heard as out-and-out contemporary jazz, with a cornet solo working in counterpart with Simon Fell's acoustic bass inventions, almost masking the electronic patterns that move in and out from background to foreground.

Fell's input is equally important to PURE WATER CONSTRUCTION, since this electroacoustic studio composition was created by both him and Archer. Echoing the work of Bob Ostertag and other tape cut-up composers, each track features additional music grafted onto reprocessed versions of the listed performers' solo improvisations.

Paradoxically, the result actually sounds more "live" than some concert performances. That can probably be attributed to the fact that experienced improvisers such as Fell, Davies and Collins are involved, and that Archer's processing seems more complimentary than intrusive.

Although there are points on the CD when it appears as if a radio is moving from a heavy metal station to a serious classical music program to a glimpse of experimental techno, overall the end product fits its agenda. The only harsh notes that are struck come, perhaps intentionally, from guitarist Jaworzyn, who manages to overpower the others every time he lets loose. This may be a minor quibble for guitar fanciers, though.

Another irritant is that the composition's first section is labeled "Part O", so your CD track number read out will reflect a higher number than the section that's actually playing.

With these discs (only available by mail order from www.discus.cwc.net) and his other work, Archer has managed to document his unique take on EuroImprov, which involves the studio more than other performers. Still it would be interesting to see him, sampler in hand, plus a cross section of top-flight improvisers present this music in real time to a live audience.

--Ken Waxman

Pilgrim -- Track Listing: 1. Angel words 2.The eclipse farm heresies 3.Beautiful city on the hill 4.A dream of broken and floating doors 5.Horn 6.Death-runes, death-rumours, ruins, rains of death 7.Chemistry lock (Mike, Elton, Hugh, Robert) 8.Winter pilgrims arriving 9.River followers (for Nick Drake) 10.Harbour town online

Personnel: Martin Archer (sonic dp synthesizers, sopranino saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinet, consort of recorders, vioelectronics); Derek Shaw (cornet); Mick Beck (bassoon); Charles Collins (flute, sampling); Benjamin Bartholomew and Tim Cole (guitars); Derek Saw (cornet); Simon H. Fell (double bass); Gino Robair (percussion), James Archer (amplified objects); Sedayne (crwth)

Water--. Track Listing: 1.Part zero - Prelude 2.Part one - Robin Hayward ; 3.Part two - Chris Burn; 4.Part three - Rhodri Davies (harp) ; 5.Part four - Jenni Molloy; 6.Part five - Stefan Jaworzyn (guitar)

Personnel: Martin Archer (sound processing, bells, sopranino saxophone, electronics, organ, violin, drum machines); Charlie Collins (bass clarinet); Robin Hayward (tuba); Chris Burn (piano); Stefan Jaworzyn (guitar); Jenni Molloy (cello); Rhodri Davies (harp); Simon H. Fell (sampling, bass guitar, bass); Gino Robair (percussion

July 27, 2000