Calling Signals 08

From Café Oto
Loose Torque No #

Coxhill/Edwards/Noble

The Early Years

Ping Pong 003

Perhaps it’s an example of the dry sense of humor that those in the United Kingdom are supposed to possess, but less than five years separate the fine trio improvisations featuring saxophonist Lol Coxhill on The Early Years from the equally stirring quartet improvisations with Coxhill and Norwegian reedist Frode Gjerstad in the front line.

If earlier in this century are “early years” what about the prior career of Coxhill, which in improvised music dates from the late 1960s and professionally from the 1950s – and who sometimes seems to have played with absolutely every musician in the UK and the Continent? His associates on the disc, drummer Steve Noble, who was involved with jazz and improvised music by the early 1980s with Rip, Rag and Panic among others; and bassist John Edwards was committed to the sound at a similar juncture, at first with the Pointy Birds and B-shops for The Poor..

Coxhill’s confreres on the other disc, who make up Calling Signals 08, aren’t tyros either. Bassist Nick Stephens was playing with drummer John Stephens in the 1970s as did Gjerstad in the 1980s. Only Norwegian percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love is young enough is to have “early years”, and he was working with top improvisers such as Gjerstad by the time he was in his late teens. Maybe the answer is that, unlike pop musicians who need such a large amount of studio boosting and engineering help that they can only release discs every few years – or decades – improvisers possess such a high level of talent and technique that, especially with new technology, means they can put out numerous discs annually Like reverse dog years, perhaps improv sessions are so numerous, that one from five years ago can literally be The Early Years.

Nomenclature aside, both of these CDs offer impressive playing. From Café Oto is a live situation, so Calling Signals 08 plays one long and one gargantuan track. The Coxhill/Edwards/Noble trio is a studio date, so The Early Years is made up of nine improvisations, only one of which breaks the 10-mimute mark. Perfectly matched, The Early Years’ trio members operate in triple counterpoint, where the resulting polyphony depends on each man’s techniques.

For instance, the concluding “Endgame” is a pseudo-blues built up with Noble’s backbeat, rim shots and cymbal sizzles as well as Edwards’ percussive string slaps plus Coxhill’s repeated tongue trills and split tones which become multiphonic as the piece progresses. With the bass-drum interaction primarily swinging and rhythmic, the saxophonist maintains edginess with kinetic corkscrew cries and tongue slaps. The connective tension exhibited here is noticeable as early as “Episode No. 1”, with friction created by Edwards’ sul ponticello scrubs and Coxhill’s reed bites finally dissipated by bass drum thumps. Climax occurs in the contrast between the bassist’s physically challenging pace and the saxman’s curved, intense vibrato.

This triple-barreled improvising continues throughout, as the players use either col legno string extensions, percussion flams, ruffs and clatter or altissimo reed squeals to make their point(s). Coxhill may twitter what could be a chromatic Bop lick on “Hook Point”, but whether by accident or on purpose is another question. The session isn’t all unrelieved intensity however, as most tracks include contrasting breaks. On “Out of the Past” for instance the drummer’s thick rolls and rebounds give way to gentle bell-ringing; the bull fiddler’s flashing flanging is allayed by string stops and shakes; while the saxophonist’s dog-whistle range textures are mitigated by steady, chromatic blasts.

Similarly, near-legato interludes exist on From Café Oto. But layers of kinetic friction are even more prominent, especially on the over 43-minute “Communication Two”. Coxhill’s improvising is no less staccatissimo or stentorian than it was five years previously, while the bass strategies from Stephens are at least as technically adroit as Edwards’ work on The Early Years. However Nilssen-Love who frequently works the kit for hard-blowing saxophonists such as Peter Brötzmann or Mats Gustafsson appears to rag his percussion with more muscle and dynamics during this live date. Meanwhile Gjerstad, who for years was Norway’s only acknowledged atonal improviser, constantly appears to be making up for lost time by blasting rough multiphonics through his alto saxophone and clarinets.

Very shortly after the improvisation’s exposition, Gjersatd’s woody clarinet tone ratchets up a notch to reed-biting, with descending tonal slaps from Stephens as his seconder, as Nilssen-Love’s cross pulses and pops back up Coxhill’s soprano saxophone shrieks. While Stephens continues thumping alongside, the saxophonist’s tone narrows to ney-like, adding slippery trills and tapering puff, while the clarinetist introduces guttural snorts and tongue stops. As another development moves the pace from allegro to andante, the percussionist kicks his bass drum to extend the speed. In the interim, downward-rolling clarinet split tones and soprano saxophone whines squeeze the narrative while maintaining chromaticism in the face of rhythmic cacophony. Pauses plus clanking cymbals signal a further discursive move, with the theme pitch-sliding to moderato, punctuated by spetrofluctuation and flutter-tonguing from Coxhill plus clarinet tone squeezes and snorts. The drummer’s parade-ground beat coupled with roiled double bass string thumps signal another variation, which also matches mid-range slurps and peeps from Gjerstad with almost-painful strident licks from Coxhill. Eventually a conclusive variant finds the two horns accelerating from double-tonguing and glossolalia to a solid drone of almost Aylerian intonation, then shrinking to constructed peeps, as Stephens plucks and bumps his strings and Nilssen-Love varies his percussive texture with snaps, pops and rolls.

Whether you prefer sessions of improvisation be all-encompassing 3-D styled extravaganzas or would like them to evolve with the brevity of a multi-episode, TV mini series, you’ll find much to like on each of these CDs.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Early: 1. Tijuana rendezvous 2. Episode no. 1 3.Coming through 4. Hook Point 5. The Set Up 6. Stray Dog 7. Out of the Past 8. 3 Tales 9.Endgame

Personnel: Early: Lol Coxhill (soprano saxophone); John Edwards (bass) and Steve Noble (drums)

Track Listing: Café: 1. Communication One 2. Communication Two

Personnel: Café: Frode Gjerstad (alto saxophone, clarinet and alto clarinet); Lol Coxhill (soprano saxophone); Nick Stephens (bass) and Paal Nilssen-Love (percussion)

July 28, 2010

The Godforgottens

Never Forgotten, Always Remembered
Clean Feed CF 164 CD

Atomic

Theater Tilters Vol. 1

Jazzland Recordings 273339-7

Swedish trumpeter Magnus Broo and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love are the soldering points of both these CDs. However, not only is each disc significant in its own way, but the thought process involved in creation is as different as the other musicians involved.

Energetic Young Lions with class, the five members of Atomic have put together a CD of hard-hitting originals whose ball-in-socket performance speaks to the group’s constant touring over the past decade. Two other Atomics are Norwegian – pianist Håvard Wiik and bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten – and one, multi-reedist Fredrik Ljungkvist – is Swedish. Leaders in other circumstances – as are Nilssen-Love and Broo – collectively the players have worked in different groups in Europe and North America, with fellow Scandinavians, Americans, such as multi-reedist Ken Vandermark and pianist Marilyn Crispell plus Germans, including saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and trumpeter Axel Dörner.

An altogether different proposition, and recorded three years earlier, Never Forgotten, Always Remembered is more claustrophobic and atmospheric than Theater Tilters Vol. 1. Unlike his literally hard-hitting performance on the other CD, Nilssen-Love is relatively restrained here, depending more on ancillary percussion than his regular kit. Similarly Broo’s identity as a modernist Clifford Brown on the other CD is traded on Never Forgotten for the long lines and rubato timing associated with Nordic sounds and ECM records.

Eschewing the soporiferous patterns of many ECM dates and replacing them with individual quirks however is the job of the two plus the other Godforgottens. Swedish bass player Johan Berthling, a contemporary of the Norwegians, has a reach which extends into playing electro microtonalism with the likes of Australian guitarist Oren Ambarchi. The last deity-abandoned contributor is veteran keyboardist Sten Sandell, whose Gush trio set the standard for Free Jazz in Sweden. Further differentiating this session from the other, is that Sandell plays not only his usual piano, but Hammond B3 organ as well and also exposes his guttural vocalizing.

Over the course of three extended instant compositions, the quartet amasses a string of distinct and mercurial tones that are sometimes droning and sometimes shrill. Hand slapping his strings or sawing them to induce tonal tension, Berthling provides the date’s percussive centre. Nilssen-Love frequently brings forward his shaken chains and rattling bell tree as well as outlining cymbal pops and bass drum smacks, while Broo’s carefully constructed chromatic lines often give way to shrill brays and juicy tongue stops. Sandell’s on-again-off-again organ drone is in place, but so too are his key-clipping and high-frequency piano runs, usually sounded fortissimo.

Maintaining a similar pitch throughout the session builds to the nearly-20 minute “Remembered Forgotten”. It’s taken staccatissimo courtesy of the drummer’s rim shots, paradiddles and pumps plus physically powerful strums and pops from the bassist. After Broo’s linear grace notes relax into moderato fluttering, Sandell takes centre stage with techniques that flow separately from either hand: a low-pitched continuum from one and high-pitched silent movie-theatre-like riffs from the other. Berthling’s ostinato ushers in piece’s final variant, until percussion rat-tat-tats from Nilssen-Love’s and Sandell’s low-frequency organ flutters giving way to distant plunger work from Broo.

Role reversal comes for the drummer and trumpeter on the other CD, where nearly every track is characterized by vivacity and speed. This is particularly noticeable on the final tune, Ljungvist’s self-explanatory “Bop About”. Reminiscent of a Jazz Messengers showpiece, this line from the Kristinehamn-born multi-reedist follows every Hard Bop hallmark. Ljungvist’s slurs, honks and flutter tonguing are spelled by high-pitched fireworks from Broo, splayed piano comping and back-beat drumming. Then, following the turnaround, the tenor saxophonist exhibits his intense vibrato before a shout chorus brings back the head, which is repeated once again following a pause.

Less formulistic, other compositions showcase the quintet’s range. Wiik’s “Murmansk” for instance is built around horn parallelism, double counterpoint whose lines never meet. Ljungvist also shows off his clarinet skill here. Staccato blowing modulates upwards to near-altissimo shrills and as effortlessly moves downwards to pressurized squeaks. Håker Flaten’s intermittent plucks and Wiik’s staccato pitter-pattering are also featured. But the highlight is Nilssen-Love’s bravura solo, beginning with paddling and paradiddles, as he works away from the drum head centres to the rims.

One of the three Chicago-associated tunes – “Green Mill Tilter” and “Bop About” are named for Windy City clubs – “Andersonville”, is Ljungvist’s homage to the late tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson. To avoid comparisons, the reed man initially uses his clarinet to match contralto trills with Broo’s heraldic flourishes and concludes by snorting away on baritone saxophone. With the initially discordant contrapuntal horn line backed by clipped, high-frequency chording from Wiik, Håken Flaten’s ostinato and a quickening parade-ground beat from Nilssen-Love, it’s the bassist’s tough pulsing that redirects the tune to a Boppy swinger. Atop drags and flams from the drummer, the exposition is restated among Broo’s rubato blasts, then drops away for a growling baritone sax solo and some woody bass slapping.

Redefining existing styles so that they fit their personalities as if they were well-tailored suits, is evidentially the preoccupation of this group of talented Scandinavians. More to the point they do so in their own way, avoiding the slavish emulations of many of their American confreres.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Never: 1. Always Forgotten 2. Never Remembered 3. Remembered Forgotten

Personnel: Never: Magnus Broo (trumpet); Sten Sandell (Hammond B-3 organ, piano and vocal); Johan Berthling (bass) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)

Track Listing: Theater: 1. Green Mill Tilter 2. Andersonville 3. Fissures 4. Murmansk 5. Bop About

Personnel: Theater: Magnus Broo (trumpet); Fredrik Ljungkvist (tenor and baritone saxophones and clarinet); Håvard Wiik (piano); Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (bass) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)

July 18, 2010

Atomic

Theater Tilters Vol. 1
Jazzland Recordings 273339-7

The Godforgottens

Never Forgotten, Always Remembered

Clean Feed CF 164 CD

Swedish trumpeter Magnus Broo and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love are the soldering points of both these CDs. However, not only is each disc significant in its own way, but the thought process involved in creation is as different as the other musicians involved.

Energetic Young Lions with class, the five members of Atomic have put together a CD of hard-hitting originals whose ball-in-socket performance speaks to the group’s constant touring over the past decade. Two other Atomics are Norwegian – pianist Håvard Wiik and bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten – and one, multi-reedist Fredrik Ljungkvist – is Swedish. Leaders in other circumstances – as are Nilssen-Love and Broo – collectively the players have worked in different groups in Europe and North America, with fellow Scandinavians, Americans, such as multi-reedist Ken Vandermark and pianist Marilyn Crispell plus Germans, including saxophonist Peter Brötzmann and trumpeter Axel Dörner.

An altogether different proposition, and recorded three years earlier, Never Forgotten, Always Remembered is more claustrophobic and atmospheric than Theater Tilters Vol. 1. Unlike his literally hard-hitting performance on the other CD, Nilssen-Love is relatively restrained here, depending more on ancillary percussion than his regular kit. Similarly Broo’s identity as a modernist Clifford Brown on the other CD is traded on Never Forgotten for the long lines and rubato timing associated with Nordic sounds and ECM records.

Eschewing the soporiferous patterns of many ECM dates and replacing them with individual quirks however is the job of the two plus the other Godforgottens. Swedish bass player Johan Berthling, a contemporary of the Norwegians, has a reach which extends into playing electro microtonalism with the likes of Australian guitarist Oren Ambarchi. The last deity-abandoned contributor is veteran keyboardist Sten Sandell, whose Gush trio set the standard for Free Jazz in Sweden. Further differentiating this session from the other, is that Sandell plays not only his usual piano, but Hammond B3 organ as well and also exposes his guttural vocalizing.

Over the course of three extended instant compositions, the quartet amasses a string of distinct and mercurial tones that are sometimes droning and sometimes shrill. Hand slapping his strings or sawing them to induce tonal tension, Berthling provides the date’s percussive centre. Nilssen-Love frequently brings forward his shaken chains and rattling bell tree as well as outlining cymbal pops and bass drum smacks, while Broo’s carefully constructed chromatic lines often give way to shrill brays and juicy tongue stops. Sandell’s on-again-off-again organ drone is in place, but so too are his key-clipping and high-frequency piano runs, usually sounded fortissimo.

Maintaining a similar pitch throughout the session builds to the nearly-20 minute “Remembered Forgotten”. It’s taken staccatissimo courtesy of the drummer’s rim shots, paradiddles and pumps plus physically powerful strums and pops from the bassist. After Broo’s linear grace notes relax into moderato fluttering, Sandell takes centre stage with techniques that flow separately from either hand: a low-pitched continuum from one and high-pitched silent movie-theatre-like riffs from the other. Berthling’s ostinato ushers in piece’s final variant, until percussion rat-tat-tats from Nilssen-Love’s and Sandell’s low-frequency organ flutters giving way to distant plunger work from Broo.

Role reversal comes for the drummer and trumpeter on the other CD, where nearly every track is characterized by vivacity and speed. This is particularly noticeable on the final tune, Ljungvist’s self-explanatory “Bop About”. Reminiscent of a Jazz Messengers showpiece, this line from the Kristinehamn-born multi-reedist follows every Hard Bop hallmark. Ljungvist’s slurs, honks and flutter tonguing are spelled by high-pitched fireworks from Broo, splayed piano comping and back-beat drumming. Then, following the turnaround, the tenor saxophonist exhibits his intense vibrato before a shout chorus brings back the head, which is repeated once again following a pause.

Less formulistic, other compositions showcase the quintet’s range. Wiik’s “Murmansk” for instance is built around horn parallelism, double counterpoint whose lines never meet. Ljungvist also shows off his clarinet skill here. Staccato blowing modulates upwards to near-altissimo shrills and as effortlessly moves downwards to pressurized squeaks. Håker Flaten’s intermittent plucks and Wiik’s staccato pitter-pattering are also featured. But the highlight is Nilssen-Love’s bravura solo, beginning with paddling and paradiddles, as he works away from the drum head centres to the rims.

One of the three Chicago-associated tunes – “Green Mill Tilter” and “Bop About” are named for Windy City clubs – “Andersonville”, is Ljungvist’s homage to the late tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson. To avoid comparisons, the reed man initially uses his clarinet to match contralto trills with Broo’s heraldic flourishes and concludes by snorting away on baritone saxophone. With the initially discordant contrapuntal horn line backed by clipped, high-frequency chording from Wiik, Håken Flaten’s ostinato and a quickening parade-ground beat from Nilssen-Love, it’s the bassist’s tough pulsing that redirects the tune to a Boppy swinger. Atop drags and flams from the drummer, the exposition is restated among Broo’s rubato blasts, then drops away for a growling baritone sax solo and some woody bass slapping.

Redefining existing styles so that they fit their personalities as if they were well-tailored suits, is evidentially the preoccupation of this group of talented Scandinavians. More to the point they do so in their own way, avoiding the slavish emulations of many of their American confreres.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Never: 1. Always Forgotten 2. Never Remembered 3. Remembered Forgotten

Personnel: Never: Magnus Broo (trumpet); Sten Sandell (Hammond B-3 organ, piano and vocal); Johan Berthling (bass) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)

Track Listing: Theater: 1. Green Mill Tilter 2. Andersonville 3. Fissures 4. Murmansk 5. Bop About

Personnel: Theater: Magnus Broo (trumpet); Fredrik Ljungkvist (tenor and baritone saxophones and clarinet); Håvard Wiik (piano); Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (bass) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)

July 18, 2010

Densités Festival

Fresnes-en-Woëvre, France
October 23 to 25 2009

A rural French hamlet in the Lorraine countryside isn’t the setting you imagine for a world-class festival of unadulterated Electronic and Free Music. Yet the Densités Festival in Fresnes-en-Woëvre – population 500 – about 80 kilometres from Nancy, is that. During three days in late October, the 16th Edition presented a sonic banquet of unstoppable Free Jazz, minimalist improv, sound installations, electro-acoustic meetings, poetry recitations and interactions between instrumentalists and dancers.

Equally fascinating were the duets between American bassist Barre Phillips and French dancer Emmanuelle Pépin opening night and French saxophonist Eddy Kowalski and the body movements of Alain Sallet the next. Both performances used wooden chairs as props, but while Kowalski rested in his to comment on Sallet’s elasticized movements, Phillips-Pépin were more proactive.

With the chair serving variously as body support, dance partner and booty to be used and or withdrawn from one by the other, Pépin also balances on it or swept the chair in circles – that is when she isn’t miming anger or marching robotically stiff-legged mocking the bassist’s sul ponticello squeals. For his part Phillips sometimes strums his four-strings guitar-like, scrapes the strings on the neck near the scroll while mumbling or yodeling. He seems to spend more time brushing the stage with his bow, dragging the bull fiddle across the floor or pulling sounds from the bass’s back and belly than sounding the strings.

On the other hand, except when Kowalski resonates his sax notes parallel to the ground or sticks the bell upwards, he doesn’t subvert his sonic role. He confines himself to simple pinched vibrato trills or propelled pure air through the horn’s body tube. In contrast, Sallet is in perpetual motion; at points crawling crab-like on his hands and knees, at others repeatedly leaping and grasping for something unseen; other times throwing himself down and up from the ground like a rag doll. Wobbling on bandy legs or exposing a hollow-legged gait with arms askew, Sallet suddenly pauses to pant dog-like, cough, retch, gasp, or, in response to a spiraling atonal line from Kowalski, dance a solitary tango. Finally as the saxophone whistles altissimo, Sallet leans backwards, slithering along the floor.

This sort of cross-platform improvising was expressed differently in two electro-acoustic meetings; one with German synth-manipulator Thomas Lehn, Austrian trumpeter Franz Hautzinger and French saxophonist Bertrand Gauguet; the other a Gallic admixture of Sophie Agnel’s prepared piano plus the electronics of Lionel Marchetti and Jérôme Noetinger. The later trio’s extended improvisation balances on sped-up and decelerated ostinatos from Noetinger’s electronics, which infrequently accelerate shrilly to interrupt the pianist’s lyricism. Prepared with plastic drinking glasses and rubber balls, the strings on Agnel’s piano echo smacked and stopped arpeggios, knife-blade scrapes and resounding wooden clanks. When he wasn’t recording piano sounds to play back in real-time unison with Agnel’s improvising, Marchetti manipulates a tape-wrapped, telephone extension among his equipment as if he’s a doctor using a stethoscope to probe a patient. In the performance, electronic loops, and flanges eventually give way to Agnel’s march tempo, Marchetti short wave-styled static and Noetinger rumbling what could have been a primitive blues tune.

Reversing the number of plugged-in and hand-held sound sources, Gauguet/Lehn/Hautzinger’s interface sounds no more or less acoustic than Agnel/Marchetti/Noetinger’s. However Lehn’s rumbling vibrations, quivering wave forms and occasional ring modulator-like clangs steady the improvisations, as Hautzinger complements the saxophonist’s unaccented puffs. Circumscribing his soprano saxophone in the air, Gauguet produces high-pitched reed bites as Hautzinger’s horn yelps and barks and Lehn burbles sound waves swollen to chunky vamps. Eventually the keyboardist’s jabs simmer unhurriedly as the horns’ double counterpoint dissolve into multi-syllabic, tremolo runs from the trumpeter and overblowing peeps from the saxophonist. Sonic equanimity is achieved when Gauguet’s over-extended rubato runs are superseded by pinging crackles and wiggling oscillations from the synthesizer.

Mostly unplugged connective voltage was on display via the Hairy Bones quartet of German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, the trumpet and electronics of Japan’s Toshinori Kondo, Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and Italian electric bassist Massimo Pupillo. Operating full blast, the reedist’s floor-shaking bawling and nephritic split tones are hypnotically matched by the trumpeter’s screeching tremolo pitches, the bass guitarist’s grinding flanges plus the drummer’s clobbering back beat that impresses head-bangers.

This wall of sound is occasionally breached when Kondo uses foot-pedal action to extend his triplet overtones or during Brötzmann’s unaccompanied breaks, where the sounds seemed to issue as much from his solar plexus and stomach limning as his lungs. During its Sunday afternoon set the quartet divides into duos or trios without slacking its sonic wallop. For instance, Pupillo’s thick strums match Nilssen-Love continuous stroking; Brötzmann’s altissimo cries face off with the rhythm section’s relentless beat; or Kondo’s pitched squeals join bent saxophone note for a balladic approximation. Smears, scrapes, rubs and trills shrilly echo during the set’s climatic moments, almost literally shaking the stage before concluding.

No stages are shaken during the festival’s other outstanding acoustic set a day pervious. Trumpeter Birgit Ulher from Hamburg and alto saxophonist Heddy Boubaker from Toulouse push foreshortened air current through their respective instruments, frequently pianissimo, but often studded with key percussion, tongue slaps and reed cries. Boubaker, who at times plays his horn at a 180 degree angle, also places his mouthpiece perpendicularly, the better to expel wide expanses of pure air. Ulher amplifies some of her mutes through a small radio, but the resulting splintered timbres and watery slurps don’t alter the minimalist note construction. Rewarding attentive listening, the two expose the partials and extensions of many notes with their laser-focused improvising.

More spectacular, but as dedicated to wringing the least obvious textures from his instrument(s) is Australian percussionist Robbie Avenaim. Theatrical in presentation, his solo set Saturday evening finds him seated behind a regular drum kit surrounded by four additional bass drums, three extra snares plus another drum stick hanging from a stand designed to strike the cymbals and snares beneath it. Using a motorized voltage controller, Avenaim programmed the auxiliary percussion to play a pre-determined rhythm, follow his live strokes or create random beats. Strokes, volume and tempi varied; while his soloing concentrates on rim shots, sizzle cymbal tonality, drum-top patterning and abrasive whacks on the drums’ unyielding sides.

Sonic inventiveness extends to a spatial installation, as Berlin’s Burkard Beins demonstrates Sunday afternoon in the foyer of the village’s ornate city hall. Plastic string was linked to Styrofoam boxes mounted on the walls at different angles, another box filled with flashlight batteries on the ground. Beins conjures alchemist-like unmistakable percussion and string timbres from the set up. By stroking, plucking, pulling and twisting the strings the contrapuntal results resonating through nearby speakers include extended textures along with designated tones. Resembling a marionette when his hands are simultaneously attached to more than one string, Beins is no puppet but in complete control. Highpoint of the performance is when he uses a sanding motion to rub together two Styrofoam boxes, about the size of transistor radios, to create first a low-pitched buzz for a few measures, then by moving them along the strings, cello-like sustained textures.

Verbal improvisation wasn’t neglected at Densités. During two very different recitals, Paris poet Damien Schultz dramatically demonstrates the onomatopoeic and homonymic qualities of various French words and phrases. Appropriately his poems are enlivened by word and sense play, with subtle layers of meanings.

The out-of-the-way location of Fresnes-en-Woëvre often made it feel as if the participants were trapped inside an improvisational bubble. Yet the majority of Densités’ performances compensate for any isolation.

-- Ken Waxman

-- For MusicWorks Issue #107

July 3, 2010

Rodrigo Amado

Motion Trio
European Echoes 004

Amado/Kessler/Nilssen-Love

The Abstract Truth

European Echoes 003

Turning a cliché on its head, it’s evident with these CDs that familiarity breeds creativity. For while Portuguese saxophonist Rodrigo Amado’s session with American bassist Kent Kessler and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love is only good, his Motion Trio disc with two fellow Lisbon musicians is exceptional.

A photographer as well as an improviser, Amado has been committed to advanced music for years, as a member of the Lisbon Improvisation Players and collaborating with American jazzers such as bassist Ken Filiano and cellist Tomas Ulrich; he even recorded an earlier trio session with Kessler and Nilssen-Love.

However it appears as if his concept of real-time composition works best with cello, considering the technical versatility local experimental polymath Miguel Mira brings to the date. American-Portuguese drummer Gabriel Ferrandini is only in his early twenties, but having played in noise as well as electro-acoustic bands and ad hoc with the likes of American corniest Rob Mazurek and German saxophonist Alfred “23” Harth, he mates rhythmically minimal texture with intensity of the Energizer Bunny when he plays.

Sticking to tenor saxophone on Motion Trio – he also plays baritone on Abstract Truth – Amado still squeals and squeaks with glossolalia and multiphonics, snakes upwards to altissimo pitches and slides downwards to mid-range just as quickly. Discursive and quirky, his lines sometimes resemble the streets twisting upwards from many port cities: squares and passages that narrowly avoid dead ends.

Throughout six long tracks Mira’s multi-string cornucopia of techniques and patterns complements the reed textures. With circular motions, the cellist often pushes his string spiccato still further, not only subdividing his output with shuffles and woody stops, also exposing partials, and ricocheting between sharp slippery slices and sul ponticello chording. He doesn’t neglect walking at points either.

A tune such as “Radical Leaves” makes it obvious when Ferrandini lays out. But this is necessary most of the time. Anti-bombastic, the drummer’s usual ratcheting beats are made up of pauses and rumbles as much as smacks, ruffs and rebounds. With a heritage that encompasses Brazil and Italy as well as Portugal and the U.S., the percussionist’s sly shakes and rattles suggest native South American as well as Iberian rhythms. Somehow also this classic trio formation brings out Sonny Rollins echoes, at least in Amado’s use of note pecking and the swift injections of melody snatches. Tonguing a hard reed, he honks, spits and splinters lines into fuzzy multiphonics.

Together the three reach a climax with the final “In All Languages”, the title of which appropriately reflects the band members’ backgrounds. Constantly chromatic and contrapuntally layered, each musician’s part cumulates in a dense and viscous crescendo, which while nearly opaque allows the colors of each instrument to shine through.

Similar cooperation is evident o the other CD – recorded almost exactly a year earlier – with Amado’s Rollins admiration also evident, but spread between two horns. Kessler, close playing partner of Chicago saxophonist Ken Vandermark in the reedist’s numerous groups, constantly steadies the instant compositions by walking and time keeping. One of the world’s busiest drummers, whose adaptability is such that he can back up such widely disparate saxophonist stylists as Peter Brötzmann and John Butcher without fissure, Nilssen-Love is additionally more upfront in his playing than Ferrandini is in his. Nevertheless the Norwegian is subtle as well. Here he backs up the saxophonist’s irregular altissimo jumps, repeated tone clusters and intensity vibrato with mid-range cymbal claps, rim shot snaps and snare undulations. Not only that, but while at points Nilssen-Love’s strokes can also sometimes be as thick as telephone poles and vibrate with a military-style gait, his shuffle beats are sensitive enough to mix it up with Amado’s and flat-line note substitution and coloration.

Examples of how the trio operates at top form appear on “Universe Unmasked” and “A Dream Transformed”. The former features snoring baritone buzzes from Amado as he expels broken-octave quacks and hiccupping runs – matched by burbling ruffs and rim shots from the drummer and muscular pumps from the bassist. The later features the saxophonist taking a mid-range and moderato tune and using it as a Trane-like depiction of every tone, color and pattern he can muster from the tenor, masticating and tonguing higher-and-lower theme variants. Adding the occasional altissimo bark, Amado’s microscopic investigation is aided by the drummer’s rim shots and Kessler’s string creaks.

The abstract truth about the Amado/Kessler/Nilssen-Love meeting is that it faithfully captures another meeting among first-class improvisers from different countries. But the interaction among Lisbon hommies makes The Motion Trio an even more memorable CD.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Abstract: 1. Intro/The Red Tower 2. Clouds and Shadows 3. Human Condition 4. The Kiss 5. Universe Unmasked 6. A Dream Transformed 7. The Enchanted Room 8. Enigma of the Arrival

Personnel: Abstract: Rodrigo Amado (tenor and baritone saxophones); Kent Kessler (bass) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)

Track Listing: Motion: 1. Language Call 2. Testify! 3. Radical Leaves 4. As we move … 5. Ballad 6. In All Languages

Personnel: Motion: Rodrigo Amado (tenor saxophone); Miguel Mira (cello) and Gabriel Ferrandini (drums)

March 18, 2010

Brötzmann/Kondo/Pupillo/Nilssen-Love

Hairy Bones
Okka Disk OD 12076

More than 40 years after Machine Gun, 1968’s seminal Free Jazz explosion on LP, and about 45 since he became a full-time improvising musician, the warp and woof is still present in saxophonist Peter Brötzmann’s playing.

Without resorting to hyperbole, one could make the argument that at 68, the Wuppertal-based reedist’s ideas and execution are as first-rate as they ever were. On two long tracks here, recorded at Amsterdam’s Bimhuis, Brötzmann directs an international combo that matches his invention and vigor, as well as being the musical equivalent of many of the saxophonist’s quartets of the past.

Brötzmann is joined by Japanese electric trumpeter Toshinori Kondo, seven years younger then the saxophonist, who worked with him in the 1980s and 1990s, plus two younger European musicians. Electric bassist Massimo Pupillo from Rome, is a member of the band Zu, and has worked with everyone from the Fantomas to Swedish saxophonist – and Brötz collaborator – Mats Gustafsson. One of the busiest of European drummers, Oslo-based Paal Nilssen-Love has backed musicians as disparate as British microtonal saxophonist John Butcher and Finnish jazz-rock guitarist Raoul Björkenheim as well as powering a Brötzmann’s tentet.

Putting aside the cacophony, stridency and bombast implicit in this session, it’s instructive to hear how in-the-tradition, the two 30-minute plus improvisations sound. Each is built on the conventional head-solo-solo-head format, which despite the glossolalia, rhythmic thrust and echoing electronic pulses here, in many respects comes across as an extension of the Hard Bop small combo formula. Brötzmann is no stranger to rock-styled electric instruments either, having worked with electric guitar and electric bass in Last Exit during the later 1980s.

Although the theme statement suggests that the title tune is the rhythm number and “Chain Dogs” the ballad – to use expected set list designations – by the time Brötzmann and company work up a whole head of steam, there’s enough power generated in both tracks to illuminate a mid-sized German city.

In “Hairy Bones” the drummer’s ricocheting strokes and the bass guitarist’s slides and stomps help separate sound shards into the multiphonic discord, as successive plunger washes from Kondo and braying snorts from Brötzmann add to the burbling and twittering voltage. As the differing tonal shades from the saxophonist’s glottal punctuation and reed bites mate with Kondo’s half-valve obbligatos and watery chunks, sul tasto string scrapes and finger pops from Pupillo also join the trumpeter’s electronic signal processing. The four eventually unite in rubato quadruple counterpoint, with a melodic inversion of the initial theme played by Brötzmann on tarogato serving as the finale. That is once Nilssen-Love has expresses himself with opposite sticking on the snares and toms, cymbal sizzle and temple bell-like rebounds.

Lengthier than the first tune “Chain Dogs” throws aside lyricism once ghostly and reflective brass timbres – a capella like Broötzmann’s intro – give way to thumping backbeat and string-shuffling scrapes. Soon strained trumpet chirps – doubled and redoubled with programming – are rubbing up against distorted bass guitar licks and renal reed textures. As Kondo’s broken-octave line crackles and peep, Brötzmann’s extended alto saxophone solo repeatedly bonds ragged pitches so that the resulting phrase clusters make it seem as if the saxman is playing “Open the Door, Richard” at different tempos and time signatures. Aided by Kondo’s fleet, fluid and iridescent vibrations, Brötzmann pushes the others to a full stop with ragged, split tones as the variants nearly overblow to infinity.

On the evidence of this CD alone, it’s obvious that Brötzmann hasn’t lost his Free Jazz mojo.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing 1. Hairy Bones 2. Chain Dogs

Personnel: Toshinori Kondo (electric trumpet); Peter Brötzmann (alto and tenor saxophones, Bb clarinet and tarogato); Massimo Pupillo (electric bass) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)

August 30, 2009

Atomic School Days

Distil
Okka Disk OD 12073

Ab Baars Trio & Ken Vandermark

Goofy June Bug

Wig 15

Without trying to make him sound celestial and selfless, Ken Vandermark is one of those rare musicians who is as comfortable in an ensemble as fronting one. Despite recording so often as leader, the Chicago-based multi-reedist is just as apt to show up on disc as an addition to an existing band or as part of a generically titled ensemble. That was happens on these two CDs.

Over the years, collaborations with Europeans have also proven to be particularly fruitful for the saxophonist and clarinetist’s musical growth. This is confirmed on Goofy June Bug and Distill with each offering a divergent – and equally notable – take on improvised and composed music.

Recorded live in Chicago, Distil showcases an octet comprised of the Norwegian Atomic band: trumpeter Magnus Broo, reedist Fredrik Ljungkvist, pianist Håvard Wiik bassist Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love; plus those members of School Days – made up of Vandermark, Håker-Flaten, Nilssen-Love and Chicago-trombonist Jeb Bishop – who aren’t in Atomic, as well as Norwegian vibist Kjell Nordeson. Nine long tracks on this two-CD set, composed by different band members, offers everyone a proper showcase.

Goofy June Bug on the other hand adds Vandermark to the established Dutch trio of fellow clarinetist Ab Baars, which also includes drummer Martin Van Duynhoven and bassist Wilbert De Joode. Except for one brief group improv, the compositions are mostly by Baars with Vandermark contributing three.

Perhaps it’s the freshness factor, but two of these tunes are among the CD’s stand outs. “Waltz Four Monk”, for example, salutes Thelonious without implicitly aping the pianist’s style. With De Joode walking and Van Duynhoven leaning hard and heavy on his kit, the polyphony from Baars’ tenor saxophone and Vandermark’s clarinet bonds, then divides as the later flutters into squeak territory and Baars double tongues and masticates the kind of robust split tones that could have frightened Charlie Rouse.

“Memory Moves Forward” is a different matter. During its slightly more than nine minutes, Baars’ lucent and wispy shakuhachi timbres intersect with Vandermark’s equally high-pitched clarinet lines supported by col legno bass runs and mallet-driven clangs from the drummer. Later on the clarinet dips into chalumeau territory, while Baars’ Orientalized wheezing create a wholly different mood, especially when Van Duynhoven accompaniment sounds as if the drummer is manipulating a taiko drum.

Not that Baars’ writing isn’t distinctive as well, especially when all four musicians all involved in those themes. “Then He Whirled About”, “Honest John” – saluting long-time Sun Ra tenor saxophone soloist John Gilmore – and the title track postulate POMO tough tenor roles. Yet with the drummer also gliding from Boppy cymbal-clanging to free form rat-tat-tats, the harmonic interchange between the saxophones doesn’t resemble that found in standard two-tenor combos like Johnny Griffin and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis or Al Cohn and Zoot Sims.

Contrapuntal riffs, squeezed split tones and stressed cries owe more to the younger Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders at their fieriest, with both Baars and Vandermark scaling the heights of glossolalia, layering rubato honking, low-pitched slithers and, on the title tune, some resemblance to bagpipes into their blowing. Even at their wildest the two manage to rein in enough to allow heads to be recapped on most tunes. Elsewhere Baars’ clarinet work is feathery and impressionistic enough to be completely distinct from his sax solos.

Distinctiveness is the order of the day on Distil as well, with the octet members gobbling up whole swathes of jazz history as they play and spewing them out in reconfigured and characteristic forms.

Broo’s “Ghosts and Spirits”, with its offhand reference to Albert Ayler’s tune, manages to feature most of the band members, but in a form that owes as much to Count Basie-like effortless swing as Ayler. Here, as elsewhere on the set, Bishop’s gutbucket smears are prominent as is Wilk’s key-clipping and Nordeson’s contrapuntal asides. Encompassing brassy tongue sprays from the composer and high-frequency organic runs, overall the track belongs to the pianist. Moving from recital-like arpeggios to slashing and splashing comping he circles the others with allegro, kinetic patterns, spraying disconnect timbres that easily meld with the horn sections’ call-and-response vamps.

Meanwhile on a tune like Bishop’s “Deadline”, Ljungkvist provides a demonstration of how he may be the only Texas tenor who was born in Norway, honking his way into multiphonics, matched by Vandermark’s R&B baritone sax whoops. Nordeson’s vibe underpinning could come from Bobby Hutcherson’s work behind Gracan Moncur III, with Bishop in the later role. Over the stop-time theme, the trombonist twists grace notes, blows tremolo clusters and works out a series of slide flourishes extended with hand-muted intensity. Building up to piston-like syncopation, Nilssen-Love’s concluding solo seems linked more to Jo Jones or Gene Krupa than the expected John Stevens or Milford Graves echoes.

Other anomalies such as Håker-Flaten’s pumping bass line and harmonized reed polyphony share particular spaces; so does the cross-pollination of elongated altissimo clarinet shrills, virile trombone snorts and sprays, plus gamelan-like tuned gong resonations from the drummer. Together they spotlight the ensemble’s versatility. At times as well, pedal-point baritone saxophone riffs and choked valve brass lines combine in double counterpoint only to be subdued by roistering drum beats and key-clipping piano for further thematic definition.

Impressively, the distillation of Atomic School Days doesn’t only register on the agitato and fortissimo scale however. The bassist’s “Irrational Ceremony” is a quieter and more impressionistic piece that unrolls unhurriedly and smoothly. Well-recorded like the rest of the set, the scene-setting results from clave-like concussion from Nilssen-Love, descriptive low-frequency chording from Wilk, spraying vibraharp pulses and harmonically vibrated horns interaction.

Another Bishop paradigm, his solo here sluices upwards to double-tonguing from moderato flutter tonguing and throat growling, as beneath him the rhythm section gradually time-shifts to a faster tempo. As Wilk fans his keys, the piece then opens up enough so that Broo can express chromatic coloration with a series of concentrated triplets and tongue curving inflections. Eventually the final variation manages to mix murky trumpet smears and discordant backbeat rhythms, Free Jazz and Swing Jazz simultaneously.

Vandermark is the link between the sessions, but it’s the contributions of all the players which make the discs memorable. Ironically, Vandermark’s activities as a talent spotter and catalyst may ultimately prove more fruitful than his forceful soloing and writing.

-- Ken Waxman

Track list: Distil: CD1: 1. Deadline 2. Irrational Ceremony 3. Visitors 4. Dark Easter CD2: 1. Andersonville 2. Fort Funston 3. Closing Stages 4. Ghosts and Spirits 5. Buñuel at the Coctail Party

Personnel: Distil: Magnus Broo (trumpet); Jeb Bishop (trombone); Fredrik Ljungkvist (tenor saxophone and Bb clarinet); Ken Vandermark (baritone saxophone Bb and bass clarinets); Håvard Wiik (piano); Kjell Nordeson (vibraphone); Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten (bass) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)

Track list: Goofy: 1. Straws 2. Honest John 3. Losing Ground 4. Waltz Four Monk 5. Prince of Venosa 6. Then He Whirled About 7. Memory Moves Forward 8. Munmyo 9. Return 10. Goofy June Bug 11. Lunch Poem

Personnel: Goofy: Ab Baars (tenor saxophone, shakuhachi and clarinet); Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone and clarinet); Wilbert De Joode (bass) and Martin Van Duynhoven (drums)

November 9, 2008

Ab Baars Trio & Ken Vandermark

Goofy June Bug
Wig 15

Atomic School Days

Distil

Okka Disk OD 12073

Without trying to make him sound celestial and selfless, Ken Vandermark is one of those rare musicians who is as comfortable in an ensemble as fronting one. Despite recording so often as leader, the Chicago-based multi-reedist is just as apt to show up on disc as an addition to an existing band or as part of a generically titled ensemble. That was happens on these two CDs.

Over the years, collaborations with Europeans have also proven to be particularly fruitful for the saxophonist and clarinetist’s musical growth. This is confirmed on Goofy June Bug and Distill with each offering a divergent – and equally notable – take on improvised and composed music.

Recorded live in Chicago, Distil showcases an octet comprised of the Norwegian Atomic band: trumpeter Magnus Broo, reedist Fredrik Ljungkvist, pianist Håvard Wiik bassist Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love; plus those members of School Days – made up of Vandermark, Håker-Flaten, Nilssen-Love and Chicago-trombonist Jeb Bishop – who aren’t in Atomic, as well as Norwegian vibist Kjell Nordeson. Nine long tracks on this two-CD set, composed by different band members, offers everyone a proper showcase.

Goofy June Bug on the other hand adds Vandermark to the established Dutch trio of fellow clarinetist Ab Baars, which also includes drummer Martin Van Duynhoven and bassist Wilbert De Joode. Except for one brief group improv, the compositions are mostly by Baars with Vandermark contributing three.

Perhaps it’s the freshness factor, but two of these tunes are among the CD’s stand outs. “Waltz Four Monk”, for example, salutes Thelonious without implicitly aping the pianist’s style. With De Joode walking and Van Duynhoven leaning hard and heavy on his kit, the polyphony from Baars’ tenor saxophone and Vandermark’s clarinet bonds, then divides as the later flutters into squeak territory and Baars double tongues and masticates the kind of robust split tones that could have frightened Charlie Rouse.

“Memory Moves Forward” is a different matter. During its slightly more than nine minutes, Baars’ lucent and wispy shakuhachi timbres intersect with Vandermark’s equally high-pitched clarinet lines supported by col legno bass runs and mallet-driven clangs from the drummer. Later on the clarinet dips into chalumeau territory, while Baars’ Orientalized wheezing create a wholly different mood, especially when Van Duynhoven accompaniment sounds as if the drummer is manipulating a taiko drum.

Not that Baars’ writing isn’t distinctive as well, especially when all four musicians all involved in those themes. “Then He Whirled About”, “Honest John” – saluting long-time Sun Ra tenor saxophone soloist John Gilmore – and the title track postulate POMO tough tenor roles. Yet with the drummer also gliding from Boppy cymbal-clanging to free form rat-tat-tats, the harmonic interchange between the saxophones doesn’t resemble that found in standard two-tenor combos like Johnny Griffin and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis or Al Cohn and Zoot Sims.

Contrapuntal riffs, squeezed split tones and stressed cries owe more to the younger Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders at their fieriest, with both Baars and Vandermark scaling the heights of glossolalia, layering rubato honking, low-pitched slithers and, on the title tune, some resemblance to bagpipes into their blowing. Even at their wildest the two manage to rein in enough to allow heads to be recapped on most tunes. Elsewhere Baars’ clarinet work is feathery and impressionistic enough to be completely distinct from his sax solos.

Distinctiveness is the order of the day on Distil as well, with the octet members gobbling up whole swathes of jazz history as they play and spewing them out in reconfigured and characteristic forms.

Broo’s “Ghosts and Spirits”, with its offhand reference to Albert Ayler’s tune, manages to feature most of the band members, but in a form that owes as much to Count Basie-like effortless swing as Ayler. Here, as elsewhere on the set, Bishop’s gutbucket smears are prominent as is Wilk’s key-clipping and Nordeson’s contrapuntal asides. Encompassing brassy tongue sprays from the composer and high-frequency organic runs, overall the track belongs to the pianist. Moving from recital-like arpeggios to slashing and splashing comping he circles the others with allegro, kinetic patterns, spraying disconnect timbres that easily meld with the horn sections’ call-and-response vamps.

Meanwhile on a tune like Bishop’s “Deadline”, Ljungkvist provides a demonstration of how he may be the only Texas tenor who was born in Norway, honking his way into multiphonics, matched by Vandermark’s R&B baritone sax whoops. Nordeson’s vibe underpinning could come from Bobby Hutcherson’s work behind Gracan Moncur III, with Bishop in the later role. Over the stop-time theme, the trombonist twists grace notes, blows tremolo clusters and works out a series of slide flourishes extended with hand-muted intensity. Building up to piston-like syncopation, Nilssen-Love’s concluding solo seems linked more to Jo Jones or Gene Krupa than the expected John Stevens or Milford Graves echoes.

Other anomalies such as Håker-Flaten’s pumping bass line and harmonized reed polyphony share particular spaces; so does the cross-pollination of elongated altissimo clarinet shrills, virile trombone snorts and sprays, plus gamelan-like tuned gong resonations from the drummer. Together they spotlight the ensemble’s versatility. At times as well, pedal-point baritone saxophone riffs and choked valve brass lines combine in double counterpoint only to be subdued by roistering drum beats and key-clipping piano for further thematic definition.

Impressively, the distillation of Atomic School Days doesn’t only register on the agitato and fortissimo scale however. The bassist’s “Irrational Ceremony” is a quieter and more impressionistic piece that unrolls unhurriedly and smoothly. Well-recorded like the rest of the set, the scene-setting results from clave-like concussion from Nilssen-Love, descriptive low-frequency chording from Wilk, spraying vibraharp pulses and harmonically vibrated horns interaction.

Another Bishop paradigm, his solo here sluices upwards to double-tonguing from moderato flutter tonguing and throat growling, as beneath him the rhythm section gradually time-shifts to a faster tempo. As Wilk fans his keys, the piece then opens up enough so that Broo can express chromatic coloration with a series of concentrated triplets and tongue curving inflections. Eventually the final variation manages to mix murky trumpet smears and discordant backbeat rhythms, Free Jazz and Swing Jazz simultaneously.

Vandermark is the link between the sessions, but it’s the contributions of all the players which make the discs memorable. Ironically, Vandermark’s activities as a talent spotter and catalyst may ultimately prove more fruitful than his forceful soloing and writing.

-- Ken Waxman

Track list: Distil: CD1: 1. Deadline 2. Irrational Ceremony 3. Visitors 4. Dark Easter CD2: 1. Andersonville 2. Fort Funston 3. Closing Stages 4. Ghosts and Spirits 5. Buñuel at the Coctail Party

Personnel: Distil: Magnus Broo (trumpet); Jeb Bishop (trombone); Fredrik Ljungkvist (tenor saxophone and Bb clarinet); Ken Vandermark (baritone saxophone Bb and bass clarinets); Håvard Wiik (piano); Kjell Nordeson (vibraphone); Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten (bass) and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)

Track list: Goofy: 1. Straws 2. Honest John 3. Losing Ground 4. Waltz Four Monk 5. Prince of Venosa 6. Then He Whirled About 7. Memory Moves Forward 8. Munmyo 9. Return 10. Goofy June Bug 11. Lunch Poem

Personnel: Goofy: Ab Baars (tenor saxophone, shakuhachi and clarinet); Ken Vandermark (tenor saxophone and clarinet); Wilbert De Joode (bass) and Martin Van Duynhoven (drums)

November 9, 2008

Calling Signals

Dreams in Dreams
FMRCD177-i0805

Calling Signals
Calling Signals
Loose Torque LT 004

Band names are a convenience, usually created when players don’t want to call a group so-and-so’s quartet. Yet the designation can also be deceptive if the make-up of a group changes substantially without altering the name.

So it is with these CDs by two ensembles called Calling Signals. The quartet was initially put together following an all-day memorial concert for British drummer John Stevens by British bassist Nick Stephens and Norwegian reedist Frode Gjerstad, who had both played extensively with Stevens. The self-titled CD is a 1996 edition of the group with its founders joined by South African drummer Louis Moholo of Blue Notes fame and Dane Hasse Poulsen on guitars and effects, best-known for his association with French reedist Louis Sclavis.

Dreams in Dreams on the other hand, recorded almost 19 year later, adds two Norwegian musicians with different histories to the Stephens-Gjerstad duo. Accordionist Eivin One Pedersen, usually a pianist, was the original third member of Detail with Gjerstad and Stevens in 1981. Today he mostly composes for theatre and films and plays more mainstream jazz gigs. Paal Nilssen-Love, who began recording with Gjerstad in 1992, before he was 18 years old, has since gone on to be one of improv’s most in-demand percussionists, working with everyone from American multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee to the Scandinavian band Atomic.

Both CDs are notable, with the shorter Dreams in Dreams more so, perhaps due to the sonic familiarity expressed by the Stephens-Gjerstad-Nilssen Love coupling and the unusual textures from Pedersen’s squeeze box.

One of the most notable aspects of the first CD is how restrained – almost John Stevens-like – Moholo is in his accompaniment. The pitter-pattering cross shots and barely-there ruffs and flams relate only vaguely to the backbeat the drummer often used to power large ensembles like Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath.

Particular as well, if sometimes a bit inchoate, is Poulsen’s work. Fascinating when he uses rasgueado strums and flat picking to reach those areas beneath the bridge or, as on “Unanticipated Turns” outputs jangling timbres that sound as if he has loosened his strings, other strokes don’t offer the same allure. Distant reverb or scene-setting frails often fail to coalesce with the others’ sounds. In contrast, there’s a passage on “The Breeze and Us” where the polyrhythmic concordance suggests Moholo is playing a darbuka and Poulsen a kalimba.

Wedded more solidly towards Saturn than the savannah, Gjerstad’s skittering lines soar, slur and sideslip far from ethnic replication. “Dots and Dashes” may be the title which most accurately reflects his program. Using tongue stops and pitch vibrato, he coils and trills his way diagonally across flat-lined, single-string guitar licks and hand patting drumming. Meanwhile Stephens holds the beat with repeated plucks.

Sul tasto and sul ponticello coloring shares space with steady walking throughout, as the bassist alternates his role as a soloist of delicate dexterity with rhythm section mate for Moholo’s spare bounces and ride cymbal hacks. With the guitarist, there’s a dramatic passage on the almost 20-minute “Crossing the Bar” where Stephens’ spiccato pulse and double stops merge with Poulsen’s electonica-tinged reverb, as the saxophonist’s collection of lip trills and side-slipping obbligatos move to a climax.

Fewer emphasized climaxes and more moderato interchange is evident on Dreams in Dreams. Perhaps it’s the shifting sfmuto of color available from Pedersen’s accordion rather than a guitar, or the fact that the reedist concentrates on clarinets.

Interestingly enough, Nilssen-Love, who often works in bombastic punk-jazz contexts, here habitually moderates his expression to drum top pitter-patter and cross-handed cymbal expansion. There are points, in fact, where the layering becomes downright impressionistic.

Perhaps in response to the polyphonic curves vibrating from the accordion, the bassist’s contribution also becomes more horizontally ornamental– at least in contrast to his work on the earlier CD. That doesn’t mean however that regular walking bass lines and double stopping drones aren’t available from his four-strings. On “Dreams in Dreams”, for example, each note is patiently sounded until the result is a reverberating line that can stand up on its own – as the accordion tones shiver and cymbals quiver behind him.

On clarinet, Gjerstad doesn’t mute his timbre exploration either, sometimes playing faster and higher-pitched than the andante proceedings. Disconnected tongue-stopping slurs with jagged pitch oscillations are still on show, though frequently this meets a wash of solid, low frequency arpeggios from Pedersen that color the proceedings.

Recently the Norwegian keyboardist has started playing dates with his local group and you can hear him becoming more comfortable with rubato improv as the session proceeds. The penultimate track captures contrapuntal quivering timbres from Pedersen’s squeeze box engaging in call-and-response vamps with Stephens’ thumping bass lines. “Dreams in Dreams in Dreams”, the final – and longest track – appears to feature no clarinet, but Pedersen’s squeeze box as the lead voice, with bass and drum accompaniment. Using sliding octaves, studied repetition and high-intensity multi- voicing, he organically builds up to flourishes and cadences that suggest both jazz and European dance music.

Satisfying in exposing a Scandinavian stylist who should be more widely heard and with top-notch work from the other quartet members Dreams in Dreams is a keeper. Slightly less memorable is Calling Signals, although the CD adds a historical perspective to the featured musicians’ work.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Calling: 1. Fjord Deep, Mountain High 2. Threeways Meet 3. Crossing the Bar 4. Dots and Dashes 5. The Last Three Notes 6. Drum’n’Bass 7. Unanticipated Turns 8. The Breeze and Us

Personnel: Calling: Frode Gjerstad (alto saxophone); Hasse Poulsen (guitars and effects); Nick Stephens (bass); Louis Moholo (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Dreams: 1. Dreams 2. Dreams in 3. Dreams in Dreams 4. Dreams in Dreams in 5. Dreams in Dreams in Dreams

Personnel: Dreams: Frode Gjerstad (Eb and Bb clarinets); Eivin One Pedersen (accordion); Nick Stephens (bass); Paal Nilssen-Love (drums and percussion)

July 7, 2006

LARS-GÖRAN ULANDER TRIO

Live at Glenn Miller Café
Ayler aylCD 013

WBZ
Prima Ballerina
Ilk Music 117 CD

Veteran Scandinavian saxophonists are the focal point of both these trio sessions. But while PRIMA BALLERINA is the first document from a well-balanced Danish sax-bass-drums aggregation that has been playing together constantly since 2002, LIVE is a one-off club date that is actually a Swedish reedist’s first headlining session, and where his rhythm section partners are far better known then he.

Umeå-born alto saxophonist Lars-Göran Ulander’s day job is as chief jazz radio producer for the Swedish Broadcasting Corp. He also played in different bands over the years, most notably in the 1960s and 1970s with trombonist Lars Lystedt and pianist Per Henrik Wallin. But after 40 years of recording, this is the initial CD released under his own name. Look at his backing dream team however. Young Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love has in a short time become the go-to percussionists for leaders on both sides of the Atlantic from Chicago reedist Ken Vandermark to British saxophonist Evan Parker. As for Stockholm-native, bassist Palle Danielsson, he was a member of the touring bands of Americans, pianist Keith Jarrett and saxophonist Charles Lloyd in the 1970s, and now works all over Europe.

While the Ulander trio’s five compositions flow semi-smoothly, WBZ propels its eight tunes in jagged bursts and bites. WBZ’s experienced soloist is alto saxophonist Jesper Zeuthen, who has performed in Pierre Dørge’s New Jungle Orchestra and with Americans such as the late trumpeter Don Cherry. Almost 30 years younger than Zeuthen, bassist Jonas Westergaard is part of Canadian saxophonist Michael Blake’s band and played with Americans such as saxophonist Tim Berne. Drummer Peter Bruun is a member of the local band Radar and has recorded with saxophonists Blake, Chris Speed and others.

An autodidact who studied Schoenberg and Hindemith on his own, Ulander has the force of personality on this CD to pilot a mid-course between the 1970s northerly cool undulations that the bassist prefers and the harder-hitting and more abstract tropes of the drummer. On “Charles Mingus’ “What Love”, the set’s one non-original, he gets Nilssen-Love to slap and pat his accompaniment while using Danielsson’s double bass as if it was a second harmonized horn. With a surprisingly gentle touch, the bull fiddler maintains the rhythmic pulse as the saxophonist layers scads of pitch-sliding notes into his solo. Still, despite later rebounds and rim shots from the drummer, Ulander never loses his cool. Here, as elsewhere, even when harshly reed biting or squealing through his horn’s body tube his exposition rarely moves past andante.

Oddly enough, the one time his Nordic reserves snaps is when he unveils warbling Jackie MacLean-like note-spraying on the nearly 22-minute “Ionizacion – Varaciones E.V.” Double tonguing and utilizing altissimo smears, his playing energizes Danielsson, whose quick double-stopping relates more to Mingus on tunes like “Haitian Fight Song” then how he plays on this CD’s “What Love”.

Elsewhere Ulander impresses as he keeps up this balancing act that allows him to sound waves of harmonics that never reach multiphonic properties, as focused split tones and effortless obbligatos arrive with equal vigor.

If the nearly 75-minute LIVE is the Free Jazz equivalent of a double LP by Simon & Garfunkel or Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, then WBZ’s disc is like hearing something by the Sex Pistols or the Ramones for the first time. Energetic and intense, the three manage to pack eight tunes into fewer than 35 minutes.

While all contribute to the excitement on PRIMA BALLERINA, titular frontman Zeuthen stands out. It’s not just that he plays the traditional solo instrument it’s also his unique tone on the alto saxophone. Closer in timbre to the soprano then the larger sax, he seems to use a combination of striated tones and choked pitches to create a distinctive, nasal sound that also resembles the ney or the musette.

Writhing, sputtering, fluttering and honking in false registers, his vibrations spur different responses from the other two. Sometimes Brunn rolls and thumps as if he was in a rock band, other times he turns to feathery brushes accompaniment to complement horn patterning and clean, ringing bass slides. Westergaard rarely backs up the others as much as he swells out restrained counterpoint usually in a tag-team with the saxman, but sometime with the drummer.

Occasionally, as on “Destruction Dirt Box”, Zeuthen alters the tonal centre to such an extent that without warning the descending bass line and slapped drum bits are playing at a slower pace then what went before, without turning the beat around. Then the reedist’s near palsied vibrato brings the tempo up again.

One of these sessions gives an under-acknowledged reed man his place in the sun. The other introduces a new hell-for-leather group of improvisers. Both are worth investigating.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Live: 1. Tabula Rasa G.M.C. 2, Intrinsic Structure I 3. What Love 4. Ionizacion – Varaciones E.V. 5. J.C. Drops

Personnel: Live: Lars-Göran Ulander (alto saxophone); Palle Danielsson (bass); Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)

Track Listing: Prima: 1. Opti/Mopti 2. Prima Ballerina 3. Assembling 4. No. 4 5. Destruction Dirt Box 6. Kreutzer Valse 7. Den 8. Plage 8. Mask

Personnel: Prima: Jesper Zeuthen (alto saxophone); Jonas Westergaard (bass); Peter Bruun (drums)

April 17, 2006

PETER BRÖTZMANN CHICAGO TENTET

Be Music, Night
OkkaDisk OD 12059

This CD may ruin saxophonist Peter Brötzmann’s long-held reputation as the ferocious, hard-hearted wild man of Free Jazz.

For the entire hour-plus CD by the German reedman’s mostly Chicago-based band is designed as homage to American poet Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972). Additionally, the longest – more than 42 minutes – of the three tracks features mellifluous-voiced Welsh poet Mike Pearson integrated into the ensemble reading selections from Patchen’s work that are, for all intents and purposes, love poems.

Patchen, an Ohio-born versifier who lived all over the United States, was a Beat fellow traveler, with a musical quality in some of his poetry. Even before similar experiments by Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Alan Ginsberg, in the late 1950s he recorded LPs reading his verse accompanied by improvising jazz combos. In a way this CD is an extension of those experiments.

Framed by an all-instrumental prelude and even shorter postlude, BE MUSIC, NIGHT unfurls like a tone poem for chamber orchestra. Of course with the massed talent on display – three reeds, two brasses, two strings and two percussionists – the layering provide more than interludes. Mixing brass slurs and pedal tones, expressive reed continuo and stop-time percussion forays, the framing instrumental passages manage to be both lyrical and polyphonic.

Furthermore, to put to rest another Free Jazz myth, the German reedist’s playing has never been as coarse as his detractors insist. As long ago as 1984 he recorded a solo CD, since reissued as 14 LOVE POEMS PLUS 10 MORE (FMP CD 125), which featured improvisations inspired by Patchen’s “14 Love Poems”.

Multiplying the interpretations of the poet’s lyrics nine-fold here, much of the instrumental elucidation depends on tutti passages or impetuous and unexpected fortissimo ejaculations. Besides the horn brays and slurs, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm is particularly effective in transforming his four strings into an electric guitar spraying discordant effects pedal timbres.

Almost deliberately old-fashioned at times, as if Pearson was reading Elizabethan sonnets, the verse is mixed with tender nocturne-like pitches that are almost as honeyed as the poet/actor’s near whispered tones. But romantic language doesn’t have to bring forth banal responses. Among the textures advanced by the saxophonists – most obviously Brötzmann, though Mats Gustafsson and Ken Vandermark clarinet passages are noticeable as well – are tongue slaps, vibrating key clicks and pops and slurred cries. Also especially effective are the grace notes buzzed by trombonist Jeb Bishop, whose valve-and-bell expansion often partners Pearson’s recitation.

An unexpected pleasure all around, BE MUSIC, NIGHT should appeal to those interested in dramatically recited poetry, those fascinated by the admixture of words and music, and those whose understanding of emotionalism encompasses sound and silences as well as lyrics.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Be Music, Night Part 1 2. Be Music, Night Part 2 3. Be Music, Night Part 3

Personnel: Joe McPhee (trumpet and alto saxophone); Jeb Bishop (trombone); Peter Brötzmann (alto and saxophones, bass clarinet and b-flat clarinet); Mats Gustafsson (baritone saxophone and bass clarinet); Ken Vandermark (baritone saxophone and b-flat-clarinet); Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello); Kent Kessler (bass); Paal Nilssen-Love and Michael Zerang (drums); Mike Pearson (voice)

January 2, 2006

Bayashi

Rock
Jazzaway Records JARCD 007

Crimetime Orchestra
Life is a Beautiful Monster
Jazzaway Records JARCD 009

Trinity
Sparkling
Jazzaway Records JARCD 005

By Ken Waxman
August 22, 2005

You could probably chalk up the more-or-less 30 year gap in the recording career of Norwegian bassist Bjørnar Andresen, who died 2004, to changing tastes in jazz fashion. There are little-recognized veteran stylists like him playing around wherever there’s some sort of scene, but their recording opportunities are limited.

Someone who gained some attention in the early 1970s in bands with saxophonist Jan Garbarek and guitarist Terje Rypdal, Andresen, didn’t seem to fit in with the glacial ECM sound to which the others migrated. Nor was he iconoclastic enough to pursue his own Free Jazz muse until he found international musicians with which to play, as did another local iconoclast, Stavanger-based saxophonist Frode Gjerstad. Instead Andresen continued gigging in Oslo, finally ending up as a sort of father figure for young jazz players there.

When one of them, alto saxophonist Jon Klette, founded Jazzaway records in 2003, Andresen got a few more recording dates in the last year of his life. The most distinctive here is Rock, the second CD by Bayashi, a co-op Free Jazz trio in which the bassist was involved. Bayashi’s first CD, from 2001 is Help Is On Its Way (Ayler aylCD-053). On the other hand, Life is a Beautiful Monster, although described as “featuring Bjørnar Andresen, and with his picture on the booklet front, is a more atypical outing. In truth, he’s merely one of 10 players in the Crimetown Orchestra (CO), where hard-core improvising taking second place to electronica and rock-tinged beats.

Tenor saxophonist Vidar Johansen, another journeyman who went from jamming at Oslo’s Club 7 in the 1970s to a gigging with leaders as different as American composer George Russell and local pop-jazz keyboardist Bugge Wesseltoft, is another third of Bayashi. Both he and Wesseltoft show up in the CO as well.

Bayashi’s third and much younger member is drummer Thomas Strønen. Besides leading Food, a British-Norwegian combo with saxophonist Iain Bellamy, Strønen’s involved with a clutch of mainstream, pop-jazz and jazz projects. Trinity’s CD Sparkling, features him with even younger tenor saxophonist Kjetil Møster – also in the CO – and bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, one of the more widely known of Andresen’s successors.

Håker Flaten, another CO member, is an integral part of Gjerstad’s well-traveled Norwegian trio, and has also played with American saxophonist Ken Vandermark and Finnish guitarist Raoul Björkenheim. Tellingly, Andresen’s influence is such that among the tune dedications on Sparkling is one honoring the older bassist, who died between the recording of the CD and its mixing.

Key to all this is Rock, which despite its misleading title and short – less than 43½ minute – running time, is an outstanding example of near-telepathic trio music. Johansen is someone whose stints backing the likes of singer Van Morrison and playing in radio big bands didn’t blunt his Free Jazz expertise. On tenor and alto saxophones, bass clarinet and flute he’s able to adopt the perfect riposte to Strønen’s polyrhythmic displays and Andresen’s sophisticated bass work, which encompasses weirdly-voiced effects as well as standard lines.

Most multifaceted is the interconnection displayed on the more than 13½-minute “So Give It Time”. Subtly tinkering with his percussion patterns, Strønen bounces and resonates tones on his toms and snare as he simultaneously slaps his cymbals. Even as Andresen turns from walking to scraping to shuffle bowing sul ponticello, the drummer adds vibes-like resonation, ratcheting cow bell patterns and hand drumming pitter patter from his seat. Meanwhile, Andresen slurs out meandering mid-range tones that get thicker as the pitch lowers.

Reconstituting himself as a veritable gamelan orchestra, Strønen begins rattling different temple blocks, tubular bells and a sound tree as Andresen’s rhythm begins to resemble tones forced from a taut rubber band. Climax is reached when the drummer’s Africanized beats cross the bassist’s unexpected wah-wah rhythm, presaging the reedist’s rough-hewn tenor sax obbligato.

“Escape” is another stand-out, which at its exposition contrasts gentle, twittering flute textures and powerful drum rolls and bounces. Andresen’s string effects then wash over the improvisations of the other two, as stuttering, accented reed pitches find common ground with the drummer creating what sound like waves of plastic washboard rubs. Staccatissimo hand-drumming paradiddles and rebounds meet the bassist’s rubberized thumps, as Andresen produces natural register cadences, completing subsequent rubberized string pulses and bell-tolling sounds with a concluding single-note coda on tenor saxophone.

Elsewhere Johansen on saxophone or bass clarinet spews geysers of triple tonguing and pitch variations or a mist of heavy breathing vibratos over certain tunes. Andresen leans into his strings for measured whole tones or exhibits scrapping spiccato textures. Strønen’s reverberating cymbal accents are definitely acoustic, but at points the offbeat patterning from his kit suggests preset electronic drum pads.

Powerful rhythmic configurations coupled with more regular beats characterize Sparkling, which in non-neo-con terms is a more mainstream effort than Rock.

Displaying its evolving status, Trinity includes dedications to Argentinean tenor saxophonist Gato Barbieri, novelist Paul Auster and American miocrotonal reedist Joe Maneri among the CD’s tunes. In truth, however, on “Trinity” the nearly 10½-minute Barberi salute, Møster’s coarse double-tonguing and vibrating side-slipping slurs make him sound more like Sonny Rollins or Frank Wright than the Argentinean. Truthfully, Møster doesn’t sound as if his tone could sheer paint off the wall as Gato’s did in his heyday. However, as the instant composition alternates faster and slower segments, Håker Flaten displays his tough, plucked rhythm.

Puzzlingly, “Swing it baby!” which honors Andresen, is even more traditional. It could, in fact, be an outtake from Rollins’ 1958 The Freedom Suite LP, with bassist Oscar Pettiford and drummer Max Roach. Strønen bounces, ruffs and rebounds; Håker Flaten meanders between a walking beat and double-stopping; and Møster lobs pitch and tone variation after variation. Speedily double- and triple-tonguing, his tone is as rough as Rollins’ was in those days, although his overblowing takes a more modern cast. Talk about retro, after a short bass solo, the tune’s finale features the drummer and saxman trading fours.

Trinity’s magnum opus is the four-part “Suite for Marge”, which is actually a little longer than the original The Freedom Suite recording. As Strønen appears to be rolling tones out of his drum tops with his palms, Møster occupies himself with bleating in false registers, tongue stopping and doits. As he snorts and slurs his reed, the drummer shakes his cymbals in a bop mode and the bassist sticks to 4/4 time.

Following an extended straight line of triple-tongued cadenzas, emotions rise as Møster begins squalling altissimo lines, chromatically providing his own counterpoint by pitchsliding his way down the scale. Pantonally he stretches his sound, alternating grunting bell-textures from the solar plexus and higher-pitched repeated arpeggios and key percussion. At points he could be playing two saxophones at once, with one sax line providing the melodic content, and the other developing and reshaping the theme.

As the sonorous reed output slows down with a diaphragm-expelled vibrato, there’s a time when his breath could be vibrating Strønen’s cymbal or the sound could arise from stick movement on the drummer’s part. Fittingly, Håker Flaten’s accompaniment in passing tones steadies in the final section as the drummer adds torque to his cymbal statements, building up to a floating modern swing feel. With Møster evolving rubato slurred note patterning, the suite concludes as the bassman echoes each saxophone tone until both men slow to stasis.

Perhaps stasis would have helped Life is a Beautiful Monster, which, especially when compared to the other CDs, comes across as a sprawling, overblown – literally – example of pop/jazz/rock. Perceptibly, the hearts of the other nine musicians – trumpeter Sjur Miljeteig, trombonist Øivind Brekke, guitarist Anders Hana and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love as well as Johansen, Klette, Møster, Wesseltoft and Håker Flaten – were in the right place when they dedicated the CD to Andresen. It’s just a shame their mouths and hands weren’t other places as well.

For a start, the less than 3½-minute “Rest in Peace”, which concludes the CD is really untypical of Andresen’s work, if Bayashi is the standard. Mostly made up of low frequency , unison horns moving in romantic melodiousness, as Andresen faintly thumps and thwacks bass effects, it almost flat lines at the end. After a pause, the final minute consists of an occasional buzz and a grating sound, as if Andresen was pushing his double bass across the studio with its spike abrading the floor.

Most of Life is a Beautiful Monster is taken up by a seven-part suite of the same name. As instrumentally sophisticated fusion, it inhabits an alternate universe to Rock and Sparkling. Most tellingly, Nilssen-Love, who has provided multi-dimensional backing for everyone from Gjerstad and Vandermark to Swedish pianist Sten Sandell, is reduced to playing exaggerated backbeat here, while Håker Flaten sticks to stuttering electric bass.

Enthusiastically rather than precisely recorded, the textures often bleed into one another. With extended synthesizer glissandi from Wesseltoft that often resemble electric piano output, drums high up in the mix, and occasional, muted fusion-era Miles Davis-like trumpeting from Miljeteig, the effect brings to mind some big band version of The Headhunters. It’s more contemporary of course, since the electronic wave modulations from the synthesizer adds a curtain of diffused oscillation to the foot-tapping beat.

Confined mostly to vamps that sound closer to Neo Funk than the New Thing, the horn section doesn’t often rise above riffing. However, the third cut includes a blistering, orgasmic reed screech. Considering it resembles Barbieri’s style more than anything on Sparkling, perhaps this is where Møster sincerely expresses his homage.

Before the suite ends with trigged samples and sine wave pulses that insinuate themselves among the hocketing sax cadences, Hana unleashes some slick, whammy-bar- distorted lead-guitar work, extended with wah-wah bass shimmies from Håker Flaten. Buried among the quivering outer space-like whooshes and whinnies from the synth, guitar riffs and saxophone overblowing, sporadic tones suggest Andresen’s presence. A standard bass pulse is heard one time as is a tone that resonates between an electrical socket buzz and squeaky door hinges,

By happenstance, Life is a Beautiful Monster was the bassist’s last recorded performance – he died only three weeks later. No matter its own merits, CO’s sound wasn’t really his music. His legacy is better served by listening to Bayashi and the players he encouraged who make up Trinity.

August 22, 2005

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

ATOMIC/SCHOOL DAYS

ATOMIC/SCHOOL DAYS Nuclear Assembly Hall
Okkadisk OD 12049

More of an internationalist than most American musicians, Chicago-based reedist Ken Vandermark has made a point of forming concordances with European musicians. Not only is he one of the key constituents of saxist Peter Brötzmann’s Chicago Tentet, but he often works in half-European/half American bands like the AALY trio, the Territory Band and the group featured here.

As its name makes clear, the octet combines the School Days band -- Vandermark, trombonist Jeb Bishop, vibist Kjell Nordeson, bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love -- with trumpeter Magnus Broo, reedist Fredrik Ljungkvist and pianist Håvard Wiik who with Håker Flaten and Nilssen-Love make up the Scandinavian quintet Atomic. The results spread over two CD sides are dazzlingly spectacular.

Probably because all the players have a musical history with one another, the octet seems as well integrated as any fulltime group. No imperialist furthermore, the Chicago reedman spreads the compositional chores around, with every member contributing a tune -- and Ljungkvist supplying two. A study in contrasts, his “W Meets A” is a straightahead swinger built on high frequency piano arpeggios plus ruffs and bounces from the drummer, while “Kerosene” is more complex.

Beginning with a light toned mixture of slurred sax and brass lines, Ljungkvist moves the tune forward in a moody Gerry Mulligan-like fashion on baritone while Wilk comps quietly and Nilssen-Love restricts himself to brushes. Taking his place upfront, Nordeson offers up some sparkling mallet turnarounds, then Bishop contributes double-tongued chromatic slide action. More rough Kid Ory than smooth Lawrence Brown, the ‘bone man develops a blossoming stop-time section, that mixes with the clean mellow clarinet lines of Vandermark. Meanwhile, polyphonically, the baritone, vibes and rhythm section mesh to repeat the theme.

Memorable on their own, the vibist and bassist skip from tractable, smooth lines on Håker Flaten’s “Green Wood” -- which also features some Bill Evans-like piano chording and a thin screechy tone from a clarinetist -- to forceful thrusting motion elsewhere such as on Bishop’s “Conjugations”.

A martial-like piece filled with chipping brass tones and unison coloratura timbres from both reedists on clarinets, “Conjugations” soon opens up with a walking bass line and quick clip-clops from the drums. As hocketing horns riff in the background, Broo promulgates slurred, muted grace notes to introduce a Håker Flaten-Nordeson duet. Resonating metal bars and strummed strings continue to play ring-around-a-rosy until plunger tones from the composer veers the tempo down to a blues-like march.

Vandermark’s almost 19½-minute “Bulletin”, which ends the set, also seems to be a compendium of all the eight can do. Following a calm, foreshortened piano intro, every horn explodes into an orgy of flutter tonguing and freak effects. Nordeson is simultaneously smoothly liquid and percussively resounding as first plunger trombone, than the other horns pass the theme back-and-forth. Bishop’s chromatic runs soon turn to broken chords, until Vandermark, on baritone, takes the lead. Pecking, snorting and tongue slapping, he propels the piece upwards until it reaches a polyrhythmic crescendo of recoiling horn textures that displace the tonal centre and only stop when the piece does as well.

If NUCLEAR ASSEMBLY HALL has a weakness, it’s that both Ljungkvist and Vandermark are listed in the personnel on “reeds”. Considering both play most members of the saxophone and clarinet family, you can’t unmistakably ascribe any singular solo to one or the other.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if despite all the recognition he has received as a composer and player -- including a MacArthur grant -- that years from now people decide that Vandermark’s main achievements was integrating American and European improvisation and improvisers?

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: CD1: 1. W Meets A 2. Transparent Taylor 3. Green Wood 4. Ink Worm 5. Kerosene CD2: 1. Conjugations 2. Dogdays 3. Light Compulsion 4. Bulletin

Personnel: Magnus Broo (trumpet); Jeb Bishop (trombone); Fredrik Ljungkvist (soprano. tenor and baritone saxophones, clarinet); Ken Vandermark (tenor and baritone saxophones, clarinet); Håvard Wiik (piano); Kjell Nordeson (vibraphone); Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (bass); Paal Nilssen-Love (drums and percussion)

August 23, 2004

Sten Sandell Trio

Flat Iron
(SOFA)

By Ken Waxman

May 10, 2004

Undeniably tough as iron, but with all the striations and curves on show, the music produced by this Scandinavian trio is anything but flat. Listening to the three tracks on this CD, you’ll note how in the right hands, standard jazz trio instrumentation can be molded into take-no-prisoners free improv.

With his harsh, jabbing piano lines, leader Sten Sandell has been exhibiting his stylistic influences from folk and ethnic musics, contemporary classical and improv since the late 1970s. Gush, a Swedish co-op he’s part of with saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and percussionist Raymond Strid, is how most non-Swedes know him. But he’s also scored for music for film and dance performances and even recorded in duet with American saxist Ken Vandermark.

Another Vandermark associate, inventive Norwegian percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love’s wealth of imagination has impressed nearly everyone he’s come in contact with over the past five years. He’s versatile too, holding down regular berths in bands as diverse as in the Free Jazz trio of Norway’s veteran reedist Frode Gjerstad and Finnish guitarist Raoul Björkenheim’s Jazz-Rock fusion band.

No afterthought, young Swedish bassist Johan Berthling gives as good as he gets here. No surprise either. His recording history ranges from romping, stomping Free Jazz with saxist Fredrik Ljungkvist and Strid to near-ambient microtonality in a duo with Australian guitarist Oren Ambarchi.

Not that there’s any sign of that laid back persona on Flat Iron. Almost from the first notes, Berthling is in there bouncing and stretching contrasting string lines alongside the pianist’s runs, which at times take on a fleet Herbie Nichols-like congruence. Content to hold down the rhythmic function, Berthling gives the drummer enough space to rumble away on the snare and bass drum, as Sandell showcases contrasting dynamics with right handed, cascading tremolos and left handed basso swoops. Soon, the pianist is repeatedly pressing firmly on one key, building up some dramatic Silent Movie music style counterpoint until internal piano strums team up with similar motions from Berthling to ease the tension. As Nilssen-Love turns from what sounds like doorbell ringing to running a wetted finger along a drum top, Sandell’s electronically altered voicing introduces note clusters that reassert themselves as a new melodic statement.

Berthling affirms himself the most on the third and shortest track, introducing the theme with strong, Mingus-like even-handed pizzicato, with muted accompaniment from the drummer using brushes. Unleashing sine waves and altered, falsetto vocal exhortations, Sandell’s shrill tones prompt thoughts of how Frankenstein’s monster may have sounded as the electricity flowed through his head. When irregular drum pulses then appear, the pianist starts hammering out rough, left-handed key explorations, then thick, two-handed arpeggio clusters. Meanwhile, the bassist saws away col legno at the bottom of his range and Nilssen-Love provides asymmetric cymbal snaps and reverberations.

“Flat Iron 2” applies variations of all these techniques to the wiggling, double- timed sideways theme. Berthling exposes a harsh, ponticello timbre as if he’s dragging a knife blade across his strings; Nilssen-Love works his way to broken note bashing; and Sandell puts on his most impressive keyboard display.

Mixing some McCoy Tyner into his Herbie Nichols, the pianist’s irregularly vibrated touch accelerates to high frequency, doubles and triples in intensity and speeds along with a modal overlay. Finally flashing bent notes reconstitute themselves into rippling right-handed near-harpsichord timbres.

Standing Wave, this trio’s first effort in 2000 introduced an exceptional, improv piano trio. This CD confirms and enhances that first impression.

May 10, 2004

BRÖTZMANN/PARKER/DRAKE

Never Too Late But Always Too Early
Eremite MTE 037/038

FRODE GJERSTAD TRIO WITH PETER BRÖTZMANN
Sharp Knives Cut Deeper
Splasc (h) CDH 850

More than 35 years after he roared onto the international Free Jazz scene, German reedist Peter Brötzmann’s playing still seems as ferocious as ever. This is a good thing. For unlike some of his contemporaries who have settled into a sort of middle-aged timidness, the tenor saxophonist still improvises with the same intensity and commitment at 60 as he did when he was 25.

Those who now hear a newly toned down Brötzmann are also a bit deluded. For the saxman’s playing has never been out-and-out raunchy and, as these two -- actually three, one is a two-CD set -- sessions demonstrate, his creations, are as solid or as subtle as he wants them to be.

Furthermore, Brötzmann, whose very first trio -- with the late German bassist Peter Kowald and Swedish drummer Sven-Åke Johansson -- was an international affair, has continued to maintain his non-German connections. Case in Point, NEVER TOO LATE is a record of his American trio with bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake, while SHARP KNIVES adds Brötzmann to the working trio of alto saxophonist Frode Gjerstad of Norway, filled out by fellow Norwegians bassist Øyvind Stroresund and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love.

Dedicated to Kowald, who first explored the then new music when they were both teenagers in their hometown of Wuppertal, the tracks on NEVER TOO LATE are alternately as stormy as the music the initial trio first made, and as sombre as a threnody should be. Kowald died of heart failure in September 2002 between the recording and release of this live set.

Encompassing three tracks, the title tune begins with mournful clarinet tones from Brötzmann and restrained arco work from Parker. Unsurprisingly the reedist keeps the growled melancholy theme going for several minutes, only occasionally heading into higher, screech mode as the bassman produces thick and solid chords and Drake appears to be doing little more than merely touching the drums. Although an instant composition, the band probably decided to use it as a memorial since the subsequent solo by Parker, who also had a longtime association with Kowald, is rooted in the creation of simultaneous tones, overtones and undertones that the German bassist would have appreciated.

By the second track, Brötzmann on tenor, is keening like a traditional Muslim widow, sluicing out slipsliding shrills and overblowing tones. Drake has turned to harder rock-style drum beating, as the saxman seems to relinquish his control and turn to multiphonics -- if it’s possible to quadruple-tongue, he’s doing it. Finally, as the rhythm section gradually slows down then speeds up its accompaniment, the beat settles and the saxman’s irregular vibrato gets so frenzied that it almost seems as if he’s about to levitate. Ghost notes, false fingering, flutter tonguing combine as entire passages are taken in sopranissimo pitch. Soon the entire audience is screaming as Brötzmann honks out elongated tones to the climax.

“Half-hearted beast” seems almost anti-climatic in retrospect, with an re-energized reedman screeching a cappella as if he playing a hunting horn leading a charge at the foxes. Meanwhile, Drake’s free, but rhythmically powerful, rim shots complement Parker’s unvarying tone. Construction is almost pure soulful R&B, if you can accept that description of a German avant gardist’s work.

The first CD is pretty powerful as well, with Brötzmann’s renal cry announcing his presence almost from the beginning. Taking up the first four tracks of that disc, “Never Run but Go” finds the saxman rolling forward like a tank battalion, using his slightly nasal tone and split tones to push obstacles away. Not that the bassist and drummer are obstacles. Parker’s pizzicato pulse holds the beat to the road, while Drake uses cow bell, snare and ride cymbal to roll and slide out his All-American commentary on the blitzkrieg. Throughout the Chicago-based percussionist subtly alters the tempo underneath Brötzmann’s explosions.

Listen closely as well, and you’ll hear Parker quote from “Boogie Stop Shuffle” at one point. This is appropriate, since the New York-based bassist seems to have inherited its composer, Charles Mingus’ mantle not only as a first-class bassist, but also as an organizer and bandleader.

Although the emphasis here is on the reedist’s collection of nephritic cries and intestinal tones plus Drake’s roughs and drags, nothing seems to faze the bassist. By the end of the mini-suite, using his bow, he’s managed to get the others to halve the tempo to such an extent that the piece becomes almost quiet and reverent. Then again Brötzmann squealing in tongues is as close to “Taps” as Free Jazzers can play.

If that piece is quiet than “The Heart and the Bones” almost sounds like restrained BritImprov. After introducing the theme with abrasive steel wool-like string tones, Parker stands aside for muted squeals from Brötz and hand drumming from Drake. Soon the beat turns hypnotic as the bassist begins revealing the distinctive string sounds of the Donso Ngoni or Malian hunter’s harp. The coda relates a lot more to his pinpointed strums than the reedist’s squeals.

Recorded eight months later, SHARP KNIVES is a reunion of sort for Brötzmann and the veteran alto saxist, who recorded as a duo CD in 1998. Here, as a matter of fact, they start out this disc unaccompanied, with Gjerstad playing short nervous cadenzas on clarinet, while Brötz pushes out dark-colored continuum on bass clarinet. The German continues to go south with his sound as Gjerstad moves higher until all hell breaks loose with the entry of Stroresund and Nilssen-Love, pumped as if they have to run the four-minute mile.

Like Parker on the other disc, Stroresund holds the pulse, while Nilssen-Love, who has recorded with everyone from saxists Mats Gustaffson to Ken Vandermark, relies on press rolls to keep things on an even keel. Meanwhile the two woodwind players are getting louder, biting down on their reeds and vocalizing notes in the aviary range.

Pressure cooker pulses continue to appear for the remainder of the session, with Brötz’s taragto at times adding a bit of Eastern European color to the proceedings. For his part Gjerstad often clambers up the scale, spearing high pitched notes and operating in dog whistle territory. Together, the mixture of claxon calls and growling multiphonics from the two saxists often produces something that could be the soundtrack for feeding time at a zoo filled with particularly bad-tempered carnivores.

Everything reaches a climax in the final -- and longest -- track, when chalumeau clarinet tones matched with bowed bass lines are superseded by irregular drum beats and reed expositions that vary from whines to Bronx cheers. As the drummer channels Sunny Murray on rat-tat-tat snares and echoing cymbals, Brötzmann lacerates the melody, double and triple tonguing as if he was pulling notes straight from the very marrow of the saxophone. Gjerstad responds at higher intensity and higher pitch to such an extent that the dense notes and tones are packed tighter than the passengers in a Tokyo subway. With each woodwind note seemingly bent, simultaneous rattling drum and bowing bass push the tempo faster until the tune finally ends.

What’s left behind from the sax-created ostinato however is the promise that either of these veteran saxmen could have continued to blow all night.

As Kowald’s death at 58 proved, no one lives for ever. But on the evidence of these CDs, veterans like Brötzmann -- and come to think of it Gjerstad -- appear to have plenty of spunk left in them for many years to come.

-- Ken Waxman

Personnel: Never: Peter Brötzmann (tenor saxophone, taragato, clarinet); William Parker (bass, donso ngoni); Hamid Drake (drums)

Track Listing: Never: Disc 1: 1. Never Run but Go I 2. Never Run but Go II 3. Never Run but Go III 4. Never Run but Go IV 4 5. The Heart and the Bones Disc 2: 1. Never Too Late But Always Too Early I 2. Never Too Late But Always Too Early II 3. Never Too Late But Always Too Early III 4. Half-hearted beast

Track Listing: Sharp: 1. Sharp Knives Cut Deeper Part 1 2. Sharp Knives Cut Deeper Part 2 3. Sharp Knives Cut Deeper Part 3 4. Sharp Knives Cut Deeper Part 4

Personnel: Sharp: Frode Gjerstad (alto saxophone, clarinet); Peter Brötzmann (tenor saxophone, taragato, bass clarinet); Øyvind Stroresund (bass); Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)

July 7, 2003

AALY TRIO/DKV TRIO

Double or Nothing
Okka Disc OD 12035

SCHOOL DAYS
In Our Time
Okka Disc OD 12041

SPACEWAYS INCORPORATED
Version Soul
Atavistic ALP 130 CD

Eventually Ken Vandermark is going to have to stop wearing his emotions --and influences -- on his sleeve and CD booklet.

Now that the Chicago-based reedman has established himself nationally and internationally as an extender and interpreter of free music, aren’t the dedications he appends to each of his original compositions getting to be a bit redundant?

He was honored with the so-called “genius” grant from the MacArthur Foundation a couple of years ago, has proved himself a valuable contributor to musical situations ranging from duos to big bands and constantly records with his own or cooperative groups. So isn’t it about time to acknowledge that audiences can now be as interested in his tunes for what they sound like rather than whom they honor.

Perhaps this need to link himself to “the tradition” is a sign of modesty or even self-abasement. The former is a more attractive emotion than the later, but neither is necessary. Vandermark’s various bands haven’t yet produced one masterwork, but despite some inconsistencies, are still creating a shelf of memorable work.

Take the discs at hand for instance. Two involve him with Europeans; the last is an all-American product.

DOUBLE OR NOTHING was recorded in 1999 as a match up between his Chicago-based SKV trio -- Vandermark, bassist Kent Kessler and drummer Hamid Drake -- and the Swedish AALY trio -- saxist Mats Gustaffson, bassist Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten and drummer Kjell Nordeson, a band which has frequented toured with Vandermark as a guest. The idea seemed to mix and match twinned instrumentalists sort of like Ornette Coleman’s FREE JAZZ or the recordings by the late Glenn Spearman’s double trio.

The only other time Vandermark tried a similar experiment was in 1986 with UTILITY HITTER, where he matched the members of his Boston trio, including bassist Nate McBride, with Chicagoans. But while that session broke down into duo and trio showcases DOUBLE OR NOTHING -- an apt title -- is a group effort. In fact, with only three tunes examined in nearly 52 minutes, the similarities among the six improvisers are on view much more than their differences.

Strangely enough, the bass duo get to show off, not on the first tune, dedicated to bassist Henry Grimes, but at the beginning of the medley of the final two, written respectively by Albert Ayler and Don Cherry, both of whom employed Grimes on important 1960s LPs. Spending almost the first five minutes with one arco bass playing in a high register, and the other bowing at an even more elevated pitch, reverberating, woody thrusts finally elaborate the theme.

Before both drummers redefine themselves with the combination of snare bashing and a sound that resembles door knocking, a characteristic of Ayler’s drummers like Sunny Murray, both hornmen have unleashed a symphony of glossolalia, producing as much spit as overtones. Vandermark rumbles contentedly and straightforwardly on bass clarinet while Gustaffson uses growls, smears and lingual tones to produce what could be the first off-side variations on “God Save The Queen” or is it “A Love Supreme”?

Fitting the front line like a plug in an electrical socket, the Cherry tune recalls the time he was part of Ayler’s band. Here, as Gustaffson elaborates the head at half tempo, Vandermark on tenor showcases some flutter tonguing and vibrato overflow, backed by the buzzing of bowed basses. These hoards subside for a time as Nordeson uses snares, toms and cymbal to attach his soloing to Elvin Jones’s lineage.

If Nordeson, who made his reputation in Sweden with pianist Per-Henrik Wallin and the Low Dynamic Orchestra, channels Jones on the first disc, which was recorded in Chicago, he was in full Bobby Hutcherson-Gary Burton mode as a vibist on the second. A live session from Oslo’s Blå club done late in 2001, it matches Vandermark and Håker-Flaten with the two other members of the School Days group -- American trombonist Jeb Bishop and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love -- plus the vibraharpist.

Because of the novelty of his instrument -- at least in this context -- Nordeson ends up front and centre most of the time, while the configuration is strongly reminiscent of those Archie Shepp bands that featured Hutcherson plus Roswell Rudd or Grachan Moncur III on trombone.

In a program featuring one Bill Evans tune, a different Cherry line, one by Bishop and four Vandermark originals -- all with dedications -- this is definitely a jazz record with a lot of theme-solo-solo-theme work. Also, in a club space, the five fare best on the faster tunes, with the slower ones dragging a bit. As a matter of fact, tunes like “Off The Top” dedicated to organist Larry Young, really end up resembling the sort of hummable soul jazz that coexisted with The New Thing in the 1960s. Bishop may be double-tonguing like Moncur, but Vandermark ends up rearing back and honking like Stanley Turrentine or one of the other boss tenors of that era.

Constant vibe accents, probably played with four mallets, enliven “What About”, which is even dedicated to Hutcherson. More of his own man, though, Nordeson brings a hefty marimba-like tone to his solos that extend on top of tasty Nilssen-Love brushwork. Then at the end, the theme, which initially pinponged between Bishop’s comfortable middle register and Vandermark’s horn, resolves itself into something that could be a mid-1960s Blue Note records boogaloo.

Closer to the Shepp-Hutcherson-Moncur aggregations, Bishop’s “Octopus” is almost sabotaged by under-recording -- at least you have to strain to hear the fleet mallet work. The composer himself lets loose with some growling shout choruses, goosed by the speedily vibrating metal bars. Soon the long-limbed trombone spit and polish is joined by Vandermark on tenor, trilling, double timing, and flutter tonguing. Powerhouse drumming pushes the saxman still further into lingual multiphonics until the entire aggregation brings back the head.

IN OUR TIMES’ music that slithers from cloistered to on the corner and back again, with the emphasis on party time, also has its parallel in VERSION SOUL, recorded two months earlier in Chicago. Credited to School Days, this trio has Vandermark on clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor and baritone saxophones, Drake on drums and guesting from Boston, McBride on bass and electric bass.

It’s the last instrument that distinguishes this session from the others. In spite of claims made for its suppleness when played by so-called fusion masters, the electric bass like the electric keyboard can’t produce the same individual touch that an acoustic instrument can. So while rhythmic input goes up exponentially on those tracks on which it’s featured, one potential solo instrument is removed from the mix.

What's more, during the course of the nine foot-tappers that make up the disc, Vandermark seems to have put himself on the horns of a dilemma -- pun intended. Boasting dedications encompassing artists as different as Reggae forefather, keyboardist Jackie Mittoo, abstract painter Mark Rothko and Larry Graham, bassist for Graham Central Station and Sly and the Family Stone, Vandermark seems to be struggling for his individuality here. Should he concentrate on being an out-and-out raucous player like the usually anonymous saxists who provided instrumental breaks in funk and reggae singles; or should he be a highbrow improviser. He tries both identities on for size here with mixed results.

“Back of a Cab”, for instance, which tries for a prototypical ska or rock steady rhythm courtesy of Drake’s woodblock percussion, doesn’t really follow through when it comes to Vandermark’s sax lines. His squeaks and gentleness seem out of place and when he uses fewer notes than usual it sounds as if he’s holding himself back. Much more impressive is “Clocked”, where the drummer’s heavy, but not overbearing effects suggests both the Crescent City and JA. With McBride thumb tapping on his electric bass, making like The Meters’ George Porter, the reedist adopts a tone that’s midway between reggae and 1950s’ New Orleans R&B, where Lee Allen’s baritone sax reigned supreme.

Probably the most impressive performance comes on “She Just Got Here” though. A McBride line with no attached musical baggage or dedication, it slips along on a Drake created reggae backbeat and some in-your-face fuzztone courtesy of the composer’s electrical outlet. Mixing his rock and his reggae, Vandermark seems perfectly content to honk away.

This overblowing is put to a more cerebral use on “Force at a Distance”, a salute to New Thing honker tenor saxophonist Frank Wright -- who, incidentally, also recorded with Henry Grimes. Apparently comfortable emulating the style of a man who always mixed gospel and blues with his Energy music, Vandermark sounds more sure of himself, indulging in extended harmonics and holding notes for an inordinate length of time. Meantime Drake glides all over his kit with the strength and imagination Wright should have got from his percussionists, and alternately plucking and bowing his acoustic upright, McBride holds everything together with strength unparalleled elsewhere.

Odd number out here, “Rothko Sideways” the CD’s longest track, is muted and melancholy, with Vandermark on clarinet relating more to Jimmy Giuffre’s early 1960s work that was as far away from pop music as British crumpets are from West Indian patties. A slow-moving, low-key recital, Vandermark’s reedy output is shadowed step-by-baby-step by McBride’s talents on the acoustic, with Drake contributing little more than the occasional cymbal splash or -- appropriately -- brush stroke.

Here are three more, wildly different, contributions to the Vandermark discography, which will probably be sought out by the reedist’s many fans. Each has something to recommend it, though overall it seems that Vandermark’s chameleon personality often needs another strong horn player to provide contrast. That’s why IN OUR TIMES is probably the most interesting of the three.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Double: 1. Left to Right 2a. Angels 2b. Awake Nu

Personnel: Double: Mats Gustafsson (alto and tenor saxophones); Ken Vandermark (clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone); Kent Kessler and Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten (bass);

Kjell Nordeson and Hamid Drake (drums)

Track Listing: In: 1. Another Double 2. Off the Top 3. What About 4. Shift 5. Octopus 6. Loose Blues 7. Elephantasy

Personnel: In: Jeb Bishop (trombone); Ken Vandermark (clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor saxophone); Kjell Nordeson (vibraphone); Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten (bass); Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)

Track Listing: Version: 1. Back of a Cab 2. Reasonable Hour 3. Size Large 4. Journeyman 5. She Just Got Here 6. Clocked 7. Rothko Sideways 8. Force at a Distance 9. All Frequencies

Personnel: Version: Ken Vandermark (clarinet, bass clarinet, tenor and baritone saxophones); Nate McBride (bass and electric bass); Hamid Drake (drums)

September 2, 2002

KORNSTAD TRIO

Space Available
Jazzland 014 724-2

ATOMIC
Feet Music
Jazzland 016 558-2

Working musicians participate in many situations and our view of their talents is often shaped by the particular role in which we hear them.

Take Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, for instance. In North America, if he’s known at all, it’s for his work with countryman altoist Frode Gjerstad or as part of various bands led by Chicago’s Ken Vandermark, two roles that place him very firmly in the avant-garde.

Back at home however, he drums for other bands, including the trio and quintet featured on these two discs, which would only be classified as outside by the most rabid neo-con. Of course perception can affect hearing as well. Since musical reactionary thought gained currency with the Young Lions phenomenon, a band like Atomic, which named its disc after an Ornette Coleman composition may be thought of being beyond the traditional pale.

Instead, a close listen to the session will convince anyone with ears that this Feet Music marches not to a harmolodic beat, but to a straightforward 4/4 provided by

Nilssen-Love and bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, who also worked with Vandermark, exploratory Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, and with the drummer, made up a fusion rhythm section for Finnish-American guitarist Raoul Björkenheim. Although the bull fiddle player has an exploratory bowed solo on “El Coto”, you certainly wouldn’t describe the rhythm on a piece like “Do It” as anything but freebop or maybe free (hard) bop.

Swedish trumpeter Magnus Broo certainly approaches the fluidity of mid-period Jazz Messenger -- and neo-con idol -- Lee Morgan -- on tunes such as “Longing For Martin” and “Prayer”. Other times, the brass blends sound as if they come straight out of 1950s West Coast jazz. But then again maybe that’s to be expected from someone like Broo who attended North Texas State University from 1984 to 1990, where the music program has long pledged eternal fealty to Stan Kenton. However, Broo’s sweet-and-sour soloing, contrasted with the deeper tones of Fredrik Ljungkvist’s tenor on his own “Den Flytiga Magneten”, sound more like Coleman associate Don Cherry than Chet Baker’s work with Gerry Mulligan.

The Swedish alto and tenor man is a special case as well. A switch hitter from outside to inside jazz and back again, he initially helped organize Atomic as a reaction against so-called mountain jazz, associated with the ECM school which characterized most Scandinavian improvising in the 1970s and 1980s. He too has freer associations with Gustafsson, French guitarist Marc Ducret and even went to Chicago to play with Ken Vandermark’s Territory Band in 2001.

Norwegian pianist Håvard Wiik is probably the most traditional man here with his light-toned comping throughout and exhibiting romantic single notes on his own “Psalm”. On “El Coto” in fact, he could be confused for ur-ECM stylist Keith Jarrett, although the horns delve into atonality. Wiik has backed up such leading Norwegian artists as bassist Arild Andersen and vocalist Karin Krog, who also record for ECM.

All in all, Feet Music is a satisfying contemporary outing, impressively in the same class as many releases by young North American jazzers.

SPACE AVAILABLE is another matter. One of those trio blowouts common since the 1950s heyday of Sonny Rollins, tenor saxophonist Håkon Kornstad has good company with which to stretch the rules.

Bassist Mats Eilertsen leads his own Charles Mingus-inspired sextet featuring Kornstad and works the bottom as much as he can here. Nilssen-Love, the eldest of the three at 28 (!), manages to fit in membership in LO-KO, a duo with Kornstad along with his other commitments. At the same time, conservatory-trained Kornstad has also had experience with No Spaghetti Edition, the local experimental large band, and has played with other advanced folk like drummer Ingar Zach.

With this disc generally a low-key affair, Kornstad wisely sticks mostly to tenor throughout. Sometimes, as on “Space Available” and “Peasant Song”, he exhibits a smooth tone that seems to owe something to onetime Scandinavian resident Stan Getz, or maybe Archie Shepp, who did, after all, record “Girl From Ipanema”. Behind him both Eilertsen and Nilssen-Love modals of accomplished restraint. With the bassist’s steady pulse and press roll and cymbal accents from the drummer, the saxman lets himself loose on Eilertsen’s “Intornette” with a mild case of reed-biting, but a pointed mini-quote from Ornette Coleman’s “Focus on Sanity” shows that he and the others don’t regard this CD as an out-and-out free session.

At times Eilertsen’s strumming and Nilssen-Love’s percussion accents frame some extended guttural breaths from the saxophonist, but the wiggling soprano saxophone tone he exhibits on “Summer Samba” was probably one experiment that should have been curtailed.

Probably the most illustrative action here, is the band’s deconstruction of Stephen Sondheim’s “Send In The Clowns”, staple of a thousand lounge acts. With the drummer sounding as if he’s quietly tapping his snares and toms with his palms, the melody is first subtly advanced by the bassist then given a slow-motion, funereal air by Kornstad. Impressive enough in execution, the saxman’s unruffled tone and adherence to the melody shows that pure improvisation is reserved for another situation.

Like FEET MUSIC, this CD offers another glimpse into modern Scandinavian mainstream, establishing that the improvisers there are as healthy and technically proficient as their North American counterparts, if a bit more adventurous.

With the collective talent assembled on both discs, it seems that almost every one of them could be capable of following Håker Flaten and Nilssen-Love into freer music. Imagine what would result then.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Feet: 1. Nära Grensen 2. Longing for Martin 3. Do it 4. Den Flytiga Magneten 5. Psalm 6. El Coto 7. Prayer 8. Fifth Circle 9. Krilons Resa

Personnel: Feet: Magnus Broo (trumpet); Fredrik Ljungkvist (soprano and tenor saxophones); Håvard Wiik (piano) Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (bass); Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)

Track Listing: Space: 1. Arched Shape 2. Send In The Clowns 3. Intornette 4. Q 5. Spring Song 6. Summer Samba 7. Space Available 8. Peasant Song

Personnel: Space: Håkon Kornstad (soprano and tenor saxophones); Mats Eilertsen (bass); Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)

June 22, 2002

FRODE GJERSTAD

Last First
Falçata-Galia FALÇ-0007/0079

No matter how proficient the musicians are, every group takes time to find its particular niche and gel into a coherent whole. Especially vulnerable are diminutive groups such as trios, which alter considerably along with the players. No one, for instance, could confuse the Jimmy Giuffre 3 with Jim Hall and Ralph Peña with Giuffre’s trio featuring Paul Bley and Steve Swallow, or mix up Sonny Rollins’ recording with Ray Brown and Shelly Manne with his session with Henry Grimes and Pete LaRoca.

Norwegian alto saxophonist Frode Gjerstad has had to face this challenge a couple of times. His trio of the 1980 and 1990s with South African bassist Johnny Dyani and British drummer John Stevens had to be reconstructed after first one, than the other man died. Then his trio with bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake couldn’t work frequently enough, since the American rhythm section was made up of two of in improv’s most in-demand players.

Now, for the first time in his life, the veteran woodwind player has a trio completed by fellow countrymen. Bassist Øyvind Storesund and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love are considerably younger than Gjerstad, but they proved their mettle with him on a recently released premium Cadence Jazz CD dedicated to Stevens.

LAST FIRST actually precedes that disc by about 10 months, and it’s fascinating to hear the group sound taking shape on it. Unlike Gjerstad’s other bands, which were by necessity long-distance affairs, this group has had time to develop through multiple gigs and rehearsals.

Interestingly enough, bassist Storesund, the least known group member, is more upfront on this completely improvised session then he would be later on. A rock-solid timekeeper like Parker, he’s the link between Nilssen-Love’s abstruse and refined percussion and the solo flights of Gjerstad on alto saxophone, alto flute and bass clarinet. You can hear the partnership locking into place midway through the proceedings. After the bassist sounds all his strings with an extended arco flourish, he’s met with a stick exploration of snare press rolls, rim shots and the occasional toe pedal bass drum hump, from the percussionist who ends this collaboration with a single cymbal sizzle.

While very much his own man -- he had to be since he was Norway’s entire jazz avant garde until this younger generation came along -- Gjerstad can move from sharp, reed biting trills in the highest register of the saxophone to barely accented breathy asides. Here, featured on the same instruments that were part of Eric Dolphy’s arsenal, he exhibits a distinctive personality on each horn.

Except for pro forma basement swoops, he usually concentrates on the highest registers of the bass clarinet and squeaks away. When he does that Storesund defines the pulse with mighty Walter Page-like bridge work, and Nilssen-Love, who has also put in time in saxist Ken Vandermark’s School Days quartet and as part of Swedish pianist Sten Sandal’s trio, decorates the proceedings with percussion filigrees. Elsewhere, bowed bass notes mesh with lower register clarinet tones to such an extent that you can’t tell which is the originating instrument.

Unsentimentally romantic on flute, there are times Gjerstad can blow multiphonics out of the metal tube; other times he produces a more traditional melody, most definitely as part of the mini-overture that opens this disc. Storesund works in the cello range at that point, while Nilssen-Love counters with a free jazz rumble, very much in the Stevens tradition, belying his ongoing experience with fusion bands.

On alto, the saxophonist unveils an improv vocabulary of tongue slaps and duck quacks, with protracted pauses to introduce the tracks’ different sections. At intervals Gjerstad’s conception involves forcing air through a tube like the most committed minimalist, other times he gets involved in fjord funk, honking away in what could practically be the tenor register. On a couple of tracks from the CD’s end he even sounds as if he’d like to start playing “Night In Tunisia”, as the three start grooving on quasi-Afro Cuban riffs.

Few bands appear as fully formed as Dolly, the sheep after a cloning experiment. But some lucky ones manage to avoid the fumbles and foibles associated with group birth pains. As this CD demonstrates, this trio was one of them.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Last First Part 1 2. Last First Part2 3. Last First Part 3 4. Last First Part 4 5. Last First Part 5 6. Last First Part 6 7. Last First Part 7 8. Last First Part 8 9. Last First Part 9 10. Last First Part 10 11. Last First Part 11 12. Last First Part 12 13. Last First Part 13

Personnel: Frode Gjerstad (alto saxophone, alto flute, bass clarinet); Øyvind Storesund (bass); Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)

June 22, 2002

JANSON/KULLHAMMER/NILSSEN-LOVE

Live at Glenn Miller Café Vol. 1
Ayler Records aylCD-012

Existing as a big blank mass at the top of Europe for most North American jazz fans, Scandinavia occasionally swims into consciousness either when some famous American takes up resident or records there, or when a musician from Norway, Sweden or Denmark moves to the United States.

Improvised music in those three countries involves a lot more than that, of course. Most interestingly is the recent emergence of a pan-European musical generation that treats the tenets of so-called free jazz as much a part of its heritage as Bop or Dixieland. It’s that accepting openness that enlivens this first-rate blowing session.

Tenor and baritone saxophonist Jonas Kullhammar, 24, is a certified Swedish young lion, with all the requisite awards including that of Jazz Musician of the Year for 2001. He has played with everyone from The (International) Noise Conspiracy to clarinetist Peanuts Hucko and from pianist Ran Blake to the Latin Lover Big Band. Yearning to record in a less regimented style, this live session was organized at a Stockholm club. Young veteran freedom ringers, bassist Peter Janson, who plays with saxophonists Mats Gustafsson and Ken Vandermark in the AALY Trio, and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, who performs in another Vandermark group and as part of Norwegian free jazz forefather alto saxophonist Frode Gjerstad’s trio are his partners here.

Like many live dates, as each succeeding tune gets longer and the musicians -- especially Kullhammar -- loosen up, the results pinpoint the rhythm section’s supple potency and the saxman’s ability to work in the free idiom. Initially apparently fearful of leaving the song-form behind, the reedist seems to find his feet -- or is it fingers? -- by the third number that he starts on baritone saxophone, a Swedish specialty since the 1950s heyday of Lars Gullin.

Once Nilssen-Love’s nuanced press roll and cymbal display is succeeded by Kullhammar’s deeper-than-a-mine-pit tone though, he becomes brave enough to jump octaves, playing in the honking tenor register as well. Perhaps this is what Sonny Rollins would sound like were he a little younger and decided to investigate the bigger horn.

Spurred by power drumming to more room-filling sax overblowing, you suddenly note the transparent clarity of the sound. Rather than being overwhelmed by the more vociferous instruments, Janson’s consistent bass patterns come through loud and clear. Of course it does help that his percussion partner is someone who has proved his equal sensitivity in a memorable solo session and driving bigger bands. Often quiet and unprepossessing as Chico Hamilton’s drumming was in the 1950s, Nilssen-Love sees his role as generating short counter motifs that complement the other musicians. Finally the piece ends with an extended coda that finds Kullhammar, now on tenor, squeezing out extended notes bar by bar as if he was encasing a lengthy sausage.

Sufficiently liberated, the three turn the last track into a more than 28-minute freebop seminar. Coltranesque and Rollinsesque on tenor, Kullhammar unroll matching licks, which he consistently introduces in one register, then answers in another -- usually lower -- one. Soon he’s wound up enough to repeat the same note patterns over and over again, as the drummer makes like Elvin Jones, doubling, tripling and quadrupling the metre, smashing sticks onto his drum heads, alleviating the harshness with the occasional cymbal splash. Not yet assured enough to pull off an Aylerian speaking-in-tongues solo, Kullhammar does the next best thing, repeating a four bar phrase over and over until it takes on a cadence of its own.

While Kullhammar does not yet have the subtlety or extended technique to join the first ranks of free improvisers, this is certainly an impressive effort and notable signpost on his route. He definitely shows he isn’t afraid to try anything. Nilssen-Love again proves his MVP status and Janson showcases his steady, guiding pulse. Foreigners can fill in their knowledge about Scandinavian music now and avoid the larger crowds that will likely be attracted to these musicians as their imagining matures and deepens.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Cold thrills 2. Slowdown 3. Smash-and-grab 4. Blow-out (28.16)

Personnel: Jonas Kullhammar (tenor and baritone saxophones); Peter Janson (bass); Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)

April 5, 2002

STEN SANDELL

Standing Wave
SOFA 504

PAAL NILSSEN-LOVE
Sticks & Stones
SOFA 505

Taking the traditional jazz piano trio one step forward into the future, this admirable CD also shows off the advanced instant compositional skills of some of the musicians who live on the roof of Northern Europe.

Consisting of two Swedes -- pianist Sten Sandell and bassist Johan Berthling -- plus Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, the band is just one of the three musicians' ongoing projects. Leader Sandell, whose interests encompass contemporary composed and ethnic music as well as free improvisation is best-known for his association since 1988 with saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and percussionist Raymond Strid in Gush. Young bassist Berthling, is part of a working trio with Strid and saxman Fredrik Ljungkvist, and has toured with Gustafsson and saxist Ken Vandermark. Understated drum stylist Nilssen-Love not only played with Norway's Free Jazz father, saxophonist Frode Gjerstad, but also was part of the School Days quartet with Chicago's Vandermark and trombonist Jeb Bishop.

Each man is fully confident in his abilities and competent in drawing the others into his orbit. The five originals on the disc not only have a unity about them, but also suggest voicings and rhythms unique to the three musicians on this project.

Concentrating on the upper registers as he does on the title tune and "Elongate," Sandell skirts percussive hammering for ambidextrous run creation in such a way that the right hand definitely knows what the left is doing. Sometimes his solos will be as cold as a Swedish December and as speedy as a winter ski-do, other times he'll be as busy and alive with concentric chords as a Stockholm street scene.

Berthling appears to have equal facility playing arco or pizzicato. Plus with 30 years of contrabass alchemy now in the music's history, sounds that appear to be snapped rubber bands arise from his bass as easily as mournful bowed passages. Notable at times more for what he suggests, rather than plays, Nilssen-Love frequently veers from the sort of straight time needed on "Elongate" to tiny percussion droplets from bells and wood blocks on tunes such as "Axel".

Instructively, although part of STANDING WAVE was recorded "live" at the Edvard Munch museum, you hear no sounds from the audience; most were probably standing there open mouthed in awe.

Nilssen-Love is in the solo spotlight on STICKS & STONES. Though the title itself is a bit of a misnomer. Certainly his sticks -- and mallets and brushes -- are very much in evidence, but the only stones there are probably make up the walls of the Sofienberg church in which this session was recorded. However the breath of his accoutrements means that the disc is subtly subdivided in such a way that it seems as if you're getting a concert from three different percussionists. For variety's sake Nilssen-Love used three different drum sets here: a stripped down kit with only hi-hat, snare and cymbal; a standard jazz kit; and the third extended with more cymbals, bells, wood blocks and the like.

Whether by accident or design however, his percussive expertise is such that you can only guess which resonators are in use on which track. In this case consistency is a virtue.

As high energy and dynamic as his work may be, he craftily stays away from the clangorous blitzkrieg that characterized earlier free percussionists like Han Bennink. Whether he's carefully dragging a bow across a cymbal, or investigating the sonics that result from the exploitation of a jazz kit, or just measuring the echoes that arise from the judicious use of wood blocks and snares, his aim is to offer as much music as possible. Note that's music, not percussion music.

Whether it's one man's conception or the melded ideas of three, both of these discs offer exceptional sounds and disparate views of how to improvisations should be actualized.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Standing 1. Mural 2. Standing Wave 3. Axel 4. Edvard 5. Elongate

Personnel: Standing: Sten Sandal (piano); Johan Berthling (bass); Paal Nilssen-Love (drums, percussion)

Track Listing: Sticks: 1.No Way Out II 2. Snap 3. Sweet and Lovely 4. Butterfly Wings 5. Guleboy 6. Dots 7. Spots 8. Fast Colour 9. B 10. Hedda 11. No Way In

Personnel: Sticks: Paal Nilssen-Love (drums, percussion)

July 16, 2001