Hall/Ranaldo/Hooker

Oasis of Whispers
Alien8 Alien CD59

Don’t get this CD to discover how Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo operates in a jazz/improv context. Unlike bumptious rock star tourists who venture into Free Music with the subtlety of a linebacker performing ballet, Ranaldo cedes most of the space to the reeds of Toronto’s Glen Hall and the multi-faceted drumming of New Yorker William Hooker. Sticking to low-key, near microtonal guitar fills, plus pre-recorded interjections, the guitarist makes Oasis of Whispers fundamentally a group effort – and the disc is better for it.

“Conference Call”, the CD’s almost 16½-minute centerpiece, is the most obvious example of how his unforced stance shapes the session. Triggered Film Noir-like pre-recorded dialogue from a tough guy, a woman’s muffled conversation plus an infant’s cries are treated appropriately as sound sources, connected sonically with slurred and frailing guitar runs, powerful cymbal resonation and bell ringing and Hall’s multi-instrumental theatricalism. Moving among wiggling, double-tongued soprano saxophone vibrations, mouth-breathed, irregularly pitched flute overtones and some mumbling of his own, Hall brings this layered piece to its conclusion with a descending flute line.

Most of the other group compositions reflect what electronic treatments and extended techniques can provoke. Framing the saxman’s repetitive reed biting, stark falsetto whistles and body tube white noise plus the drummer’s mallet popped cymbals and blunt bass drum pressure are buzzing wave form loops and reverberating guitar flanges.

Still, Sonny Rollins’ “Blue Seven”, featuring Ranaldo’s distortion pedal fills, Hooker’s kettle-drum-like resonation and Hall’s exaggerated tremolo tenor saxophone playing confirms the trio’s linkage to the jazz tradition, no matter how transformative the presentation.

-- Ken Waxman

July 27, 2006

Glen Hall/trio_muo

Angles
Tarsier Records ACD-0501

Veteran improv warrior Glen Hall’s past collaborators have included arranger Gil Evans and Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Renaldo. But trio_muo, a working unit since 2002, is the Ontario-based saxophonist and flutist’s own chamber ensemble.

As cohesive as it is flexible, the band is filled out by longtime associate, bassist Michael Morse, who shadows the reedist’s every move like a P.I. on a stake-out; and decades younger percussionist Joe Sorbara. Reveling in ambiguity, most composition titles relate to concepts of geometry, so as to focus the listener on the music itself, with its shifting tonal centres, free time and elastic intervals.

Appearing more formidable than they actually are, the 11 tunes take as touchstones the advances of originals like Ornette Coleman and Thelonious Monk, whose characteristic doubled motif echo in a couple of Hall heads. Recorded with remarkable clarity, most tracks have definite architecture, with Hall sharing space with the other two, even turning to alto flute on “Vertex” to melodically accompany the others’ improvisations. Solid and thick-toned, with a touch of sul ponticello interjections, Morse is the CD’s rhythmic core, while Sorbara colors the proceedings with cymbal pings, rattling maracas, clapped drum sticks and sonorous drum rolls and bounces.

Although he reveals a plush and luxuriant bass flute tone on “Big Ears”, a threnody for poet Paul Haines, playing his usual tenor and soprano saxophones Hall’s expression is assured and unique, moving from peeping, quivering shrills on the smaller horn to undulating, territory-marking sonority on the tenor.

This is a fine effort all around.

-- Ken Waxman

January 10, 2006