Sarost

Schindler & Rogers
Ephemeral Essence of Low Tone Studies (for Duo)
FMR CD 725-925

British born but a long-time resident of France, Paul Rogers is best known for his membership in Mujician as well as playing a 7-string double bass of his own design. With a recording career dating back to the 1980s, he’s never lacked for collaborators. He’s also not limited to one style of improvisation as proved by these sessions. While recorded less than a month apart, the  two are more antithetical than akin.

Ephemeral Essence of Low Tone Studies is 13 tracks of free music that match Rogers’ bass with the multiple reeds and brass of Munich based Udo Schindler, who has plays in small or larger groups with numerous international improvisers. Recorded about three weeks later in Bristol, Aurora is a four-track suite of classic Free Jazz session, Besides Rogers the other members of Sarost – both from the UK – are tenor/soprano saxophonist Larry Stabbins, slightly older than the bassist, and who has played with everyone from Keith Tippett to Robert Wyatt; and drummer Mark Sanders, who is slightly younger and has worked with a cross section of British and Continental innovators.

While Sanders’ press rolls, tambourine on hi-hat shakes and focused slaps and Rogers buzzing string stops, constant plucks and stinging arco pluses maintain individuality while pushing individual sequences forward, Stabbins’ reed default is a refurbished variation on John Coltrane’s innovations. No imitation, the saxophonist adds many curves and flourishes of his own, alternating such gambits as sopranissimo cries, strained body tube breaths and drawn out multiphonics. But the journey still travels along Trane tracks.

Creative in high and low registers on both his horns, the saxophonist also goes beyond the parameters of Energy Music. When, for instance, on “II. 67 South” he packs as many outlined notes as possible into a reed interlude, it’s done in the context of broken octave advancement. Evolving alongside his reed yelps, peeps and quacks or aviary flutters are Rogers’ full tilt string squeezes, upwards bass neck slides and doubles twangs and strums as well as Sanders’ cymbal coloration and drum ruffs. Whether direction is towards a saxophone advanced Aylerian march or a soprano-gentling Trane-like ballad, linear affiliations remain.

Rogers assertive sul ponticello swells or swift multi-string stops also exist as tandem duets with the saxophonist when the latter isn’t sophisticatedly arching trills on top of rhythm section comping. By the final “IV. Boreas Curtains”, the triple tongued worrying of reed phrases over and over makes common cause with the drummer’s intermittent clip clops and the bassist’s string sweeps to reach a climax of a strained but processional connection.

The tone fragments, tongue stops altissimo fragments and squeals that intermittently arise in Stabbins’ playing are given a wider scope on Ephemeral Essence of Low Tone Studies. But Schindler propels them over a multiplicity of instruments which visually seem to be an E-clarinet, bass clarinet, tubax and sousaphone.

What that means is while Rogers outstanding contribution to Aurora was a bit off beat, it still held to most expected double bass contributions. It’s mostly the same low-pitched and scrubbed tones with which he plays on Ephemeral … but the paradigms take on varied shapes as he responds or foreshadows Schindler’s timbral challenges.

“Savage Grace” for instance, is built around thick snoring reed honk that develop into splintered treble flutters. These are met with a combination of vibrations, stretches and strums from the bassist’s seven strings. A shift between tubax and sousaphone on “Whispers in the Dark” also highlights horn yelps and bellowing squalls is met with continuous string scrubs from Rogers on the other hand. Meanwhile the rumbling and tough bass sax bites on “One Moment at a Time’ bring out such rugged pushes from the bassist that Schindler ends up pulling what sound like laughing yelps from his instrument.

Antiphony isn’t one sided either. On “Smell of Rain and Grass” the bassist’s move up the scale with pizzicato thumps, stops and frails is answered with stop-start reed puffs that slowly widen to intersect with string twangs. Eventually as Schindler ascends in pitch to screaming whistles, Rogers’ strums and twangs splay out in sitar-like accompaniment.

More dramatically, the extended “Noise Like Water” begins with violin-pitched sul tasto jumps from the bassist met with wavering clarion reed bites from Schindler. As the textures swell to spiccato string rubs and warbling tongue stops and gravelly timbres from the woodwind, the two slowly intertwine climaxing with Rogers’ guitar-pitched chording surmounting Schindler’s high-pitched split tones which then become the underlying ostinato.

Faced with equally worldly and testing musical situations projected by equally exploratory and sophisticated musicians Rogers proves himself equal to the tasks. With these improvisational situations unrolling so close to one another, rather than being a quick-change artist, the bassist merely emphasizes varied facets of his musical personality.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Aurora: 1. I First Lights 2. II. 67 South 3. III. 67 North 4. IV. Boreas Curtains
Personnel: Aurora: Larry Stabbins (soprano and tenor saxophones); Paul Rogers (7-string double bass) and Mark Sanders (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Ephemeral: 1. Seat Of Gravity 2. Wrong Colours 3. Savage Grace 4. Movement of a Joint 5. Map Themselves Anew 6. The Thought of Nothing 7. Smell of Rain and Grass 8. Whispers in the Dark 9. One Moment at a Time 10. Sudden Mystery 11. Noise Like Water 12. Territory of Light 13. Warmth and Dread

Personnel: Ephemeral: Udo Schindler (bass clarinet, soprano and bass saxophones and sousaphone) and Paul Rogers (7-string double bass)