ZooMorphisms

Mein einziger Freund is unusual only if you think electronic and acoustic instruments shouldn’t mix, like the shibboleth against red wine and fish. However the crux of this eight-part improvisation demonstrates how unremarkable creating a reeds, drums and synthesizer trio can be. The unremarkable doesn’t extend to the music though, which mixes serrated free music tropes with the fluid effervescence of synthesizers. The later role falls to Lausanne-based Vincent Membrez, who works with Lionel Friedli among others. Fellow Swiss, reeds player Michael Jaeger leads his own bands and has played with Greg Osby. Meanwhile American-in-Switzerland drummer Gerry Hemingway has partnered with numerous improvisers, including synth specialist Thomas Lehn.

The strategy throughout is matching impulses from Membrez’s machines which provide foreground or background scope, sometimes simultaneously, with the varied motifs engendered by Jaeger’s reeds. More of an accompanist here than usual, Hemingway’s percussion range is used as specific adornments, to keep sequences horizontal, or sometimes to lay out altogether.

Membrez’s ability to emphasize the computer programmed, ring modulator or pipe organ capacity of his instruments adds an element of unpredictability to the tracks. Equally resourceful, Jaeger moves among his reeds, meeting organ-like swells and meandering cadences with irregular slides and slurs in the altissimo register or using almost circular breathed saxophone vibrations to maintain development. Elsewhere Membrez’s splintered and spluttering voltage throbs warble alongside clarion clarinet arabesques, with the intermediacy emphasized by Hemingway resonating gongs, bells and cymbals.

With programmed static and pooling ambient flow from the synthesizers; ascension, descent and snarls and snorts from the reeds; and clatter, crashes and thumps from the drums up front at different times, maintaining fluidity alongside multiphonic asides is paramount during the sequencing of each “Morph.”

Creating a memorable disc by integrating electronics in place of an acoustic one angle of an improvising trio is ZooMorphisms’ accomplishment. However considering Mein einziger Freund translates as my only friend, the question of which band member isn’t a friends of the others remains.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. Morph 1 2. Morph 2 3. Morph 3 4. Morph 4 5. Morph 5 6. Morph 6 7. Morph 7 8. Morph 8

Personnel: Michael Jaeger (tenor and alto saxophones) and clarinet); Vincent Membrez (syntheizers) and Gerry Hemingway (drums and voice)