Avant Music News

The latest from Tom Hull:

Buffalo: Collision (Duck) (2008, Screwgun): Another of alto saxophonist Tim Berne‘s groups: two thirds of the Bad Plus — pianist Ethan Iverson and drummer Dave King — with the bassist replaced by cellist Hank Roberts, a change that trades in any real capacity for swing or groove for an arty sheen on top of the free jazz drama. Iverson plays in dense blocks, and Berne works his way around the wreckage, in one spot piling up into a brutish piece of avant-ugly, but mostly working through intelligently and inventively. B+(***)

The Flatlands Collective: Maatjes (2008, Clean Feed): Dutch alto saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra is the effective leader of this group of mostly Chicago-based musicians: James Falzone (clarinet), Jeb Bishop (trombone), Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello, electronics), Jason Roebke (bass), Frank Rosaly (drums). Best when the three horns are all cooking, each on its own track, with Bishop’s trombone buoying everyone else. Stretches of cello and electronics — Dijkstra also plays lyricon and analog synth — are scratchy abstract. The Dutch avant scene has always been noted for whimsy, while the Chicagoans are known to occasionally suspend their creativity fetish and just rock out. B+(**)

Darren Johnston: The Edge of the Forest (2007-08 [2008], Clean Feed): Trumpet player, from Canada, based in San Francisco, first album as leader, although his name shows up on another album I have in the queue, plus he has a couple of side credits. Seems like someone I should have recognized — in fact, he appeared on a former Pick Hit here, Adam Lane’s Full Throttle Orchestra’s New Magical Kingdom. Pianoless quintet here — like one of those quartets but with a third horn, the range of colors and timbres spread wide by Ben Goldberg’s clarinet and Sheldon Brown’s tenor sax (or narrowed with bass clarinet), but they tend to cycle against each other rather than fly apart. Devin Hoff plays bass, Smith Dobson V drums, and Rob Reich appears on accordion on one track. Brown is a strong soloist — another guy I’ve run across a couple of times, but should remember from now on. The rhythm section keeps things moving, and Goldberg is superb as the guy who ties it all together. A-

Steve Adams Trio: Surface Tension (2000 [2008], Clean Feed): Googling Steve Adams, we find: “a cutting edge progressive rock guitarist and composer, formerly with ex-Camel keyboardist Peter Bardens and Mirage”; “bass player for ALO, Brett Dennen, Sara Bareilles, Tea Leaf Green, Forest Sun”; “gospel acappella music like you have never heard before”; and a bunch of non-musicians, including a Unix/Oracle guru, a Cincinnati criminal defense lawyer, the CEO of Sabrix, and some guy running for president. More promising is the Steve Adams who shows up on websites for Nine Winds (Vinny Golia) and ROVA — he would be the ‘A’ there. Plays four weights of saxophone, listing sopranino first, as well as bass flute. The trio adds two guys I don’t need to look up: Ken Filiano and Scott Amendola. Actually, I’ve heard Adams before in Filiano’s company, and (of course) in Rova; also with Composers in Red Sneakers, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, and Your Neighborhood Sax Quartet — maybe with Golia too — Adams dedicates a song to Golia and notes that they met in 1982 — although I’m way, way behind there. Three observations: one is that Adams has a lot of tricks up his sleeve, but only the sopranino doesn’t remind me of something else I’ve heard before; second is that Filiano, as dependable as any bassist working today, has rarely played with this much intensity; third is that Clean Feed has made a habit of picking up old tapes by unknowns, releasing them presumably just because they like them. B+(**)

John O’Gallagher Trio: Dirty Hands (2007 [2008], Clean Feed): After some sleuthing, I found an announcement that this batch of Clean Feeds was officially released on Nov. 28, making them 2008 releases. Until then I was guessing that the the Darren Johnston, Steve Adams, and John O’Gallagher CDs must be 2009 releases, given that they don’t seem to be available anywhere (DMG offers pre-orders). So it turns out that Clean Feed does have some concept of street dates, even though they may not correspond to reality — another bookkeeping headache. As for this record, any group that manages to play 6 straight nights in Braga, Portugal is likely to show up on the label. O’Gallagher plays alto sax. I think of him as a postbop player, but he leans free, and he usually makes a strong impression, as he does here. The others are Masa Kamaguchi on bass and Jeff Williams on drums. Seems like an average set, dilligently working against the grain, exploiting the higher range of the instrument, with the rhythmic complexity de rigeur these days. B+(**)

The Skein: Andrea Parkins and Jessica Constable: Cities and Eyes (2004 [2009], Henceforth): Parkins plays accordion and piano, most notably in Ellery Eskelin’s trio, and dabbles in electronics. She also gets a voice credit here, but presumably the lead vocals here belong to Constable, a British composer-singer who also has ties to Eskelin — she’s on his Quiet Music — and who also gets a credit here for electronics. I started playing this a couple of times, quickly deciding I wasn’t up for it. The vocal parts, which cover damn near the whole record, are massively irritating. The electronics also tends to irritate, but not always, and here and there can be quite intriguing. C+

Joe McPhee/Paal Nilssen-Love: Tomorrow Came Today (2007 [2008], Smalltown Superjazz): McPhee strikes me as the most doggedly anti-commercial avant-gardist of the last three or four decades. It’s not so much that he’s inaccessible but that he’s so preoccupied with his own inner logic that he could care less what you think — a couple of meetings with Ken Vandermark, who idolizes McPhee, come to mind. Norwegian drummer Nilssen-Love, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have any notion that what he does shouldn’t be embraced by everyone. He came up in rock groups, plays free, and sometimes ties them all together. His Dual Pleasure duos with Vandermark were unusually lucid and engaging sax-drums duos, and here he does the same trick for McPhee. A-

Evan Parker/Ingebrigt Håker Flaten: The Brewery Tap (2007 [2008], Smalltown Superjazz): Parker should be a household name by now, but isn’t anywhere close. B. 1944 in England, cut his first records c. 1971, and has released a couple hundred since, plus side credits in nearly every European avant-jazz context of interest — his career has roughly the same shape and trajectory as Anthony Braxton’s. Has his own label now, Psi, which I don’t get any service on, so I only pick up occasional scraps, and he remains a long-term project. Plays tenor and soprano sax. His soprano is utterly distinctive, shrill, with a lot of circular breathing — very impressive, but also discomforting. I usually prefer his tenor sax, which is featured here, a lot of poking and prodding, a little circular breathing. Håker Flaten’s bass makes for a nice foil, rounding him out where Paal Nilssen-Love’s drums might sharpen him up. Long improvs. Not clear how much weight to put on them, given the feeling that he could do this all day every day, but a very nice showcase. B+(***)