LESTER BOWIE
All the Numbers
(Nessa)
The early recordings of the Art Ensemble of Chicago are somewhat tough nuts to crack. Their first salvos were released in semi-succession by then-Chicago-based Nessa Records under the nominal leadership of principal hornmen Lester Bowie (trumpet; Numbers 1 & 2) and Roscoe Mitchell (saxophones; Congliptious and Old/Quartet). Beyond stalwarts in bassist Malachi Favors and reedman Joseph Jarman, the group (billed early on as the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble) early on included drummers Robert Crowder and Philip Wilson.
When Wilson departed the group in summer 1967 to tour with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, the Art Ensemble soldiered on first as a drummer-less trio and then as a quartet with the addition of reedman Joseph Jarman (it would be a few years before Don Moye joined as the group's regular percussionist). All the Numbers consists of several takes of the group improvisations and compositions that made up Lester Bowie’s first LP, also the debut from the solidified AEC lineup, which would go to Paris in 1969. To produce the LP, takes were mildly edited and spliced; here, they’re presented in unadulterated form across two discs, which also made up part of Nessa’s Art Ensemble 1967/1968 boxed set from several years ago.
As the group’s approach developed into a unified sound, the ensemble integrated the languages of R&B, bop, free improvisation, modern composition, and African musics into an often-theatrical whole. Early on, the seams between such focal points were much more obvious, present in a raw, go-for-broke aesthetic. The intensity of the individual and collective statements wrapped into All the Numbers is quite startling. Bowie’s growling, sputtering drawl and cutting pre-bop brass tones, paired with Mitchell’s feral, piercing alto make a striking combination. Of course, also ever present are the little instruments, providing orchestral nuance from the beginning – you didn’t usually hear bells, tin cans and harmonicas in New York free jazz.
While the music is unbridled in its intensity and able to achieve extreme volume with minimal means, meditative passages of arresting detail conjure the most depth – a stately duo ballad for trumpet and bass midway through “Number 1” is augmented by twittering scrapes, vocal wails and bells. As Favors’ strums pick up steam, Mitchell engages him with a brief, lyrical flute solo (actually recalling Nicole Mitchell), before resuming percussive clatter and yelps. Piquant, nearly saccharine alto tones dovetail with Bowie’s long brass lines amid halting, wound pluck, Mitchell unraveling longer sounds into haranguing staccato collisions and serrated brays, obliterating pensiveness with garish violence. Favors’ meaty, taut pizzicato is the primary rhythmic guide for this music, echoes of Jimmy Garrison and Gary Peacock in both his unwaveringness and dexterity, while he maintains a healthy swing and beautiful tone. The mishmash of dirge and Rip/Rig/Panic in the theme of “Number 2” might not be so carefully plotted without his bowed, metronomic sensitivity.
The quartet tracks – three versions of “Number 2” (which also gets the trio treatment) bring an only slightly thicker palette to the proceedings – Jarman’s additional reeds and percussion are certainly crucial to an orchestration of contrasts and give the piece a little more flesh. There’s an anarchic streak to his playing; Jarman's clarinet leaps from woody tension to volatility in a few short moments, sharply divergent from Mitchell’s delicate breaths. Bowie and Mitchell surely have that same element of “dangerousness” in their playing, but it seems much more controlled and when, for example, Mitchell’s phrasing becomes seemingly unbound, it’s still within a clear phrase logic, developing from terse and often repeated statements into something broader than intervallic relationships. Jarman, on the other hand, provides nattering comment alongside crushed brass while Mitchell is crisply unhinged on the opening minutes of “Number 2 (Take 7)” before the threesome become inseparable, swirling wind against Favors’ unyielding thrum. This latter twenty-minute take is closer to a group improvisation than the others, heave-ho rhythm and bent march-like rhythms engaged very loosely as Jarman, Bowie and Mitchell blast through its signposts in oblique reference.
All the Numbers provides a window into the earliest iterations of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, which entered its 43rd year of existence in 2010 despite the absence of Bowie, Favors (who passed in 1999 and 2004, respectively) and Jarman’s now occasional participation. Great Black Music began with a small group of individuals seeking transcendence through, among other things, rebelliousness and wit. If this merger of contrasting expressions of a great tradition is not always rendered seamlessly, the music is completely honest and often startling, retaining uniqueness and prescience decades on. Chuck Nessa and his estimable label deserve kudos and more notice for keeping this music in circulation.
Nessa Records currently doesn't have a web presence, but CDs on the label are available in the US from the Jazz Loft, City Hall, and Squidco.
COMMITMENT
The Complete Recordings 1981/1983
There’s a curious blip in the early discography of bassist/composer/multi-instrumentalist William Parker, one which at first might not register as a crucial document of Afro-Asian improvised music, much less a need-to-have avant-garde rarity. Commitment was the name of a cooperative group based in New York which began performing out in 1978 and ceased working together in 1984; it consisted of Parker, violinist Jason Kao Hwang, drummer Takeshi “Zen” Matsuura and reedman Will Connell, Jr. Recording one self-titled LP in 1980 that was released on Hwang’s Flying Panda label, the group was a fixture in Lower Manhattan performance spaces like Verna Gillis’ Soundscape, also performing at the Sound Unity Festival, Kool Jazz Festival, and in Europe. But like many jazz records released in the early 1980s underground, its status as a self-produced document rendered it unheard by all but the most serious devotees of the music. This two-disc set on Lithuanian free-jazz devotee label No Business includes the complete Commitment LP as well as a recording from the Moers Festival in Germany, and constitutes the group’s only appearance in the digital realm.
The group initially came together via Hwang and Connell; as detailed in loft-jazz historian Ed Hazell’s liner notes (he also did the booklet for the wonderful Muntu boxed set also on No Business), the pair met at one of the jam sessions held on Sunday afternoons at the Basement Workshop, an Asian-American cultural center whose mission was to broadly serve communities of artists to enable visibility for Asian-Americans. It’s hard to quantify what exactly makes the music itself sound “Asian” though certainly Hwang’s violin work approaches tonalities quite far from those in Western music, a narrow, high and piercing sound that reminds one – perhaps – of some Chinese string music. When plucked, there’s an air of poise and the ears could hear zither or harp as well as violin. In improvised music, one is quite used to being able to parse certain African and European influences, even at the general level, while Chinese (Hwang’s heritage), Japanese/Korean (Matsuura’s), much less South and Southeast Asian influences, are harder to pinpoint. In some passages of Commitment’s music, it is rather a distinct “otherness” that prevails – tones and combinations not seemingly relatable to anything one has heard in Afro-American or European-American free jazz.
Compositionally, Commitment runs the gamut from a decidedly measured pace to frenetic free-bop. The high, lonesome whine and the scales that Hwang improvises on in “Grassy Hills, the Sun” for example, end up quite far from the prevailing Leroy Jenkins model. That particular piece’s spacious moving-through of thematic material, almost duet-like as Hwang, Parker and Connell occupy it at Moers, does have more than a twinge of AACM-music in it, specifically the early work of Anthony Braxton or Muhal Richard Abrams’ “My Thoughts are My Future – Now and Forever.” From the Moers set, Parker’s composition “Whole Grain” is a free-bop tune of the highest order; a jaunty series of cycles for alto and violin across a snappy, swinging rhythm erupt into Connell’s braying post-Ayler/post-Roscoe Mitchell worrying cells, needled by Matsuura’s dry chatter and eloquently placed bombs. Hwang’s solo is nothing short of astounding – ferocious ducking and diving, shrieks and hoe-downs paired with rusty honks and horsehair swirls. A Stuff Smith bounce edges in and Hwang doubles on a passage both strummed and bowed in a technical feat that serves expressive complexity. While traditional motifs are certainly part of this tune, its movement into spaces beyond that are nevertheless controlled marks a work of early maturity in Parker’s writing/organizing canon.
Two of Connell’s compositions open the original LP, “Mountain Song” and “The Web of Forces.” The former espouses pensive delicacy, flute and arco strings winding through a lilting theme outlined by malleted cymbals and toms. Narrow fiddle sawing and centered abstraction parallel and buoy Connell’s thin breaths on this brief, measured piece. Halting, chunky rhythm and bundled keen on the latter are a nod to composer-pianist Horace Tapscott, with whom Connell studied, though the quartet is quickly off to a run, heel-digging triple-stops leading into uncorked alto skronk, Matsuura’s floating amalgam of Klook, Elvin and Max providing a cooking anchor to front-line freedom. The drummer also gives a grounded energy to the precarious swirl of bowed violin, bass and alto clarinet on Parker’s unsettling tone poem “Famine.” When the foursome stretch out, as on the two Hwang tunes that make up side two of the original album (including the aforementioned “Grassy Hills, the Sun”) and especially on much of the Moers set, room to embrace spacious textures and concise energy is taken full advantage of.
Even at its sparsest, Commitment carries with it a foot-stomping energy, the push-pull of Parker and Matsuura a forward-moving presence even in Hwang’s delicate, AACM-inspired processional themes. “No Name” is imbued ever so slightly with Braxton/Jenkins alto and violin pacing, while also seemingly a nod to the pathos-laden pairing of Ayler and Michel Sampson. The solo order follows lines of lead voice and rhythm, though concentrated subdivisions of meter offer supportive activity to the similarly coiled instant compositions of Connell and Hwang. While barely heard in their half-decade lifespan, this peerless ensemble is once again available for investigation. Those interested in the work of William Parker will especially enjoy this set, as not only does it provide early strong examples of his work, but the germinating seeds of pan-cultural influence on his later career are also quite visible.
ARCHITEUTHIS WALKS ON LAND
Natura Naturans
(Carrier)
Though one wouldn’t know it from the minimal credits on this disc, Architeuthis Walks on Land is the chamber-improvisation duo of bassoonist Katherine Young and violist Amy Cimini, and is musically far less unruly than the concept of an actual giant squid displaced from its undersea home. Young has become known for her work in the various ensembles of Anthony Braxton as well as her own disc of solo bassoon and electronics released on Porter Records earlier this year, Further Secret Origins (in itself a doozy of a record). The duo is also half of the New York-based young chamber ensemble Till by Turning, and Natura Naturans is the pair's second disc. The fact that both musicians are as adept in the modern performance world as they are in creative improvisation and experimental music comes through in works that have the feel of preordained structure, splintering off into impulsive subforms and returning to droning markers on “Below the Thermocline,” devilish string fracture skittering around Young’s twisted foghorn. Crackling gurgle on “Inside/Outside I” sounds akin to electronic glitch, huffs and whinnies underpinning false-fingered sawing on a manic breath interlude. “Glitterbird” is, by turn, almost folksy in its clarion call, spikes of vocal arco eliding into bassoon harmonics before shifting into a manic dance for flying horsehairs. Whether secondary tracks are present within “The Fields” or not is hard to tell, as the track’s beginning is an extraordinarily dense passage of string and reedwork, though the meat of the music is in its filmic, almost immobilized waltz for strummed viola and a particularly moving, pinched bassoon line. Though the language of the duet is often conversational and frequently sparse, orchestral mass and thick, noisy impasto are a major component of the Architeuthis Walks on Land aesthetic, which certainly hinges on Young’s bassoon work, though Cimini’s maddening fiddle pyrotechnics more than hold their own.
JOHN BUTCHER / CLAUDIA ULLA BINDER
Under the Roof
(Nuscope)
English saxophonist John Butcher and Swiss pianist Claudia Ulla Binder capture something quite rare in the small pantheon of expanded-palette duos – a sense of environmental space. Butcher’s language at first might have seemed derived from countrymen Evan Parker and Larry Stabbins, but the physics of his sound are far more macrocosmic than micro. That’s usually more evident in his solo work, which has found the saxophonist outdoors, in cisterns and caves as well as in raw studio space. Binder has studied with figures as diverse as multi-instrumentalist Karl Berger and pianist Walter Norris, performing in both new music and free improvisational contexts (though her work isn’t too well known on either side of the pond). As the resources of breath, reed, and keys are stretched and disassembled to make up the saxophonist’s material, strings, wood and an assortment of objects give Binder her paint. The improvisations on this disc are mostly rather short, which only one over six minutes, and though spiraling intervals of reedy phraseology and chunky gymnopédies could easily be a template for rousing vignettes – witness the athleticism of “Raincoat,” for example. However, the pair explores harmonic relationships at a different end of the spectrum and with astounding range – low resonant hum from Butcher’s soprano sounds almost like feedback or electronics underneath Binder’s spiky gestures, quickly building into angled kisses at the close of “Troves.” Sharp tenor flutter and keening bends are a steely contrast to light, keyed motion on “Umbrella,” quickly shifting into a landscape of guttural harmonics to match the pianist’s wiry plucks and seasick wows. Among the most interesting pieces are the paired “Black Martin, Female” and “Black Martin, Male” that find Butcher’s concentrated sputter quite avian, agitated calls to Binder’s gravitational poise. Other pieces explore architectural imagery – “Truss Joint,” “Cantilever,” “Skylight” evoking the aural effects of action on relationships between resistant objects with acute strength and literate beauty.
JOEL FUTTERMAN / IKE LEVIN
Dialogues and Connections
Virginia-based pianist/soprano saxophonist Joel Futterman and Bay Area reedman Ike Levin have forged a fruitful musical relationship over a number of years and eight co-led discs, and Dialogues and Connections is their third recording as a duo. While naturally the expanse of flyover landmass between the two players makes frequent meetings difficult, a shared language of loquacious communication binds their work together. From a literary perspective, there’s also common ground – Futterman has written a novel, while Levin is a poet. Their interaction, forged over time and geography, is entirely immediate as well as historical, and as with much of their shared and independent music, the eleven duets represented here are totally improvised. Levin is a flinty-toned fire breather and, like Futterman, has a way with words though he’s a bit more declarative in style than the pianist, whose stories and improvisations unfurl in a gradual, drawling dialect with burbling pronouncements and warm reflections gaining equal footing. As much as the duo revels in excitable kinetics, the contrast between instruments and methods draws out interesting turns – Futterman eking out passages of roiling romanticism a la Jaki Byard, while Levin juts a burnished, long sigh or the two commingle in refracting volleys.
As the first conversation closes, the pianist explores spindly architecture, cascading into dense arpeggiated forms as the left hand marks intervals with winking jounce. It’s an unaccompanied, raw kaleidoscope that introduces some of the nakedest saxophone playing of the set, Levin working through smoky harbingers of late nights and frosty mornings. Barrelhouse rock and roll introduces the seventh dialogue, Futterman’s repetition somewhere between boogie and Sonny Clark while simultaneously coaxing ecstatic wails from his soprano as the two weave an entwined flight. Though volume is something that both players call to their sides, it’s not paramount. Futterman can paint a sparser parallel as Levin’s squawk reaches foot-stomping intensity, or the reedman gives a rhythmic chug to the right hand’s upward telescope. Though obviously sprung from a different bond, Dialogues and Connections makes an interesting comparison to Futterman’s recent juggernaut duo with tenorman and frequent partner Kidd Jordan, Interaction (self-released, 2010). Whether joined by compatriots or unaccompanied, Futterman’s art is both expansive and homespun.
RICH HALLEY QUARTET FEATURING BOBBY BRADFORD
Live at the Penofin Jazz Festival
(Pine Ear)
At this point in time, any recording featuring cornetist Bobby Bradford should be considered an event. An early sideman with Ornette Coleman (albeit not recorded with the saxophonist until 1971), the Texas-born Bradford was a crucial part of the West Coast avant-garde jazz community in the 1960s and ‘70s, mostly as a co-leader in groups with reedman and composer John Carter. He also worked in Europe with drummer John Stevens’ Spontaneous Music Ensemble and the Stevens-Frode Gjerstad group Detail. Bradford is an unassuming character despite his deep connection to the history of postwar jazz, and though his playing was certainly felt, for example, in recordings and appearances with Gjerstad’s Circulasione Totale Orchestra earlier this year, extra ovations for Bradford should have been de rigueur. This year has been good for Bradford-philes, as in addition to new recordings, his work with Carter for the Revelation label has been collected on a Mosaic Select 3-disc set. Bradford has collaborated with Portland-based tenor saxophonist Rich Halley for a number of years, and Halley is even less well-known (though he’s been part of the West Coast scene since the 1980s and has worked with Vinny Golia). This recording from the Penofin Jazz Festival in Potter Valley, California is the second release to capture their music together.
The group is rounded out by Halley’s son, drummer Carson Halley, and bassist Clyde Reed on four originals. Sandblasted tenor and fat, cutting brass make a good pairing, and the frontmen have a clear affinity for one another. There’s a dirge-like quality to “The Blue Rims,” which opens the set, its ominous call somewhere out of post-Albert Ayler New York, though it quickly shifts into a countryish bounce. Bradford is the first soloist, fleet fragments rushing together but remaining particular and referential as bass and drums keep to an open gallop. Following a brief bass solo, the tenorman lets out with a powerful evocation of Ayler’s pathos and humor, rare among contemporary American players, as percussion shimmers around him. Bar-walking isn’t out of the picture either, as tenor and rhythm stir up an easygoing walk, Bradford providing celebratory commentary. “Streets Below” finds the quartet inspired by a funkier muse, though the rhythm section is a bit didactic in their exploration of the form, especially considering the flinty unslickness embodied by cornet and tenor. Clunky beat or not, Bradford works through a striking and empathetic solo, linking brass-band cajones with airy pronouncements before Halley digs his heels for a series of earthy North Texas blasts. The set ends as it began, funereal and sneaky with a knotty turn in “The River’s Edge is Ice;” hopefully we can hear more from this brass and reed pairing, and certainly more epaulettes for Bradford are always welcome.
MARY HALVORSON
Saturn Sings
The world of creative improvisation ever so often gets a glimmer of crossover potential. It’s not too common, but it does happen – whether in the post-loft late 1970s with reedmen-composers Anthony Braxton and Henry Threadgill signing to Arista and its subsidiaries, or in the 1990s and early 2000s when the music of tenorman David S. Ware, bassist William Parker and pianist Matthew Shipp seemed poised to take over the world. With music as fragmented as it has become, it’s no surprise that “niche success” is what most can hope for, but the critical anti-establishment still gets rightly excited when an artist of excellent technical caliber, vision, historical understanding and “vibe” gets accolades from seemingly all sides. Not that guitarist and improvising composer Mary Halvorson is the “savior” of avant-garde jazz, but her music does have broad appeal. That’s certainly not a bad thing, even among the niche-happy – people generally want those who are “good” to do “well.” Halvorson’s guitar work is really quite unique; though it would be easy to name-check precedents in Derek Bailey (volume pedals and odd intervals) and Sonny Sharrock (bunched intensity) alongside the circularity of Joe Morris and Grant Green, she’s given equal ear time to Deerhoof’s Jon Dieterich or Don Caballero’s Ian Williams. In other words, there’s indie rock in her blood, and it shows both as an improviser and composer. Her quintet augments a working trio including bassist John Hébert and drummer Ches Smith (ex-Xiu Xiu) with trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson and altoist Jon Irabagon, and Saturn Sings is the group’s first recording.
There’s an easy-seeming albeit oddly-moving lope that introduces the opener, “Leak Over Six Five (No. 14)” – like all of the tunes here it’s penned by the guitarist, and reads like a Threadgill word game. Irabagon’s querulous bebop phrasing is well-supported by hacking rhythmic piles, trumpet and guitar spreading out signs behind him before Halvorson counters with an interjection of crumpled chatter. Stretching out in crisp, hollow tones, her phrasing is immediately captivating and one anticipates what she’ll do as the horns work through a long chorus. Though the writing is clearly organized with horn arrangements in mind, the trio is often the real focus, Halvorson’s bent, pedal-doubled coagulations ricocheting off Smith’s floating rattle as Hébert provides a ghostly pizzicato anchor. The following “Sequential Tears In It (No. 20)” is for trio, and feels like Tal Farlow transplanted into a dusty, martial landscape (Hank Garland for a punky new age?), isolated and meaty single-note flecks augmented with barfing strums and microscopic agitation as the rhythm section surges and falls away. “Moon Traps In Seven Rings (No. 17)” flirts with saccharine and poise, alto and trumpet reinforcing a lilt as guitar and percussion explode around them in a volcanic center, Halvorson stretching in puckered turns as Irabagon hews close to a brightly rakish postbop sensibility. Finlayson peels off fat, short rounds before Halvorson wanders with a dulcimer-like tone into an area demarked by unruly fuzz and the quintet closes in the sketchy theme.
“Sea Seizure (No. 19)” alternates between Seam-like exuberant discord and art-rock slink, stuttering around absent declamations before settling into wry swing. The band minus Halvorson’s guitar is a rare thing, but she lays out for the first part of Irabagon’s peppery solo on “Crack In Sky (No. 11),” returning with cottony comp that slowly distorts. It’s hard to say what inspires the freakish sense of anticipation as Halvorson builds her solo – sly, detailed and extremely pretty while retaining base simplicity, it’s the kind of playing that builds atmosphere and allows Hebert and Smith to redefine their improvising space. Saturn Sings is just about the most unequivocally perfect record from a young improviser-bandleader to come down the pike in a while. For once, it seems unfair to ask “what’s next” (though the psychedelia of her work on “Crescent White Singe (No. 13)” is enticing), and rather revel in what we presently have.
MATTA GAWA
bA
Matta Gawa describe themselves as “free rock,” which is partially fitting because among guitar-drum duos, the work of Edward Ricart and Sam Lohman is quite far from, say, Derek Bailey and Han Bennink or Joe Morris and Luther Gray. bA is the group’s first recording, though both members of the duo are active on the Northeast Corridor axis. Ricart augments his wiry flights with what is assumed to be fuzzed-out bass loops on the opening “Your bA Will Not Abandon Your Corpse,” giving the music a bottom that it might not otherwise have, while Lohman maintains a tom-heavy agitated pulse a la Chris Corsano at his finest. The first point of comparison – and there aren’t many to this DC-based unit – is to the Daily Dance of drummer Bob Thompson and guitarist Doug Snyder (New Frontiers, 1973), though Matta Gawa are probably more technically proficient and their energy is more punky. Though the Engine Studios production style can obscure some of the finer points of creative improvisation, which often depends on crucial tone and detail, the slight murk in the product of Matta Gawa’s work is welcome, giving it a hazy distance. Searing high-pitched wail erupts out of fuzzy loops and allover drum floes on “bAs of Re” on which upturned runs and echoed skitter might wink towards lofty prog-rock tropes, though the network of loops and pervasive grit levels the proceedings to an unruly but athletic stew. “Dialogue of a Man with his bA” is primordial in its foreboding energy, keyboard sludge, feedback-drenched and distorted wrangling, and simmering kitwork laying ground as Ricart’s six-string takes on an odd, twangy quality, erupting into maddening tremolo amid Lohman’s thrash. Matta Gawa are also at their jazziest here, fractured and scumbled guitar flecks becoming a muted language somewhere near the merger of Bern Nix and Wes Montgomery as Lohman parses time into self-reflective angularity. It’s almost straight, in fact, as Ricart introduces “Your bA is Within You,” even as the pair moves into harmolodic and dubbed-out territory. This is a deep, unruly recording devoid of New Weird-hipness, capturing the dangerous fragmentation of noise and psychedelic vibrations with a young, hungry energy and both musicians are individuals to keep an eye on.
JASON ROEBKE
In the Interval
In the Interval presents studio solo bass recordings by eminent Chicago avant-garde contrabassist Jason Roebke, captured literally in the downtime between touring engagements. Roebke is an incredibly versatile player, working in groups as diverse as trumpeter Nate Wooley’s vicious, noisy experimental trio with cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and drummer Mike Reed’s squirrely, historical repertory ensemble People, Places and Things. Certainly most bassists worth their salt seem to explore the solo medium – Peter Kowald, Barre Phillips, Joelle Leandre, Carlos Barretto – yet solo bass records aren’t exactly a dime a dozen. Taken together, the two pieces on In the Interval clock in barely under a half hour (one is twenty-two minutes, the other a mere six), and seem more like snatches of a greater process.
At first, the music might seem culled from practice tapes because of its brevity and worked-through quality. Roebke has a wonderful, woody tone and deep muscularity, building tensile taps and exploratory thwacks into a fleet, painterly evocation of movement and literary logic. Midway through the first piece, gestures built into song soon become scrabble, the bassist doubling on Waisvisz crackle-box as he plucks and whispers across guts and surface area. Rather than breaking up the program into a run-through of what he and the instrument can do both compositionally and technically, Roebke moves through a spare language of clear, related forms and audible space in a way that seems neither heady nor overly flashy. On the first piece, his phrasing and ideas appear quite simple and dryly questing, while the second conjures terse arco clatter and scrappy, prepared-string natter. Economical and somewhat narrow, the nakedness of these performances might not capture the recesses of the ear at first, for the connections between materials appear gradually and with concentrated dedication. Whatever one’s experience with solo playing or this Chicago mainstay’s work, In the Interval is worth time spent.
PHILL MUSRA
The Creator is So Far Out
Los Angeles-based tenor saxophonist and his work/journey have graced the pages of Ni Kantu before, as we’ve dug up previously unreleased tracks provided by the man himself, as well as acquired windows into his life and recordings for the Intex and Cosmic labels with his brother, multi-instrumentalist Michael Cosmic (1950-2001). Though Musra has assembled CD-Rs of archival material to almost no distribution over the past few years, his visible output has generally remained known only to connoisseurs of rare records from a bygone era. That is until now, as what is officially his second LP as a leader in over 35 years has been released in a limited edition via the Sagittarius A-Star label. The Creator is So Far Out takes its title from a composition that also appeared on his 1974 Creator Spaces LP (Intex) as well as on the present album. Here, he’s joined by drummer Don Hooker, percussionist Steven McGill and pianist Walter Barrilleaux on two sidelong originals.
The core trio of Musra, Hooker and McGill has been together since last year, making live appearances on the West Coast (most often at the Heartbeat House in LA) and cutting some YouTube videos that have yet to go viral. As one would hope, there is a rather profound difference between this trio and what came before. Rather than the slightly-unhinged democracy of his 1970s free unit with Cosmic, Musra stretches out his husky and somewhat minimalist riff on Newk over dry, regular conga and trap set patterns on the lyrical, loving ode “Yvonne,” peppered with occasional throaty wails. The title track is taken in a bluesy direction, Barrilleaux laying down churchy chords around Hooker’s loose lope and Musra’s slightly wandering declarations. McGill’s brief, glassy vibraphone is used as a marker between tenor and soprano solos, on which the leader’s pinched tone contrasts curiously with the rhythm section’s chunky groove. Boxy electric piano and flute shortly make a strange pair, as Musra runs through his arsenal. There’s always been an outsider quality to Musra’s music, and thirty-odd years ago that unbridled and sometimes unfocused energy probably contributed to his and his compatriots’ “unknown” status. Now, of course, that naturalness is something many musicians “work” to achieve, and if Musra’s music is a little more reigned in today, it’s not without a folksy honesty that makes The Creator is So Far Out a charmingly humanist statement.
Though released in a very limited edition, some copies should be available in the US from Eclipse.