Todd McComb's Jazz Thoughts

One thing about this format is that I need to cycle older entries onto an archive page every so often, or else this page gets to be too long. Even as is, it gets to be rather long. The previous nine months was thirty-nine entries and over twenty thousand words. Each time I move entries to an archive, I need to write a new first entry, to serve as some sort of introduction for those that follow. Perhaps turning to that previous first entry is a good idea at this point. It's more thoughtful. Or turn straight to my favorite recordings.

When I "recycled" this page the previous time, I was eager to do so on account of my growing knowledge & appreciation of the style of music vaguely called jazz. I wanted to put some of my earlier ramblings behind me, and indeed the immediately preceding nine months of writing is something with which I'm generally rather pleased. There are some ideas that aren't worked out terribly well, or are expressed clumsily, but there are — if I do say so myself — some good ideas. Hopefully there will be more in this iteration.

When I declared myself "ready" last time, I had concentrated largely on USA music. As I went on to write in September, I knew there was good European jazz(-like) music — I had even written about some non-USA performers — but I hadn't explored it much. Since then, it's dominated this space. What is there to say about that? I guess, frankly, it upsets me. I've never been one to prioritize USA output in other music — I don't think anyone who looks at my medieval writing could see it as a factor at all. Yet somehow, I believed that jazz, as invented in the USA, would be a different situation. There are leading USA musicians, many of whom go to play in Europe, and there are institutions that prioritize USA music, which is why European improvisation can seem a bit hidden from a listener here, but the volume of innovative talent in Europe is clearly ascending.

Why? This is not a difficult question to answer, sadly enough. It's about commitment. It's about commitment to nurturing musical talent in young people, and it's also about commitment to new artistic exploration. To the extent that USA supports musical development, it does so mostly in narrowly defined categories with strict limits on creativity. Young musicians, even those who are lucky enough to receive an extended education, are generally required to remain within conservative structures in order to remain funded. It's a travesty. The USA continues to have its share of eccentrics and iconoclasts, the sort of people whose creativity cannot be reined in by the structures around them, and those people have had a huge impact on worldwide musical innovation over the past decades. However, many of these people are also getting older or dying. Can young musicians in the USA survive — let alone thrive — while following their own path? It's a real question.

If jazz is "meant" to come out of a counter-culture, then what's that counter-culture in this country? Let's face it: Intellectualism is openly derided in the USA. How can a person innovate artistically if the sort of thought process necessary for innovation is derided? Our issues here go farther than mere funding for the arts, and they're chronic. Creativity here is being slowly starved, to where it's scary to think where this discussion might be in another twenty years. For now, any sort of widely adopted innovation has to be highly accessible. I don't want to dismiss accessibility, but that's a serious constraint, particularly if one cannot tug at its borders. The flip side is isolated styles that can become stiff in their lack of engagement with the public, which is another problem arising from intellectual segregation. Vital art is both public & creative.

Leaving aside that negativity, I've decided to drop the word "blog" from this space. I tried it on for size, and don't like it. This is not a set of reviews, however. I'll call it a tapestry of recording comments (and more). I like to discuss recordings in terms of other recordings, not so much as stand-alone entries. So comments about a particular recording might not be contained in only one space. I'm also prioritizing ensemble interactions, and basically the metaphor of real life as an improvised group activity. I've made recent comments in this space about modernism & postmodernism, and also about familiarity. I've implicitly treated modernism/postmodernism as a dialectic, and will be making that more explicit, as well as doing the same with familiarity/unfamiliarity. I'm presently fascinated by the latter idea.

When I started this project, I had the notion that I'd focus on younger performers, with the thought in turn of focusing on contemporary music-making and new ideas. The latter is still my focus, but I soon realized that there are older musicians who are still forging new styles today. So age isn't the real factor, but "what have you done lately?" is. Although appreciating people for their past accomplishments is certainly a worthwhile endeavor, that's not really the purpose of this space. Similarly, older musicians who are still in fine form, performing in a style they pioneered in decades past, are largely dealing with old music. (And these are the people most lauded by the USA media.) Here it's about new music, but age is unimportant.

Age, or even life... as I've added Tapestries by Bill Dixon (1925-2010) to my list of favorites. This addition has been a while in coming, and there are a few factors surrounding that. The above is actually the least of them, as I threw off the age notion quickly enough. Tapestries is a double album (and with a DVD that clearly shows how vital Dixon was at 83), and uses the largest group of musicians of an album I've included in this space. Dixon is someone who was innovating and seeking to refine his particular musical style well into his 80s, and it shows in Tapestries, which is something of a musical testament as his final studio album. The live album Envoi from 2010 uses exactly the same group of nine musicians, although Dixon's contribution on trumpet was recorded earlier, and he sounds frail addressing the crowd. There's less variety of material than on Tapestries, but still a push for new ideas.

I've found this music rather striking from the start, but did I like it? Five trumpets? I've found it an interesting album to live with, somewhat akin to my remarks about Morton Feldman's music and how it might or might not fit into my current life. The signature moment with Tapestries for me was when my partner and I were staying in a hotel room in San Francisco, out at the end of the N-line, near the ocean. We were there for the Barleywine Festival in February, and naturally didn't want to involve a trip back to the North Bay. It wasn't a particularly well-insulated room, and the various noises of the city were evident, prominently including the N train turnaround outside our window. It wasn't oppressive noise, but it was frequent, both human and mechanical. Somehow Tapestries fit perfectly into this environment. It reflected those sounds and merged with them. But did I like it? I still didn't know! I mean, the sounds of train cars and random people yelling in the distance aren't generally my idea of something to seek.

I had actually first paid close attention to this album while I was traveling with my family to Sedona. I had a fantastic view of the red rocks from the dining room table in the condo I was renting, and the same portable computer speakers as in San Francisco. Although the music was technically fascinating, it didn't do anything personal for me in that environment. I'm not sure why I returned to it, in fact. I've kept coming back to that subsequent San Francisco experience, however, and of course the idea of environmental music. The result of that trigger is that I've found Tapestries captivating, and I find myself linking it to other albums & ideas. I think that means I must like it? That same evening in San Francisco, we also listened to Stone Quartet - Live at Vision Festival, and found that it fit neatly into the urban landscape too, yet in a different sense. The albums have very different sorts of abstractions, Léandre & company into a form derived much more overtly from written music history, Dixon & company retaining those raw sounds woven together. This was also the origin of my "swamp" comment regarding Beyond Quantum. It projects a decidedly non-urban environment.

This idea on environment has played into some of my other recent comments, including about Pail Bug and Fremdenzimmer. (And I should add that I subsequently learned from Stef Gijssel's discussion that "Fremdenzimmer" is an explicit term for a spare bedroom lent out to traveling strangers. I had taken it to be coined.) If improvisation is inherently of a particular time & place, Dixon's music is immersed in very real places. Something like Pail Bug would seem to be more exotic, yet specific in its way. Despite the size of the ensemble, Dixon's ensemble on Tapestries has definite sonic kinship with the Daniel Levin Quartet: The trumpets are rarely playing at once, there is cello & bass together (and contrabass clarinet), and the drummer doubles on vibraphone, marimba, etc. The comparison ends with this idea on environment, however, as Levin's music projects the environment of the concert stage, not somewhere else. Not even the concert stage as surrounded by urban New York as might be said for the Stone Quartet. (And particularly considering my explicit mention of municipal transit above, the album Transit is also a natural point of comparison here, although Transit is more gestural and less of a landscape, integrated or otherwise.)

Returning to Feldman, his music suggests a rather pristine environment, whether the concert hall or perhaps simply disembodied out of one's audio speakers. There is no real sense of place to Feldman's tapestries. The idea of the concert hall as an environment itself is certainly not new to USA music, most prominently explored by Cage with his ideas to get the audience to listen to itself and to question the "frame" of the concert setting. Dixon confronts these ideas, blended even with environmental or ambient concerns, to create a distinctive sense of place. The trumpet techniques on the album are also fascinating, derived from Dixon's long work with the instrument, as is the ensemble interaction in such a unique group. What does Dixon do with ideas of familiarity on Tapestries? We hear familiar sounds, recontextualized as music — not so much even commented upon, but integrated as is, and explicitly humanized by the performers.

I've wanted to write more about Anthony Braxton in this space, and want to do it near the top of this new page, but I'm also not sure what to say. As already mentioned, Beyond Quantum is an amazing improvised recording, including a couple of other iconic USA musicians. Much of Braxton's significant work is older, of course.

When starting this project, I listened to a couple of his recent releases, chosen fairly randomly... part of his "Ghost Trance Music" as I've come to understand (which he views as "glue" music between his other simultaneous compositions). It's generally fairly slow & growly stuff, and didn't make a strong impression. What's made more of an impression is just how many musicians whose work I admire have connections to Braxton. That's been ear-opening, to be sure. What crystallized things a little better for me was eventually listening to his Quartet albums from the 1980s. I'm not dealing with music of that vintage in this space, but it's also obvious to hear the technical command, and simply the amazing improvisatory vitality imbued into dodecaphonic music. Very striking, and obviously very influential. I wish I'd heard it at the time, but then I didn't understand the relationships between jazz and contemporary classical music.

Much of Braxton's later compositional work seems to be rather grand, in the sense of constructing compositions where all can be played simultaneously, etc. I don't know what to make of this simultaneity idea, without experiencing it in practice. I can certainly conceive an Ives-ian sense of simultaneity, including in my own life with the musicians around me doing their own things. The music theater ideas are also intriguing... not the sort of thing I would pursue regularly, but as noted back in February, I would be very interested to see one staged. Braxton is also big on music as a reflection of general human interaction, which is one of my core interests. It almost seems as though he's reached such a stature that releasing an "ordinary" improvisatory album isn't enough. He's clearly one of the towering figures in USA music from the 1980s into now, and I can appreciate that some people follow everything he does closely. Reacting to my remarks upon rolling this page over a couple of days ago, there is simply no European version of Anthony Braxton. A followup question, I guess, is will we have anyone like him in the USA a few decades from now?

For now, though, we can marvel at Braxton's accomplishments and wonder what comes next. He's clearly one of the world's great musical figures, perhaps unparalleled.

There are certain clichés about "European free improvisation" as differentiated from "jazz," and although blending & borrowing are the norm these days, one could probably construct a few axes along which USA improv would occupy one end and European another. One obvious axis is the instruments themselves. There are standard jazz instruments such as drums, bass, saxophone & trumpet. In Europe, any instrument associated with classical music might lend itself to improvisation, naturally enough, and of course one sees that trend in USA now too. Another historical axis is that jazz has been known as fast & loud, and in comparison European improv has been slow & quiet. There is an element of truth to the latter, as exploring slow quiet textures does seem to be a contemporary concern, even if there are various European improvisers known for playing fast & loud.

Earlier this year, I noticed the Creative Sources label for the first time, via the new release listings at Squidco. This label has a distribution association with Clean Feed, was started at the same time, and is almost as prolific. However, Creative Sources is directed by Portuguese violist Ernesto Rodrigues (b.1959), and a large portion of the catalog includes his playing. Rodrigues' work exemplifies some of the discussion above, in that it's a free-form and often slowly moving exploration of texture between sometimes unusual instrument combinations. There is a sense of sonic tapestry perhaps, but definitely a close sense of timbral relationships between sounds and very detailed listening experiences both between the musicians and for the audience. Rodrigues is involved in so many recordings, it's difficult to know where to start, but I've been listening to a couple from 2011, particularly Le Beau Déviant featuring Heddy Boubaker on saxophone and Abdul Moimême on prepared electric guitar. Although this sounds little like traditional Western music, one obvious thing to note is the technical prowess of these performers. They seem to be carefully under control in even the most extreme sonic production from their instruments. The web suggests that something happened with Boubaker, and he is no longer able to play saxophone, but here his breath control is phenomenal. Moimême with the prepared electric guitar acts as percussion or even gongs at times, not an electric screech (leave that to the other two), and exemplifies the attention to detail in this style. All tracks are less evocative of human music (so to speak) than they are scenes from nature, perhaps finding the apotheosis of a French trend beginning in the late 1800s, and originally derived from Orientalist tendencies. This somehow becomes music about the natural environment, seeming distinct from humanity, as opposed to some of the other items I've discussed recently which incorporate the mechanical sounds of civilization into a soundscape. In any case, although I have found Le Beau Déviant rather interesting, and do enjoy the first track with its piercing saxophone, I've ultimately found the recording more interesting than compelling. Mainly, I guess, it doesn't fit my emphasis on human interaction in music, although obviously such is occurring. This is at least as true for the most recent recording including Rodrigues (as well as Moimême), Brume (still dated 2011), featuring a laptop-objects-drum duo called Diatribes. Although the tracks are not titled, this improvisatory sextet is said to evoke the mysterious sounds of a dark forest at night. While generally quiet and subtly mixed, it's a wide open canvas of pretty much any sound that can be made, including static and feedback.

Creative Sources does include other projects in its catalog, beyond Portugal & France, such as from Scandinavia or Eastern Europe. One item to note is Excerpts from anything, featuring bassist Achim Tang and prepared pianist Philip Zoubek who play with Joe Hertenstein in his more traditionally-aligned piano trio Tørn (and on their album Crespect). Here Tang & Zoubek are with trombonist Matthias Muche, in a dark & slow-moving trio album largely true to the concepts above. It's interesting to hear these musicians in this context, in part because it puts the brief "extended technique" sections on Crespect more in relief, and gives an added dimension to that already enjoyable album. Excerpts from anything was recorded in October 2010, a year or so after Crespect. Although Excerpts from anything does have a sort of ageless quality as evoked by its title, I find myself wishing for some changes in color over the course of the album, such as the high pitches punctuating some of these other items. The cover art features a big empty (abandoned?) room, mostly darkened, and that sense of largely empty expansiveness permeates the music. One can hear in it a "natural" animation of artifact.

In taking a look at the Creative Sources catalog, and seeing what I could learn about the musicians involved, I came across Pourtant les cimes des arbres, the first album on the new Dark Tree label by the French bassist Benjamin Duboc (b.1969). This album fits with most of the previous orientation. One big difference from Brume, though, is that it's quite minimalist in its use of instrumental resources. The drummer (Didier Lasserre) isn't even listed as a drummer, but rather specifically playing snare drum & cymbals. Daunik Lazro on baritone saxophone rounds out the trio (and I'm not sure why baritone saxophone seems so rare in USA jazz in the 2010s). I find this minimalist approach to instrumental resources to be intellectually stimulating, but also believe I'm really missing something by having a recording alone. If you cannot see what the performers are doing, does it matter? At some level, I'm listening to what I hear, and how it is produced is secondary. Pourtant les cimes des arbres is quite naturalist in orientation, with the track titles taken from a classic Haiku, emphasizing the East Asian lineage of French impressionism. Again the technique is impressive — particularly from the bass and on the minimal drum equipment — with very precise control of the way sounds develop. This is also the "noisiest" of the albums mentioned here, with very close microphones, and sustained dissonant shrieks based on feedback in ostensibly acoustic instruments. I'd be very interested in hearing these musicians interact in a different format, although the last track does inject human semantics into the music in the guise of a recognizable melody (presumably reflecting human observation of the scene, and so far from arbitrary in the Haiku sense). Pourtant les cimes des arbres has received quite a bit of critical praise, and might be the most accomplished album in this general style, also from 2011.

Probably the album that I've already featured here that is most similar to those in this entry is In Just, by drummer Martin Blume and his German-Hungarian quartet. It features some of the same sorts of sounds and techniques, likewise with very fine details of interaction between the performers. What makes In Just speak to me in ways these other albums, albeit intriguing & technically impressive, do not? I've been pondering this question. For one, it's a drummer's album, featuring an overall percussive sense, and a resulting manipulation of the passage of time that I find appealing. I would characterize the naturalist albums above as more "observational" in that sense, more a depiction (however creative) than a manipulation. This is really the hint to my reaction, namely in the way the human element is expressed in the recordings. In Just has a sense of human dialog, or even an incorporation of the mechanical aspects of civilization, as per my discussion of Bill Dixon and others previously. Why should this be more appealing? Obviously it's a personal thing. Abstracting the human element out of a depiction — and of course humans are centrally involved in these performances — has a clear intellectual appeal, especially as civilization continues its assault on wilderness. I greatly enjoy hiking & wilderness, so why not as musical impressions? Perhaps one day these items will be more compelling, but for now, I find myself focused on the human elements, whether as musical dialog & social interaction between the musicians, or as transformation of civilization, or even humanization of its more mechanical aspects. Perhaps I feel no need for a human depiction of something outside civilization, something I could observe myself. It's a question I'll continue to ponder.

Continuing something of this theme, as well as building on my earlier remarks on Stone Quartet - Live at Vision Festival, I had occasion to have another hotel experience involving that album. My partner & I stay in inexpensive places, and in this case, there was a door to an adjoining room that was particularly bad at blocking sound... so at one point, we suddenly had a loud rhythm from next door, usually in 3s, so BOOM-BOOM-BOOM. The volume of this sound coming through the door was on par with the music in our own room. I was listening to some Javanese gamelan at the time, and the BOOM-BOOM-BOOM ruined the experience. Gamelan music with all of its nested repeating cycles has a sort of expansive quality that also becomes delicate against an aggressive competing rhythm, and that aggression definitely conflicts with its charms. I do not escalate, so was not going to become loud, but I also wanted to enjoy some music (and I find listening to music in various contexts to be valuable). I tried something likewise with an aggressive driving rhythm, and found some parity with the BOOM-BOOM-BOOM; that music could be enjoyed, with a bit of distraction. Then I turned to the Stone Quartet, which does not have a drummer or sustained rhythms. Their music made the BOOM-BOOM-BOOM seem utterly irrelevant, as if a 1-2-3 had entirely lost its coherence and become background static. If one stopped to ask if the BOOM-BOOM-BOOM was still there, yes it was, but it was not noticeable as anything related to music. What to make of this? Is this a humanization, a dehumanization, an obliteration of the external environment? Perhaps it's an indication of how people, and musicians, can create their own environments — in some ways the opposite of these impressionist nature sound scenes. (Maybe this also speaks to the creation of "jazz" as an art form concerned with human dialog.)

Finally, note that those naturalist scenes are extremely fragile, and generally spoiled by any sort of sonic pollution. Their sound worlds are not inclusive. This likewise reflects a depiction of wilderness, so is hardly a criticism. Indeed, any of these comments regarding humanity can easily be turned around and viewed differently. There is a sense in which these natural depictions seem extremely mechanized, for instance, not least of which because the instruments are mechanical contraptions. It's a style embedding a contradiction, reflected in my ambivalence.

There's been a bit of a lag here, not through any disinterest on my part, but there's been a lag in releases, and indeed up to this point, most of the new things I was hearing were still dated 2011. I've had a discussion of Kyle Bruckmann's recent recordings planned for almost a month now, and have listed Psychotic Redaction (likewise released in 2011) in preparation, but I've been waiting to hear some related material, and erred in the way I sought to procure it. Hence the delay. Over on the medieval side of things, I can say with some confidence that 2011 was a particularly good year for albums of high interest to me, and the numbers are saying the same here under "jazz" — but that could be attributable to the development of my familiarity during 2011, and not about the years per se. So hopefully 2012 has much more to bring in this space.

In the meantime, one recording dated 2012 — and in this case, it was even recorded in 2012 — to discuss is The Gowanus Session by Thollem McDonas, William Parker & Nels Cline. I noticed this recording because it included William Parker, and I was not otherwise familiar with pianist Thollem. The album includes a stimulating density & variety of sound, in some ways superficially reminiscent of Pail Bug in the ostinato emphasis & some extensions. For some reason, I wanted to conceive of this album as a response to Pail Bug, but that comparison ends up being quite strained. On the other side would be an album such as Good Citizen which includes notable classical influences in the piano part. Ultimately, The Gowanus Session seems more like a juxtaposition of styles than those two "reference" albums. There is a lot of repeated tonal material in the piano part, often ostinato driven, as well as explicit harmonic motion that isn't necessarily integrated with Parker's creative but usually understated bass playing, or Cline's rock-style "shredding" on the guitar (which turns out to be more prevalent than the tapping style). No doubt this is intentional, contrasting the often placid & slow-moving piano part against frenetic background material; or elsewhere, a tonal drive in the piano against more static rhythm-oriented material. Personally, that sort of "worlds apart" aspect doesn't work terribly well for me, because I'm focused more on musicians hearing each other, reacting, and synthesizing. Still, it's an interesting ensemble (and the electric guitar does not dominate), with some worthwhile ideas. The poem that makes up the (otherwise arbitrary, presumably) track titles for the all-improvised session is also cute. It's a play on individuality, obviously a theme for this album, and from the standpoint of respect for others, but the music itself projects a sense of disengagement that isn't fitting my life right now. For people in a different place, I can see how it could be more meaningful.

Although it was never my intention to write in this order, mention of The Gowanus Session actually provides a perfect lead-in to a discussion of recent recordings by Kyle Bruckmann (b.1971). It was after seeing The Gowanus Session listed as an upcoming release with William Parker that I visited the Porter Records website and saw that Bruckmann's quintet Wrack had an album Cracked Refraction, also from 2012, but already in circulation. I was intrigued by an oboe-led ensemble with bass clarinet & viola, so took the plunge.

Although Cracked Refraction hasn't become a favorite, it was interesting enough to inspire listening to some related material, and I'll discuss a group of six recordings in this entry. As previously mentioned, my favorite is Psychotic Redaction, a 2011 release of a 2006 trio recording, featuring Bruckmann on reeds & electronics with Michael Zerang on hand drums and Jim Baker on (keyboard) electronics. This is the "most electronic" album yet to be featured in this space, although the juxtaposition with the traditional Middle Eastern hand drums is one of its appeals. Whereas the album does not state who formed the trio, and the tracks are apparently group improvisations, the title Psychotic Redaction forms an obvious parallel with Cracked Refraction, and aspects of Bruckmann's conception are clearly reflected strongly, as they can be assessed from other albums with different performers. Indeed, his duo Cube of Force has an album Book of Vile Darkness (available as a free download), that shows similar emphasis & concept with electronics. That album is more explicitly punk-influenced, and generally takes a more straightforward and trance-repetitive form from track to track. In the case of Psychotic Redaction, the redaction creates a very unstable harmonic situation, with extreme movement across a hypnotic rhythmic background. I have very little firsthand familiarity with the punk style, but hearing music here & elsewhere that is explicitly influenced by it, I begin to pick up a bit of the technical traits. Here they're transfigured in some ways into a "jungle" setting, with disorienting electronics. At a few points, the electronics are a bit cliché, but that's only a few points. Mostly, this is a very original improvisatory trio album, with some Middle Eastern shadings in the reed playing as well, and one wonders why it took so long to appear on record. It's certainly not quiet music, but makes a strong impression when something more aggressive seems warranted. It captured my attention from the first moment I heard it.

Although Psychotic Redaction was the earliest of the recordings featuring Bruckmann to appear last year, perhaps its delayed release was provoked by other upcoming items. Even more recently released than Cracked Refraction is On Procedural Grounds, a "classical" album of composed music. There's some overlap with Bruckmann's style elsewhere, particularly with Wrack, but On Procedural Grounds also comes off very clearly as contemporary composed music, often very elaborately choreographed, and not especially fluid or spontaneous. That could be a matter of practice time, more than the musical writing per se, and the different pieces use different ensembles. Having enough time to get performers familiar with tricky material is obviously one of the basic tensions of avant garde music, including in jazz.

Although I had some familiarity with Michael Zerang as a drummer, I knew nothing of Jim Baker other than Psychotic Redaction, and so sought to understand what he was bringing to the trio. He leads a working quartet called Extraordinary Popular Delusions (apparently a popular theme, given Ingrid Laubrock's recent album) which released their second album in 2011: Aprocryphal fire in the warehouse, and other explanations. Baker plays different keyboards there, including piano, and electronics. This is an experimental ensemble, improvising on a weekly basis in a club in Chicago, and the album catches some of their recent live highlights along with some studio tracks. Apparently they don't do much advance planning at all. There is some interesting material here, and one can hear Baker's own style reflected both here and on Psychotic Redaction, but unfortunately Aprocryphal fire suffers from muddy sound quality at times. (Psychotic Redaction has a very "up close" sound where you feel like you're hearing everything going on, although I have no idea who is doing what much of the time, other than the drums.) That's the biggest weakness in what is otherwise a rather creative & spontaneous album, one making a strong first impression, even if the interest level tails off a bit at times. Mars Williams "shredding" on saxophone against an electronic background can be particularly striking.

Returning to Cracked Refraction, this album has a distinct classical feel to it, in pretty much equal mixture with jazz-improvisation. That's not a criticism per se, but an acknowledgement as per this space (and I should probably create less segmented spaces, which I'm seeking to do), and also a reasonable reflection of Porter Records, which claims not to consider genre. As is obvious from this entry, Cracked Refraction created enough interest to get me to hear several other items, but it also seems overly orchestrated at times. Obviously the quintet itself is unusual with oboe, viola & bass clarinet to go with a traditional rhythm section, but the way the instruments are deployed and engage in solos etc. is very much styled after jazz. Yet somehow it doesn't project a jazz feel. This is a matter of melody & harmony presumably, but also the way the pieces unfold with distinctly scripted roles in a contrapuntal context. It's common for slow-moving parts to have another instrument juxtaposed with more activity. There is a lot of pressure on the drummer (Tim Daisy) to create interest against some slow-moving harmonies, for instance. The different tracks have the character of "scenes" at times, with a particular static mood. The other side of this is there are intricate themes, both harmonically & rhythmically, which are played with a great deal of grace & fluidity — these are obviously talented performers who know what they're doing. (Perhaps somewhat akin to the Claudia Quintet in some of these qualities.) There's a sort of synchronicity and resolution with that that's more evocative of classical music in some ways. There's also an "industrial" feel at times with perhaps found objects in percussion, and hints of a punk mood. This is particularly true of the penultimate piece, but then the album ends with a simple lullaby. It's certainly an interesting effort, but not quite speaking to me personally, as these comments suggest.

Bass clarinetist Jason Stein is a member of Wrack, and his Delmark album The Story This Time was also released in 2011, receiving some good press. I didn't know what to make of the album at the time, since it seemed the most concrete statement about the style was that it was from Chicago. Huh? I'll discuss this Chicago idea a bit more below. In any case, The Story This Time, a quartet album featuring Keefe Jackson on reeds and Joshua Abrams & Frank Rosaly on bass & drums, often evokes a classic jazz feel. It's a mix of Stein's own music with tunes by earlier jazz masters. Stein's trill technique is rather impressive (as are other aspects), and the album often evokes a positive, uplifting feeling. It's generally very pleasant, with a bit of contemporary extensions thrown into a fairly classic concept, albeit featuring bass clarinet. This is a good album for more conservative listeners who nonetheless want something new, and like Cracked Refraction, gets high marks for "accessibility" — although I'm not always sure what that is. It's a term applied to Wrack, though, and I think it's safe to say that Cracked Refraction has an element of self-conscious accessibility... of making sure a particular rhythmic-harmonic theme is audible and understood... that contributes to a stiff impression of some otherwise rather interesting material. The Story This Time has more flow in that regard, and a sense of swing.

Bruckmann has recently relocated from Chicago to Oakland (and I'm intending to go hear him live when things work out for that), but other than his classical album On Procedural Grounds, these items all have a firm Chicago orientation. As noted, descriptions often mention items such as this as if saying they're from Chicago describes the musical style. Perhaps I'm deaf to it. After all, I grew up in Indiana, not terribly far from Chicago, and whatever native element was there, presumably I was immersed in it. Maybe it sounds distinctive to someone from Europe. I've yet to see, for instance, any substantial discussion of Native American style contributing to jazz music. It's an established fact that, as oppressed people, African Americans & Native Americans intermingled considerably in the early United States (this is established more via genetic testing than any particular oral history, as far as I know). So is there some connection between that and the fact that the region around Chicago (and Indiana, of course) had huge native populations? I don't know, but I'll add that when I've had the chance to listen to native tribal music ostensibly from the area, it sounds awfully familiar. Undoubtedly Chicago was central to the development of the US jazz tradition for decades. Is that in the past? For the most part, Chicago jazz ensembles appearing on record now seem fairly conservative, perhaps while including rock fusion. Other musicians have moved to New York and elsewhere. (And I guess it's telling that the idea of a "New York sound" immediately brings musical images to mind for me.) What does all this say about the idea of a "Chicago style" as an audible sound? I'm not sure, but it does seem that I'm too close to hear it as a distinct entity. Another common aspect would seem to be an explicit emphasis on accessibility. Psychotic Redaction is probably the most "out there" thing I've heard from Chicago (although Aprocryphal fire might qualify), and Bruckmann is originally from Connecticut, whereas Zerang is of Assyrian heritage. Anyway, these are some tentative thoughts that I may be revisiting.

Another 2012 release worth noting (recorded in August 2011) is Overseas IV by Norwegian bassist Eivind Opsvik (b.1973). I first heard Opsvik in his work with Kris Davis's quartet, and was also interested in the cast on this release, which includes Tony Malaby (also in Davis's quartet with Opsvik) and Kenny Wollesen, a frequent John Zorn collaborator. Additionally, there's Brandon Seabrook on guitar, and most intriguingly Jacob Sacks on keyboards — mainly harpsichord. That's an interesting lineup, to be sure, and who can resist the idea of harpsichord in jazz? With piano preparations (and bass preparations, for that matter) gaining increasing prominence, it seems like an interesting fit. It turns out that Overseas IV does not include a lot of jazz per se, that is, in the most restrictive sense of being representative of the rhythms & harmonies of classic jazz. There are a couple of "jazz" themes. Mostly it draws from Baroque music and Rock, combined broadly in a variety of ways. There's even a Renaissance/virginals theme (& viol-style playing on the bass), plus different metal or punk styles on the other end. Each of these elements is treated fairly distinctly, but differently in each track, i.e. there are identifiable elements in each track that develop together within the logic of that piece. These include some interesting combinations, and of course classic Rock, particularly early metal, has a history of drawing on Bach and others, so this conception isn't completely novel, albeit played out differently here in a more improvisational context. The resulting impression is often kind of a gothic or "horror movie" representation of Baroque themes, particularly against a hard Rock style screech or rhythm, although there are periods of lightness also (such as an island rhythm intro on vibraphone). Occasionally there's some extended tonality, a la mid-20th century movie scores, but for the most part, the performance sticks to the tonal space of its genres, albeit with some Rock noise. The jazz influence is found in the rhythmic space carved out by individual performers as much as anywhere. The last track changes up the sound world a bit, prominently using what is apparently credited as a "marching machine" alongside organ instead of harpsichord. Other tracks have a bit of the character of a Baroque "battle" piece to them. The result is some striking sound combinations and textures, such as on track 5, where a "gothic" intro gives way to offbeat jagged banging on the harpsichord into an extended tonality. I'd've been interested in exploring something like that a little more, rather than so many Rock references. The other aspect of the album is that, although the combinations are striking, once established on a track, they tend to remain static for long periods, sometimes even bridging ideas from one track into the next. The album consequently becomes less interesting to hear once you're following what's going on, although perhaps the idea is to be trance-like sometimes. More typically, it's to underscore the successful combination of elements for the listener. Finally, I should note that I did not hear the first three Overseas albums, so cannot compare.

Another 2012 release to discuss (recorded in September 2011) is Book of Mæ'bul by saxophonist Darius Jones (b.1978). Jones has been attracting quite a bit of attention, and so I finally felt compelled to hear this, his third leader album, and third of a trilogy (each with a different lineup). Going only on what was written, the approach Jones takes to creating music did not seem very similar to how I conceive things, and so I had not investigated his earlier albums, despite their acclaim. I want to discuss the approach a bit, both in order to give some thoughts on this album, and as fodder for more general discussion of approach to material in the future. There is plenty written elsewhere, so I'm not going to get into much detail with the music itself.

Jones's trilogy is conceived around narrative, and not only narrative, but characters with painted representations. He and the artist, Randall Wilcox, are even intending a graphic novel dealing with the same characters and stories. I don't mean to make any judgments about people who like graphic novels, but it's just never been me. So this seemed quite foreign. These are also explicitly stories and characters dealing with Jones's past. Although, what with my medieval concerns & interests in historical world music, this might not seem like a big deal, my emphasis on improvisatory music in the context here has been strongly centered on being in the present. So again, a bit of dissonance... Jones telling stories about his past. Jones also comes from a strongly Christian background which, again, does not resonate with me. In one interview, he says he wants to be a "country preacher" in music. Somehow, I handle Christianity without much concern when it's music from the 1400s, so I'm aware of the contradiction.

So those were three fairly concrete reasons that descriptions of Jones and his music did not engage me to seek it out. On the other side are the musicians he's been involved with... Matthew Shipp, Cooper-Moore, and in this quartet release, Ches Smith (of Mary Halvorson's quintet, for which a new release is imminent), et al. It turns out that this is a more reliable guide than how Jones's music is described, and Book of Mæ'bul is an appealing album. Jones has a clear sense of what he's trying to do, and that shines through in his music. Readers might recall some other discussions where I lamented that there seemed to be no purpose to a release. That isn't the case here. There's a sophisticated abstract conception that also deals with very human themes, all in a traditional jazz context (including taking turns soloing). Well done. (The paintings are interesting too.)

Although I'll put aside any issues I might have with narratives or graphic novels when it comes to Jones, I still wonder about the issue of past & present. I am not finding these sources right now — and there is a lot of writing about Jones & quotes from Jones online — but I read that Book of Mæ'bul ends his trilogy from the past and that further albums will be set in the present. I also read that this is the ending of the first set of three albums of what will be three sets of three. Bluntly, it seems to me that it's not possible to both be in the present and already know how many albums it is going to take to tell a story. So we'll see what happens. I'll be interested in Jones's future work, particularly if he lets his instincts take over a little more in a less thematically structured & more open-ended way. That's probably easier to do than for someone with nothing to say to think of something worthwhile to communicate. That all said, it's also exciting to hear some commonality from someone seemingly starting from such a different place.

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• July 2011 – March 2012 (39 entries)
• October 2010 – June 2011 (25 entries)

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