Moment's Notice
Reviews of Recent Media
(continued)
@xcrswx
MOODBOARD
Feedback Moves FM10
The duo @xcrswx with drummer Crystabel Efemena Riley and alto saxophonist Seymour Wright has flown a bit beneath the radar. They recorded and released Lookbook on Café Oto’s digital-only Takuroku label during Covid lockdown back in 2020, followed by two EPs on the Feedback Moves label run by musician Conal Blake but none got the attention they deserved. MOODBOARD is a bracing new recording by the duo, each of whom absorb/integrate/ignore/gnash traditions ranging from free jazz to noise-thrash to footwork/jungle electronic dance music to no-wave into a highly personal language. For the release, they took live recordings from a residency in Brussels into the studio to rework, loop, overdub, abrade, and refine the source material into a careening 36-minute piece.
Though divided into 8 cuts, the recording unfolds seamlessly from Riley’s opening incantatory looping drum patterns. A short, repeated shred of Wright’s saxophone is interjected, making way to cyclical crying reed sighs that overlap and build as drums begin to quietly rumble up. The piece continues to jump-cut from one motivic section to the next, interrupted by sudden breaks that serve to launch things in new directions. Electronic cracks, fractured shards of frayed drum claps and reed yelps, and reversed and distressed snippets explode, further pushing and subverting the trajectory.
Acoustic sounds of drum resonance and reed overtones build intensity and density interjected with electronic splinters and gruff blasts of energy. The mix of the piece is key here, evolving back and forth from balanced detail to overdriven saturation which then cracks open. Across a panoply of projects, Riley and Wright have honed keen structural sensibilities. What could easily devolve into sonic mayhem is dexterously reconstructed into an exhilarating whole. The piece concludes with a return to the looping drum patterns that opened the recording, repeating them, slowly speeding them up and layering them to build tension, and then concluding with a hard cut to silence. Kudos to the Feedback Moves label for supporting @xcrswx. MOODBOARD is an inspired view into their continued journey.
–Michael Rosenstein
أحمد [Ahmed]
سماع [Sama'a] (Audition)
Otoroku ROKU046
For its first studio album, the quartet أحمد (henceforth referred to in English transliteration as Ahmed) recasts the four pieces which make up pioneering bassist and oud player Ahmed Abdul-Malik’s 1958 leadership debut Jazz Sahara as the four self-contained sides of a double LP. To recap for new listeners, the band, comprising pianist Pat Thomas, alto saxophonist Seymour Wright, bassist Joel Grip, and drummer Antonin Gerbal, honors Abdul-Malik's music which fused Arabic, East African and jazz modes, but in doing so reimagines it as something thoroughly contemporary, startling and visceral.
Whether by coincidence or design, none of the four sides exceeds 19-minutes, modest by the ensemble’s usual long-form standards. Nonetheless the group’s characteristic dissection of Abdul-Malik’s melodies into terse rhythmic units, replicated until they bear scant connection to the source, remains intact albeit necessarily condensed. In a Venn diagram, Ahmed would inhabit that portion where the source material intersects with minimalism, heavy metal and noise in a fractious but joyous mash up.
Part of the album’s charge stems from how each player narrows his expressive palette to sharpen the ensemble’s collective identity. For example, Thomas, Grip, and Gerbal constitute the trio Ism, whose open-ended piano-trio voyages, roaming freely through the jazz tradition, in no way equate to Ahmed with Wright subtracted. In Ahmed, however, they drive toward pattern and pulse, shaping a disciplined unified engine rather than a narrative flow. Wright too maintains multiple personas, many of which co-opt extreme textures that evoke industrial process and circuitry as much as saxophone, making even his abrasive contributions here seem pointedly focused.
Even so, Wright loosens the frame in “Ya Annas.” Instead of locking exclusively into hammered motifs, he threads muezzin slurs, clipped fragments, and serpentine circular-breathed strands through the rhythm section’s grid, taking inspiration from Johnny Griffin’s mercurial solo on the Abdul-Malik original without imitating it. Although Thomas stays steadfastly sighted on the percussive cells, he flashes unexpected lyric undertones. While generally slightly less prominent in the mix, he features strongly in the prelude to “El Haris,” where clanking piano circles staggered saxophone plosives in a spacious duet which slyly nods to the theme, before the ensemble tightens its focus. Later, he stands out again towards the conclusion of “Farah Al ‘Alaiyna,” as off kilter piano meshes with Grip’s pizzicato throb to cue to a final run through the head.
Spontaneous in-the-moment arrangements offer nuance. Pointillist rubato sections emerge as a framing device on “El Haris” within which the tune surfaces and retreats, while the other cuts often abandon explicit thematic reference after the initial statement. Bassist and drummer introduce “Isma’a” at a brisk tempo, Grip embroidering Gerbal’s tattoo until Thomas and Wright enter with a tumbling unison. Grip especially benefits from the studio mix, which reveals the invention in his shifting riffs and propulsive bowing; his lines glue the ensemble’s disparate layers. Similarly Gerbal morphs from one figure to another with near-imperceptible transitions, generating a relentless momentum that hovers between underlying drone and kinetic whirlwind.
With the group’s vocabulary distilled into compact forms, the discs allow a grandstand view of Ahmed’s aesthetic without sacrificing its depth. However, it represents not a turning point but a parallel path: during a recent four-night Café Oto residency, the quartet navigated just one of the compositions each evening in extended, hour-long explorations, proving that compression here does not curtail ambition. For the curious, this set presents an approachable point of entry, for fans it remains essential.
–John Sharpe
JD Allen
Love Letters (The Ballad Sessions)
Savant Records SCD 2226
I am sorry to admit that in recent years JD Allen has somewhat fallen off from my radar, along with several other artists whose careers I had followed with great interest in the pre-covid years. This is much to my loss given Allen’s rich and varied output over the last four years. From his 2021 solo album Queen City to the unorthodox trio date This (2023), which featured Gwilyn Jones on drums and Alex Bonney on electronics, Allen has experimented with repertoire, shifted band lineups, and pursued new sonic possibilities. In every new context, his playing remains pithy, economical, and melodically inventive.
With Love Letters, Allen moves directly back to the center of the mainstream jazz tradition. Given the exploratory bent of his last few albums, one might expect Allen to introduce a few wrinkles or twists to the ballad record format. Not here. Along with pianist Brandon McCune, bassist Ian Kenselaar, and drummer Nic Cacioppo, Allen lays down eight gorgeous tracks. The quartet takes “Where Are You?” at a glacial tempo, and its unadorned delivery makes it easy to imagine sitting alone in an empty bar at 2am, working on one last scotch as the band finishes its last set. Allen et al solve the pacing issue that can make ballad albums drag on by counting off every other track at a medium tempo. On tunes where Allen dwells in the middle and lower ends of the tenor, as on the opener “You Are Too Beautiful,” “Stardust,” and the rarely heard “Mya Buddy,” he sounds very Dexter-ish, even in articulation and note shape. When he sits more in the upper half of the horn, he has a more contemporary ballad approach that combines nuanced and liquid phrasing with a centered and full-bodied tone. If only it was possible to wrap oneself in his lush sound. Love Letters has everything one could want in a ballads album: lyrical, touching, and emotional playing; a tasty rhythm section; and favorite tunes mixed in with lesser-known chestnuts. Moreover, its immediacy reminds me why I was attracted to Allen’s playing in the first place, motivating me to go back and dig into what I have missed.
–Chris Robinson
Roy Brooks
The Free Slave
Time Traveler TT-M001
Recorded in April 1970 and issued on Muse in 1972, drummer Roy Brooks’ The Free Slave appears to be only the second album released from weekly Left Bank Jazz Society concerts at Baltimore’s Famous Ballroom, following 1969’s Home! by hometowner Gary Bartz’s NTU Troop, released on Milestone in 1970. Esteemed as Left Bank concerts now are, after umpteen releases from the LBJS’s own trove of tapes, they didn’t attract so much national attention back then. New York musicians knew it as an easy one-day hop (the Famous was a block north of Penn Station, where they could catch a late train home) with large and enthusiastic, if occasionally finicky, predominantly African American audiences.
That said, the Left Bank connection was prominently billed on Bartz’s and Brooks’s LP covers. Young Gary Giddins, in his Free Slave notes reproduced here, remarked on the concert’s “artist-audience conversation” – the audible encouragement listeners might offer, nicely captured by New York engineer Orville O’Brien, who’d recorded Freddie Hubbard’s Night of the Cookers and would mix Ornette’s Friends and Neighbors, live recordings that show an appreciation for venue atmosphere. The call and response esthetic is strong between bandstand and the house.
“Come on Roy!” “Do your thing man!” “Roy, you understand me?” “You go, Roy. Do it all, brother, do it all!” “Ease up, ease up.” “That’s what I want!”
The four compositions the quintet stretch out on differ in rhythm, mood, and tempo, but all reflect the energetic minor/modal hardbop Jackie McLean among others were propagating in the early/mid-1960s. (You could say much the same of Home!) The title track’s a grits-and-greens groove with a little NOLA sway in the snare drum. Woody Shaw’s line-ending rips and drop offs make the terse melody sing. Tenor saxist George Coleman digs deep into the bluesy implications – the kind of solo Pres might call “all belly.” A unison vamp for Cecil McBee’s bass and Hugh Lawson’s left hand is the foundation, but the piano could use a tune-up. Lawson echoes McCoy pentatonic but without the pedal-down thunder: leaner, lighter.
This stuff could be hard on trumpeters but Woody Shaw never sounds fazed here (or on Home!); iron chops, high notes, catchy riffs, and fiendish runs – hear the crowd cheer him on, as his solo keeps building on the 5/4 “Five for Max.” There Brooks’ chomping hi-hat pays tribute to his leader/colleague in percussion choir M’BOOM. (It was a sore point with Max Roach, who had played in 5/4 first in 1959.) The horns sound especially tasty when they mix it up a bit on the rideouts, and merge in ratty unison on the head of McBee’s “Will Pan’s Walk,” where Coleman flies over the changes. McBee’s sound is an early example of 1970s bass style: low-action and amplification contribute to a busy rubbery sound that was well worth the trade-off in tone quality for pluckers who no longer had to struggle to project. (Shaw and McBee would cross paths again a few times, notably on Shaw’s 1977 LP The Iron Men.)
Roy Brooks solos on two of four tunes, but he plays with solo fire and flexibility behind the soloists much of the time: a drummer-leader’s prerogative. He’s always cooking, prodding the quintet along, and changing up his colors from soloist to soloist. One more sign Brooks connected with locals that Sunday: he returned to play the Famous in November. A few attractions who entertained Left Bank audiences in the intervening seven months, some more than once: Karl Berger, Jackie McLean, Stan Kenton, Horace Silver, Buddy Rich, Thad Jones, Jeremy Steig, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Braxton/Corea/Holland/Altschul, Sam Rivers, Wayne Shorter, Blakey, Dizzy, and Woody Herman.
Gary Bartz’s Home! awaits reissue.
–Kevin Whitehead
Kai Fagaschinski
Aerodynamics
NI VU NI CONNU nvnc-lp066/067
Clarinetist Kai Fagaschinski has been an integral part of the Berlin scene for over two decades, playing in groups like the clarinet duo The International Nothing with Michael Thieke, The Dogmatics with Chris Abrahams, Los Glissandinos with Klaus Filip, The Magic I.D., and Splitter Orchestra. But oddly, Aerodynamics is his first recording as a leader. Over the course of two extended pieces, Fagaschinski digs into two contrasting, though complementary settings for clarinets. “Welcome to the 20th Century,” in what the composer refers to as study in swarm behavior, is performed by The Paranormal Clarinet Society, an all-clarinet octet featuring Laurent Bruttin, Lucio Capece, Sam Dunscombe, Chris Heenan, Theo Nabicht, Michiko Ogawa, Michael Thieke, and Fagaschinski. “Surrounded by Idiots” is a multi-tracked piece built on interwoven layers of improvisation. Both delve into an examination of the rich multiphonics of clarinet performed by masters of the instrument.
“Welcome to the 20th Century” was initially instigated by an invitation to write a composition for an evening of conceptual pieces for expanded clarinet ensemble. Fagaschinski explains, “my point of departure for the octet was to treat the ensemble as a flock of clarinets and develop swarm-like scenarios. At the same time, I thought of the 8 players as a kind of acoustic 8-channel installation with the musicians surrounding the audience ... Sounds appear and disappear in casual relation to each other. Inside this loose net, precisely connected events travel between players making tones and sub-chords move through the room as a kind of acoustic panning.” For this recording, the composer took a bit of a different approach, asking each of the players to record their parts individually at separate sessions, introducing an element of open realization to the piece. Fagaschinski used the methodically time-blocked score to mix the contributions from each player into an expansive whole with the voice panned across the stereo plane.
The piece begins with the voicing and slow transformation of a multiphonic chord. Fagaschinski likens the structure to working at a mixing board. “The volume faders are set in motion; certain frequencies get filtered in and out; the mute button turns tones on and off. Basic parameters are altered in simple ways.” From the sonorous beginning, the piece begins to develop multi-layered beating frequencies as high tones quaver against the resonances of bass and contrabass clarinet parts. Hisses, pad pops, breathy exhalations, frictive clicks and abrasions are introduced and the sections of timbral grit intertwine with microtonality in swarming skeins that build density and release into more open sections where tones transform into spare textures. The composer’s subsequent astute mixing of the parts delivers a richly orchestrated ensemble.
“Surrounded by Idiots” is a multi-tracked piece for Fagaschinski’s clarinet playing with one track recorded every day over the course of nine days. He explains the impetus for the piece. “In group improvisation there is often a tendency to adjust to each other either by aligning or by creating a specific contrast. This seems to be driven by the need for integration. Within this experiment, the different voices stay where they are (or change or stop by their own means), integration is not their concern. This ‘carelessness’ isn’t driven by ego either, it’s simply the default of the piece. This oddness of interaction and expression fascinates me.” The only instruction he followed was to time-box each improvisation to exactly 35 minutes and 19 seconds. Eschewing the use of motivic cells, the clarinetist structured each take around extended long tones, burrs of breath, and overblown abrasions.
While he was conscious of leaving space in each take, he didn’t attempt to structure them around a particular compositional form. The subsequent tracks were layered across the stereo plane in random order and while there was no editing or cutting, he did make use of adjusting volume to accentuate the tracks accrued into a mercurial whole. Lines shift in and out of synch, with areas of sputtered abstraction settling into subtle, layered, shifting tonality. There is an overarching sense of patience that informs the results. Even with nine tracks, things never get busy or impenetrable. Every choice of tone, timbre, and texture arise with overall clarity in the mix as it develops an internal arc which is astutely resolved at the 35:19 mark. As always with NI VU NI CONNU, the production of the recording is superb, with two LPs cut at 45 RPM to maximize detail and detailed notes by Fagaschinski. This is a sterling presentation of his singular vision of both the clarinet and an approach toward the blurred lines between improvisation and compositional structure.
–Michael Rosenstein