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Gato Libre
Strange Village
Onoff Records, Japan
Intriguing, and so is the music. Tamura's slowly unraveling trumpet lines (don't go flashing on Kenny Wheeler here--Tamura's far less elliptical) color the long-held accordion tones of Satoko Fuji, Kazuhiko Tsumura's Spanish guitar, and Norikatsu Koreyasu's acoustic bass.
Strange Village (taken as a whole since the mood of these ten pieces is very much like movements alluding to a central master theme) is very meditative, sly, and almost of an Eastern European folky atmosphere. I found myself thinking of the circuitous routes through a strange village which a cat might take--under wash lines, between houses, behind rows of children's backpacks.
Subtle humor does arrive now and then, possibly as unintentional as a cat's as well, what with the dancing trumpet lines of the Dvorak-like title bit, "Welcome Party," whirling about the guitar and bass, or the unpleasant surprise (possibly for the cat, not the listener) that leaps up in "Journey Again."
On occasion Tsumura's guitar (perfect tone for this music) will carefully pick out a path forward while Tamura's muteless trumpet lays out. The instrumental layering here is also a treat, especially during "Then, Normal Life," which alludes to both a hoary old medieval bass line and Tom Waits's "God's Away on Business." I have a feeling that last was unintentional. Koreyasu's arid bowing is equally a treat here once they get that seesaw pattern out of the way.
Fuji's accordion, in the way it refuses to lilt, does not call up mental postcards of hotels on the Left Bank in Paris with flocked wallpaper in the lobbies, and for me that seals the deal. It's been a while since I've heard something this different.
It may not be for you, but Gato Libre's Strange Village is good company when your apartment manager doesn't allow animals.
Sandbox and Sanctum/Song Cycle for Quartet
Simp Records, USA
You like to think that eventually all the great voices will be unearthed, and all the notes will be played. I suppose then we'd just have to go back to ragtime and start all over again. Unless, of course, Dixieland came first. Did it?
But then somebody like Gene Ess comes along, and you realize there's a way to go yet before every nuance has been explored and every possible combination of notes has been played. Thank heaven! Saves me having to go to the New School and take a composition or arranging course.
Mr. Ess is worth waiting for in that he knows his history, and he knows what was recently attempted (his hollow-bodied Yamaha guitar has some of John Abercrombie's gentleness and an equal dollop of Pat Martino's tart humor) as well as an idea of the success and drawbacks of recent experiments. This is yet another of those guitar/sax/bass/drums quartets (see a recent review by yours truly in these e-pages concerning the redoubtable Perry Conticchio, for example). Maybe the piano is falling out of favor.
The combination of knowledge, chops, and a light touch for melody (having the current era's middleweight champ, Don McCaslin, on tenor and soprano saxophones doesn't hurt either) makes for an excellent addition to the new impressionistic strain in the music of late (Dean Taba and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee). Thoughtful, well-constructed solos demark the exquisite "Baptisma Pyros" (an island in the Aegean Sea?), quiet and unassuming near to a fault while drummer extraordinaire Gene Jackson cuts up scandalously.
Some may find Jackson, who clearly never met a paradiddle he didn't like, overbusy and domineering. I'm frankly high on his swinging, Tony Williams-like discernment of space and time. Astutel Jackson challenges Ess's mid-on statement in "Baptisma," goosing him to tremolo his notes and twin them with McCaslin. Nobody will ever mistake Ess for Hendrix but there is some definitely magisterial string-bending from Gene E at the close of a very rewarding workout.
No Jazz album from this mindset is complete without at least one ballad, and on this one "...for a Swordsman" has Ess on acoustic Spanish guitar, bassist Harvie S at middle distance and pensive, Jackson nicking off the rhythm matrix at an easy half lope and McCaslin largely laying out early.
Ess's taste for melody is elusive and requires many listens to sink in. Once McCaslin finally gets his solo he accesses a bit of the late Dexter Gordon's soundworld, coming close to quoting Nat King Cole's "Mona Lisa" and Wayne Shorter's "Nefertiti" but never quite doing so. I can dig it. At this remove from the founding days you have no need to overplay your hand.
"Ask the Guru" must be about a very hip old fellow sitting on a mountain somewhere that's not very far from a really good Jazz club; well, shimmying like one's sister Kate is purportedly good for the hips. Lovely gnarled melody, Jackson taking it at a medium trot, and Swartz opens with a shuffling, bluesy statement that puts me in mind of late Mingus. Plucked like a master. And there's a lot more good stuff too.
You would be hard pressed to find a wittier release this year (I'm cheating just a bit, as it has only now as I write this been 2006 for about ten seconds). Six months from now, I'm certain I'll be able to say the same thing, though.
Manuel Mota
Quartets
Headlights Recordings, USA
Manuel Mota's quartet are accomplished players, but it was the inclusion of the carillon, a form of celeste (you may recall the period instrument Tom Hulce was playing in his portrayal of Mozart during the "Magic Flute" sequence late in the movie Amadeus), that repeatedly hampers this effort. Because the carillon's contributions here are all made-up chords and single notes which often either repeat or vary within a very narrow pitch field, you may find your ear turning to the carillon as the improvisation's tonal center by default. And this may not at all be the case. Often the effect appears far more jarring than the composer or the improvisers may have intended. I kept flashing on a Morton Feldman piece adrift in a far more jagged sea than his work might normally be used to.
It's rather sad, because Mota has an ear for tapping the body of the acoustic/electric guitar that adds a nice woody percussive flavor to many of these nine short bits. Mariam, muted or no, essays a nice dirty tone, and Garcia scrabbles to good effect, but overall the entire thing just seems to be prevented from jelling by the very narrow range of the carillon and the fact that it only seems to be staking out center stage (either due to its own natural limitations or how it is used--I'd venture to guess the former).
Equally it's a shame because there's a certain Braxtonesque randomness here that's subtle and engaging. As in, say, Anthony B's 1978 piece "For Four Orchestras," it takes a hearing of a full phrase from the group en masse before one can get an idea of where the track is headed. A lot harder to do when you haven't got it all written down!
Solar
Suns of Cosmic Consciousness
Aztac Records, USA
Mingus's "Remember Rockefeller at Attica" gets a rootsy bit of a go, the band underlining Le Grand Charles's debt to Cole Porter in the melody (you'll figure out what song).
Skip ahead a few tracks to Yamin's original, "Waltz on the Hudson," and you'll wonder what Marx Brothers movie this bouncy lovesong melody is in. Classic pre-Tin Pan Alley, and delightful support from Demos's tubs. I also can't fault Demos's literate snare work during a jolly run-thru of Monk's "Rhythm-a-ning."
If Solar has any main connotation I'd say McCoy Tyner's mid-to-late 1960s trios--you know, before he started using those muscular Jacob's ladder left-hand vamps he was into for a while.
Bernstein's "Samba de Aztac," this CD's opener, starts with some of that Lonnie Liston Smith cascading piano and drums, downshifting smoothly into a bopping continuum made to show off Yamin's very estimable chops. In fact, the take of Kurt Weill's "September Song" makes me think of one method Tyner might have used to cover it, though to my mind I don't recall if he has yet. A lot of what-ifs here, all diverting.
It's only fair to mention Bernstein's cheerfully plump bass extensions, on best display during "Rockefeller" (appropriately enough) and the stupefyingly in take of the Ra song. Well, we remember how Sonny Blount decided in his later years that it was time to bring the Arkestra back into orbit about Earth again (you can only write "The Utter Nots" once), but I would never have expected anybody to rescore "Love" to the point that Bill Evans might have used this arrangement. Very nice! Jazz is the sound of surprise, after all (thanks, Whitney Balliett), and that track is the most notable of the new year.
Trio X of Sweden
Agnas Musikproduktioner, Sweden
Ekberg whirls adroitly about his toms and cymbals, Simonsson comping along with a cocked ear for the spaces between notes, and Johansson's moody plucks taking the center of the sound field. Delightful. Not a lot of sonic baggage is shared by the ditties before and after with this one, but...
The surprises, most of them very pleasant I admit, keep coming. "There She Walks" has a rhythmic complexity I don't think Erroll Garner's trios ever essayed, but it captures them nicely otherwise, tiny scraps of R&B and boogie-woogie sticking out at angles. Sly connections in "Joel" between a trance ballad and some of the more evocative tonal phrases from Leonard Bernstein's "Some Other Time" made me nod faux-wisely as if to say, "We've all been there."
"Back on Doubletrack" adds a nodding lilt to the previous tune's aura, but then "Bonsoir" and "Biggi's Dance" change direction again into a Lyle Mays pop/jazz sort of space.
Having been a Pat Metheny Group fan since their debut in the late 1970s (though Brian Ferneyhough and Roscoe Mitchell are more my thing these days), I have no problem with this; you, however, might start getting dizzy.
The mood of Trio X of Sweden's CD, to paraphrase Emerson keeps and passes and turns again for the next eight tracks as well-more Swedish folky bits, an oddly syncopated Monkism here, a wintry ballad there, more impressionistics. They certainly can do well whatever they choose. You'll get a workout, but that's what art is supposed to do. A sense of artistic focus may be overrated after all!
Tom Walsh and Steve Swell
Phat Hed
Ombu Recordings, Canada
Small record labels with big ears like Ombu have brought us Tom Walsh's trio/quartet Phat Hed, and there's some heady (no pun intended) stuff going on here.
Walsh's "Waltz Leger" (recorded at the 2003 Montreal Festival International de Jazz) opens up the program with antiseptic clouds of synthesized horns and strings that somehow do not transfer us into hyperimpressionistic Eberhard Weber country; rather, the widescreen selection of root chords spreads out over a very tantalizing distance and allows Perkin's slow, broken-bass sine wave to trampoline this piece to a higher level.
Gossage (known to me from his own fine ensemble, recorded by another label) brings his selection of musical saws to the fore, and Swell steps out to duel the drummer with humor and guile. Walsh eventually shuts down his sampler and takes up his own trombone, but the traffic never gets too heavy onstage to deter one from the many sights along an easily fluent way. In fact the later silence among the instruments spices the middle section of "Waltz Leger" in a way I wouldn't have expected.
Equally notable is the McCoy Tyner-like intensity of a take on Dave Holland's "Backwoods Song." Again, Perkin's performance makes me sit up and wonder why this isn't his band. But that sense of improv's credo, that anything can happen and usually does on a good night, is all the explanation necessary.
"Nitra Oxide" and "Drunk Man," recorded live in Slovenia in 2003 by Walsh with drummer Balasz Elemer and bassist Szandai Matyas, have a raw energy and an erudite sort of respect for the blues (Matyas's slippery shuffle is almost worth the price of the CD), but in an emotional as opposed to an intellectual vein. Very clever. "Drunk Man" is based on a Hungarian folk air but somehow that dusky attitude remains. Very cool.
We round out the evening with Benny Carter's "Walking Thing," waxed back at Montreal again, and without too much surprise Swell and Walsh's trombones merge and part with yet more wit. Sounds like a lot more wind instruments than just two, but if Phat Hed is a whole far greater than the sum of its parts that's very much to Walsh and his top-notch collaborators' credit.
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