Brooklyn’s Berning

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UNKNOWN DISASTER
FEDERICO
Tim Berne
Fulton Street Maul
Columbia : 1987

TB, alto sax; Bill Frisell, guitar; Hank Roberts, cello; Alex Cline, percussion.

“For ‘Unknown Disaster,’ I didn’t want a guitar solo over the vamp, I wanted a noise solo – total annihilation right at the start.”–Berne, reining things in on his major label debut.

Tim Berne was, simply put, one of the things that made jazz in the 1980s worth listening to. With a self-taught style (heavy assist from Julius Hemphill) and a forged-in-alloyed-plastic tone, he combined Downtown eclecticism with a rigorous sense of structure to create a challenging oeuvre that stomps over boundaries with refreshingly little concern for what lay underfoot.

While more recent releases have highlighted Berne’s penchant for long, cellular performances, in Fulton Street Maul we’re treated to more compact studies in sound. “Unknown Disaster” is a varied six minutes, opening with the sort of incredible blitz that makes one wonder, agog, how this happened to be released on Columbia (for more on this, see interview snippet below). Everyone goes for broke at once, but the center manages to hold; there is, as with most of Berne’s music, a discernable and premeditated framework. You can hear the influence of Hemphill in the groove, and also in the rhythmic use of cello.Â

“Federico” (after Fellini) starts out fairly straight ahead, even conventionally pretty, with beautifully arranged thematic work, followed by some intricate sax-cello interplay that shows off Berne’s more conventional melodic thinking. Then, just shy of the four minute mark, the track erupts into some of the coolest music weâ??ve heard from Berne. With electronics burbling just under the surface, Frisell starts going nuts â?? presaging some of the work by Marc Ducret in Berne’s later Science Friction group. The vaguely tribalized rhythmic churn plugs away for another five mintues — it carries a fairly heavy Ralph Records vibe to these ears — while Berne and Frisell takes turns playing against the grain. Roberts’ cello emerging from the murk toward the end is just a wonderful thing to behold.

Both tracks are reminders of what a nasty-ass player Frisell was back in the day, when he was listening to Chrome instead of Aaron Copland. A reminder, too, of his amazing work with Powertools and Naked City.

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There is a great, thorough Berne interview from 1998 at Perfect Sound Forever:

PSF: How did you get hooked up with Columbia/Sony?

It was kind of a freak. This guy, Gary Lucas, who I knew growing up was working there doing ad copy. He was trying to find shit to produce. He started coming into Tower (Records) and started harassing me. He wanted tapes and I finally I gave him some stuff, including a duo I did with (Bill) Frisell. I think he heard part of that and decided that he could sell it as ‘new age.’ He pitched it to them as a ‘new age’ thing from this nice little white guy, unbeknownst to me (laughs). So, he got a deal. It was a pretty bad deal but it was still a deal. It surprised me that he got it together. It was great. That’s when I did my first record for them, Fulton Street Maul. He was pretty nervous in the studio- he was saying ‘you know, this might be a little out for them.’ At that point, I had no illusions of grandeur. I said ‘well, it’s too late now.’ I figured that I’d make a good record and just see what happened. I couldn’t sell out if my life depended on it because I don’t know how to.

PSF: Did they give you freedom or was there pressure to be commercial?

They gave me the freedom because they were too stupid to figure out what else to do. They were trying to figure out how they got into this mess and no one wanted to go near it. Ironically, when it came out, it got unbelivable press. So, they had to do another one and it was like ‘oh, Jesus.’ So I did the other one and no one came near me. I hired my own producer, picked the studio and the mastering engineer. They just sent me the money. It was GREAT. I’m really proud of that record (Sanctified Dreams). Of course, it got great reviews and then they phased me out. That was fine with me. I had already done another record by the time I was dropped. I was ready by that time.

One of the bits of unbelievable press that Maul received came from Jon Pareles, writing in the New York Times that the disk was “one of the year’s most important jazz albums” — this was in February of 1987. Times subscribers might be able to access the whole review here.

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Elsewhere: Berne answers twenty questions re life on the road.

You can buy the rereleased late 1980s Berne joint Fractured Fairy Tales here. Highly recommended.

And: Tim Berne’s internet fortress of solitude.