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The Amazing Bone

March 4th, 2010 · Julian Priester

POLARIZATION>RHYTHM MAGNET>WIND DOLPHIN
Julian Priester and Marine Intrustion
Polarization
ECM : 1977

JP, trombone; Ron Stallings, tenor sax; Ray Obiedo, guitar; Curtis Clark, piano; Heshima Mark Williams, bass; Augusta Lee Collins, drums.

In the alternate universe we inhabit when tired or otherwise deranged, there is a trombone hall of fame, presided over by Grachan Moncur III, George Lewis… and Julian Priester. (Albert Mangelsdorff mans the European branch; Roswell Rudd is awaiting his vote.) Priester has an utterly singular pedigree, playing on a number of far-flung classics. He jumped from Sun Ra (Angels and Demons at Play) to Coltrane sessions (Africa/Brass) to Max Roach’s We Insist! to Herbie’s Mwandishi bands of the early 1970s. More recently he appeared on SUNN O)))’s remarkably lovely drone-metal Monoliths & Dimensions, confirming his lifelong commitment to creative music.

Polarization is the album following Priester’s kozmigroov classic Love, Love (1974), recently reissued by ECM. Ditching the Mwandishi band and beginning to move away from their visionary electro sound, Polarization finds Priester in an expansive mood. The track above is a suite that originally ran as side one on the LP. The 20-minute cut begins with a double-tracked Priester in a duet with himself, moving next to beautiful, stately, and memorable theme of “Rhythm Magnet,” joined by the full band. “Wind Dolphin” plays with this theme in a spare and open fashion, closing with rousing contributions from all together.

For more — and more recent — Priester, see here at the Internet Archive for a streaming cut of a 1999 date with Sam Rivers. And coming up next month, more vital contributions from Priester on Mike Reed’s forthcoming People, Places, and Things project, Stories and Negotiations. What’re you waiting for? Go get ‘boned!

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WHERE THE NUTS COME FROM

February 22nd, 2010 · Hermeto Pascoal

VELORIO (MOURNING)
GUIZOS (BELLS)
Hermeto Pascoal
Hermeto
Buddha/Cobblestone : 1972

HP, arranger, keyboards, flute; Ernie Royal, Gene Young, Joe Newman, Melvin Davis, Thad Jones, trumpets; Garnet Brown, Jack Jeffers, Richard Hixson, Wayne Andre, trombones; Don Butterfield, tuba; Ron Carter, bass; Airto Moreira, drums, percussion. Vocals (Velorio): Flora Purim and Airto. Vocals (Guizos): Googie. Strings: Alfred Brown, Gayle Dixon, Gene Orloff, George Ricci, Gerald Tarack, Joseph Malignaggi, Julian Barber, Kermit Moore, Matthew Raimondi, Max Pollikoff, Paul Gershman, Sanford Allen, Selwart Clarke, Winston Colymore. Woodwinds: Arthur Clarke, Harold Jones, Hubert Laws, Jerome Richardson, Jerry Dodgion, Joe Farrel, Leon Cohen, Maurice Smith.

We’ve been struggling to get our heads around this album for some time. So rather than attempt a definitive response to the oddity that is Hermeto, Chilly and Drew decided to crack open a few beers, spin the album a few more times, and talk it over.

BEER #1:
Chilly Jay Chill: So what exactly is this album? It’s kozmigroov meets soft rock? World music mixed with cruise music? Just when you think it’s one thing, it becomes another.

Prof. Drew Le Drew: And just when you’re ready to fully embrace it, it turns icky. And just when you think it’s too saccharine, it takes some weirdly compelling left turn. And then back again.

CJC: Is “icky” an official critical term?

DLD: It feels right on for many of the songs on the album, though not necessarily the ones we selected. Maybe this music is more… naïve?

CJC: I’m not so sure. Hermeto Pascoal’s got an impressive musical pedigree from his excellent work in Brazil’s Quarteto Novo in the late 60s. Plus he was in Miles Davis’s great early electric bands, contributing to Live-Evil and Jack Johnson. I mean, he must’ve known what he was after.

DLD: This was recorded close to his Miles tenure, but it’s something entirely other. It’s adventurous, it has elements of jazz, but… but…


BEER #2:
CJC: The production effects are deeply strange.

DLD: Maybe Hermeto’s borrowing from what he picked up from Teo Macero. Some of the technicolor orchestrations feel like there’s the influence of Gil Evans in there too.

CJC: It feels very 1970s, but in ways that nobody else quite was.

DLD: There’s something singular about the way Hermeto combines the local (Brazil) with the Global (let’s say Miles and Teo and Gil). Even the Airto albums from this period aren’t as gonzo, or at least in quite the same ways.

CJC: I have to confess that the Pascoal I knew was for years simply based on staring at this image also which appears in the Jack Johnson set liners:



DLD: Freaky.


BEER #3:
DLD: The music on Hermeto is challenging but in ways that I’m not aren’t used to being challenged. At the level of taste – does all this really go together?

CJC: Robert Christgau once wrote that part of the genius of Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles was their lack of taste. He meant that they were willing to tackle any material – and in the process they could transform it.

DLD: But does that apply here?

CJC: I think it does. There’s a strain of Brazilian music that seems to prize beauty for beauty’s sake, that’s unabashedly sentimental and emotionally open. Or am I over-thinking this and what we’re hearing in, in fact, just cheezy in spots?

DLD: I’d say “Velorio” offers the most sustained and compelling weirdness on the album. It starts off as a moody Brazilian percussion workout; the piano doesn’t even come in until the 5 minute mark. Then there’s the sweeping strings and horns and Flora Purim’s vocals – and it becomes what? Some sort jazz tropicalia spy theme? Then an avant whirlwind? My head hurts. But in a good way. I need another beer.

CJC: Compelling weirdness is right. The mix of sounds is the most oddball aspect. This tune really stands out from the rest of the album too. We shouldn’t give folks the impression that this is the prevailing approach, because it’s not.


BEER #4:
CJC: “Guizos” is fascinating. It’s ethereal and haunting. Unusual synths and percussion and horn charts floating all around the vocals.

DLD: It’s also very unstable. You think it’s going to be a simply pretty tune, but instead its vaguely unnerving, like a low grade fever.

CJC: What’s crazy is how this subtly avant song eventually resolves into something so grandiose that it could be the climax of an episode of “The Love Boat.”  What the fuck.

DLD: There’s the same unnerving, so-sweet-it’s-creepy vibe as the Rosemary’s Baby soundtrack. It’s also redolent of the Annette Peacock/Paul Bley weirdness.

CJC: We’ve been using the word “weird” a lot here.

DLD: Maybe we need something stronger than beer to truly appreciate this music.

CJC: You mean like glue?

DLD: Ex-actly.


BEER (OR SOMETHING) #5:
DLD: Dude, I gotta say, the album cover tells you what you’re in for – and it delivers in spades.

CJC: Truth in advertising, man.

DLD: Right, but here’s the thing – is this album, like, actually good?

CJC: Yes? No? Maybe Hermeto is beyond mere good and evil.


HERMETO PASCOAL LINKS:
Early Hermto on YouTube

Hermeto YouTube Channel

** What do you make of Hermeto? **

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SUPERGROUP!

February 8th, 2010 · Archie Shepp, Don Cherry, John Tchicai, New York Contemporary Five

CONSEQUENCES
TRIO
New York Contemporary Five
Consequences
Fontana : 1963

Archie Shepp, tenor sax; Don Cherry, trumpet; John Tchicai, alto sax; Don Moore, bass; J. C. Moses, drums.

The New York Contemporary Five barely lasted a year all told, but they recorded five albums that shaped the jazz to come. They were a supergroup after the fact – the stellar frontline of Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, and John Tchicai all being relative newcomers at the time. Cherry had recently left Ornette Coleman and was only starting to stretch into world music. Shepp was fresh off a stint with Cecil Taylor and had just found his voice as a composer and performer. And Tchicai was virtually unknown, period.

Their scorching music – aided by the supple and hard-hitting rhythm section of Don Moore and J. C. Moses – is a thrilling mix of adventurous soloing and post-bop structures, memorable heads and go-for-broke improv. Shepp and Tchicai offered two different ways forward for sax players. Shepp privileged texture, density, and fragmentation. A pointillist take on Ben Webster or Coleman Hawkins, perhaps. Tchicai was a master of melodic invention, teasing out hard and bright phrases that seem unpredictably off-kilter.

What’s still remarkable about these tunes is their sense of internal tension. They’re wound tighter than a magnet coil – without sacrificing any  spontaneity. There’s little that’s strictly free about this jazz, but it’s full of reckless and unexpected drama all the same. “Consequences” is the record’s barnburner, built on fiery performances and climaxing with a Don Cherry solo that sounds like the aural equivalent of a fifty foot skid mark. Their version of Bill Dixon’s “Trio” is contemplative by comparison, offering a loping groove, overlapping textures, and a series of wonderfully sustained solos that show off the stylistic strengths of each player.

Not many jazz fans may have picked up their records, but there’s no doubt that their fellow musicians were listening closely to the New York Contemporary Five. (For a fascinating and informed look at what came next for John Tchicai, here’s Bill Shoemaker on the New York Art Quartet, just published in Point of Departure.)

* * *

What are your favorite super groups?

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Project for a Revolution in New York

February 1st, 2010 · Jerome Cooper, Leroy Jenkins, Revolutionary Ensemble, Sirone

SIDE TWO
The Revolutionary Ensemble
Manhattan Cycles
India Navigation : 1973

Leroy Jenkins, violin, viola; Sirone, bass; Jerome Cooper, drums, percussion, flute, bugle, metal hoops, tape recorder.

“Feel the wrath of my bombast!” said Mark E. Smith in the mid-’80s. And it can stand as an unfortunate motto for just about every public figure — politician, artist, soldier, spy — since. We live in an age of bombast; the internet itself thrives on it. Bombast is the primary currency of political discourse. It can sometimes seem as though it’s the very reasonableness of the current American president that is his main shortcoming, if also one of his more rare and remarkable qualities.

In contrast — and opposition — to the wide spread of bombasticity, we present the second half of one of the earliest records by the wonderful Revolutionary Ensemble. Recorded on New Year’s Eve, 1972/73, there was doubtless plenty to be bombastic about at that time. But what we get instead is as un-bombastic as it gets. This is perhaps the most revolutionary aspect: no foreground, no background, a cooperative enterprise that enlists every technique at the artists’ disposal. And that includes pre-recorded sound — Billie Holiday makes an appearance on side one, and check the bebop tune just before the runout groove (“Now’s the Time”?) at the end of side two.

The entire performance is a model of interplay, but the piece above is notable for the room allotted to Sirone, who died last year at 69. A major loss, though we were at the time unable to put together an adequate memorial post. Thankfully, David Grundy at Streams of Expression more than made up for it with a superlative and deep tribute to the late bassist. We heartily encourage those of you moved by the track above to hit it, hard, forthwith. It goes to show that those with the most bomb(a)s(t) need not carry the day.

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Duets of the Gods: Tony Williams + Cecil Taylor

January 25th, 2010 · Cecil Taylor, Tony Williams

Clash...of the titans.

MORGAN’S MOTION
Tony Williams Lifetime
The Joy of Flying
Sony : 1978

TW, drums; Cecil Taylor, piano.

Here’s a deep cut that not many people know about. Tony Williams’ eclectic Joy of Flying is an R&B inflected album filled with collaborations with the likes of Jan Hammer, George Benson, Tom Scott, and even rock guitarist Ronnie Montrose. To be honest, it’s not a particularly memorable set. But tucked away at the end is a total anomaly: A fiery duet with Cecil Taylor that’s worth the price of admission, and then some.

In the book Future Jazz, Greg Tate cites “Morgan’s Motion” as one of the all-time great jazz performances. It’s prime Cecil, his essence boiled down to a tightly coiled eight minutes. By this point, Tony Williams’ salad days were already behind him, but the track shows that he could still summon his best work when challenged.

We won’t go so far as to say his performance here is definitively better than, say, Sunny Murray, Ronald Shannon Jackson, or Tony Oxley — but Williams’ explosive drumming frames Taylor’s music in an entirely different way than any of his esteemed peers.  Like his best work with Miles Davis, Williams’ performance is both sensitive and aggressive, not afraid to get in Cecil’s face, to give as good as he gets. The results generate fireworks and lyricism.

“Morgan’s Motion” doesn’t devolve into pugilism, but it does recall the conventional wisdom that ballet dancers are as tough as boxers. It’s a shame these two never repeated the encounter. “Morgan’s Motion” is one hell of a dance.

What other gems are hidden in the Tony Williams discography?

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Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

January 18th, 2010 · Famoudou Don Moye, Joseph Jarman

Empty Space 05, Eva Kalpadaki, 2005.

NA ENU IGWE
Joseph Jarman and Famoudou Don Moye
Egwu-Anwu (Sun Song)
India Navigation : 1978

JJ, tenor and alto sax, sopranino, flutes, bass clarinet, conch, vibraphone; FDM, drums and other percussion, bailophone, conch, whistles, horns, marimba.

Rare things: Successful utopias. Hen’s teeth. Really good linguine con vongole. Giant pandas. And, apparently, silence. There’s something of a micro-genre springing up, with recent books devoted to searching out the world’s quickly disappearing quiet places. Noise pollution as heir to air pollution.

The value of silence is something the AACM was onto decades ago. Not for them the pure scream of Pharaoh Sanders or the wall-to-wall wail of Albert Ayler. Jarman and Moye, two of the first wave of AACMers, fully embraced the association’s pursuit of sound in ALL of its permutations. One of the memorable passages concerning Jarman from George Lewis’ magisterial history of the AACM captures this beautifully. Here’s Anthony Braxton talking about one notable rehearsal:

We play “NN-1″ [a (Muhal Richard) Abrams composition]. I say, I’m going to show these motherfuckers what it’s all about — thirty-second notes, Coltrane, Cecil Taylor. I finished my solo, and Jarman stood up and said [sings] Bwaaaah! [silence], Oom [silence], Pfffft! I said this motherfucker is totally out of his motherfucking mind, and this is the baddest shit I’ve ever heard in my life.

With the twenty-minute “Na Enu Igwe,” the concluding movement of a duo concert, we can hear something of Jarman and Moye’s open-ended approach to the full spectrum of sonic possibility, about ten years after Braxton’s AACM indoctrination. Ranging from relatively straightforward sax and drum duets to a concentrated pas de deux of little instruments, honking horns, and percussion, this multi-part track captures the fearlessness and grace Jarman and Moye bring to live performance. And the quiet passages here speak as loudly as anything else.

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Up

January 11th, 2010 · Larry Young

PEACE (FOR DAKOTA AND JASON)
ANGELS WING
ANCIENT PLACE
Larry Young
Love Cry Want
New Jazz : 1997 (rec. 1972)

LY, organ; Nicholas, guitar, synth; Joe Gallivan, guitar, synth, drums, percussion; Jimmy Molnieri, drums, percussion.

Destination: Out’s Dept. of “Believe It or Not”:
We belatedly kick off the New Year with some insane electro space rock from Larry Young. This remarkable ensemble faced the wrath of none other than Richard Nixon, who personally ordered his staff to pull the plug on one of their concerts.  But more on that in a minute.

This molten recording wasn’t released until 1997 and even then it quickly disappeared from sight. That’s a shame because Love Cry Want is one of Young’s greatest sessions, straight up. It offers a more concise and ragged version of the blown-out kozmigroov explorations of the great Lawrence of Newark and even trumps the speaker-damaged assault of Tony Williams Lifetime’s Emergency! Strong words, but hearing is believing.

“Peace” is a bare-knuckled track that mixes manic funk rhythms, percussive organ swirls, and heavy distortion. “Angels Wings” offers some cascading riffs before grinding its feathers into storms of bracing industrial noise. The languid “Ancient Place” features some seriously futurist electronic graffiti that slowly coalesces into a heady ritualistic groove.

In 1972, this group took up residence in Lafayette Park with the intention of levitating the nearby White House. The Yippies hadn’t managed the trick with the Pentagon in 1968, but Nixon was no fool. If any music stood a chance, this was it. Taking no chances, he personally ordered H. R. Haldeman to pull the plug on the concert. Check out WFMU’s always excellent Beware of the Blog for the full scoop.

We can’t but wonder where the “music as a weapon” ethos of avant jazz has gone. Who would you like to see levitated and who could pull it off?

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