october 07 braxtothon... day one (2)

second session: silence
date: 18th july 1969 (sleeve, incorrect; prob. june '69)

restructures link

i had already started this and sat down before i even looked, then immediately realised that neither of the pieces on this album was actually composed by braxton, despite his being credited as the leader (or was he? not totally clear about this)... well, started so i'll finish and i wanted to hear something from '69... besides, it's fairly short...

two fifteen-min plus free sound explorations with the same trio as provided the core of the '68 debut, the first piece credited to jenkins and the second to smith, very different in character... the jenkins, er, composition is called "off the top of my head" and would appear, indeed, to be basically a free-for-all, everyone plays whatever he likes on a variety of instruments, not necessarily even paying much attention to what anyone else is doing; perhaps the idea was that the sounds would nevertheless coalesce at times whilst seeming to diverge wildly at others..? that is of course what happens, anyway: all sorts of ideas are expressed freely in embryonic form, some wither and die at once whereas others blossom and develop before mutating into something else and eventually falling back into the constant state of flux... smith seems to start the most confidently of the three... soon enough there is more (horrible) harmonica unfortunately, no idea why that seemed such a good idea at the time, but maybe variety was one of the prime considerations... perhaps wanting to smother it, braxton follows the first harp utterances with a terrific entry on sax, which develops quickly into a shortish but quite thoroughly-explored and very strong solo. this turns out to be a bit of a red herring though as more formless weirdness follows, and an accordion joins in with the fun...

... a sudden shift of group atmosphere around 11.25 is undercut by more harmonica (damn!), and once again braxton rescues it, this time by whipping out the furniture - around 12 mins he enters on contrabass clarinet and proceeds to give an extraordinary demonstration of how to use breath-related attacks on that instrument while still producing notes as well; this leads to some very strong statements all round, smith taking over then jenkins before the piece peters out with some brief, isolated statements on various instruments again. some very interesting places have been visited but the journey seems to have been a bit haphazard and there was much doubling-back.

the second piece is the title track and, indeed, there is proportionally a lot more silence than sound; by which i mean the players lay out more often than they play (since of course the effect for me is to endure long stretches of low-level electronic ambience from my hardware... punctuated by music, or is it just sound? that is the sort of question which this (seemingly much more solemn) piece raises. a stark soundscape in which usually very precise statements are made, limited to minimal exploration or variation and always returning to silence, it does have some wonderful moments - just before the eight-min mark a bell ushers in some actual group interplay, though once again the dreaded harmonica arrives to sabotage the mood - after a brief pause smith lets loose the most marvellous piece of flatulence through his horn. again, some very interesting sounds are produced and the control is at times breathtaking; but a) i could really do without the accordions and harmonica now and b) there is a slight "chinese water torture" effect after a while, despite my patient intentions: i sit waiting for the next sound and resisting the urge to grab the remote and skip forwards.

overall this seems to be a strange release for b. - none of his writing, and not necessarily much cohesion or direction although the three players suggest all sorts of possibilities.

write-up within 30-mins: yes
distracted: only by virtue of the actual music (second piece)..!

(CC)