I posted originally about the musical forays of (my old friend/ former C#9 blogger extraordinaire) Atanase back in December... when I last updated the blog about his saxploits, I was in the doldrums, although (in the grand scheme of things) it didn't end up taking me too long to escape them. Anyway... he and his co-conspirators have been busily establishing their own label, and there is quite a bit of stuff on their Soundcloud page (and/or their Youtube channel) already. To help with the navigation of same, here's a bit of info from the man himself, who participates in three bands, to wit: "GRB3 (our original more restrained, smoother effort), GEORGINA BEASTLY (this has a punk leaning guitar player and consequently material is somewhat more feral) and DYNAMO-81 (this formation is made up of guys with roots in prog-rock, fusion, 70-s hard rock, hence the tilt in that direction)".
To be clear about this (as I perhaps may not have been last time), these are not A's "solo projects" or anything of that sort; rather they are all fully-cooperative groups, put together by friends, which just happen to include a friend of mine in their line-ups (two other groups, Marching Dog and Two Professors, do not feature A.). Naturally, A's sax was my reason for knowing about this stuff in the first place, and also very much the reason for my listening to it; but I have to say, the more I listen, the more it grows on me. Each of the groups features a hard-to-categorise mishmash of styles and influences, the function of the different players with their different backgrounds, striving to reach a common ground where none of them has to compromise (if possible). There is (apparently) no precedent for this stuff in A's native Georgia, no scene into which they can fit themselves - which leaves these guys building one of their own, from the ground up.
Given that my route in was via the ripping tones of A's tenor (... I confess I have hardly listened to the groups where he's not a member), and that this is a blog very much centred around the life and work of my favourite woodwind master, I am still inclined to focus on that aspect of the music here, even while I'm increasingly learning to appreciate the other elements of it too. A. has mentioned to me that he finds a freshness in trying to present (what are traditionally) free-jazz sounds within a non-jazz context, and I certainly understand what he means there in principle. In practice, where I have heard other musicians' attempts along similar lines previously, I have often concluded that the overall effect suffers when the players have no real grounding in free jazz, even if they aren't trying to play it: mainly, the issue for me is with sax players who think they are blowing hard enough to flatten walls, but who barely can barely raise a cool breeze, never mind a firestorm. It takes someone who is really familiar with the history of such blowing, who can properly appreciate the pioneers of such an approach, to inject the necessary edge and power. Needless to say, A. has this familiarity down and inside-out, and when he leans into his playing, it gets me every time. (As well as tenor sax, as I have mentioned before, there is also some bass clarinet and some shehnai, and indeed not all of the latter is played by A. himself. But tenor remains his main axe, and is where he has developed his most distinctive voice.)
So much for my blather - the music is really capable of speaking for itself. A first gig is imminent, about which I hope to inform the blog in due course, Test pressings for an actual first album have also just arrived! Exciting times... it's always refreshing to get some good news, in this troubled future-present of ours, and I'm happy to pass it on :-D
***
In other news: as part of my continued efforts to get my Braxtonian house in order, I'm gradually working my way through the amassed collection I've built up over the years, taking stock of exactly what I've got (and in some cases, what I haven't yet got - but would particularly like to acquire). It's (happily) not necessary to list albums I own as official releases, since these are of course finally all in one place these days (...with the obvious exception of official downloads - but what ya gonna do). Furthermore I did make a detailed year-by-year list of those infamous cassettes back in the day, so that's another task I don't have to undertake at this point (just as well, since I'm still not ready yet to deal with those). What I do have to sort out is an exhaustive list of all the recordings I have of B's music on CD-R (both whole albums/live performances, and single tracks/fragments) or in purely-digital format. This will take a bit of doing - these days, I don't allow myself to get completely immersed in such things to the exclusion of all else (that way madness lies... or at the very least, domestic disharmony and personal turmoil) - so I'm going to be doing it gradually, as time permits.
I only really started last night, and already turned up some things I'd forgotten I even had (e.g. the Vandermark 5's version of Comp. 69L - along with three other random tracks from the same album*) - I'm going to enjoy rediscovering some of this stuff, even as I have to manage the frustration of not being able to listen to all of it at once... one thing I did find time to listen to already was Ten Compositions (Quartet) 2000, one of several releases issued by CIMP around this time (and which, again, I'd forgotten I even had). I recently restated my less-than-average interest in jazz standards, and even more recently qualified that by saying that of course it depends on what standards one is talking about; in this case, most of the pieces are by the late, lamented Andrew Hill - which puts the album squarely within my field of interest, even if some of its other characteristics (I remain stubbornly squeamish about undistorted electric guitar for the most part, unless Mary Halvorson or Joe Morris are involved) might seem to argue such a thing.
Closer inspection reveals that this album was one of two recorded during three days of sessions in May 2000, which very much centred on Mr Hill's compositions; this album gathers together all the quartet recordings, while the other comprises quintets and sextets, the core group augmented on those days by Steve Lehman and Paul Smoker (him again). As it happens, the quartets included a handful of pieces by other writers - two by George Coleman, one each by Wayne Shorter and Billy Lester - but the overall flavour of the album is definitely that of Hill. CIMP's notoriously fussy approach to engineering is not to all tastes**, and as I say, in my own case the "clean jazz" guitar would make it hard for me to get into at the best of times - but I must admit that Kevin O'Neil does a great job here and really goes to town in his solos. Kevin Norton, too, really works over every surface on his kit in the course of this one, and of course the maestro - well, I don't always like hearing him in these contexts as I've said before, but I enjoyed him here, at any rate. (Bassist Andy Eulau is generally inaudible - this is CIMP after all - but sounds pretty good when I can actually hear him.) "Pumpkin" being a particular favourite of mine, I have played that one four or five times in the last 24 hours; only the second take was released.
... and for once, that's all I want to say about that. The companion album, by the way, is now firmly on my wants list, not least because Lehman (one of a few contemporary players whose career I actively follow) actually wasn't featured on that many of B's recordings, even if he was very much involved in a pretty famous one. I am going to have to be patient, as the album in question is evidently a pain in the arse to get hold of... at some point in the near future I will post separately about which albums are actually at the head of that list; in the meantime, if anybody would care to hip me up to an online rip of Nine Compositions (Hill) 2000, I'm all ears...
* I have no recollection of where I got these from, but the only tracks I've got are trs 2-5 of disc one. (Those include the studio version of Vandermark's arrangement of "Saturn" by Sun Ra, which - along with Don Cherry's "Where is the Bomb" - was frequently played live by V5 around this time, if I recall correctly...)
** This is putting it mildly. One blogger of my former acquaintance could hardly stand to hear this label mentioned; he was a bass fanatic, which goes a long way to explaining it. Rusch father and son have been credited by various musicians with being the only producer/engineer to give them back exactly what they played... the complete lack of reverb on their recordings does quite possibly serve to render a very faithful account of the instrumental voices, although it is true that bass does not seem to figure very highly in their priorities. Not for everyone, as I say.
No comments:
Post a Comment