braxtothon '08 live update

er, yes... you read that correctly: as far as the braxtothon is concerned, it is still technically 2008... well, look, it's long established (and was pointed out by my old mate pete marsh) that the space-time continuum gets seriously bent around these parts anyway, and besides... in the case of braxtothon '08, it didn't start until the last third of march... so i reckon i've only just overrun, myself ;-)

- really, why '08? because that was that phase and the next one has a different aspect to it, already lined up... what i managed to squeeze out of the tube last year was phase 3a i suppose, and the mopping-up job which is underway at the moment therefore constitutes phase 3b... much to my frustration, dortmund just stuck there and refused to clear itself, and the attempt to sort that out in november was ludicrously unrealistic (with a child a few weeks old...); and thereafter, the time to do it never did seem to present itself... until my next chunk of holiday (if one can call it that... mind you, the weather was great, all very life-affirming). and even then, how would it pan out?

but what happened in the end was that the bremen gig turned up, just at the right time... and the unblocking took a different form altogether. hustled back into the swing of it by that interesting item, i used the impetus to fill the gaping montreux-shaped hole in last year's entries; that was really the one which needed to be sorted out first, after all, and with a head full of 1975 (suddenly!), it was the most natural thing in the world to go straight from posting the bremen write-up to a final follow-up session* for montreux, which then got written up the very next day. now, it's true that other tasks came to the top of the pile, later in the week... and dortmund is still stacked and waiting, as a consequence... but not for long, i promise..! it's on the way, to be presented in two separate parts (context then detail) soon, and then this whole overlong 2008 business can finally be put to bed with berlin... meanwhile, following on from bremen, montreux '75 is the next station stop: look for it over the weekend (when some of us lose an hour of precious sleep. ah, but more light in the evenings, so good...).

* comments

(braxtothon fill-in) bremen, 1975

well, and what have we here..? another missing puzzle piece, is what - more material from a period i've already covered in some detail, in chronological order; and if this one didn't necessarily answer any burning questions, it did remind me, if i needed reminding (i probably did by this point), that the quartet with wheeler still cooked at a late stage, it did not always sound as if wheeler's reluctance to go much further out into the unknown was holding the band back... these the kind of "crystallised conceptions" someone like a critic - or like me, since i am not a critic (...) - ! - can easily get caught up in repeating and repeating: very often what may have begun as a valid, even sharp observation will end up as a grotesque overgeneralisation, obscuring the facts rather than casting any light on them whatsoever. so it's good to have these things overturned regularly... in this case, i already had one surprise last year when the "special quintet" recording turned up (wheeler gone from the working group and on his way as a leader/writer of wistful ballads, so soon back sharing a stage with our man, with george lewis on show as the main surprise, admittedly) - and now this '75 date arrives (no precise date or venue yet unfortunately), wheeler already effectively with one foot out the door... yet he plays as well as i've ever heard him in a live set with this band, i swear.

- and yet it can't be any earlier than '75, because that version of (the mighty) comp. 23e in the second file is so close to the studio version waxed in july of that year - the band has the spellbinding buildup of this piece absolutely down by now, and is also ve-e-ry comfortable with those fall '74 side one pieces - again, all from the 23 series, indeed comps. 23a-f inclusive very neatly make up the bulk of what we have here, (alas) incomplete as it is - i am guessing that this was from later the same month, i.e. july 1975 - which would make sense, they were in europe anyway round about then, after recording in new york right at the beginning of the month. we know they were in montreux on the 20th. yes, of course - but that's the missing one, isn't it - and it's not as if i came out of that session thinking the montreux sessions were bad, just that it didn't really quite catch fire for me, and besides, it ended up as the one (braxtothon) piece i never did write up... hence the decision to postpone it until berlin time - and bend/warp time during the actual journey thereby - quickly became too tempting and, well, just unavoidable really. the point is, they were around at the time, this must surely be from roughly the same time is what i'm saying. i knew they were around, i just didn't know that the group at that point still sounded this good. (yes, of course they were coming off the back of that - but my lasting impression of that landmark recording is that not all of it sounds as awe-inspiring as comp. 23e... besides, which vibe would the band carry with it on the road? and how will that ebb and flow, day by day..? etc)

on this occasion i want to try and keep observations about the music to a minimum (this is already turning out to be longer than i thought); i'm more concerned here with thinking about that ever-mutating set-list. but there will, of course, be the odd musical sidetrack along the way. (as if...)

what we've got: two different sound files, with two slightly different sounds (though this is a guerilla recording and sound quality varies somewhat throughout anyway, basically good enough though) - but a very similar stereo image; however, the end of the first file is actually tacked on from elsewhere, it being an incomplete number which fades in at probably two-thirds of the way through - and this fragment has the stereo image reversed, so that braxton and wheeler appear to have swapped sides onstage. or it's a freak occurrence during the various transfer processes which led to the mp3s... whatever, it sounds different straight away though the vibe seems to be the same... but it may or may not be from the same concert, who knows... of course, if anyone can help with clarification of these pesky details then please contact me..!

first file: my first feelings here were actually amused familiarity and then mild disappointment - i've already greeted comp. 23a as if as an old friend when i covered the '76 graz concert ("the piece comes full circle", etc etc) - and here it actually is being re-used as a set opener more than a year earlier. trouble with that is: resurrecting it for lewis is one thing, the switch of trumpet for trombone offering a very, very different sound for the monophonic line - with wheeler, it's only a second or two before i go looking for leroy jenkins and miss him. holland then also seems to fluff his very first entry (which comes late in the written line, don't forget). but already the sound of the band is good. naturally, choosing a monster number as opener dictates a monstrous first solo, and b. is quickly off and away. yet there again, he sounds somewhat restrained to me at first, or uninspired: he resorts to dropping back into paired notes from the theme, puffing them along in his own rhythm, but it seems unlike him...

... but then the backing drops out suddenly, instantly the freedom multiplies and the sounds become more eldritch. before long it's fascinating, and that's basically it for the disappointments, because (like in graz later) it's as if with certain limitations established early on, the band stretches out quickly and proceeds to play really, really well. holland's first note was a red herring, he sounds great more or less all set (by the end it almost felt as if i'd spent the whole time listening just to him); and wheeler, well - as i said above - i can't remember the last time i heard him sound so consistently inspired and liberated. altschul sometimes needs a bit of a kick to get him woken up, on the other hand, and the leader sometimes almost seems to be a ghost of himself - or something like it; but we'll get to that.

several minutes into what's still theoretically 23a i find myself wondering where the hell we are, the leader on sopranino and everyone cooking - have we switched materials? i never did know the answer to this one, it was the same at châteauvallon in '73 - this fast line extension more or less comes from nowhere and just rockets along, so that the opening theme never gets another look in once the ship has departed. (we're following that same map actually, as eventually becomes clear - of course, wheeler is the only one of this band who's followed it before... as far as i know..! probably not) - the landscape shifts shape several times as the leader slips different mouthpieces on and off - the contrabass monster again, then alto (short bursts of primary solo language, at once), then flute, sounding great on each at this point, lovely breathy playing on flute, real density to it (the recording captures this just fine). then: - we're presented with the palate-cleanser, comp. 23c - the additive repetition series, something i certainly didn't expect to hear... of course fall '74 was presumably on sale by now; still, very possibly some of the audience would have heard these pieces before, at some festival or other during the previous couple of years... anyway, altschul here gets to do his own thing, not restricted to the written sequence as the others are (ish - wheeler eventually takes a cheeky breather, not for the last time in this set as we shall see) - the freedom given to the drummer is used well, his textural explorations subtle and shaded so that in time he comes to remind me of his own eventual successors: hemingway, norton, siegel... the other three bang through the piece without any fuss, and when it ends it's immediately gone, an empty space taking over which the drums alone may explore. short, isolated attacks are each given their time to decay back into the void before others take their place - wheeler is in soon enough, joined then by b. on alto, playing - ? ah, simple enough, playing comp. 23b as it turns out, and there was i thinking that one had been permanently put to bed in the studio... well, to be fair, it sounds totally fresh here, making me wonder if i wasn't a bit harsh on it in the end - hmm, now i think of it, to be honest with you all (inc. myself) it's a very good vehicle for the leader, of course it is, containing the most natural high-energy expressive space a soloist could wish; albeit he is having to sneak in under cover, as it were - in that respect it still seems as if it's unrepresentative... i can still see what i meant. but i no longer fully agree with it because of that expressive space - now, the trouble with that is that in the studio, he really did nail that one for all time, a terrific, multiple-play-demanding blackbird song which is now emblazoned almost bar-for-bar in my ear memory - and what, he is now gonna try and top it? how? and if not, why is he back here... well, maybe sometimes you have to give the sidemen what they know best in order to encourage them, i dunno... again thinking of graz...

... but it does sound like a crowd-pleaser [the political debate concerning the desirability or otherwise of such a thing as a crowd-pleaser is one for elsewhere, i see nothing wrong with "treating" your audience - so long as it's not all the time, natch]. BUT the solo, we're into the solo and back to the question, what more can he do with this number? why would he personally want to keep playing it when he's completed the process of honing and refining it which was simmering away through '73, '74...? and it's off the boil, there's no doubt about it - he doesn't really really get going and no wonder, listen to that weak lack of support from the engine room: altschul especially is half asleep at the wheel, swinging away in a perpetual groove which takes me back to moers this time, not somewhere i particularly want to be since that was really my least favourite rendition of this number. holland, well - i said last year that he seemed the perfect bassist for the piece, yet in a live context that hasn't necessarily been the case either... and in terms of the mini-set we're (re)hearing, i'd actually take j-f jenny-clark any day. the thing about holland and altschul is that they are so finely attuned to each other as well as having their relationship(s) to the music, the leader etc - maybe, somehow, this piece isn't quite fast enough for them, they rock-n-roll it into a bit of a lull whenever i hear them play it. yes, in the studio holland cooked his (and my) head off - ah, but that was with jerome cooper wasn't it? just to keep reminding everyone of that discographical anomaly.

the solo goes up a bit, then down again, finally UP as b. hits the required intensity to boot altschul up the arse and get him cooking - then we're suddenly in business, but of course the master is more or less done by then. (it never struck me as being a "rote" solo, i don't think he's capable of it, but... this was one of those "ghost of himself" moments... ladiezngennelmen, tonight due to unforeseen absence the part of anthony braxton will be played by... anthony braxton) - and there's a funny thing, when he lays out there is no applause audible at all, that's highly unusual for this sort of deal. [maybe not a festival, not enough beer taken on board (...)] - still, here comes another surprise: wheeler's solo is one of the best i can remember him taking with this band. for once his initial exuberance at finding himself free doesn't peter out, rather it inspires him to essay a series of unusual bends and presses, toy with his timbre a little more than at other times towards the end of his tenure... anyway, it kept me paying attention which is always a good sign. nonetheless, during the restatement (which does arrive bang on cue, now - the exact same map as wheeler was navigating (at least) two years ago was used as the template for this three (...)- piece suite) wheeler gets to miss out an entire short section of the theme, leaving his leader well and truly high and dry for a while there - but going into the coda he's more or less there, never misses a note when he's actually playing one... from the pov of the other three it's flawless (is how i remember it).

ok - that's that miniature set out the way, there is a pause and some applause and then something nasty happens in our source recording, an edit, and within the same file a new piece arrives, already underway as it fades in with wheeler soloing over compelling drums and driving bass. as previously mentioned, there is suddenly the effect of the two horns having swapped sides - well, same date, not same date, doesn't really matter, this is not from moers wherever else it is, at least not in '74, the broken accents are (still-imperfectly) rounded off but the piece reveals itself soon enough to be none other than comp. 23f, the first encore which almost redeemed the uneven main set at moers - and which does not appear anywhere else in the official catalogue. soon enough, because rather irritatingly, we have already missed the leader's entire clarinet solo, but still, it's an interesting jigsaw detail just to know for sure that the band did still revisit the piece.

* * *

ok, so the second file sounds a little different from both the first set and the "mystery edit", but the original stereo image is back and it's very likely the same concert, i think. on with the (by now familiar/unexpected) show, we're kicking off again with comp. 23d, one of the great neglected jazz ballads (as i'm always saying). ok, so what else can we say about that one? - cos again, that piece, that alto solo - both really nailed to the wall in the studio the previous year. (i really didn't imagine b. "promoting" an album in this way, assumed that the material, having been worked up on the road, got put to bed pretty much once it had been nailed - obviously there are exceptions, but still... anyway, promoting the album may or may not have been the idea, though with a major label album finally (presumably) out, getting people talking about it wouldn't have been a bad plan... how well did it work for our man? on the whole, it seems to agree with his band.)

- the answer on this occasion is that the alto solo is both quite intense and episodic, but fairly laconic (sensibly enough, since no transportation is likely to take place)... but again, wheeler sounds terrific and never runs out of ideas (i didn't mention this earlier, but his first trademark squeal - while not that long in arriving - doesn't come until a few minutes into the set, no hurry today, no shortage of ideas for once, and good for him (good for us too!). with altschul onto brushes behind holland, then a lovely restatement, we can remember again how good these guys all sounded together, and the two horns especially, perhaps - wheeler (like corea) drawn in surely by b's skill as a teller of (hallucinatory) ballads: by this point, his own ballads were calling him, tugging him away, yet this "watershed period" finds him today both relaxed and continuously inspired. what, more applause? was that an encore or what? and then argh, the german announcer back to remind us who we've been hearing, and fuckin' "stolen moments" fades in behind him and hangs around like an inappropriate fragrance for at least the next minute... [well, the joys of unofficial recordings are well known; for myself, given the choice between this or nothing i would take this every time, yes and crappy equipment too... i'm not really complaining, just passing on what it was like for this friendly experiencer...]

- now suddenly we're (did we but know it) at the start of another longish set (and all within the second file still). and what do we begin with, once the applause has died away (mercifully taking mr nelson's audible chestnut with it... no offence btw*1) but the barrier-bending masterpiece that is comp. 23e. now... this one has been waxed by the time of the concert (surely) but the results had not yet been released, though then again - there wasn't much delay either... anyway, the audience may well have heard this piece before too, but they won't have heard it quite like this before. this band has taken part in that unforgettable group ritual which was the studio version (may as well say now that i think you could consider that to be holland's finest moment with the band*2 - incredible playing by him on that very demanding piece) - really, they must have it still fresh in their minds by the sound of it, and what's more it's now been decided that the long, drawn-out transition sequence heard in full on the studio version (and in earlier live workups) can be short-circuited, with the right kind of collective effort the quartet can get us right up close to the energy portal much more quickly than before - holland now understands his role so fully, and is so confident in his vibrating arco attack that the doorway is scarcely shown to us before we're moving towards it; and yet it's so close in precision to the studio recording that i find myself suddenly wondering what the hell, are they now broadcasting the fucken album or what (all bets about details now off as far as this recording and broadcast are concerned) - when in point of fact i know they aren't - it's just uncannily close to it for a while there. yet - as soon as the moment of transition is reached, the climax of that electrifying crescendo, it's instantly very different from the studio rendition: b. hops playfully back and forth over the divide, now on the other side, now back on this one, in, out, easy as that once you know how, that's how close the two planes are i suppose (did we but know it). conjure aside the veil, and - it's right there...

... for the next twenty-odd mins, once again, god knows where this piece eventually takes us; all sorts of seemingly-unrelated spaces open for temporary visitation; as usual i am left wondering whether the territory has changed long before it finally, definitively does (after we're finally done with all those 23s, the repetition series comp. 40(o) sees us to the fade at the end of the second file). but it certainly appears to be a feature of this extraordinary tour de force that performances of it, while allowing/encouraging some of the most closely-controlled, inspired utterances, exist only in my mind as i am hearing them and leave little or no recollection behind. also, the transition itself, the "ayler moment", remains so damn impressive that i always just find myself returning to that. besides, the wondering, when that kicks in - have we switched? are we still on the same score? etc etc. well, who cares... finally b. leads us into 40(o) and for a good long while, it is the closest thing to a rote run-through that i've yet heard; none of the usual timbral filtering, radically different colourations from sequence to sequence, just repetition in stacks, on one horn; eventually a switch back to alto cues uop a sort of solo, quite effective - holland then in the spotlight with just spectral shading from b. at first and then others, everyone out in the deep darkness again; some truly delightful touches from holland now, things i've never heard him do before; and as it relapses out into total freedom, it's regrettable that we approach fade-out and that's our lot.

* * *

maybe the thing about comp. 23b is that although a surefire crowd-pleaser, it's not necessarily a popular one for the players - ? for a brass player it's not quite the equivalent of ploughing through an assault course with a backpack full of canned beans, but it's hardly an afternoon stroll either - small wonder that after all this time, wheeler sometimes just takes a breather and misses a chunk out (b. could probably play it in his sleep by now). in any case, that's now at least two instances on this number of subdued backing from guys counted on to cook; and then, with exceptions, there's this whole larger question regarding the leader, how he is supposed to keep himself alert when the maps are rather old and familiar - he struggles at times, by the sound of it. yet the band, given mostly old-shoe-comfy material to play with, really does play with it. comp. 23e is a different matter, but that would only have been "perfected" recently and the thrill of witnessing the trick pulled off live, with such focus and control... lucky for those who witnessed it, all i can say...

- so an excellent feast for the ears, this time almost despite the leader rather than because of him; and that no slight on his playing either, more that he's there as backup rather than leading from the front for once... but there's no way it could have been otherwise, he himself having finished saying what he wanted to say with (much of) this stuff. it's still hugely enjoyable and instructive, and it arrived at just the right time to get me kick-started again... more (real) braxtothon stuff is now on the way.

blink and you missed it

back in the day (i.e. two years ago) at c#9, one album being hunted by several readers was QB by paul smoker. no-one could help with that one... until last month when it turned up here. (canadian) pablo's new blog has already been mentioned in a recent comment, and i doubt that there are too many readers here who haven't come across it by now... but it's worth mentioning anyway, there's an excellent selection of material on offer with the promise of more to come... i myself haven't downloaded this much stuff in quite a while ;-)

besides, a quick word about the smoker album, which was well worth the wait i thought: get past the dodgy "disco tonite" graphics on the front cover, and the music sounds totally fresh and alive. the date is basically known for its (partial) presence in the braxton sessionography, but there is plenty of reason to listen to the trio even without the master, who only plays on three cuts. smoker, a wonderfully expressive and fast-thinking player, has a big presence which makes his horn sound at times almost like a trombone; and the crackling energy from ron rohovit and phil haynes had me recalling no-one so much as greg cohen and joey baron, from the next decade: indeed masada came to mind a few times during my listens to this recording - and of course with the addition of the alto, the group becomes a de facto "ornette quartet" so the lineage is certainly there. this particular generation of that lineage has not, in all likelihood, been fully appreciated due to the record's notorious scarcity. (some online "discographies" i found don't even list it.)

needless to say, but i will anyway, b. contributes some superb playing to the date. [a few years later, he was to recruit smoker for an all-star septet extravaganza. meanwhile rohovit and haynes, young acquaintances of smoker's at the time of the '84 session, remained for some time his first-choice rhythm section and cut the better-known genuine fables with him for hat, also in 1988.]

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... and speaking of that last label: according to their front page, this one is out again, just in time for its twentieth anniversary... good news!

pisa trio 1980

this very interesting recording was brought to my attention the other day, and just in case anyone has any thoughts about it (or knows any more info), i thought it worth a post all of its own... (i did actually try and leave a comment on ubu-roi's blog, but apparently it didn't accept it..?)

crediting this to the "anthony braxton trio" is, i presume, a gloss added later. to an extent braxton does indeed take the lead, but these are surely not his pieces being played - the music has the feel of three-way group improv throughout, at least once the full trio is in action; the first short piece, on which rzewski isn't heard until near the end, seems to have been a simple idea worked out by b. and lewis beforehand, a drone-with-depth effect on which lewis' multiphonics summon the dead across vast freezing marshes, even as he continues playing the drone. as the second file begins it appears that all plans and blueprints have been scrapped, and the three-way construction which follows sounds at times a little hesitant. (piano is maybe not the most obvious voice for this sort of music..?) the audience, too, are maddeningly distracted as is obvious during the quieter passages. this, in turn, can only be somewhat off-putting for the performers, though they are all seasoned players and must be used to it. still, one does wonder what this audience was expecting, exactly. when the longest piece finishes, the eventual applause sounds rather perfunctory as if the crowd don't really know what they're applauding.

braxton seizes control with the next piece, opening with a prolonged squeal (a device which john zorn particularly likes also) and setting in the process a furious "pace" for the group territory which is very much taken up by the other two. effectively the piece becomes a triple solo statement, the three players snaking around and under each other at high speed until the burning intensity is spent and the music gently winds down. again, rather confused applause precedes the last piece here, what sounds like an improvised ballad structure. i wasn't totally convinced by this one, and again, the audience seems to be elsewhere entirely for much of it. typically enough, only when the performers take their bows do the penguins suddenly remember what their role is supposed to be. a few even cry for more, though there is not much suggestion that many were really troubling to listen the first time round.

pisa was the venue for another improv trio two years later, of course: i dealt with that one here (my upload, alas, is no longer live). bailey is a more natural partner for this sort of stuff, having been in on the ground floor so to speak. still, this earlier trio is fascinating for all braxton (and lewis) fans and well worth hearing... check it out and let us know what you think!

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that last reference to "us" was not delusional, by the way... the post dated the 9th feb really was by mcclintic sphere, as some readers may perhaps not have realised. after a long absence, the founder of this blog has returned to it, a cause for (dignified!) celebration i would think. some of you reading will probably not even remember who he is, others will suspect that i made him up - but older hands will recall him from the comments pages in c#9 and may well have downloaded some of his rips. i hope regular readers will join me in welcoming him back. the blog still has it in itself to evolve :)

critical massage 3: student studies

AT LAST at fucking last and only after much hesitation/procrastination, and with easy justification for same deriving from the radical change(s) in my immediate environment during the last year; hold page 13, i have started to read the tri-axium writings. this is really the first time i've tried in depth to follow a really detailed system of philosophy since i read ouspensky in my late twenties... and even that was essentially quite different, since much of the core text is not written by him as such but transcribed from q&a sessions (ideal stress- and ego-free way of doing it, in principle). braxton's writing takes me right back to my last year of uni, heidegger's being and time as my english edition is called; in order to crack that (very difficult) linguistic code i had to get all the forensic tools out and really dismantle the stuff sentence by dragging sentence, constantly annotating with abbreviations to ensure that every fragment was grasped before inching onto the next... four or five hours of this, during which time i covered a surprisingly large chunk of the first half of the book, all that i really needed to know once the massive implications had had time to settle, following the series of earth-splitting reverberations detonated inside my head, on the occasion of that one late-night total immersion...

... this time is somewhat similar in that the beginning is very, very dense and requires painstaking and meticulous reading, the writer going to great lengths to present the eye (and impatient questing mind) with structures both seen and unseen, entirely personal and therefore new and fresh models for arranging communicative or discourse-related information for purposes of dissemination. or something like that (ahem). actually, once the main body text is underway, the ideas and words flow very smoothly and efficiently with no wastage, only such repetition as is necessary (and already stated at the outset as a core principle) in order to keep presenting and re-presenting the new ideas and models from as many different angles as practicable within a written text. (heidegger never reached that stage for me; maybe one individual sentence might be brief and/or simple, but never an entire block of text actually "readable"...)

already, after just a few pages there are so many details i could go into that i have to rein myself in almost completely, not allow any digression into details of the text (yet) but simply point out the most poignant aspect of the work at this time, when so few of the writer's hopeful hopes have been realised on any significant scale; yet; but a new phase is, indeed underway - and although there are never any guarantees (except the obvious one or two) and it's best not to get too carried away with ones hopes for the human race, there is still time for major and radical change to occur, with the sort of shake-up which could (indeed) destroy empires, but would by no means extinguish human life in so doing, merely perhaps draw the line under an obsessive, unhealthy and ultimately futile and self-defeating (ask alexander the great) target-driven approach to life. that is what it might take, at this point... the potential to end up as another failed experiment (this particular life form called the human race at this time) is still not only there and considerable but in terms of betting, it's where the money was... till very recently, since of course now "they" aren't sure whether any of them are gonna be left with any money once the buildings have stopped shaking...

i never did read radano last year beyond the first couple of pages, can't remember why really, never even read more than a chapter or two of george e. lewis (yet - neither of these books is going anywhere) - and had enough reasons for that anyway, as i did for leaving the braxton books in their box for a while, daunted by vast mountain-ranges of detail - at a time when i couldn't even keep the braxtothon going, and pre-parenthood time was ticking away week by week - but now that i have made the effort to engage with this major work of profound social value (as it seems to me - feeling always confident that i know the ring of truth when i hear it being spoken or channelled) i shall keep up with it, for sure, as time and circ's permit. as the warmer weather approaches, light advances / dark recedes, new undertakings are timely and apposite... as usual, watch this space... long, slow, deep breaths ;-)

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ask me some other time to tell you about the music i've been listening to during the last 72 fairly hectic hours... and maybe just maybe i'll have time to tell you about it :)

cent x

Last night a DJ saved my life

A review of the Complete Arista Recordings, broadcast in the US last week on NPR.

I actually like the review pretty well, except for the bit about Sousa's band marching into a wall.  To me, the creative orchestra track in question is the sound of a joyful march into freedom... not at all a destructive image.

But overall, pretty solid.  And great publicity for our man.

These records were my first introduction to Braxton, about 15 years ago.  I have a lot of them on vinyl already, and they're some of my favorite recordings.  It's great to have them in print... I would say "again," but have they ever all been in print at the same time?  And wasn't "For Four Orchestras" in print for about a week?

McC. S.

300 duets

as we know, the years after the breakup of the "great quartet" (1993) were largely dominated by the massive meta-project known as ghost trance music (routinely rendered on this blog, and indeed elsewhere, as gtm). it's easy at times to assume that any opus number upwards of about 180 will refer to a gtm map/layout - but this is by no means always the case. the 323 series, for example, is a short book of diamond curtain wall blueprints for trios or quartets to use with the supercollider software.

- and another tradition continued in this era, that of b's writing pieces specifically to fuel his never-ending fascination with playing duets (which itself runs parallel to his core discipline of playing solo, a one-off requirement for aacm acolytes which became a lifelong gong fu practice for our man). as the opus numbers ticked into their fourth century, another clutch of duo territories sprang forth to provide fodder for another series of duets. frequently these pieces feature those half-mocking, interval-spanning birdcalls - messages fed to your ears by intelligent birds, seemingly offering the secret passwords to your dreams. (this hallmark, in turn, can be traced back into the early seventies and probably beyond... by 1976 the duo pieces b. was examining with george lewis seem to throw up eerily-familiar melodic fragments.) an example is comp. 304, evidently written with thb in mind, for the master's full album of duets with his new "disciple"...

... and two more are comps. 310 and 311, which if conceived in a different mood or another day might perhaps have begun life as 310 a&b... this time the duet date was with master percussionist andrew cyrille, the resulting material spread over two paired releases. far from being the full-on free jazz blowout some might have expected (?*), this meeting saw information shared and exchanged at a very subtle level, forceful dynamics rarely the chief concern. as well as the birdcall motifs which link these two braxton originals with comp. 304 (and with their common ancestors), all three recent pieces seem to include a basic stipulation that very precise modulations and inflections of tone and timbre will be employed at times. this is certainly the case for the leader, but to an extent it is mirrored in what bynum and cyrille bring forth in return. bynum is a very expressive player anyway, who prefers cornet to trumpet for that reason (expressiveness/tonal versatility) and who still probably has a special place in his heart for arch-trickster lester bowie; cyrille, all drummers to all people, becomes here a micro-explorer of the oceans of sound which lie scattered around his drum set. i'm guessing that those colourful signs and symbols we glimpse tantalisingly in partial reproductions of recent braxton charts were used quite liberally on these scores; that is, liberally but precisely, that word once more.

all three pieces have helped me enjoy the day, now it's evening and in writing just the vaguest outline about them i'm resisting the temptation to listen again with full focus to any of 'em, never mind all of 'em... we could be here for a long time if i did! the well never runs dry... i know from the half-listening which took place earlier that full concentration would see me engulfed, swallowed whole as if by a huge, friendly but hungry monster. one thing i can tell you for sure is that the fineness of those reed calibrations is getting ridiculous... by the time the millennium came and went, countless hours of informed practice were reflected by a supernatural degree of control over all the potential variables governing b's next individual utterance. for a duet partner this must be thrilling, intimidating and inspiring all at once... or so i like to imagine :)

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just to get really nerdy for a minute, a quick word regarding a list... my list-making/fetishising proclivity has been reasonably well reined in for some time now, i try not to make them at all unless they are actually gonna be functional... and as regards my number one obsession, i can honestly say that i don't know how many braxton albums i have (in whatever form), because i don't need to know but i *do* maintain a master-list of all his recordings i have, arranged chronologically for obvious reasons. that list, at the time of the original braxtothon week, numbered exactly 100 entries; at present time of writing it runs to a manageable 183. (an entry might be a full-length album or live show, a box set, or a live fragment; news from the 70s comprises five different entries, the iridium box just one, as befits a monolith.) just to get really nerdy for a sec... right now all the post-millennium entries occupy one full page on my screen, something which has the added pleaser that there are no entries for 1999 anyway, this being one very few "dry" years i have left... may even be the only one. see, i'm not going to check -

- and in any case, what i actually wanted to pass on was the more relevant synchronicity which came as the answer to one of my own queries. 1985 or 1993, my finish-line for the braxtothon? well, again at time of writing the last entry for 1985 (coventry) occurs at line 113, which of course has a special significance in braxtonian numerology... so that's that, 1985 it is - whenever the damn behemoth rolls back over and onto its wheelbase, and however long it takes to get there it will terminate at the end of the 1985 u.k. tour. who knows, if i live long enough to see it, i may even embark on a separate series of voyages to the later realms explored by that same "quartet's quartet"...

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