1. Fab Trio, ‘Implications’
   From History of Jazz in Reverse, FINLAND TUM RECORDS TUM CD 028 (2011)
2. Andrew Cyrille & Haitian Fascination, ‘Marinèt’
   From Route De Frères, FINLAND TUM RECORDS TUM CD 027 (2011)
3. Mikko Innanen & Innkvisitio, ‘The Grey Adler Returns Again’
   From Clustrophy, FINLAND TUM RECORDS TUM CD 025 (2011)
4. BCR, ‘Afroklez’
   From Off-World Beat, USA CITY SPARK CDJ334 CD (1995)
5. Bucketrider, ‘Événement 11′
   From L’Événements, AUSTRALIA DR JIM’S RECORDS DRJIM35 CD (2004)
6. Fab Trio, ‘History of Jazz in Reverse’
   From History of Jazz in Reverse, op cit.
7. Andrew Cyrille & Haitian Fascination, ‘Isaura’
   From Route De Frères, op cit.
8. Paul Flaherty, ‘Little Death’
   From Voices, USA WET PAINT 3002 CD (2003)
9. Mikko Innanen & Innkvisitio, ‘Detto The Magician’
   From Clustrophy, op cit.
10. Olavi Trio & Friends, ‘No. 69B’
    From Triologia, FINLAND TUM RECORDS TUM CD 026 (2011)
11. Eugene Chadbourne with Joe Williamson & Uli Jenessen, ‘Light in the Darkness’
    From Ayler Undead, GERMANY GROB 321 CD (2001)
12. Joe McPhee, ‘Klatu’
    From Mister Peabody Goes To Baltimore, USA RECORDED 005 CD (2001)

Olavi Trio & Friends features the trombone playing of Jari Hongisto supported with Teppo Hauta-aho’s bass and Niilo Louhivuori’s drums, but guest players join in with trumpet, tenor sax or electric guitar on some tracks of Triologia (TUM CD 026), and in many places the group dynamic is a very successful negotiation of mixed voices. I like it best when they manage to disguise their instruments’ natural tones and arrive at a low, growling rumble effect which grinds away like the teeth of an old man eating cake. But the pace of this album is a bit too subdued for me, and I wish it had a little more menace or tension. Kalle Kalima’s electric guitar seems to liven up the players somewhat and I like some of his atonal meanderings on the long track ‘Biologia’, but in the final analysis this record murmurs and mutters a little too vaguely; I just wish they’d get to the point and say something definite, instead of all these constant allusions and obscure remarks.

Route De Frères (TUM CD 027) is a much warmer and even a very entertaining jazz album. The great free jazz drummer Andrew Cyrille, famed for his work on ESP-Disk and with Cecil Taylor, goes back to his Haitian forebears as he joins forces with the combo Haitian Fascination, a foursome which is half American and half Haitian. Not really a free jazz album; these are 12 jolly tunes and toe-tapping melodies which are showcases for the players taking solo turns one after the other, in the good old-fashioned small combo jazz style. The uptempo numbers like ‘Marinèt’, ‘Deblozay’ and ‘Isaura’ can’t help but make a hit in the stoniest of hearts, and you’ll be pulling on your dancing shoes in five seconds flat. What a terrific rhythmical swing it all has. No doubt the Haitian master percussionist Frisner Augustin (also artistic director of a dance company in NYC) has a lot to contribute, but all the players provide an irresistible and unusual lilting rhythm which you won’t hear on many contemporary jazz albums, and Cyrille’s restrained drumming is a joy throughout, his bass toms giving a solid foundation to the gently skipping melodic lines on top. What strikes me is the very open and refreshing sound of the album; the acoustic guitar of Alix Pascal is as light and delicate as autumn sunlight on the falling leaves, sometimes reminding me of Dorothy Ashby’s harp albums. Hamiet Bluiett’s baritone sax also adds an unusual flavour to the combo, and it’s a splendid combination of voices. While some of the tunes may stray a little close to easy-listening, it’s still a winning and heart-warming set.

Now we come to Clustrophy (TUM CD 025), an intriguing album by Mikko Innanen & Innkvisitio. This group is led by the “free-minded” saxophonist Mikko Innanen who is a graduate of music academies in Helsinki and Copenhagen, and leads what is essentially a sax-trio album with Fredrik Ljungkvist and Daniel Erdmann, supported by drummer Joonas Riipa, with no bass player in sight. So, a very full sound on the record and one which has been immaculately scored and arranged to make much of the cross-rhythms and three-way interplay of the saxophones, and the full range of woodwinds is on offer – alto, baritone, tenor, soprano and sopranino. Like a well-oiled acoustic machine they function beautifully. The band’s secret weapon is the synthesizer player Seppo Kantonen, who adds fabulous touches of fruity electronic wildness to the sound. While the title track isn’t much more than a sophisticated take on Duke Ellington, I very much enjoy the awkward and craggy compositional style of ‘Earth’s Second Moon’, which also showcases the band’s distinctive voices very well. It ain’t quite the Sun Ra Arkestra, but it’s got a strong Nordic flavour of reinterpreted and repurposed American jazz motifs. We’ve also got the subdued mystery drone of ‘A Panoramic View from the Top Floor’, where the massed breathy saxes are again augmented and coloured by Kantonen’s lovely filtered keyboard settings. And there’s the ultra-complex Zappa-esque circus jazz music of ‘The Grey Adler Returns Again’, which really puts the drummer through his paces as he attempts to render the jumpy, herky-jerky rhythms, never missing a trick; and the hauntingly melancholic clarinet tones on ‘Ardennes at Dawn’. Perhaps Innanen never quite overcomes his conservatoire training, and there is an overhanging sense of “seriousness” to the album, but this isn’t to say the music is stilted or pretentious. Clustrophy is a varied set of good experimental jazz-rock, free jazz and electronic music moves, with a perfect production sheen and not a misplaced note anywhere. I also bet if you saw this band live you would not be disappointed.

Another American free jazz hero is Billy Bang, who passed away in April 2011 just as History Of Jazz in Reverse (TUM CD 028) by Fab Trio was entering its final production stages. Simply great violin playing from Bang, with bassist Joe Fonda and drummer Barry Altschul, and this excellent album is truly the goods. Seeing as how Bang has played with personal favourites Don Cherry, Sun Ra and James Blood Ulmer, I can’t figure out why I don’t own any of his solo records. As I listen to the variety of styles in his playing, how he performs impossible feats with evident ease, I can only sit back and enjoy in admiration. Of the records in this list so far, this is the one that hasn’t forgotten how to swing. Dynamic motion that’s like a cross-country car ride into other dimensions, sometimes as on ‘From Here To There’ speeding along at a demonic rate of knots with Bang recalling Leroy Jenkins at his most possessed and frantic, although you may prefer the brilliantly syncopated rhythms of ‘Implications’ or the smoky serenity of ‘Chan Chan’. And if it is indeed an album that contains a statement on the history of jazz in its grooves, then it’s a personal odyssey that ends with a nod to New Orleans (the cradle of jazz, natch), along the way pays a tribute to 1960s free jazz in the form of Don Cherry, and begins with a wistful tune called ‘Homeward Bound’, to the accompaniment of which I would like to think Bang is ascending to his rightful place in Jazz Paradise where he may play his golden violin for eternity. Recorded and flawlessly improvised in the studio in New York in 2005. May I recommend this great album wholeheartedly.

Can’t say the same for More Than 123 (TUM-A CD 001) which is a little out of my line; it’s a showcase for the singing and guitar playing of Dave Lindholm, with a jazz band combo under the baton of conductor Otto Donner. Lindholm, a long-serving singer since the early 1970s, may well be respected in the Finnish scene, but his croaky blues-influenced crooning is too corny for me, seriously lacking in conviction and pressing too many flattened fifths on autopilot, to say nothing of the cliché-ridden lyrics. We are invited to find resonances with Tom Waits, but it feels more like a Finnish version of the hateful Jools Holland Big Band. The supporting musicians play competently enough however. Lindholm is attempting the Zoot Suit look on the front cover, but with that cut and the sort of ordinary grey material you’d associate with a businessman or a conservative politician, a shape in a drape he ain’t!

Toil and Trouble

Hubble Drums (NORTHERN SPY NS 015) by Hubble is mostly the work of Ben Greenberg expressing himself freely with impressive guitar licks and overdubs, arriving at some mutated form of Terry Riley repeated loop sections, filtered through dirty amplifiers and a rock-music mentality. If Sonic Youth hadn’t fallen under the spell of Glenn Branca, they might have arrived at a similar location to Greenberg, but Hubble (on evidence of this release at any rate) has no interest in drumming or singing or adding a dash of No Wave angst to his very able playing. If anything he tears into his work with far more single-mindedness and intensity – on ‘Glass Napkin’, the middle track of three and the longest and strongest at over 20 minutes, he’s working his riffs like a dynamo, pounding them into submission like an oil rigger wrestling with his mighty shaft. But far from revelling in the glorious monotony of repetition and hoping to induce a state of stasis, this music continually propels itself forward at a speedy rate, and completely energises the listener in an electrifying manner. ‘Hubble’s Hubble’ is slightly more refined, combining the simple repeated-to-infinity licks with some hissy, crackly drone effect that’s hard to place; it’s like being lowered slowly into a pit full of mesmerising cobras with gigantic staring eyes. It’s on this track that we can more clearly perceive the slow progression of accreted layers and added counterpoint supplied by these ingeniously off-register overdubs, which is what makes me think of Terry Riley or perhaps Steve Reich with his out of phase voice loops. Except I have to assume that the talented Greenberg is playing all of this in real time. The USA is good at producing these superhuman prodigies of the axe. There’s also ‘Nude Ghost’ where he’s joined by a threesome of other players who are probably adding the raucous drumming and other percussive elements to Greenberg’s taut, obsessional circular playing. This is the opening cut and you’ll know within seconds of being caught in this fine golden mesh of finely-knit guitar droplets whether this is the sort of music that can lift you out of the ocean of lethargy along with all the other fish, or whether that net is the net of a retiarius and you’re about to be skewered by his trident in the gladiatorial arena of the cosmos. As to the cosmos element, the title is not a careless invocation of science – the third track is designed as a soundtrack to NASA footage of outer space views captured by the Hubble telescope, and Greenberg performs it as a live set working with his solo guitar and deliberately making a concerted effort to “charge the air in the room”. I’m bowled over. Be sure to seek out more work by this creative powerhouse with his supple, flexible fingers and his mind as fast as a silver dolphin on skates. There’s some live WFMU recordings here for starters.

Doctor Foom

Practice (BO’WEAVIL RECORDINGS WEAVIL45CD) is a solo album by Alan Wilkinson, the British tenor player who’s a somewhat neglected treasure of free jazz and improvisation. Neglected by me, that is. In the mid 1990s the trio of Hession Wilkinson and Fell created quite a stir in the trousers of many with their Foom! Foom! release, an album which did much to reinvigorate the jazz trio format as something loud and rough, and very coincidentally we also received a Simon H. Fell bass solo album from this same label at the same time we got this. It was recorded mostly at a purpose-built studio in Stoke Newington at the behest of the Bo’Weavil label owner, and also at a special “carpeted cell” in a hospital in Dalston, a space which clearly holds some sentimental attachment for the player and which he has since had to abandon, probably to make way for some Government-sponsored programme of “improvement”. On a track like ‘Line’, you’ve got the classic Wilkinson mode where he carries a melodic line with tremendous authority and clarity and then brilliantly and suddenly explodes into a helter-skelter barrage of overblowing and screaming effects, then just as easily switches back into the original melodic mode. Not even the most excessive American free jazzers of the 1960s could do that, often losing control of their facilities to the extent that once the skronk kicked in, there was nowhere for them to go but louder, faster and more aggressive. The first of the two Dalston tracks ‘Flush’ is quite different, a forlorn and growly meditation where Wilkinson seems to be sucking invisible spiritual nourishment from the air around him, and releasing it in awkward coils of vibrating electric energy. This is almost like problem-solving through the therapy of music, a man grappling with a thorny human conundrum and not doing anything to conceal the hideous insoluble nature of the dilemma from himself, or from us. Plus there’s an Ornette Coleman composition ‘Lonely Woman’ rendered with compassion and graceful minimalism, and Wilkinson’s truly deconstructionist take on the jazz standard ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is’, which in his embouchure turns from an old-fashioned romantic ballad into a heartfelt lament on the selfishness of contemporary English society, with its narrow-minded and acquisitive people who truly don’t know the meaning of love. That’s how I read it, anyway, although I suspect Wilkinson is not as pathologically disposed against the human race as I am. Don’t be fooled by the title into thinking this is just a solo record of saxophone exercises; it’s an intense set of 60 minutes’ worth of humanity, honesty and emotion, almost too much to take in one sitting.

Guest appearance from Tim Abbott

1. Crystal Hell Pool, ‘Life In Silence’
   From Domain, USA DEBACLE RECORDS DBL066 CD (2011)
2. Heroin In Tahiti, ‘Spaghetti Wasteland’
   From Death Surf, ITALY BORING MACHINES BM036LP (2011)
3. Nick Pynn, ‘Friends In Comedy’
   From Talktapes, UK ROUNDHILL MUSIC RHLCD011 CD
   (2011)
4. Charnel House, ‘Erosive’
   From Contagion, USA SYGIL RECORDS 008 CD (2011)
5. Erland Dahlen, ‘Piratman’
   From Rolling Bomber, NORWAY HUBRO CD2512 (2011)
6. Rella The Woodcutter, ‘Dead Star’
   From The Golden Undertow, ITALY BORING MACHINES BM037 LP (2012)
7. Bonnie Barnett Group, ‘Set In Stone’
   From In Between Dreams, USA PFMENTUM PFMCD063 CD (2011)
8. Wade Matthews & Alfredo Costa Monteiro, ‘Aconite’
   From Winter, USA COPY FOR YOUR RECORDS CFYR009 CD (2011)
9. Hum Of Gnats, ‘Hey, Rube!’
   From Purge The Weevil From Yer Midst, ITALY STRUNGAPHONE RECORDS SPR01 CD (2011)
10. Layers of the Onion, ‘In The Land of Sona-Nyl’
    From Hal-An-Tow, NORWAY OHM RECORDS 2.4 OHM / APARTMENT RECORDS APAREC030 / DRONING-ON RECORDS DRONCD15 CD (2011)
11. Poisucevamachenille, (Track 01)
    From Poisucevamachenille, ITALY OUTLINE RECORDS CD (2010)

Very coincidentally the trumpeter Nate Wooley made a record for Carrier which we noted in September 2011, a set of duets with Peter Evans which was quite a wild and woolly one – semi-structured improv and process work bordering on free noise. His November 2011 release The Almond (POGUS PRODUCTIONS POGUS 21061-2) is quite different to that, and it’s a beautiful piece of solid minimalist droning. He put it together using multiple recordings of his trumpet playing, using different microphones and placed in different recording locations; and the instrument itself was varied through tunings, or use of the mute. It’s all about the generation of timbres, pitches and overtones, allowing for the creation of spectral harmonies and unexpected voicings in the finished playback. In pursuit of this purity, Wooley refuses “extended technique”, by which I assume he means adding any form of embellishment to his tones and demanding of himself the utmost discipline when it comes to fingering methods and breath control. He likewise eschews processing, which presumably means there are no post-production studio treatments applied to the tapes, and the only studio technique has been the editing together of long sections of recordings. No wonder Al Margolis, who once overdubbed and multitracked his clarinets to tremendous effect on Clara Nostra, is getting excited about this release. As he points out, “the materials…seem to grow out of each other, spatialized in such a way that suggests a more organic movement than the tedious tape preparation…would suggest”. How true; Wooley’s art transcends technique here and The Almond successfully sublimates all the hard toil of its creation into a highly compelling, rich and varied listen that borders on the monumental. The 72-minute work had its origins in a [2010] submission to Compost and Height, a 20-minute piece where Wooley’s express aim was to move beyond the signature sound he had evolved in his jazz and improvisation work, and produce “true solo trumpet” music. Arriving with a Louis Althusser quote printed on the back cover and a suggestion that playback at loud volume / through headphones is indicated, this fine creation rests squarely in American Minimalism traditions, strongly reminiscent of Phill Niblock or La Monte Young.

1. Anders Hana, ‘Iskoras’
   From Dead Clubbing, NORWAY DRID MACHINE RECORDS DMR2 LP (2011)
2. Strongly Imploded, ‘Signs of liberation for Wandering souls’
   From Twilight of Broken Machines, USA EH?58 CD (2011)
3. No UFOs, ‘Evidence / Century Park’
   From Soft Coast, AUSTRIA SPECTRUM SPOOLS SP 011 CD (2011)
4. Sutcliffe Jugend, ‘Carnage’
   From With Extreme Prejudice, UK COLD SPRING RECORDS CSR143CD CD (2011)
5. Astro, ‘Slow Slide’
   From Creative Destruction, UK HYPNAGOGIA GIA07 2 x CD (2011)
6. Defektro, ‘Bite and Spit’
   From Creative Destruction, op cit.
7. Mark Van Hoen, ‘I Remember’
   From The Revenant Diary, AUSTRIA EDITIONS MEGO EMEGO 136 CD (2012)
8. Rothkamm, ‘German Film Star’
   From Reno, USA FLUX RECORDS FLX15 CD (2011)
9. Foust!, ‘Astounding Data’
   From Space Sickness, USA EH?60 CDR (2011)
10. Vega (with Bart de Vrees), ‘Light Code’
    From Wormsongs, NETHERLANDS ARTEKSOUNDS ART001 CD (2011)
11. PMT, ‘THEFCKWT TWO’
    From Frosty Lee / THEFCKWT EP, UK SLIGHTLY OFF KILTER SOK035 CD (2012)
12. Alla Zagaykevych and Electroacoustic’s Ensemble, ‘Part I’
    From Nord/Ouest, UKRAINE NEXSOUND NS67 CD (2011)
13. Ensemble Pamplemousse, ‘Symbiosis’
    From Raanna Jedaku, USA CARRIER RECORDS 013 2 x CD (2012)

* * * Mute Sound * * *

What does Christmas do to our cerebellum?

Another item from the Chicago Peira label showcases our favourite improvising cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, here scraping his bow in a duel with the “no-output turntable” of Aaron Zarzutzki. If you want expanded vocabularies for an instrument, few have done more than Lonberg-Holm to deepen and enrich the basic sound of the cello in an improvising context, and as this record shows he has the speed of thought of a thousand Greyhound buses enabling him to respond quickly and appropriately whatever the situation. Additionally, his arms and fingers are as supple as if a young Amazonian sapling had come to life and were able to bend its twigs around the neck of a stringed instrument; for this, try and imagine a sort of teenager-oriented 1990s remake of From Hell It Came. In amongst the wily scrapes and plucks from Fred, incidentally about the most abstract and least conventionally jazzy of any date I have heard from him, I assume Mr Zarzutzki is contributing these bizarre semi-mechanical grinding sounds, perhaps through studious use and abuse of his turntable which may or may not be amplified and almost certainly has no records sitting on the deck. Together, they certainly produce a euphonious blend, and while the music is intensely hard to follow it is by no means as fragmented as the efforts of Simonis and Candlesnuffer above. “This work necessitates further study with a detailed listen,” is the suggestion of the press note. I agree, but I also think the act of listening here should be likened to a session with an outlawed contortionist, or a chiropractor who is about to be stricken from the register for his dubious use of the medieval rack device. In short, most of what I hear is twisty and turny content, made all the more envigorating for being played in real time. The odd title for this release Feminization of the Tassel (PEIRA 08) almost feels like one of the wryly comic titles devised by Derek Bailey for some of his Incus tunes, while the track titles here, with numerous references to spikelet meristems, have something to do with the properties of cereal grains that I don’t understand.

Melodic ambient-electronica of a sort from Minamo, a Japanese quartet of fellows who put together keyboards, guitars, and computer processing to create their not-unpleasant tunes, which have previously found a home on 12K and elsewhere. All the music on Documental (ROOM 40 RM443) is semi-improvised, and unlike both the records above is clearly not intended to agitate or disturb the listener; the press note praises its qualities with words like “floating” and “understated”, and the producer Lawrence English thinks highly enough of the group that he collaborated with them in 2010 on A Path Less Travelled. I do like the clarity of the recording process and the finished production, which has ensured that every single sound stands out as cleanly as a serving of fresh spring water served in an expensive designer glass, probably in a white-walled room where all the furniture is simple blocks of unpolished wood and the single window gives a view onto a mountain top. The restrained chamber-music piano sound which opens most tracks has its charms, as does the guitar sounding like a koto (or perhaps it actually is a koto). But for some reason, on today’s listen my body resists falling under the mesmerising spell that is clearly intended, and all these Eno-like performances just feel a bit too static for me. It would be a mistake to call this simple music “cluttered” and the four players are highly respectful of each other’s space, but I wonder if it would be interesting to hear them work in smaller units within the group – say two players at a time, a strategy which might bring out a little more of Minamo’s gifts for invention and interaction.