On Extinction Burst (bim-082), we have Christopher Riggs Trio laying down a single unstoppable blasteroo for exactly sixty mins. Riggs is an American guitarist who ran the small label Holy Cheever Church Records in Detroit for about two years, putting out a bunch of nifty cassettes. I think he moved to Chicago after this, which is where he started his “extinction burst” episodes with the help of drummer Emily Davis and pianist George Romaine, which is what we hear today. Riggs himself opts for playing a near-obnoxious barrage of squeal and mangled noise, as if emitting pure lightning bolts from his axe, and the natural sound of his six-stringed alligator is barely recognisable. His frenetic hoppermaroo bouncing is made all the more odd by the relative calm of his backing players, especially Romaine who issues his slow-moving runs of notes with deliberation and poise, as if delineating a skeletal backdrop of abstract grids. Meanwhile Davis pads incessantly on the most unexpected parts of her kit, and performs as if she was languidly swatting insects as Christopher Riggs flails madly away. Certainly enjoyed this groinkathon for the most part, but it doesn’t really move anywhere in the space of its allotted hour, I think deliberately so – one of the key words here is “static”, and they ain’t talking about the triboelectric effect. While I admire the stamina of these three to keep pushing away at the same immovable block of stone, the overall noise that is produced starts to grate a little over time; you may need a pep pill or two to endure it for the full 60 mins.

Chris Dadge teams up with Eric Hamelin on All Greased Up For Nothin’ (bim-81), and the name of the duo is Cryingsnice. It turns out we heard Hamelin 10 years ago when his band NoMoreShapes made an odd jazz-noise record for Drip Audio. Like Dadge, he too is a drummer and he’s lodged in the thumping seat for these 2018 studio recordings, while Dadge plays an amplified violin, I think feeding it through an echo or reverb unit for some interesting delay and distortion effects. Two long sets on this CDR, and notably we hear a lot more “space” in the music than the crowded, teeming surface of Riggs as above. I like the way the music sounds somewhat unfinished, ramshackle even – like a mad invention rigged up by some crackpot engineer that’s been allowed to run riot outside of the workshop, much to the dismay of the locals. There are some tasty semi-crazy sounds on offer, and the texture is muddy and maximal, but one still feels the duo never manage to fully cut loose or let the greased hog off its leash. Even so, the players (Dadge in particular) both exhibit that “insistent” mode of playing which I personally enjoy, as if they could wear away the floor by sheer persistence.

The record by Monicker is much more in the “classic” old-school of free improvisation, if we can dare to suggest such a thing, mainly because two players in the trio are old dabs. English percussionist Roger Turner is no stranger to the Incus and Emanem labels, showing up on the former as early as 1979. He’s here with two Canadian ‘provsters, the trombonist Scott Thomson – relative newcomer, though he has ‘boned with Braxton and Malcolm Goldstein – and the guitarist Arthur Bull. Bull may not have shown up on record much, but I’m assured he’s lurked and lolled with some of the major elks in the Canadian avant-garde since the early 1970s, including Michael Snow and Paul Dutton, as well as the lesser-known Bill Smith. This record Libr’aerie (bim-79) comes from a 2018 concert in Quebec City, at a hip bookstore that offers rare and second-hand tomes, coffee for your mouth, and a performance space. Turner always seems such a restless player to me, every performance I’ve heard conveying sensation of a swarm of angry insects as he attacks his snare and cymbal with a kind of fussy, constrained emotion. Bull follows suit, and lays down atonal guitar stabs in the “skittery” mode that used to be reckoned as the blight of 1980s UK improv, and he impressively manages to avoid sounding a single recognisable note, cluster, or chord shape – he’s all about furious, wiry, noise. Look to Thomson’s ‘bone if you want more tuneful elements, but I’m finding his expressive semi-blurt a little too rich in this context; he’s like a comedian mugging on the stage, too eager to please the audience. However, he’s capable of doing the 100 mph thing along with the other two players, at which moments the trio manage to lock into some kind of flailing energy. The label are very proud of this album, deeming it a “perfect” Bug Incision release.

Lastly, we have Collateral (bim-80) – largely a showcase for the unhinged guitar work of Sam Shalabi. This talented player has been showing up in these pages since 2000, sometimes on the & Label, sometimes as part of The Invisible Hands, and also in The Shalabi Effect and Land of Kush. This highly talented Egyptian-Canadian fellow never ceases to amaze all who are drawn into his orbit, and his ambitious projects to fuse Middle Eastern music with western classical and jazz are starting to bear much fruit. As it turns out, he also dazzles in a small group context, as this powerful gemuloid testifies. Joined by cellist Norman Adams and the piano of Tim Croft, he summons a major “harmattan” playing his oud and guitar on these 2014 concert sessions recorded in Halifax. The release is dominated by a 48:52 single performance where the music flows, jumps and wriggles with such unexpected non-stop dynamics, that it almost defies gravity; a rare case of an extremely productive situation where the river of talent just keeps on flowing like an endless wellspring of honey, and you don’t really want it to stop. The combination of instruments works great, producing a highly unusual sound, and Adams and Croft are more than just “sidemen”, they’re weaving an integral part of this aural web of desert scorpions. I gather these Halifax players are not only well respected veterans in the Canadian improv area, but also involved in centres of excellence such as the suddenlyLISTEN organisation. This really is a great document, and my only wish is that the cover art were a little less drab. Otherwise, fab.

All the above from 30th October 2020.

The pair arrived at this deep sound through close-miking their instruments and allowing amplification to reveal all sorts of details about the workings of the trumpet and the clarinet, the tubes, the keys, the wood, the metal, the reed…all made very present, very physical. Hundreds of years of classical technique (for orchestras and chamber music) have disguised all these things and trained musicians probably regard them as unwanted artefacts; the “better trained” the musician for classical purposes, the less they will sound as though they are blowing into a tube. This record embraces the exact opposite of that position and makes a tremendous virtue of the sound of breath. Of course you will no doubt start digging into your collections and produce records by Stéphane Rives and Axel Dörner and Robin Hayward from the furthest reaches of extreme improv, players who have all made a virtue of showcasing their lung power. Aha. But there’s an aesthetic dimension to Sound Of The Mountain which I like, whereby they transcend the materiality of the situation and start to stir our dreams and imagination with their deep rumbly sounds. In this, their overall plan has drawn inspiration from Pauline Oliveros (natch!), but also from Haino, Nakamura, Franz Hautzinger and Isabelle Duthoit (the French improvising clarinettist). Also available as an LP; recommended. From 11 September 2017.

From same label, we have Craig Pedersen Quintet playing Approaching The Absence Of Doing (MW003), a seven-part suite. Compared to above, this is more easily identifiable as free jazz music, but there’s much originality and innovation in Pedersen’s take on the genre – he allows plenty of space for free blowing and wild improvisation, but he’s also concerned with composition, arrangement, and direction. I suppose all of these elements, combined with a real knack for economy and concision, are what make this such a satisfying listen. I also like the sparse instrumentation – two drummers (Eric Thibodeau, Bennett Bedoukian) and a bassist (Joel Kerr) are all that’s needed to support Craig’s trumpet work, and the alto sax lines of Linsey Wellman. This means the sound is never over-crowded and the players never smudge or smear a single note, all good things helped by the very “natural” sound of the recording. None of this compromises the energy and attack of the quintet when they catch fire, as they very often do, but they’re also capable of turning in some deliciously autumnal and reflective melodies, such as the opening ‘Intervention’. This suite successfully walks the tightrope between composed music and free jazz, not an especially easy task, and Pedersen has learned his lessons well from his declared mentors (Cecil Taylor, Coltrane, David S. Ware and others). Only the childish doodle on the cover disappoints; it’s like what a sarcastic New Yorker magazine cartoonist of the 1960s would come up with to communicate “free jazz album” to his readers. From 11 September 2017.

We’ve heard from one of these Canadian players before, the estimable Peggy Lee who is a cellist and directed the album Tell Tale by Film In Music. That album wasn’t too far in scope and ambition from Sick Boss, though in both cases I find myself admiring rather than enjoying the music too much. Sick Boss are super-talented as players, but perhaps a little too eager to convince us of their many skills and wide-ranging musical tastes; once an idea or musical theme is seized upon, it’s pushed forward with relentless enthusiasm and energy, particularly with the help of Dan Gaucher’s zealous drumming. Complex time changes and speedy instrumental runs present no challenges to the highly proficient fingers of guitarist Schmidt or keyboard player Tyson Naylor, tempting the listener to add Progressive Rock to the melting pot of stylistic influences. But Sick Boss are also informed, one senses, by post-modern strains of doubt and uncertainty which have been plaguing rock music since the inception of the dreaded Godspeed You Black Emperor, and similar post-rock bands. To some degree these ambiguities are embedded in titles such as ‘Bad Buddhist’, ‘Ruthless Waltz’ and ‘Troubled’, but they are more manifest in the music; despite the air of assertion and affirmation (verging on bombast), and the slick delivery and production of these “chamber landscapes of unrepentant psych-rock”, the band don’t seem to have any shared sense of purpose or meaning to the music. They can’t quite agree on what they’re trying to do, and tend to get in each other’s way. I won’t say this makes the music insincere, but it may account for why I’m finding today’s spin entertaining, but unsatisfying. From 6th June 2017.

From same label, Ron Samworth offers Dogs Do Dream (DRIP AUDIO DA01296), a concept album themed on the notion that dogs have dreams. Something which any pet owner has always known anyway is apparently now confirmed by “scientific analysis”, we are told, as if that settles the matter. “We can only imagine the nature of these dreams,” states the press note blithely. Well, evidently Ron Samworth can’t; all he can muster is a series of prosaic observations about very obvious things that dogs do (such as walking in the park and shaking their fur), with no imagination whatsoever, let alone insight into the world of dreams – or the world of dogs, for that matter. These banal anecdotes are related in a faintly precious tone by Barbara Adler, against Samworth’s inoffensive pseudo-jazz decaffeinated backdrops. Some of the names from Sick Boss are here, including Peggy Lee, Tyson Naylor, and James Meger. I think I’d sooner endure a Ken Nordine box set than this…from 6th June 2017.

Tell Tale is a concept record of sorts, themed around the TV series Deadwood, which is one of those protracted HBO series that demands a long attention span from its viewers, and whose themes may be read as a veiled metaphor for late capitalism (not my original idea; I think I saw this in Sight & Sound magazine). Peggy Lee used this TV series as a starting point to build a compositional structure that would allow all the musicians to play characters, and tell stories; one outcome of this strategy is that the album is nicely balanced between ensemble work, and solo spots where each musician gets a turn to shine. They’re all improvisers, by the way. I seem to recall this “story-telling” device has been used by other improvisers to get results in a group situation, or possibly to break down barriers between musicians who don’t know each other too well; didn’t Chris Cutler do it in some capacity?

It works well on this occasion in terms of delivering a varied album, although overall I found Film In Music’s musical approach to be rather pedestrian, despite their evident skills, musical chops, and rapport with each other. There’s something too facile about the playing, and the sound is too smooth for my liking, as though every player fears to get too abrasive or loud, and the atmosphere of mutual respect in the group becomes stultifying. Even when they attempt to get noisy or abstract, it feels like something done to create predictable surface effects, and I’m just not feeling the bold exploratory passion for experimentation or risk-taking. The upbeat tunes are fun, but they also come close to turning into cocktail lounge modern jazz for people who don’t really like jazz; the arty tracks, with their sad drones and listless meandering, just project a feeling of melancholy weariness. From 12th December 2016.

This arrived with a hand-written note on a very nice piece of marbled paper. Perhaps the marbling is the work of Karoline Leblanc as well, perhaps not. The design of the cd sleeve is also very striking. A warm-yellow sleeve; a single fold-over piece of card, but professionally printed in full colour; the yellow on the outside augmented with a four bar graphic – three turquoise bars and one red on its face. Upon opening, on the inside the background is red with the same graphic but with one red and three white bars. There is no written information on the inside apart from the indication that these are nineteen individual pieces of piano improvisation. This description is included on the back cover as a helpful subtitle for the casual observer. The longest piece of music is just under four minutes while the shortest is very brief at only 58 seconds. I use the term “music” deliberately; these are very “musical” improvisations; no extended technique, Cageian preparation or augmentation with everyday objects here. These nineteen tracks actually work very well if listened to straight through in one sitting and perceived as a whole piece, or a whole movement. Leblanc demonstrates some very technical playing and clearly she is a very accomplished pianist – I think she plays instruments other than piano as well, namely violin, harpsichord, organ, and most interestingly, the Ondes Martenot: an early electronic orchestral instrument. If you are not familiar with the Ondes Martenot, imagine something not unlike a scaled-up Stylophone. And go and source a copy of Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony and be amazed. I’d be very interested to hear her tackle the Ondes with a similar approach to this.

She appears to be involved with an improvising scene in Montreal; I think her initial entry-point some time ago being through free-jazz. She runs the atrito-afeito label with another musician, the improvising drummer, Paulo J Ferreira Lopes. I think Velvet Oddities is a very impressive piece of work with a good flow throughout the course of the album. Indeed, with this many short pieces, I’m sure a lot of thought would have gone into the sequencing of tracks, which benefits the material greatly. It works very well; is very dynamic, and because of the high level of technique, a lot of it is leaning towards – or revealing the influence of – classical piano music more than it is Electro Acoustic Improvisation. But that’s no bad thing. Yeah, I like it. Edition of 100.

You could pick no better creator who personifies “unknowable depth” than your man Kafka; I’ve been reading his short stories since about 1979, and one day I hope to understand them. I can’t claim to have studied a great deal of critical analysis of Kafka, and I’m not sure that I care to; there’s a pleasure to be had for the reader in the constant mystification he sets up with his warped visions of European vistas, his mental labyrinths and strange symbols. I’ve no doubt there are numerous interpretations and explanations of The Trial and The Penal Colony, both works which feature in this music, but Francis Dhomont emphasises one particular aspect: the Law. Dhomont takes “the law” in Kafka to be “a metaphoric representation of the impenetrable realms the human mind hits”, and explores this theme with some determination. He probably reads Kafka’s work as describing a maze which always leads back to the same inescapable place, and ascribes the tone of despair and futility to the gloomy inevitability of mankind’s fate.

Dhomont also gives us his sonic take on other significant Kafka themes, including guilt, solitude, dreams, death, the family, and “impossible messages” – the last one being an apt description of Kafka’s own short stories, for this reader. On Le Cri Du Choucas – a title which incidentally translates as “The jackdaw’s call” and makes a punning reference to the Czech word Kavka – he does it through rich and maximal fugues of abstract sound. Everything has been heavily treated and processed through a vast amount of expensive-sounding digital crunch and filter effects, yet you feel you could somehow reverse-engineer these noises into their sources if you only listened for long enough. Alien though they be, some sounds closely resemble swarms of chattering voices in a huge mass, which is how I remember parts of Frankenstein Symphony by this composer (from 1997). Often these sounds coalesce and rush forward in a massed advance which seems unstoppable; it creates a suitably nightmarish and unreal mood for the listener.

The work is further illustrated and signposted by a good deal of spoken-word narration (in French), fragments of texts and documentary recordings which I assume highlight significant milestones in the design. But these interpolations also interrupt the flow of the music, and keep reminding us of the grand abstractions that Dhomont wishes to convey, barely allowing us any space to conceive our own thoughts. This is one of the stumbling blocks for me on this otherwise exciting release, as it lends an air of didacticism to the work; it’s like being lectured by stern academics in a stuffy University where the Kafka syllabus hasn’t been updated in over 35 years. One senses that the masters at this academy would have no truck with Orson Welles’ free-spirited cinematic interpretation of The Trial. It’s also something of an old-school musique concrète technique, one which has tended to mar my enjoyment of Pierre Henry’s Apocalypse De Jean, that famed Oratorio Electronique from 1969. This aside, you can comfortably play this meticulous work at peak volumes for immersive and transporting effects, to induce profound states of mind…from 25 May 2016.