The Butterfly That Stamped

Erb / Baker
Bottervagl
SWITZERLAND VETO-RECORDS-EXCHANGE 006 CD (2013)

If you’re perusing this on a Monday, it’s highly probable that on the evening of said day, avant jazz pianist Jim Baker (a compatriot of Fred Anderson, Rob Mazurek a.o.) will be a-pounding and a-probing the ivories at a residency at The Beat Kitchen, Chicago with the Extraordinary Popular Delusions collective. And as to the activities of one Christoph Erb (Tenor Sax/Bass Clarinet); touring/van life with bands like Lila, Veto and erb_gut and recording sessions with Paul Lovens, Fred Lonberg-Holm and Daniel Humair will certainly nail that mystery of the age.

In the earlier stages of 2012, these two left of field improvisors combined their considerable chops (another example of Veto Records’ cultural exchange deal between the windy city and Lucerne) with the release of the Bottervagl CD, its title being the German for Butterfly.

The track titles too like “Tximelata” and “Gwilwileth” are butterfly-related (in tongues foreign), though I don’t quite see why, as none of the tracks on offer are particularly delicate or indeed fluttery creatures. Instead you’ll find a pretty wind ranging spectrum of edgy outrospection and mysterious/nail-biting moods. These merge with slightly more stately thematics, while, at some other stray moments, Erb’s breathy tones are found knocking at the door of the vapourous antics of Martin Kuchen, master of the almost nearly, hardly there kingdom. Baker’s piano meanwhile, comes on so angular, it surely must have been built and designed by a mad cubist, bent on world domination.

Certainly, these skittering motifs can become jagged and neurotic in a trice but I would say these occasional heated exchanges never really reach the unholy plateau of high energy skronk. No Sir. Nevertheveryless Bottervagl presents us with a duo who appear to be perfectly at ease with themselves in developing their own peculiarly spikey free jazz vocab.

Oh! and there’s three more of Erb’s Chicago sessions to come…

Veto Records, Luzernstrasse 4, CH-6206 New Church, Switzerland