American trumpet player Brad Henkel here with Croon (n/n 021), recorded in a studio in Berlin (where he’s currently based) and released on the Brooklyn label Neither Nor Records courtesy of Carlo Costa.
We’ve never heard this player before, but he’s been busy for years developing his own approach to playing the instrument – a very personal approach too, one that allows his own personality to find expression. I say this in case you’re getting too familiar with the term “extended technique”, too often applied to players who have the technique, but nothing to say with it, and though they may produce fine and unusual sounds there’s no sense of a human being having generated them in the first place. Henkel conversely is a warm human organism with plenty of juice in his lips and air in his lungs, the same air passing through the tubes of his instrument and arriving on the airwaves in unusual mutated forms.
There’s some pretty extreme forms on offer. Both ‘Whir’ and ‘Squall’ on this album could be presented before the committee as instances of the heavy-breath mode, but unlike Axel Dörner or Robin Hayward who aimed to subtract all musical substance from the performance and attempt to give us nothing but breathing, Brad Henkel is producing a messy, unkempt lump of acoustic noise, breath, music, spitting and tongue-lashing, all compressed into these intense performances. It’s a real express-way pile-up, that’s for sure – and brave the man who attempts to rescue any salvageable automobile parts from that collision. Another good one is ‘Purr’ – if you’re digging these one-word titles, don’t assume that the Bradster is always going to serve up what’s printed on the label. There may be cat-like emissions here, but also strange growls which seem to bend into weird shapes in real time, and somehow evolve into tones resembling evil electronic noise. Any improviser worth their salt would like to turn themselves into a personal power-pack, a transformer, an amplifier larded with feedback, but few have the willpower to get their body, mind and trumpet into that space.
Similar high point is the 8:32 mins of ‘Chant’, a carefully measured session of purr-drone growlery and suck-blow sputterment enriched with multiple mouth effects that sees our man reach deeply into his inner core, with the assurance of a tight-rope walker. I mean it’s full of tension and doubt, contrasting with the confidence of his playing. Like seeing a trained brain surgeon operating on his own cerebellum, using a mirror. If it’s more conventional free-jazz inflected acrobatics that ye crave, I suppose you could click on to ‘Croon’ and ‘Clamor’, but both seem a shade too triumphalist to me – like the principal instrument in a high school marching band having an avant-garde moment after their team won the big game. My sympathies naturally incline towards the abstract, uncertain, dirty and noisy aspects of the Henkel id; those precious seconds where he lets down his guard and reveals truths about his inner self that many would rather were kept hidden.
As noted, a very extreme instance of what could be classed as free improvisation, and certainly pretty far-out as a trumpet record goes too; more akin to an introspective bout of psychological self-healing. In support of my theory – admittedly a little far-fetched – gaze at the cover photos by Nathaniel Morgan, and ask yourself what do you really see in this subdued tableau of sepia and black? Another great one from this small but excellent label, representing some of the best in marginal free playing in solo and ensemble settings. From 23 March 2023.