Another cassette from Scots player Joseph Blane, who sent us The Spider Room in March 2023. Today’s effort is called Nocturnal Woes (SUBMARINE BROADCASTING COMPANY SBCA129), and this time the guitarist is joined by three collaborators Alison Coldrain (electric piano), Eddie Rorschach (bass) and Tom Bailey (woodwinds and trumpet). Apparently the other musicians recorded their parts in Venezuela and America, so Nocturnal Woes represents a virtual “assemblage” piece of some sort, as Blane built up his skeletal guitar pieces with their additions. He takes some pride in his “minimalistic and reductionist approach”, adding fleeting musical decorations to pieces that were pretty stark and simple to begin with.
Unlike Spider Room, which stood on the cusp of generating an interesting atmosphere of some sort, Nocturnal Woes is very under-nourished sonically, and leaving the instruments bare in the spotlight mainly serves to expose Blane’s musical inexperience and lack of original ideas. Too often he lapses into a rather naive vision of what he thinks jazz, or improvised music, ought to sound like, and this leads him into error more than once. The lack of rapport with his fellow players is also problematic; I appreciate they weren’t together in the room at the time, but everyone feels uncertain of each other, and nothing clicks together or sparks to life with anything like the musical interaction that improvisation is supposed to bring. It’s very hard to feel any emotional connection to this wispy, half-baked music, almost entirely lacking in conviction and purpose. (12/09/2023)