Free jazz with energised updated beatnik-type Afro-futurist poetry and prose in a science-fiction mode…this can be yours for purchase price of The Burning Bright Light (KARLRECORDS KR116), played by Dromedaries with the intense vocal recits courtesy of Alex Smith, appearing here as Alexoteric.
American player Keir Neuringer is the sax player behind Dromedaries, and though I never heard him before he also played in Irreversible Entanglements, a group who are so free they don’t just play free jazz – they’re “liberation-oriented”. I liked the use of electronics (played by the drummer Julius Masri) on ‘A Brass Planet’, which shows how the trio don’t have to go full-on energy jazz every minute of the day and have a nice line in “open” structures, highly suitable for this mode of cosmic voyage music. There’s also a splendid where-are-we-now vibe emerging from the chaotic strands of ‘Avant Jawn’ – Keir Neuringer is also a synth player and while he’s no match for Sun Ra on Oblique Parallax, his music somehow intrigues me more when he lays down his overpowering sax.
Alexoteric, also of Philadelphia (where this was recorded), is a very advanced practitioner of “Afrotopian tension” (selon Glyphhaus) and manifests his visions in comic books, collage zines, and art-punk bands, pushing beyond the expected tropes of “cyberpunk”. I found his breathless expositions exhausting at first, but I gotta admit the rush of imagery is exhilarating, and he gets more reflective towards the end of the record, and does much to convey the crags and crevices of a twisted unknowable universe, riven with doubts and anguish. He doesn’t despair of the potential of the human race to rebuild society, but neither should we expect a joyous celebration of humanity, such as June Tyson might have delivered. Vinyl LP release for this unusual item. (19/12/2024)