Terrence McManus and John Hebert, Saints & Sinners

It is a treat to hear Terrence McManus on electric guitar and John Hebert on bass for a full album of duets. The album, Saints and Sinners (Rowhouse Music ROW01), captures a free-wheeling session of the two dating from 2010 but just recently released.

It gives you plenty of space to hear the freely creative twosome in a very inventive light. John Hebert is well-known out there as a bassist of power and imagination. We don't get a lot of him in such an exposed playing environment, and that is even more true of Terrence McManus.

It turns out that they were fully primed to get rolling on that recording date. The open-form possibilities are very nicely unveiled for this set. A tumbling, percussive/legato freedom comes into play and prevails throughout.

McManus reveals his considerably evolved outside lining, chording and sound-color sculpting prowess against a consistently invigorating backdrop of Hebert giving out with asymmetrical phrases that tumble forward to create a melodic-harmonic context advanced, swinging and well-thought out in the most spontaneous ways.

The two together let their creative intuitions flow for a full set. It is a refreshing result, two accomplished free improvisers getting maximum torque from the chemistry of the interactions.

We perhaps know Hebert's formidable capabilities, but then McManus comes through here as well to establish his own far-ranging imagination and an electric sound burnished yet cutting as needed.

This is high-powered invention, a duet that never flags and goes to a variety of interesting musical spaces.

A nice one!

Noah Kaplan, Giacomo Merega, Joe Moffett, Crows & Motives

We return today with another good free trio effort that features Giacomo Merega on electric bass, along with Noah Kaplan on alto sax and Joe Moffett on trumpet. The album is titled Crows & Motives (Underwolf).

It is an album of open-form freedom, a chance for all three artists to express lines and note-choices that meld together into an ever shifting unity. Merega has a burnished electric bass fluidity that sets the bottom foundation for the music well and shows inventive originality. Sometimes he shifts into fuzz-distortion and that gives the trio a more neo-psychedelic edge. Kaplan can be mercurial or lithely floating. Moffett sounds limber and full.

There are spontaneous effusions and what sound like composed or at least deliberately choreographed motives that play in and out of the continuous dialoging. In the 33-plus minutes of the EP your attention gets focused by the unexpected shifts and turns the trio plunges into heartily.

It's a fine effort all around, a good addition to the ever blossoming art of the improvisers today.

Dom Minasi and Michael Jefry Stevens, Angel's Dance

Electric guitarist Dom Minasi, pianist Michael Jefry Stevens...neither are improvising voices you can easily pigeonhole as this or that. They both are complete artists, not content to stay in one zone, not content to repeat themselves. They are musicians who evolve and grow at their own pace, who make records that say something others have not, who are motored onward by an inner compulsion, not what the flavor-of-the-month is supposed to be.

So when they make a recording together, it's a special thing just by nature of who they are. But then of course, there is the music, which is what it all means. Angel's Dance--Improvisations for Guitar and Piano (Nacht Records Download) gives a really good listen to what happens right now when the two get together and freely improvise. Now two years from now there might be something very different happening, and of course that is the beauty of these guys and the music.

There is much going on here. Some things are like clouds of sound, peaceful or turbulent, others take on more of a pulse. All explore the edges of possibility in any music neighborhood they choose to dwell. There are tonal-centered or even key-centered moments and there are moments where that stretches through the spontaneous reactions of each other to each other and they work in their own tonality, so to speak.

This is music that comes to us when two very original instrumental minds meld in the various moments. Neither sounds like anybody but themselves, but in the many moments of inspiration they go beyond what you think those selves sound like and surprise you.

That's the very best sort of improvising! Grab this album by going to http://www.domminasi.com/disc.html

Joelle Leandre & Jerome Bourdellon, Evidence

Not everything is everything. In fact some things aren't much of anything. Not true of Evidence (Relative Pitch 1010) by Joelle Leandre & Jerome Bourdellon. It is neither not much nor is it everything. Which means it is the right thing. What makes it right is the chemistry created by the two artists.

Joelle Leandre has been one of the premiere avant acoustic bassists for some time. She is marvelous, inventive, a sound-texture artist of the highest order, respected by her peers and critics alike. Jerome Bourdellon is not well-known to me but comes through on this recording as fully worthy of this major collaboration. He covers the contrabass flute, C flute, bass flute, bass clarinet and piccolo masterfully, giving Ms. Leandre a full spectrum of pitch zones to react against, which between the conventional pizzicato and bowed pitch ranges and those gained by harmonics, is just as wide.

We are talking about free improvisation here, as many would expect. And it's all about sound color and space, yes, but also about pitch sequences. Joelle is a master of such things and also a vocalist that has carved out her own style of out scatting, which she does at times here (and Jerome sometimes joins in with vocals too, effectively). Bourdellon keeps pace with Ms. Leandre, which is saying something. He has excellent tone control and sound generation inventiveness, yes, but also can run lines that go head-to-head with Joelle's prowess in that zone.

Evidence has excellent pace in its movement from instrument combination to instrument combination, from mood to mood, from color and run to color and run.

Marvellous duo! Beautiful playing! You won't be disappointed. It's very good in everything it does. And it's very worth having even if you don't seek to have everything!

Joe Morris, Agusti Fernandez, Nate Wooley, From the Discrete to the Particular

Joe Morris has become one of the very seminal free music guitarists out there today. He's written a book on playing free that I am reading right now, teaches at New England Conservatory and has made a large impact through many recordings and of course personal appearances. For the album on tap today he plays acoustic guitar (or at least it's his semi-hollow with little amplification, not sure) and joins in chamber free trio improvisations with trumpetmaster Nate Wooley (who has also become a centripetal force on his instrument) and pianist Augusti Fernandez, perhaps a lesser-known artist but fully at the level of the other two in his own way.

From the Discrete to the Particular (Relative Pitch 1008) brings the three together live at Firehouse 12 in New Haven in 2011. The triple-tiered interplay can get downright contrapuntal, which is only logical given the players and what they tend to do. But at all times there are various zone interactions going on, each player plotting out an aural spot and then working off the other two in the zones they establish. Seven individual pieces vary the freedom in ways that keep it interesting and exciting.

The harmonic texture of the music primarily comes out of the overlapping, interacting melody lines. The high inventive level of those lines and how they work as a triumvarate is what makes the music come through, makes it all "pop" so to speak. And pop it certainly does. The threesome have chosen their version of the open road; they challenge each other to get spontaneous chamber combustion on a continuous basis, and it happens. This is not easy music to do well. It is a tribute to the musical ears and imagination of the players that they succeed, that they plummet the hurdles of free playing in tandem. This music is vital!

Colla Parte, A Cast of Shadows

If you never experienced the spectrum of "serious" music out there today, you've missed quite a bit, I should think. I started like everyone else as a kid. I didn't know much of anything except what was on the radio and what my father played, his records. I followed my nose most of my life, one thing suggesting another, until I am ear-wise where I am.

I suggest this because today's CD is miles away from some of the indie rock I cover here, and yet it's something you should hear if you want to give yourself a stretch and grow.

I speak of the avant improv trio Colla Parte and their new CD A Cast of Shadows (self-released). The group consists of Daniel Barbiero on double bass, Perry Conticchio on reeds and flutes, and Rich O'Meara on vibes and percussion.

The album and its avant improvised music has as thematic the contrasts between shadow and light, as expressed musically. Of course music cannot directly express light--but the poetic thought is what motivates these three adventuresome artists. An interesting aspect of the instrumentation is Rich O'Meara's ability to get into the vibes and percussion or act as the drummer. With that option the group can grab into a chamber new music sound or a free music jazz feel or anything in between. And they do that.

Daniel puts much into play either arco or pizzicato, Perry has melodic improv ideas to spare and Rich engages in dialog and commentary in ways that extend his role and function.

If you are a young reader of this blog, you might find it consoling to know that most of the guys in this trio still have their hair, or maybe all do and one shaves his head. I don't know. But the point is that there are younger people coming up into avant music. It isn't something just for the cane and sweater set!

Colla Parte is a quite interesting example of music you can make because you have learned to hear something else than the ramrod military-march-equivalents-avec-boobs like you see and hear on the videos today! There IS much alternative music of all kinds and this is part of that. A good part.

AYCH, As the Crow Flies

AYCH is a formidable free trio lineup of Jim Hobbs on alto sax, Mary Halvorson, electric guitar, and Taylor Ho Bynum on cornet. As the Crow Flies (Relative Pitch 1004) brings the three together in a program of free-wheeling improvisations and compositional frameworks, the latter of which include many by Hobbs and are well worth a careful listen.

Mary's guitar gives the unit the possibility of 3rd front liner or harmonic backdrop, single-note improviser, sound artist or free chordal comp-er. She is admirably versatile and original and the trio puts her often in a fulcrum position.

Jim Hobbs plays a very expressive sax, and can emote in post-Ayler ballad context, get the juices flowing or hang back a bit and play sensitively in a three-way ensemble situation.

Taylor Ho is the multifaceted stylist that brings much to this group, a singular voice that can do most anything that's needed.

A totality of concept and interesting trio blend is what goes down here, with a great deal of stylistic variety and plenty of co-listening and preparation.

Great band. Nice music!

Roman Stolyar and Dominic Duval, Park West Suite

Back to the improvisational arts today. And as for that there is a very good place to be with Roman Stolyar and Dominic Duval's new program, Park West Suite (Cadence Jazz Records). It's a substantial program of free-wheeled improvisational duets with Dominic D of course on contrabass and Roman Stolyar at the piano.

Maestro Duval remains one of the most original, most accomplished bassists in the improvisational world of today. Roman Stolyar is a pianist with various influences (clearly Cecil Taylor, perhaps a bit of Jarrett in his more outre moments, new music performance practices, etc.), which he harnesses for an organic style that is not eclectic as much as it is respectful of those who came before but determined to plow a singular furrow, so to say.

It's a near-hour of the two conjuring up forward moving modes that have room for contemplation at points. Dominic is in top form, playing a great deal of well-thought out bass alternating with space and sound-color moments of relative restfulness.

Mr. Stolyar impresses with good use of motifs, droning full-piano sonances, prepared and inside-the-piano chimes, cosmic whirligigs of turbulence, exploratory moments of spontaneous freedom, and scalular, tone-centered rubatos.

This is a very impressive set--Duval sounds inspired by Stolyar's all-over pianism; Stolyar gets much to interact with from Dominic's explosive bass-mastering.

These two would make a fabulous trio with the addition of a very musical, keenly attuned drum master. But there is so much going on already one certainly feels no lack. Excellent disk!

Karl Berger, Dom Minasi, Synchronicity

The teaming of Karl Berger and Dom Minasi turns out to be an inspired idea. That's not surprising. Both players are known for their thoughtful approach to free improvisation, Karl Berger as one of the vibraphone greats and a pianist of big ideas; Dom Minasi as a guitarist deserving wider recognition, who uses his well grounded technical and artistic schooling as a ladder to the higher calling of pure spontaneous music making. Both are originals.

The album at hand, Synchronicity (Nacht Records), brings out the qualities of the two in beautiful ways. They concentrate on the simultaneous interlocking creation of spontaneous lines much of the time. And they succeed in creating some major free improv poetry of the highest caliber.

Half the album features Karl on the vibraphone. For the other half he switches to piano. Understandably the second half gives out with more vertical harmonic aspects, the former more strictly a horizontal movement.

In both cases there is the magic of the moment in time, the satisfaction of musical originality, excellently executed.

It's music for keen, hungry ears and it delivers much for those ears to savor. In it's own way it's most certainly one of the high points in either player's recorded output. So I suppose that gives you the idea what I think of it. Listen. And listen again. And see if you do not think the same way.

Heddy Boubaker, Hernani Faustino, Domino Doubles

A sax-bass improvisational duet depends for its success on the abilities of the players to come up with captivating moods and modes, with expressive and productive spontaneity.

So a meeting of Heddy Boubaker, alto and bass saxes, and Hernani Faustino, contrabass, on their CD Domino Doubles (re:konstruKt 057) should be evaluated in those terms.

First off both players have plenty of avant credentials and we needn't rehearse them here. Second, the range of timbres produced by Faustino's bass and Boubaker's bass and alto saxes is considerable. Hernani gets bowed subtones, percussive cascades of abstract phrases, harmonics and the sheer sensuality of the force of bow and fingers against strings. Heddy responds with a full spectrum of avant sax sound-producing techniques: breathy whispers, subtones and "swallowed" notes, full voices and harmonic grittiness. The bass sax brings a special sound to the ensemble and Boubaker does well getting the behemoth to speak nicely. Both players come up with lines of interest when they are not concentrating on timbre.

The session succeeds. It succeeds because both artists are well-attuned to one another and have the imaginative and creative inspiration to work together along with the technical prowess to make it possible.

Duets such as these aren't designed to sell huge numbers of CD copies. They are disciplined statements on the art of bare-bones freedom. This is an excellent example. Grab it if you can!

Eugene Chadbourne, Warren Smith, Odd Time

Eugene Chadbourne has been plying his brand of outness ever since I guess the earlier seventies. Warren Smith has been applying his drums-percussion-mallet talents to countless session and recordings as sideman and as leader and composer for many years.

The idea of pairing the two up might seem an odd one, but turns out it works well on Odd Time (Engine).

It's Eugene concentrating on the banjo (he plays guitar also, but not so much here) and the music is divided between some free excursions and Eugene's snide underground ragtime-bluegrass outer-spacial songs. He does some quite credible out-picking, some early jazz ragging and otherwise extends the banjo into the outer worlds in convincing and appealing ways. Warren is right there with him on vibes and the drum set.

"The New War" is a modern day not-so-pro-war song that sticks in the head. In fact the whole album does so. It's a collaboration that extends the music of both and keeps us interested in the process. Good going!

NHIC: Atlas, New One from the New Haven Improvisers Collective

The New Have Improvisers Collective is a home-grown brand of free improvisation centered around New Haven, Connecticut--headed by guitarist Bob Gorry. Their latest, NHIC: Atlas (NHIC 006) teams Gorry with a selected smaller ensemble, namely Steve Asetta, saxophones, Nathan Bontrager, cello, Jaime Paul Lamb, bass, Adam Matlock, clarinet, and Stephen Zieminski on drums.

What makes this one of their very best are the compositions by all concerned and the creative interplay among the band members. DIY can work if everybody is on the same page and there is a good plan compositionally or structurally--of where they plan to go in any given piece. Of course pure spontaneity can work too, but it can be harder to attain with a kind of local "can do" aggregate.

In this case there is plenty of spontaneity in the compositional-structural frameworks and the improvisers respond with coherency and energy.

There's no describing NHIC style--it's what the players attain with a sort of local earthiness. That is not to say that the players are not schooled at what they do--just that they do not show jazz or new music rootedness in any major formal sense. And that's in part what makes them different. They run on instinct and creativity in their improvisations.

So here they are. This is a good place to start. Atlas has a genuine sound and they get it together well.

Andrea Centazzo-Henry Kaiser, "Infinity Squared," Live in Los Angeles, 2006

A couple of days ago we looked at the Andrea Centazzo-Elliot Sharp duo recording. Today it's Andrea and Henry Kaiser, Infinity Squared (Ictus 152). This one was caught live at Cafe Metropol in Los Angeles during the summer of 2006. Like the Centazzo-Sharp duet this one has atmospheric sampling-electronics, Andrea's beautifully melodic battery of drums and percussion, and adventuresome guitar explorations, this time Henry Kaiser in a spacey mood. Once again it's not a hot licks exchange, but rather a successful attempt to create a live soundscape of varying moods and textures.

Gongs and cymbal washes, backwards guitar, some energetic freestyle drumming and guitar soundsculpting are in order. In this context the percussion and drums have a pitched relevance that plays off of Henry's scrambled but no less pitched guitar poetics. Of course if Andrea is on vibes, that is a matter of course. The whole battery however is an extension of a tonality, which cannot be said for many avant percussion practitioners that come out of the improvisatory area. A surprise is "A Similar Thang" when Henry breaks into the chord sequence to Muddy Waters' "The Same Thing" and Andrea takes some nice vibes rides, then Henry turns in a blistering scorcher of a solo while Andrea comps. From there it gets way out there but with space a major factor. It's not so much a barrage as it is an essay in periodicity. Lots of two-way contrasts and empathetic listening is going on between the two artists.

"Eternal Current Anew" is a long motif reminiscent of the one on Zappa's "Watermelon in Easter Hay" and Henry gets quite lucid overtop of the ostinato percussion and guitar loop. There are some rocker-outs and a big spacescape to top off the album.

It's a very fruitful encounter. The two connect in multiple musical circuitry, in ways that envelop the listener in dazzling sound color. Space cadets, seek this one out by all means.

Bruce Arnold and Dusan Bogdanovic, "Aspiration": Advanced Acoustic Guitar Duets

Aspiration (Muse Eek 129) is an interesting series of free improv acoustic guitar duets that came about when Bruce Arnold and Dusan Bogdanovic chanced to jam together and realized their affinities. The result is a wide ranging set of 18 duets that reference everything from early music lute to Spanish classical to the nether realms of advanced jazz.

Sometimes the music has the periodicity of rain falling, gentle notes sounding interesting combinations, drawing together and pulling apart as scattered punctual points on a broad field. Other times there are motives that one may suggest and the other react to.

Throughout the course of the set Arnold and Bogdanovic enter some rarified aural realms in excellent fashion. There is a sheer visceral element, an obvious love for the simultaneous double melody line and the variety of sounds the two acoustics can express in the duet situation.

The music is of such an unusual caste that it defies easy description. It is broadly tonal, brilliantly spontaneous and thoroughly open ended. There is a gentle freedom that will make this an accessible offering for even those who tend to be put off by the more assertive variety of free improv. For the rest of us there is much to appreciate as well.

Not your everyday fare and all the more interesting for it. Give it a listen by all means.

Macroscopia: deBrunner, Silverman, Carter and Zlabinger in Avant Chamber Improv

Despite the words of a song that blazed over my radio as a youth, freedom is NOT a word for "nothing left to lose." Freedom of choice is almost a terrifying prospect, as you know if you've looked with glazed eyes at the 200-odd brands and sub-brands of spaghetti sauce in the pasta aisle of your supermarket. Sometimes you stop caring that there is freedom of choice, partially because it becomes meaningless. It's a free market thing undoubtedly, to have huge price differences, little variation in actual features, and maximum sensuous overload from the images and graphics of what's on the outside of the jar. We all know the feeling, I suspect. That's not the kind of freedom that free improvisation represents. Freedom, at least here, brings challenge and responsibility. It's serious. All the creativity, all the imaginative and technical resources of each musician comes into play. One's reputation is on the line with every passing minute. The quartet of free players on the CD Macroscopia (Metier Jazz 0403) take that seriously. Listen and you know it is so.

A drummerless quartet of bassoon (Claire deBrunner), electric guitar (Ken Silverman), reeds and trumpet (Daniel Carter), and contrabass (Tom Zlabinger) forms the nucleus of the music. Seven free episodes comprise the CD. The quartet creates spontaneous four-way melodic communications of a modern sort. The tonality tends to be expanded and the emphasis is on invention as a whole. There aren't so much solos as there are collective improvisations. This is music without the safety net of preplanned compositional frameworks, overarching rhythmic patterns or, for that matter, without a lot of energy forays.

Claire deBrunner's bassoon gives the ensemble a distinct sound from the beginning. Bassoons do that! She plays a good bit of it and fits well with what the others are doing. Ken Silverman's guitar work has subtlety and a certain amount of selflessness. He creates lines and some harmonic context with taste and restraint. Daniel Carter loosely responds to the others in ways for which he is known. Tom Zlabinger anchors the proceedings with lower register contributions that, like the others, keep the group context as its focus.

What you get in the end is a promising quartet playing a challenging set of group improvisations which move directionally. Continued future interactions could well mark them off as a free ensemble of importance. For now there is a tentativeness in the explorations, a sounding-out of some possibilities, a testing of the waters. That doesn't mean that this is not an interesting listen. It most certainly is. I wish them the best and hope they continue to blossom as a unit as they continue their journey into uncharted territory.

Guitarist Bruce Eisenbeil: Mural, 1999

When you think about it, compared to piano or tenor sax, there aren't all that many electric guitarists who play in the free improvisation zone. Not as many. This blog has covered most of them at one point or another. Not Bruce Eisenbeil. Until today. There's a very representative CD that's been out for a few years, Eisenbeil's Crosscurrent Trio and the album Mural (CIMP 194).

It's Bruce playing electric guitar (a Strat) in a trio with fellow travelers J. Brunka on contrabass and Ryan Sawyer, drums. It's a longish program of improvisations that have compositional frameworks by Eisenbeil. Brunka and Sawyer freely accompany what are pretty much guitar-centered performances.

Eisenbeil is less abstract and angular than Derek Bailey, less torrential than Joe Morris, less blisteringly dense (most of the time) than early Sonny Sharrock. Instead he combines chromatic and sometimes slightly diatonic lines with harmonically sophisticated chord sequencing (sometimes played with a rapid seres of strums) in a way that is linear yet not symmetrical. He plays with a fair amount of lower-end settings some of the time so that in those moments the sound is not bright. He also tends to play quietly on some numbers so that he sometimes ends up fairly low in the mix compared to bass and drums. Once your ears become accustomed to his sound, there is much inventive guitar work to be heard on this album.

This is not mellow music; nor is it particularly abrasive. What it is has such a singular thrust that you must listen attentively to get on its wavelength. Brunka and Sawyer are very open ended and sympathetic in helping to realize Bruce Eisenbeil's vision.

In the end what you get is not quite like anything else. Here is a guitarist that most definitely plays himself. Listen and you'll hear something different. Click the CIMP Records link for more information.

"Serious Folly" from NHIC's Erasmus Quintet

The New Haven Improvisers Collective have been going their own way, guiding their own destiny for a number of years. They hold forth from their headquarters in Connecticut with live performances that feature an ever-shifting cast of local freely inspired music makers, as well as an ambitious series of recordings on their NHIC Records.

The latest is a paired-down quintet, the Erasmus Quintet to be precise, in a program of guided free improvisations released as Serious Folly (NHIC 004).

The absence of drums and bass makes this perforce a kind of chamber jazz outing. The music is given direction by the loose compositional frameworks constructed for each of the nine relatively short to mid-length pieces. Most of them have been penned by NHIC founder and guitarist Bob Gorry who takes a hand in the proceedings along with fellow guitarist Jeff Cedrone, Adam Matlock on accordion and clarinet, Paul McGuire on alto and soprano sax, and Stephen Zieminski on electric mallet percussion and keys.

As with previous NHIC ensemble recordings this one features a delightful sort of DIY seat-of-the-pants improvising style. The typical musical vocabulary of free jazz or the avant garde is jettisoned in favor of an intuitive folk-like attention to collective melody weaving. Most of the pieces proceed with a kind of five-way improvised, pulsating counterpoint.

It is challenging music that like Erasmus's famous Renaissance essay "In Praise of Folly" takes some pleasure in clearing the way of the accretions of detritus, for the present case in the practice of the art of improvising. These are musicians that stubbornly carve out roughly hewn blocks of new musical structure and content.

They sound especially persuasive in this smaller-unit recording. May they continue their trailblazing for many years to come!

Joe Morris' Solo Bass: "Sensor"

Joe Morris has musicianship to spare. A guitarist on the frontiers of the new jazz, he is also an accomplished contrabassist. So accomplished in fact that he recently did an album of unaccompanied solo improvisations, Sensor (No Business NCLP 27). It's a vinyl LP (a trend I do not find unwelcome incidentally), so the playing time comes in around 35 minutes, and that feels just right.

I do not intend it as a slight when I say that Mr. Morris is probably the best acoustic bassist in the history of improvised music among those who take up the bass as a second instrument. These sorts of comparisons are not terribly illuminating but it gives you some idea what I think of his playing.

To tackle an unaccompanied solo bass album is nervy I suppose, but Joe comes through with a performance that is not only not uninteresting, it is technically proficient and dynamic.

Joe starts off the album with his bass sounding like a Burundian trough zither--earthy, accentuated, punctuated in a freely soulful way. He goes on to bow and pizz his way through extended, long-lengthed line construction in the Joe Morris manner. As with his guitar work, he is never at a loss when constructing a smoothly executed, harmonically extended chromatic phrase.

This is improvised bass music of depth. It is not meant to be a tour de force of pyrotechnical prowess because that's not what Joe is about. Matter-of-factly direct. Avant. This is my music, he seems to be saying. This is what I do.

If you want to hear a player who has forged his playing style out of the force of his musical will, Joe Morris is your man. And Sensor is your album. It's a most pleasant surprise for those like myself that didn't quite expect it. And it will appeal to those who revel in the sonority of the contrabass in a free mode.

Zed Trio Heads for the Beyond on "Lost Transitions"

Somewhere in Toulouse, France in October 2009, the Zed Trio recorded their album Lost Transitions (Ayler 102). The CD showcases some out sounds from Heddy Boubaker on alto and the lesser-heard bass sax, David Lataillade, electric guitar, and Frederic Vaudaux on the drums. With a bass-less trio of this sort, the bottom comes through in the form of the bass drum, and Frederic has the "drop the bomb anywhere" approach, which means that the bass drum punctuates the music at any and potentially all possible places in any given phrase. He fills out his statements with churning figures that engage contrapuntally with freely devised alto or bass sax and the post-Sharrock-Bailey sound complexes of Lataillade.

There are ten different improvisational segments, many of which get pretty dense and robust at points.

It's a bit of a honk-out with the energy component one has grown accustomed to expect since the days of Albert Ayler himself. The Zed Trio goes more in for abstractions than the folkish qualities of Albert, and so they align a little more with Evan Parker, the pioneering Improvisation Company and those in that camp.

All that having been said, the Zed Trio most definitely hold their own. If you'd like to furnish your aural living space with an hour of wall-to-wall outness, and like the electrical charge a bit of noise-shred guitar brings to the equation, you'll dig this one.

Commitment: The Compete Recordings 1981 / 1983

Based on the No Business release (NB CD 14-15) of the complete 1981-1983 recordings of the avant jazz group Commitment, I realize I missed out on a very distinctive conflagration the first time around. The 2-CD set includes their studio date of late 1980 and a live appearance from 1983 in Germany (the latter unreleased before).

The band had an interesting aural presence partially due to it's not entirely standard instrumentation: reeds (Will Connell, Jr.), violin (Jason Kao Hwang), acoustic bass (William Parker) and drums (Zen Matsuura). The sound is greatly abetted by William Parker's enhanced sound staging, especially on the live date. He's out front throughout and plays ensemble passages when not engaged in the flowing free bass anchorage for which is has become renowned.

The studio date takes up much of the first disk and has less expansive, more compact improvisations. The live date stretches out more and has the advantage of two years of the band's history under wraps. They seem more attuned to one another and the expanded time frame lets them flow to and from each interlocking arranged-improvised musical cell at a more leisurely and considered pace.

It's both individually and as a ensemble, especially the latter, that they distinguish themselves. The sound texture of the group in full sail is dramatically powerful and nuanced. The players as individuals have well developed musical personalities. Parker is assertive and sound-color oriented, a moving force and a direction taker throughout. Matsuura has a tumbling drumming style that has energy and freedom. Connell can and does catalyse the proceedings with his energy travels on flute, alto and bass clarinet. Hwang's violin is sharply cutting when it needs to be and blends well with the melodic principals when engaged in ensemble improvisation or pre-worked line weaving.

Having the studio and the live date on two CDs furnishes for you a kind of mini-retrospective that shows the band's initial potential and its realization on two occasions. If only they stayed together even longer, they might have accomplished even more in the improvisatory realm. For a relatively brief moment in the '80s they showed themselves as one of the most important improvisatory ensembles of the era. You can hear why on these sides.