Marc Edwards & Sonos Gravis, Holographic Projection Holograms

Marc Edwards has always been a drummer of great power, drive, full technique and imagination. You can hear that on the sides he made as a member of Cecil Taylor's outfits and as a leader in his own right. But his music has been evolving over the years, taking a turn into the more electric outside free rock zones, in bands with and without the tag-teaming of Weasel Walter.

We now get a close-up panorama of what he has been up to with two interrelated releases. I tackle one today, the other soon. Up for consideration is Marc and his band Sonos Gravis and their album Holographic Projection Holograms (APCD-R4/Dog and Panda 6).

What we have here is a very invigorated live set recorded at New York's Local 269. Marc holds forth at the drums, then there are the very kinetic, amped guitars of Ernest Anderson III, Takuma Kanaiwa, and Alex Lozupone, the latter sometimes rigging up his guitar for bass tones.

For those who like the freely anarchic, high-decibel sort of out rock improvising, this has it on a high plane. Marc plays a whole lot of drums in his indefatigable way, in freetime and sometimes with pulse. The guitarists get a three-way frothy head of psychedelic steam going for them. Together all four make an exhilaratingly noisy tumult that carries plenty of notefulness and full-out fire. Marc's head compositions (two, the third number a collective improv) are very appropriate launching vehicles for this space trip.

The set is strong. Everybody hits in on all cylinders. It is freely fused out rock that takes "free jazz" and cranks it. Now you may not like that but if you say to yourself, "that sounds good," you will not be disappointed!

Matta Gawa, Tambora

Avant psychedelic metal? Free rock? Matta Gawa does that. It's Ed Ricart on very electric guitar and Sam Lohman at the drums. Their second full-length album Tambora (New Atlantis) continues where the first left off, with barrages of guitar power, effects-laden, voltage drenched tirades of skillful and smart amperage, punctuated by all-over drumming that brings the controlled chaos into the clear channel of musical mind-blow.

Take the two-minutes of true outness of long psychedelic band jams from the classic era and use that as the basis for your musical existence. That in many ways is what Matta Gawa is about.

Such freedom requires much creativity and discipline. The fact that the music hangs together convincingly and in exciting ways shows that Ricart and Lohman have it.

The audience for this music is probably in part self-selecting. Those that might like this sort of thing, do, assuming they get the word. Here is the word...

Dennis Rea, Wally Shoup, Tom Zgonc, Subduction Zone

Dennis Rea, readers may recall, is the Seattle-based guitar innovator, composer and bandleader with a number of excellent recent albums under his belt as leader of Moraine, Iron Kim Style, and under his own name (do a search on the top of this page for my review articles).

He teams with altoist Wally Shoup and drummer Tom Zgonc for a collectively free-avant improvisation date, Subduction Zone (self-released).

This is pull-out-the-stops out freedom of an advanced sort. There are seven collective improvisations on the disk, all fully charged with high-voltage expression.

Shoup gives forth with the emotive wails, fanfares and hard-scrabbled sax work appropriate to the genre. Zgonc applies an all-over rock-heavy leverage to the sound, in multi-layered torrents of freetime. Dennis excels in a highly electric, heavily sound-colored series of onslaughts that alternatively soar, break up into fragments of noise patterns, and provide a melodic and textural outness that helps give the trio a specific, distinctive sound ambiance.

This is avant improv of the swashbuckling sort. They move together in cohesive directions. They go for the big sound. And they do it all with a sense of drama that gets your attention and keeps it riveted throughout. If you love adventure and electricity, Subduction Zone will be a place you'll want to visit frequently.

Mayhem Circus Electric: Avant Groove from NHIC

The NHIC (New Haven Improvisers Collective) have been making their own brand of avant jazz for some time now. It's adventurous fare with a kind of territory band approach to the avant that is healthy and goes its own way. The group as a whole varies in terms of its members and the degree to which material is worked out on any given occasion.

Today's CD is by an NHIC offshoot with a more electric bent than the NHIC as a whole. It's a seven-man outfit that includes two guitars (one of them Bob Gorry, NHIC founder), sax, keys, bass guitar, bass clarinet and drums. Mayhem Circus Electric is what they call themselves and Lubricity (NHIC 005)is the title of the disk.

There are eleven jam-like vehicles, which take something from the electric Miles Davis concept on one hand, and to my ears, the Captain Beefheart ensemble style of his classic period.

So in other words there is a loose avant rock-funk feel with multiple collective solo work and there is also some of the jagged Beefheart angularity.

These are mere stepping-off points. Mayhem has a local DIY sensibility that gives the group (like the parent NHIC) a distinctive lack of the expected licks and textures that you might hear in the main currents of avant-dom. Collective is the operative concept in play on these pieces. No one much solos in the singular sense yet everyone is soloing throughout.

Lubricity has conceptual flair and group dynamic heft. And they seem to be enjoying every moment of the experience too. I say bravo to all that!

Hugh Hopper and Yumi Cawkwell on "Dune"

Originally posted on July 8, 2008

[The late] Hugh Hopper, an electric bassist who impressed the musical community through his pioneering bass work with Soft Machine beginning in the late sixties, shows that he can remain on the bleeding edge of the music with his latest release, a collaboration with keyboardist and vocalist Yumi Hara Cawkwell. Dune (MoonJune) maps out aural landscapes that are populated with ambient, flowing sound events.

Hopper’s bass playing is adventurous. Effects, loops, layering and a distinct, cosmic-oriented tonal arsenal are well in hand on this disk. Yumi provides a suitable and compelling stylistic counterpart with a chant-like vocal style steeped in Eastern sensibility and a keyboard approach that goes from drone to free articulations. This is free rock, I suppose you could say. There are no beats to speak of, but every piece is a miniature world of sound that evokes mind journeys to far away and exotic spaces. It is as dream provoking as it is musically provocative.

Totem: Power Trio Playing Experimental Music

Originally posted on June 13, 2008

Noise. Free Jazz. Out electric guitar. Electric guitarist Bruce Eisenbeil, bassist Tom Blancarte and drummer Andrew Drury give you the update on these musical categories in their newly released recording as Totem, Solar Forge (ESP). This is probably not music of which your grandmother would approve.

It’s a whole CD-load’s worth of experimental collages and explorations in the sounds one can make with this instrumental configuration. For that it is an excellent recording. They’ve clearly worked hard to get a consistent approach to new sounds. If you think it is easy, try it yourself! Not, of course, everybody’s cup of tea.