Theo Ceccaldi Trio + 1, Can You Smile?

My old boss had a sign on his desk that I do not forget. "Be brief," It read. "Be brilliant. And be gone." Now those were wise words from where he sat. He had no time to waste. And the three maxims still offer food for thought. It isn't easy. The "be gone" part notwithstanding.

With the music of Can You Smile? (Ayler 136) it is a challenge. Because the music is different. Theo Ceccaldi is the leader on this date. He plays violin in interesting, free and schooled ways. Also alto. The ever-wondrous Joelle Leandre is on contrabass and vocals, and she as always makes you ponder because she is always fresh and yes, very much schooled on the bass. Guillaume Aknine plays guitar, out guitar, electric and exploring. Then Valentin Ceccaldi is on cello. Sounds good.

What this is in essence is, what, a very adventuresome, free-wheeling sort of string quartet with everybody pulling plenty of weight. It's about texture as much as it is about line-creation. The group gets a sound that nobody else does that comes to mind. There's new music components and free new-thing components, and they mix in very nice ways. There is counterpoint, improvised, some composed lines that work right, some of that very singular Joelle scat embedded in out string improvs, strident outbursts and quiet musings, densities of flurry, fury and flying riffdoms followed by contrasts expected or no, electric guitar thrashing with sophisticated string responses, quartet movements that sound concerted, pizz and bowed emanations that startle or amaze....

That is a description of what you will hear. What it doesn't say to you is how fresh this album sounds. For that you need to zero your ears in with a copy of it! I thank you for reading what might not be brilliant but is at least pretty brief. Now I'll be gone! For today...

Dom Minasi & Hans Tammen, Alluvium

Dom Minasi you know, if you read this blog, anyway. Hans Tammen you may not. Both play guitar and can and do go into zones of adventure and freedom. The two met as a part of an eight-guitar ensemble, found that they had compatible conceptions musically, and made a point to get together as a duo and record. The result is this album, Alluvium (straw2gold pictures).

It has a focus on sound and grit. There are almost punk-ish, post-Beefheartian moments on this set of improvisations. Hans initially looked to Sonny Sharrock and Pete Cosey as influences. Some of that is in there in his playing, but much more of his own besides. Dom has influences in roots harmomelodism from Johnny Smith on, but then has taken things out in his very own ways, which can vary as widely as you could imagine, from pulsating, harmonically pinned fluorescence to sound-sculpting.

This is an album that shows a rare, vibrant species of chemistry between two guitarists. They travel the spaceways and they plant their feet firmly on earth as well, sometimes in a heartbeat.

This is what open improvisation is about. Between two truly inventive artists. No preconceptions except to live in the spontaneous creative moments of now! The listener must anticipate the unknown. Like going on those "mystery rides" my dad sometimes sprung on us kids when I was young. Where? You find out as you go. That's the excitement that this music puts forward. You don't ask, "when are we going to get there?" Because "there" starts, continues and ends with the duration of this set. Open up!

Recommended!

Tess Parks, Blood Hot

What makes garage rock into art? When it's not quite the deadly dumb progressions on guitar, but slightly off kilter. When the band gets very together in what they do, even if at base it's a matter of simplicity. And the vocals must have something special. Tess Parks and band on her album Blood Hot (359 Music 359CD6) do that kind of garage art.

What we have is some supremely laconic, not-quite-snarky but very attitudinal vocals from Ms. Parks, a hard-edged guitar-bass-drums quartet that hits psychedelic power chords and lets a simple effective lead guitar voice (or two) come though now and then.

Now that may sound ordinary, and it is. But the power of it all and Ms. Park's delivery put this one in the zone where you say, "Yeah, that works!"

There is still plenty to do in the garage rock zone. Tess Parks gives us something to remind us that roots can be rejuvenating. is it the guitar and vocals fountain of youth? No. But close.

Peter Hammill & Gary Lucas, Other World

It makes perfect sense that Peter Hammill and Gary Lucas would collaborate together on a project. Both are purveyors of the rock art song, Gary especially with Jeff Buckley in that day but after that too; Peter with Van der Graaf Generator. They both have an affinity with spacy, psychedelically open worlds also--Peter in the sound Van der Graf gets at times and Gary as a one-man master of pedals and space with his Strat and array.

So they just released the (first?) fruits of their efforts and I am immersed in its other-earthly world with a good deal of pleasure.

Not surprisingly it is called Other World (Esoteric Antenna). It is a collection of rather riveting, quirky song-soundscapes created with nothing but Peter's vocals and Gary and Peter's guitars. Another world opens up that simultaneously points forward to new frontiers of space music as it recaps where both have been. To my mind music is like cinema. Genres are constants that transcend time. So space music is to our world as is sci-fi or horror films. No genre is exhausted when our prime creative artists put their mind to working within it. And so here.

There's a bit of the rootsy Gary, a corking good deal of the cosmic Gary and Peter, and the kind of intelligent peculiarity of Peter's songs combined with the structural hipness of Gary's song-melding, all wrapped up into a sequence of sounds that gets better every time you hear it. It is memorable in ways you might find unexpected, unless you know their previous music well. The scapes are some of the most symphonic ever, the songs some of the most quirky.

It's not time to go up to the attic and unpack the lava lamp. It's time to don that silver spacesuit and confront the future that has arrived.

The music needs genuine creative acuity to move forward. Peter and Gary have that in abundance here. Strongly recommended.

Kazhargan World, Post Fiction

The internationally diverse ensemble Kazhargan World comes together with a new one that shows the band evolving and growing. Post Fiction (Dewey-Records LC24579), the latest, combines a sort of middle-period Miles Davis feel with nice composition elements, some excellent individual and collective soloing and a loosely hip rhythm section that swings and rocks appealingly.

Cheryl Pyle recites some spacy poetry in her very own way and plays a warm and contemporary sounding flute--also in her very own way. Stanislav Zaslavsky writes a good deal of the material and plays piano with smarts and flair, sort of post Hancockian. Hans Peter Salentin plays trumpet with a sound that certainly owes something to Miles, especially on muted horn, but the notes are his and nicely done. Sean O'Bryan Smith is on electric bass. What is interesting with him is that he can articulate funk riffs but then sometimes improvise between and around them in ways that make him a part of the improvisatory action. Max Ridgway plays a bluesy, nicely laid out electric guitar. Laurent Planells has for this band the ideal combination of free looseness and funk togetherness, sometimes all at once.

I like this band especially when they collectively improvise. They know when to come in and when to drop out so that it works really well. The written lines are very nice to hear and extend the rock-funk nexus in good ways.

That puts it all together for you as far as what to expect. It's something many people will find accessible, I would think, but it has intelligence and soul enough that you find yourself liking it more the more you hear.

It's not super-electric and it's not super-eclectic. There is a terrific balance between torque and expressive soul-lyricism.

So hear it!

Ayman Fanous and Jason Kao Hwang, Zilzal

Two sons of immigrants, from Egypt and China, respectively, in the world we live in today--each have dual cultural backgrounds to call upon, if everything is right. That is the case with violinist Jason Kao Hwang and guitarist-bouzoki player Ayman Fanous. There is the music of the homeland somewhere embedded in their musical minds and there is what they have invented themselves out of structural-improvisational forms they have absorbed here in the US.

You can hear that come across very clearly and brilliantly on their duo recording Zilzal (Innova 869). It's music with the freedom to explore tonalities and sound color. Each has his very own way. Neither sounds quite like anybody else.

The full set of improvisations take us to the world we are in now--one with a communications network and patterns of migration that continually enrich the culture we experience. But we do have to do a little looking for it. On the surface of pop culture there is some kind of homogeneity that can be found globally in one form or another. Some of that, even much of that can be vacuous, a white bread of bland product.

You get the opposite here. There is great freedom, technique harnessed to the ends of making a statement musically, and the sort of magic that results when all of that works, comes together.

This is experimentally open music. It is not a compendium of riffs and licks, far from it. Listening to it is to enter a kaleidoscope of modern expression, expression with rootedness in a new 3rd musical territory that is neither exactly modern in the a-cultural sense nor traditional in the constant need to affirm the previous.

There is some new conge-gating going on here, and it is rather exciting, I must say. Listen!

Adam Lane's Blue Spirit Band

Adam Lane isn't only a superb bassist. That should be enough. But he is also a leader of real strength. You get that today with his album Adam Lane's Blue Spirit Band (Cadence Jazz 1231) which was waxed in 2009 but released last year. The mood is elated, exuberent, and the repertoire is the roots, blues, spirituals, folk songs. That doesn't mean he's "gone traditional" any more than the Art Ensemble did on Message to Our Folks. It means that respect for the past combines with what playing cutting-edge jazz is to these artists.

When I first listened to this one and then put it in sequence for later listens and review, Roy Campbell was still with us and we had no idea, no warning that he was going to leave us. But he did, suddenly, shockingly, gone. But here he is on this record, blazing fire, sounding excellent, a trumpet at the top of today, now a memory. So RIP Roy Campbell. This is as good a place as any to hear his last flowering.

And then the rest of the band is at the top, too. Avram Fefer on tenor, volcanic and impassioned. Vijay Anderson turns in a very together performance on the drums, as you can count on. Adam plays bass like you know he can. And the arrangements turn these old hoary classics into the now of today.

"House of the Rising Sun"? Yeah, and "Peace Like A River", "Old Time Religion" and a bunch of others, done with all the heat and tensile strength of the music today. There's another release on CIMP I'll be covering shortly. But get this one; pay respects to Roy Campbell but do the same for all of these artists. Someday we'll all be gone and we need to appreciate the art while we--and they--are here. You'll be getting one hell of a nice recording too!