Max Johnson, In the West

If I have not posted on this blog in a while, it is not because I seek to discontinue coverage. On the contrary. My everyday life has become more demanding lately. And everything else has taken a back seat. I aim to revive posting here. Today marks that beginning.

An auspicious one. The bassist Max Johnson has been getting more and more attention for his appearances as a top tier avant jazz bassist and a bandleader. In the West (Clean Feed 439) is in a way the culmination of his presence thus far. What we have is an excellent quartet of players at the pinnacle of the New York scene, playing mostly Johnson compositions. The framework is thoughtful, the players realizations central.

Max of course is the bassist for the date. His playing has catapulted him into one of the busier bassists on the scene and this album shows you why. His open-field playing shows a superior sense of note choice, timbral richness and an all-encompassing drive. And he in a way is ever soloing, in the sense that it all has an outstanding presence. His rhythm teammate Mike Pride on the drums shows himself as always a smart. flexible artist who drums as musically as anybody these days.

Susan Alcorn makes of the pedal steel guitar a timbrally rich, notefully central front-line force. There is always a close rapport with what she does and what else is going on at any given time. Kris Davis has become one of my favorite pianists in the avant jazz fold. She does all the right things in a very pianistic way. No note is wasted and no opportunity to contribute squandered. Listen to what she does here and you may not be able NOT to smile.

So there we are. In the West is no doubt Max Johnson at his very best to date. The quartet is excellent and there is edge-to-edge relevance.

Hear this one by all means.

Eric Revis Trio, Crowded Solitudes

New albums by bassist Eric Revis have become something of an occasion to me. The latest gives us a fabulous trio effort of Eric with pianist Kris Davis and drummer Gerald Cleaver. Crowded Solitudes (Clean Feed 363) is a smartly burning set that brings out the best in Eric with plenty of full blown expressive thrust, some whip-crackingly precise yet vastly expressive, soulfully out Kris Davis, and a roll-and-tumble propulsion and dynamic energy from Gerald Cleaver.

A young Rio Sebastian Revis gives us a very musical speech statement which sounds almost Chinese and serves as the compositional impetus for the fascinating "Bontain." We get some collectively devised pieces, a few by Revis alone, one by Paul Motian (RIP) you may well recognize and yet another by Greg Osby.

The threesome are on a roll throughout, everybody pulling much weight and punching out with a determined brilliance--to mix metaphors. Davis reminds us how central she is now, but so do Eric and Gerald.

This is determined collective-self-music of a beautiful edginess. A fantastic set.

Hear it. Get it. And you will no doubt get it and get with it. I am not kidding!

SKM: Gauci, Davis, Bisio in a New Recording

The drumless jazz-improv trio (in this case tenor, piano and bass) offers up different possibilities. Without the drums there is a transparency to the musical texture, the bass is exposed in its direct manifestations unmediated by the wash of the ride cymbal and snare-bass-drum punctuations. The bass becomes a third "horn," so to speak. The trio SKM (Stephen Gauci, tenor, Kris Davis, piano, Michael Bisio, acoustic bass) takes advantage of the opportunity in a densely creative self-titled CD just out on Clean Feed (189).

It's modern avant chamber jazz that gives equal weight to all three artists. All the various solo, duo and trio configurations are made good use of. This is serious music. Seriously advanced music.

Michael Bisio is his usual inventive self, using all manner of standard and augmented techniques to create a distinctive aural universe. He is a master. (Any reader of this blog has come across my various accolades on his artistry, so I wont repeat them here.) He is shown in especially good light in this project.

Kris Davis plays a piano that combines a Cecil Taylor motility with some Cagean prepared piano sounds on occasion. She has a finessed earthiness that comes out of her own sensibility. The end result is a player of distinction. She engages in wide-ranging flights of fancy. She is impressive and mixes her attack with the others in a sensitive and eloquent manner. (See my review of Paradoxical Frog at my Gapplegate Music Review Blog for more on Ms. Davis.)

Steve Gauci sounds terrific on tenor, as he always does, though for this outing he is especially inspired with rapid jabs and asymmetrical phrasing that give the three-way musical dialog a special quality (that Kris and Michael pick up on and give back in equal measure. OK, so the causal arrow can go three ways, but it is natural to hear the tenor as the lead instrumentalist if you listen frequently to this kind of music. Here it is a three-way affair, so suffice to say that his fragments of phrases are a mirroring of, and are mirrored by Kris and Michael's phrasings.) Steve also strings together some long, complicated-interesting lines when the music goes that way.

What is especially ear-grabbing to me is the judicious use of repetition here and there to intensify the particular emphasis at any given point. More than that SKM is improv at its best. The artists make a definitive statement. The CD should be heard by all those wanting to dig the latest in the improvisatory firmament. It makes for exhilarating, absorbing listening.