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.

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!