The Quietus | Features | Complete Communion

Vijay Iyer Trio by Craig Marsden

With my girlfriend away on a three-month residency the psychological results of lockdown lastly exacted their toll. I simply need to sleep all day, with music haunting my liminal states. I hold listening to a endless stream of recent music, however like most of us, I’m actually dying to listen to sounds being made stay and within the flesh – not on my pc display screen.

Once I’m feeling extra chipper I exalt within the bounty of music round me, not too long ago compounded by the welcome arrival of my assortment that had been in a Chicago storage unit for greater than two years.

Lockdown has continued to be good for archival materials, and the French imprint Darkish Tree has been exemplary with its excavations of music from the potent however usually missed Los Angeles scene throughout the Seventies and Eighties. In 2021 the imprint has complemented earlier titles by Horace Tapscott, Vinny Golia, and John Carter & Bobby Bradford with a gem from bassist Roberto Miranda.

Live At Bing Theater options Miranda’s House Music Ensemble, a 1985 live performance which introduced collectively Tapscott, Carter, Bradford, and flautist James Newton in the identical band for the primary time. Though often called a sideman, Miranda’s writing for the 11-member ensemble is assured, various, and absorbing. Most significantly, it supplies the superb band loads of grist for the improvisational mill.

The music weaves in rhythms from the bassist’s ancestral homeland of Puerto Rico, along with his father Louis Sr. and his brother Louis Jr. including percussion to compositions that groove and meditate. However, in all truthfully, it’s the chance to listen to these storied improvisers, superbly recorded, that makes this a necessary doc.

ICP Septet + Joris Roelofs, Terrie Ex, and Mara’s Pianola – Komen & Gaan
(ICP)

This informal gathering within the tiny village East Friesian village of Oldeberkoop within the Netherlands options the members of Amsterdam’s mighty ICP Orchestra who are usually not caught in different climes as a result of Corona pandemic joined by two succesful company. The low-key recording is mirrored by photographs within the CD booklet, as music making is interspersed with meals and drinks. A few tunes flip up, together with two spins by way of bassist Ernst Glerum’s old-school ballad ‘De Linkerschoen, De Rechterschoen’ and a suitably lose stroll by way of ICP founder Misha Mengelberg’s ‘Kroket’, however the bulk of the performances, with bass clarinetist Joris Roelofs and guitarist Terrie Ex fleshing out the group, are improvised, often in small groupings indicated by titles like ‘MaGuTer’, contractions of the primary names of every participant (on this case, violist Mary Oliver, pianist Guus Janssen, and Terrie). Album opener ‘Lucht’ feels like a affected person, breath-driven exploration of the room, whereas ‘Pianola Potpourri’ is an advert hoc jazz medley utilizing the room’s decommissioned participant piano.

Chris Pattishall – Zodiac Suite
(self-released)

It takes cojones for a jazz artist to interpret a traditional album on a debut recording, however pianist Chris Pattishall – a mainstream presence on the New York scene – clearly has the boldness and imaginative and prescient to drag it off. Main a glossy quintet, he remakes the sensible, still-overlooked 1945 trio album by pianist Mary Lou Williams Zodiac Suite, a wildly various, astonishingly authentic, and masterful portrait of the 12 astrological indicators distinguished as a lot by her ingenious writing and preparations as her agile taking part in. Working with producer Rafiq Bhatia (Son Lux), Pattishall recast the album for a quintet with drummer Jamison Ross, bassist Marty Jaffe, trumpeter Riley Mulherker (Westerlies), and saxophonist Ruben Fox, deftly highlighting the genius of the fabric however transplanting its essence to the presence, particularly in the way in which the horns translate components initially written for piano and bass. The beautiful melodies might evoke the post-swing period, but the preparations, refined digital thrives, and a blinding sense of financial system from every participant — each on meticulous charts and concise improvisation — sounds completely trendy.

Hafez Modirzadeh – Sides
(Pi Recordings)

Iranian-American saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh is a part of a rising variety of musicians exploring completely different modes of expression to include microtonality with jazz observe. This newest endeavour to advance his concept of “chromodality” — fusing Persian scales with normal Western temperament — enlists three glorious pianists to carry out on a specifically tuned instrument that re-tunes eight keys on a keyboard whereas leaving the remainder in equal temperament. He despatched his scores for a collection of duo items upfront to Kris Davis, Craig Taborn, and Tyshawn Sorey (the acclaimed drummer and composer who additionally occurs to be a wonderful pianist), however every musician encountered the re-tuned piano for the primary time within the studio. A lot of the tracks are pensive authentic items the place the pitches could seem wobbly to ears solely accustomed to plain scales, however the microtonality brings out unusual, alluring new harmonies and melodic strains of a lot higher nuance. Particularly attention-grabbing are some classics by Thelonious Monk, a pianist who famously inserted an adjoining word to counsel a bent or “blue word”.

[Ahmed] – Nights on Saturn (communication)
(Astral Spirits)

The third searing album from this European quartet continues to research the compositions of the American bassist and oud participant Ahmed Abdul-Malik, who linked conventional Arabic modes with jazz within the Fifties. Pianist Pat Thomas, reedist Seymour Wright, bassist Joel Grip, and drummer Antonin Gerbal deconstruct a pair of their namesake’s tunes — cited within the piece’s title — as a launch pad for its personal feverish journey, a single 41-minute observe minimize stay at Café Oto in December of 2019 that collides easy Arabic modes with a collection of riveting, virtually violent trances. On this explicit iteration Grip and Gerbal maintain regular with buoyant rhythms that swing and stutter, giving the pianist and saxophonist a platform to blow up a few terse patterns. They cycle by way of these phrases with exhilarating give-and-take, a sort of charging pressure of meditation the place they section out and in of each other’s orbit with always morphing however extraordinarily refined modulations of pitch and rhythm. [Ahmed] has loved a relentless inventive ascent with every new launch, and greater than a yr after the final erasure of stay efficiency, there’s no single group I’d relatively break that silence with.

Vijay Iyer Trio – UnEasy
(ECM)

The primary two tracks on Vijay Iyer’s new trio album are meant to attract consideration to social issues roiling the US: ‘Youngsters Of Flint’ invokes harmless victims of the water disaster within the titular Michigan metropolis, whereas ‘Fight Respiratory’ was composed to accompany a political motion within the wake of the Black Lives Matter motion. The musical content material of these compositions doesn’t explicitly reference both topic, though with out water and breath we don’t exist, and that appears to be the bigger level within the pianist’s music right here, an announcement regarding our most elementary wants, together with companionship. The music on UnEasy isn’t as turbulent as that title would possibly counsel, and the bond he’s fashioned with drummer Tyshawn Sorey, a collaborator for greater than twenty years, and bassist Linda Might Han Oh, a more moderen musical associate, couldn’t be way more fluid. The ten items assembled cowl twenty years of the pianist’s profession, together with a brand new model of ‘Configurations’, initially on his 2001 album Panoptic Modes, a sublime stroll by way of ‘Night time And Day’ modelled after McCoy Tyner’s taking part in on the 1966 Joe Henderson model of the tune, and an homage to pianist Geri Allen through her ‘Drummer’s Track’.

Punkt.Vrt.Plastik – Somit
(Intakt)

The second album from what could be probably the most thrilling piano trio as we speak raises the stakes from its bracing eponymous 2018 debut. Pianist Kaja Draksler, bassist Petter Eldh, and drummer Christian Lillinger proceed with clockwork exactitude on materials that perpetually teeters on the sting of an abyss. Rhythms splinter and fracture, forging uneasy alliances with melodies that appear to mock the polyrhythmic, post-hip hop propulsion. The straightforward repeating piano melody of Eldh’s ‘Natt Raum’ — performed, like every little thing right here, on an upright — sails alongside gleefully impervious to the way in which the wildly careening groove seeks to virtually crush it, whereas Draksler’s glowing tones on ‘Vrvica’ use their very own splattery logic in opposition to the roiling grooves of her companions. One of many yr’s greatest, little doubt.

Binker Golding, John Edwards & Steve Noble – Moon Day
(Byrd Out)

London saxophonist Binker Golding is understood greatest for his long-running duo with drummer Moses Boyd, the place they’ve solid a pressure of high-octane free jazz that by no means strays too removed from a good groove. Golding has been exploring different settings lately, together with an excellent duo with pianist Elliot Galvin and now comes this improvised album made final summer season between lockdowns with bassist John Edwards and drummer Steve Noble, each endlessly imaginative linchpins of the British improv scene. I give credit score to Golding for having the heart to spar with such heavies, gamers who way back jettisoned any sort of pattern-driven security internet. From the outset they feed and reply to Golding’s grainy sighs, sobs, and sorties with typical unpredictability, whereas providing stealthy however forceful shape-shifting grooves, an space the place the saxophonist stays most snug, breaking down post-bop phrasing into koan-like pleas.

Charles Lloyd & the Marvels – Tone Poem
(Blue Notice)

Veteran reedist Charles Lloyd constructed the Marvels across the mix of guitarist Invoice Frisell and pedal metal whiz Greg Leisz 5 years in the past, complemented by the presence of non-jazz singers Lucinda Williams, Willie Nelson, and Norah Jones. Tone Poem is the band’s first instrumental outing, however there’s little doubt that Lloyd and the guitarists are singing. The album opens with a pair of Ornette Coleman tunes that showcase the band’s fluidity and soulfulness: “Peace” is aptly meditative and looking, whereas “Ramblin’” is groovy and rooted within the blues. The album’s lengthy, affected person arc drifts in the direction of extra meditative modes in matches and begins, with the agile rhythm part of bassist Ruben Rogers and drummer Eric Harland sculpting a springy, elastic basis that erases style strains in favor of temper and empathy. There’s a lilting model of Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem” with the frontline braiding its melodic innovations like vines fanning out over a wall, and the interaction is simply as elegant on the shuffling title observe, a Lloyd composition. Now 83, he’s not often sounded extra profound.

Lina Allemano 4 – Greens
(Lumo)

Trumpeter Lina Allemano maintains an existence break up between her native Toronto and Berlin, with initiatives distinctive to each locales—though the pandemic has just about saved her in Canada over the past yr. Greens is the most recent albums from considered one of her oldest and greatest bands, an acoustic Toronto quartet with saxophonist Brodie West, bassist Andrew Downing, and drummer Nick Fraser constructed upon intense interaction, each composed and improvised. The album opener “Onions” embroiders the indelible opening phrase from the Dizzy Gillespie bebop normal “Salt Peanuts,” however as a peanut is a legume, not a vegetable the piece shortly pivots right into a lurching car constructed upon the thick arco strains from Downing because the frontline lays out some bracing multi-linear improvising. Allemano’s sturdy tunes toggle between off-kilter swing and blocky rhythms, all of them designed to foster charged, spontaneous interactions between musicians who’ve discovered tips on how to anticipate each other’s subsequent strikes.

Zeena Parkins, Mette Rasmussen & Ryan Sawyer – Glass Triangle
(Relative Pitch)

Zeena Parkins units the tone in each approach on this bruising free improv session, utilizing her electrical harp in sufficient completely different ways in which it looks as if she’s taking part in a brand new instrument on every of the six items. She doesn’t dominate, however her enter alters the context for the slashing alto saxophone of Mette Rasmussen and high-energy rhythmic streams of Ryan Sawyer. On “Nat Bygone, simply biggone” she produces a thrumming low finish of sludgy noise, whereas on “Flod of Bushes” she uncorks sustained stabs of noise, like a jacked-up Theremin with a brief in its wiring, and in every case her chameleonic presence has the impact of remodeling the power and aura of every piece, though no level-headed individual might deny the power of her companions to exert that type of change, too. The damped harmonic flutters Rasmussen blows on the beginning “The crystal chain letters” set up a transparent vibe, answered by Sawyer’s kinetic stutters and Morse code transmissions. All of it works as a consequence of their real willingness to pay attention.