Label Spotlight:

Improvising Beings
By Ken Waxman

A combination of altruism, friendship and obsession are behind Paris’ Improvising Beings (IB) label, which in less than four years has produced 20 CDs, featuring a cross section of deeply committed French, American and Japanese sound experimenters. Many more discs will appear in the next few months, because as artistic director Julien Palomo says: “I’m not producing records. I am documenting lives at a particular moment.”

Palomo, whose day job is head of student cultural affairs at Paris’ Sciences Po, began documenting free jazz a decade ago when he became friends with American alto saxophonist Sonny Simmons. Within a couple of years he, Michel Kristof and Roy Morris established Hello World! Simmons’ Web site, and began offering downloads of Simmons’ sessions. Then the group started burning limited edition CD-Rs that Simmons could sell at gigs. “We found ourselves spending nights in my kitchen burning CD-Rs, pushing the inkjet printer to its limits and assembling things. But by April 2008 we were all a bit tired of the DIY method and I quit for a year,” he recalls.

These Simmons’ sessions were recorded by Parisian bass player Benjamin Duboc, who plays with many advanced musicians on the French scene. “Duboc taught me where to put a mike, what editing, mixing and mastering is, and how to deal with publishing and contracts,” recalls Palomo. “Then in 2009 he forced me to get back on top of things by dropping by my place one evening saying, ‘Come on, tomorrow we record the first album of your new label with [Japanese trumpeter Itaru] Oki’.” Oki plays with Duboc in a band called NUTS, so the Oki/Duboc session became Nobusiko.

“I’m doing the records others don’t do,” Palomo explains. “My main incentive is that we need more Simmons, more [French pianist François] Tusques, more Oki, more [American multi-instrumentalist Alan] Silva. They’ve mastered their instruments and concepts for six decades and it’s important to document that. IBs are more documents than regular records. They have no real commercial value right now but will later have a strong cultural value.”

One of the best-documented French pioneers of free jazz in the ‘60s, Tusques hadn’t had a new record since 2005 when Topolitologie, his duet with American drummer Noel McGhie appeared. “I decided to release CDs with Julien because he’s the only guy I know who believes in me and in what I play,” Tusques explains. “I met him two years ago when he told me he was interested in my musical story and wanted to make many new CDs of my music. He’s really interested in what I do rather than in commercial considerations.” More CDs by Tusques and Simmons are planned, affirms Palomo. “François lives in Paris and I attend every gig and tape everything. When we’re set on something, either we use those tapes or go ahead in a more proper setting.”

This year, for instance IB released Tusques’ solo disc, L’étange Chang (mais les poissons sont toujours là), a quartet session, New Today, New Everyday featuring Silva on synthesizer and Oki with tenor saxophonist Abdelhaï Bennani and drummer Makoto Sato. Beyond the Planet, a two-CD set by Simmons will be out soon plus more new and archival Tusques and Simmons sessions.

Palomo’s other obsession is Japanese Improv, which is why CDs like Oki’s, and Crimson Lip, featuring Silva, vocalist Keiko Higuchi, percussionist Sabu Toyozumi and guitarist Takuo Tanikawa are available. “Early on I discovered Japanese free jazz by seeking out Itaru’s albums,” Palomo remembers. “Soon I discovered the huge production of Japanese free-jazz. When I finally set foot in Tokyo in 2009, I saw Alan [Silva]’s all-Japanese Celestrial CD with Kazutoki Umezu, Shota Koyama, Nobuyoshi Ino, Akira Sakata, names that should be as important to free jazz as Peter Brötzmann, William Parker or Frank Lowe. Higuchi and Tanikawa, who are mainstays of the free scene in Tokyo, have become my friends. Skedded for immediate release on IB are Tanikawa’s Music for the Contemporary Kagura with Silva and Awai from Higuchi.

While his Asian contacts were multiplying so were Palomo’s connections with American free musician. There’s Zorn from Cambridge, Mass saxophonist Mario Rechtern and pianist Eric Zinman; and Bound and Gagged is from New Yorkers, saxophonist-guitarist Jeff Shurdut and bassist Gene Janas. “I met Jeff through the internet in 2004,” recalls Palomo. Today I discuss an enormous amount of things with him almost daily. I met Gene on eBay when I beat him in an auction. Jeff and Gene worked together to creates Bound and Gagged and its follow-ups.” IB’s catalogue is filled out by discs from French free players in the avant-rock as well as jazz fields. Many are associates of Duboc. “When the music is too difficult for me to record and/or mix on my own, Duboc lends a hand to perform his white magic on computers to save muddy tracks,” Palomo clarifies.

“I was on Improvising Being’s first CD and maybe I’ll be the bassist for the last one too,” jokes Duboc, “and I record and mix a lot of the others. “Julien and I don’t agree about all the music he records, but it’s a great experience. Julien’s first love is for music and musicians without concession and nobody does what he does. He does it not for the money but for the improvising beings. He’s a track maker who is recording for the future.”

IB releases are pressed in batches of 300 or 500, with the musicians retaining all publishing and licensing rights, and receiving copies of the masters. They’re paid a flat fee and/or 100 to 150 copies for gig sales. “The older generation prefers the flat fee, the younger generation prefers CDs because they tour more,” acknowledges Palomo. IB pays for all manufacturing, distribution and taxes, “important in France because it takes up to 30 per cent of manufacturing costs,” he notes. Palomo puts up the majority of funds, with Paris-based Kristof, who helps operate the IB Internet site, also contributing, along with Scottish music supporter Morris, who initially recorded IB’s For Harriet by American saxophonist Joe Rigby. Any profits help finance subsequent CDs. “Basically it works because I don’t mind losing money,” Palomo adds. “I’m happy if 40 per cent of the money comes back to keep the label going; 75 per cent is cool too. I don’t own the music. A record is not like a painting you don’t buy it and keep it in your salon. I find it unethical to keep somebody from his own art forever.”

That’s also why IB has stayed away from LPs. “My philosophy is die-hard DIY and that kind of vinyl mastering process, test pressing and all would eat too much of my time better spent preserving my friends’ music. LPs are also too expensive for a small label like mine. Shipping costs to the US and Japan would be awful for potential customers. Anyway I’m a child of the CD era. We live in the era of the LP revival. I’m getting ready for the CD revival in the 2050s. IB CDs will go on eBay for $500 apiece,” he teases.

As for downloads, while Palomo likes the idea of being able to release longer performances, he figures the audience for free music isn’t really interested in downloading. “So I stick to CDs.”

--For The New York City Jazz Record June 2013

June 13, 2013

Abdelhaï Bennani/Itaru Oki/Alan Silva/Makoto Sato

New Today, New Everyday
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Meticulous idealism can sometimes have as ill-advised an effect as cynical indifference as this partially indispensible two-CD set demonstrates. Paris-based tenor saxophonist Abdelhaï Bennani, although possessing an individual take on Free Jazz, records infrequently. So that anything he, and associates like Japanese trumpeter Itaru Oki and drummer Makoto Sato do, is worthy of note. And in fact with New Today, New Everyday the three veterans have come up with a notable session of profound, energetic sounds.

The problem is that outstanding, cognitive improvising only appears on the second of two discs in the program, when Alan Silva, the expatriate American Free Jazz pioneer joins the trio on three tracks collected as Childhood Dream Life. Recorded two months earlier in the same Parisian atelier, the previous three performances seem understated and uncoordinated; so tentative in execution that they could be rehearsal tapes.

Although by the final section Oki chimes in with some mouthpiece oscillation and tremolo flutters, while Bennani’s previously strangled glossolalia becomes a bit more assertive and intense, ennui is the order of the day. Sato’s recoiling flams and ruffs do little more than underline the general listlessness. Even staccato reed breaths and bugle-like grace notes are barely audible rather than lyrically expressive.

These misfires are puzzling. Late coming to improv, the Fèz, Morocco-born saxophonist has still recorded notable earlier sessions with guitarist Camel Zekri and bassist Benjamin Duboc and drummer Didier Lasserre. Meanwhile the 70-year-old Itaru has followed his own path since the late 1960s, initially as one of Japan’s first experimental Jazzers with his own bands and later in Paris-located configuration such as Nuts, which includes American trumpeter Rasul Siddik, Duboc, Lasserre and Sato, the last of whom also toils as a writer about food and restaurants.

Maybe the presence of Silva, now 73, whose list of collaborators range from Sun Ra and Albert Ayler on one continent, to Roger Turner and Johannes Bauer on the other, and who has also lived in France since the late 1960s, is the spark needed for the others. Certainly as soon as his synthesizer outputs an oscillating bass line on “Take Time, Play the Game” Oki’s mid-range puffing develops some capillary muscle and speed; Sato’s beats become more focused and harder; and Bennani’s timbres transform from tentative squeals to expansive honks, slurs and split tones. Operating in counterpoint the transparency of the trumpeter’s sparing grace notes are clear alongside the saxophonist’s pronounced glossolalia. Climax is achieved when Silva’s pedal point turns out expressive Sun Ra-like space chords, churning and ejaculating tremolo lines as Sato beats out flams and ruffs.

The suddenly galvanized trio is animated enough during the remainder of the session to jockey from uncommon technical feats, such as Oki’s strident mouthpiece kisses and Bennani’s pressurized bites, to toy with legato pronouncements. With Silva somehow managing to create the sounds of both string-bending and keyboard comping, in response Oki’s vibrations turn muted and on “Life First, A Dream” he clearly quotes “Bag’s Groove”. That doesn’t means that rubato brays or unaccented air pushed through the trumpet without valve action, the saxophonist’s staccato singular slurs nor the drummer’s cymbal rebounds or crackling slaps are abandoned, they just have more of a context in which to be displayed.

After interludes when both horn men sound as if they’re playing with their instruments’ bells pressed against metal plates, the massed vibrato from Silva’s synth overrides the friction-ridden polytonality, concluding with a distanced interface that is easy-going at the same time as it maintains its pressurized thrusts.

Committed followers of Bennani Oki and Sato may rate the first CD higher. But overall CD2 appears to contain a group of intuitive improvisations shacked to what could be rehearsal squibs on CD1.

--Ken Waxman

Track Listing: CD1: 1. Birth 2. Tribes 3. East West Ends CD2*: 1. Take Time, Play the Game 2. Life First, A Dream 3. More Is Different

Personnel: Itaru Oki (trumpet, flugelhorn, flutes), Abdelhaï Bennani (tenor saxophone); Alan Silva (synthesizer)* and Makoto Sato (drums)

December 25, 2012

Benjamin Duboc/Itaru Oki

Nobusiko
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Akira Sakata & Jim O’Rourke with Chikamorachi

…and that's the Story of Jazz

Family Vineyard FV78

KuRuWaSan

KuRuWaSan

Quintoquarto QQ002

Globe Unity: Japan

By Ken Waxman

With Japan’s year filled with disasters both geographical – an earthquake and a tsunami – and societal –political instability and falling interest rates – it’s heartening to hear CDs proving that musicians’ improvisational skills are still advanced. The sessions are also noteworthy, because like relief efforts, their success is due to collaborations with foreigners.

Trumpeter Itaru Oki moved to France in 1974 and he and bassist Benjamin Duboc work together frequently. On Nobusiko Duboc uses the bass’s percussive qualities to maintain a chromatic bottom as Oki splutters split tones. Pointed bass plucks match rubato brass squeaks, while steady walking accompanies tongue flutters.” Oki thickens brass shrieks with multi-flute resonations as Duboc thumps his instrument’s wood on “Ihoujin”. Duboc’s stops not only mute Oki’s note squalling at the end, but also move the duet towards melody.

Akira Sakata, who has released 35 discs since 1969, dedicated …and that's the Story of Jazz to a friend missing since the tsunami. The alto saxophonist has worked with noise experts like bassist Bill Laswell, and he extends that concept with drummer Chris Corsano and bassist Darin Gray of Chikamorachi, and Jim O'Rourke on guitar, harmonica and electronics. No conventional melodies appear; rather tension without release. “Kyoto” finds O’Rourke’s choked guitar strings spurring the reedist to staccato screams as. Gray hammers his four strings and Corsano smacks powerfully. Sakata’s nephritic growls also create a menacing interface, when paired with the guitarist’s slurred fingering. If Sakata introduces “Nagoya 3” with unforced clarinet trills, paramount stimulation is soon attained. Luckily the result is more exhilarating than exaggerated.

KuRuWaSan’s memorable CD pairs tuba gusts from Osaka’s Daysuke Takaoka with Brussels-based reedist Grégoire Tirtiaux, keyboardist Pak Yan Lau and drummer João Lobo. The eponymous album references parade rhythms, microtonalism and electronica. On “Baking”, Lau’s kinetic piano patterns brush up against tuba bellows as Lobo bounces. “Traffic Jam” finds Lau pulsating electric piano plinks plus resonating organ washes as Tirtiaux’s breathy flute lines challenge Lobo’s slide-whistle squeals. The disc climaxes with “Trilogy”. Surrounding a protracted pause are variants that include piano soundboard scrapes plus ascending drums rolls pushed aside by pedal-point tuba and saxophone tongue slaps. The result is restrained and exhibitionist in equal measures.

--For New York City Jazz Record December 2011

Tracks: Nobusiko: Shyukendo; Fudo; Harawata; Rindo; Yamabusi Tengu no Akubi; Ikoujin Siwasu

Personnel: Nobusiko: Itaru Oki: trumpet, flugelhorn, reed flute and tube; Benjamin Duboc: bass

Tracks: Story: Disc One: Kyoto; Hanamaki; Disc Two: Nagoya 1; Nagoya 2; Nagoya 3

Personnel: Story: Akira Sakata: alto saxophone, clarinet and vocals; Jim O’Rourke: guitar, harmonica and electronics; Darin Gray: bass, percussion and bells; Chris Corsano: drums

Tracks: Kuruwasan: 1. Schröder 2. Pão de Leite 3. Traffic Jam 4. Baking 5. Eclaire 6. Galão 7. Interlude 8. Trilogy

Personnel: Kuruwasan: Daysuke Takaoka : tuba, balloon, neyzan tuba: Grégoire Tirtiaux: singing bowls, shengn, nose and hunter’s flutes; alto and baritone saxophones, bird call, cocodi diaquetic; Pak Yan Lau: prepared piano, pianet, organ, electronics; João Lobo: drums and sliding flute

--For New York City Jazz Record December 2011

December 5, 2011

Benjamin Duboc/Itaru Oki

Nobusiko
Improvising Beings ib01

Angharad Davies/Axel Dörner

A.D.

Another Timbre at31

Creating novel techniques for instruments as familiar as the trumpet, the double bass and the violin is difficult enough. However these duo CDs are doubly absorbing, since the participants have created individual inventions for one brass and one chordaphone while stretching outwards their expected timbres.

In a context such as this, Nobusiko is actually the more traditional of the discs. That’s because French bassist Benjamin Duboc habitually uses the stolid percussive qualities of his four strings to maintain a chromatic bottom. Meanwhile Japanese-born Itaru Oki, who has long made his home in France, bounces, splutters and spits out as many textures as can be imagined from his trumpet, flugelhorn, wood flute and plastic tubing. Duboc, one of the busiest bassists in Paris, may also be able to foretell and calculate many of Oki’s rubato moves, since both are members of NUTS, the excellent French Free Jazz quintet.

A.D. – evidently named for initials of both participants – is a different matter. Capable of also playing fiery Free Jazz, Berlin-based Axel Dörner’s unique reductionist and minimalist brass technique here meets another challenge when duetting with the equally obtuse and often strident tones of London-based Angharad Davies’ violin. Davies often works with similar sound experimenters such as electronics manipulator Benedict Drew and inside piano specialist Tisha Makarji.

In her three improvisations with the trumpeter here, she uses brittle scrubs and comprehensive spiccato lines to create resonations to meet Dörner’s air leaking timbres, slide-whistle like peeps plus growls that sometimes take on thunder-sheet like stresses. Separating these distanced plinks and plucks from different string positions and the sometimes continuous no-valve touching expelling of pure air are extended silences, which give both parties time for cerebral regrouping.

With much of interface discordant, abrasive yet languendo, it’s a tribute to the participants that the pieces move as linearly as they do, often helped by stop-start sul tasto swipes from the fiddler and narrowed multiphonic puffs from the brass man. At points in fact the technical skills displayed is such that while some timbres may be inchoate, they are created with such single-mindedness, that many can be ascribed to neither strings nor brass.

No such confusion exists on the other CD. That because sputtering and warbling bras textures, airy wooden flute peeps or tube reverberations can be easily distinguished from string maneuvering, no matter how strained or spiccato Duboc`s lines may be. Irregular harsh plucks are matched with rubato brass squeaks and steady walking with burbled hockets or hesitant tongue flutters.

Seemingly ambidextrous, if not multi-armed, Oki, on a piece such as “Ihoujin” thickens his shrill shrieks with multi-flute resonation and methodical bell-ringing as Duboc thumps the wood of his bass’s waist and belly. However on other tracks, such as “Harawata”, Duboc limits himself to sul tasto pops and background thumps with his string-set, while the trumpeter displays grace notes, strained triplets and squeezes out encircling grace notes to make his point.

Overall the CD builds up to the concluding “Siwasu”, where sul ponticello stops and focused strums not only mute Oki’s vociferous note squalling and emphasized split tones, but also move the duet more towards to more melodic textures.

Two string sets, two brass players, and two wholly different methods of creating notable improvisations are available on these significant CDs.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Nobusiko: 1. Shyukendo 2. Fudo 3. Harawata 4. Rindo 5. Yamabusi 6. Tengu no Akubi 7. Ikoujin 8. Siwasu

Personnel: Nobusiko: Itaru Oki (trumpet, flugelhorn, reed flute and tube) and Benjamin Duboc (bass),

Track Listing: A.D.: 1. Stück Un 2. Stück Dau 3. Stück Tri

Personnel: A.D.: Axel Dörner (trumpet) and Angharad Davies (violin)

January 28, 2011

Festival Météo, Mulhouse, France

August 24 to August 28
By Ken Waxman

Proving that varieties of improvised music can sound as different as the personalities of those who play it, the annual Météo festival offered a cornucopia of noteworthy sounds from the bombastic to the barely audible, solo or in groups.

Venues in this Upper Rhine French city, located 30 kilometres northwest of Basel, Switzerland, also reflected this sonic diversity. Performances take place in the hushed surroundings of a 12th Century chapel downtown, and on the city’s outskirts, a capacious night club usually used for rock shows; and, new this year, within the expanses of an abandoned 1930s’ thread manufacturing factory.

The factory, Friche D.M.C., proved an ideal space to appreciate veteran trombonist Radu Malfatti. Accompanied by the sound wave produced by fellow Austrian Klaus Filip, Malfatti’s technique consisted of barely-there gurgles, split-second soft tones, soundless slide motions and blows across the mouthpiece – all of which were separated by lengthy silences. Contrast this with the solo tour-de-force of Swiss tenor saxophonist Antoine Chessex in the Chapelle St. Jean, which took full advantage of the building’s spatial conditions. Entering the room in the process of vibrating a high-pitched tone, he seemingly never removed the reed fom his mouth during the next half hour. His key percussion, altissimo runs and granular pulses combined to reveal multiphonics, drones with vibrating overtones. This non-stop polyphony not only refracted his ideas outwards, but as he constantly moved on stage and off, the permeative substance of the ancient walls lined with sculpted statues reflected back onto his improvisations.

A variant of this strategy was expressed at the D.M.C. by Dutch alto saxophonist Thomas Ankersmit as part of his duo with the split-screen cinematic images and electronic pulsations created by American Phil Niblock. At first, pacing back and forth while reverberating long, concentrated tones, the pressurized trills were soon not only intensified by the exposure of partials and overtones, but swelled to take on pipe organ-like qualities as Ankersmit sampled, processed, then synthesized loops of his original solo as he continued playing live. Joined by computerized drones from Niblock’s software the result was akin to surround sound stereo seeping from every part of the industrial structure. These protracted, relentless surges perfectly complemented the images of repetitive and nearly interchangeable oceanic tasks, filmed in China and Brazil.

More animated even than Niblock’s images was The Thing XXL, which boisterously dominated the Noumatrouff stage, which hosts many rock acts. If Heavy Metal Improv exists than it’s exemplified by The Thing’s core: reed-biting, note-slurring Swedish baritone saxophonist Mats Gustafsson; Norwegian Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten, who thump the bass and finger-pop its electric cousin with finesse; and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, with his hard-hitting backbeat. Added were Swedish trombonist Mats Äleklint, Dutch guitarist Terrie Ex and Americans, trumpeter Peter Evans and Jim Baker on piano and synthesizer.

Energetic Ex’s rough, whiny, bottleneck tones, extended by biting the guitar strings for added distortion or percussively dragging its head on the ground pushed the combo towards rock, an impression intensified when the horns combine for R&B-like vamps, Baker made like Jerry Lee Lewis and the drummer expressed himself in rolls, pops and rebounds. But while the strains of “Iron Man” peeked from among the many riffs, it also appeared as if Evans used “In the Mood” to signal tempo changes; The trumpeter’s slurring and soaring tone exchanges with the saxophonist were exhilarating – and jazzy; and Aleklint’s triple-tongued tremolo was as sophisticated as it was affecting. Although Gustafsson came across as a bar-walking Big Jay McNeeley sometimes, at other junctions he muted his sax bell against his pants leg for unusual, timbres or trilled a touching interlude on his invented fluteophone.

Of course if pure noise was literally a raison d’être, BTR’s Noumatrouff midnight orgy of aural destruction provided a reason to live. Experienced British percussionist Roger Turner, plus the crème of French sound provocateurs, turntablist Alexandre Bellenger and electronics manipulator Arnaud Rivière rumbled, squeaked, flipped, scrapped and buzzed everything in sight. Bellenger for instance, more frequently smacked the record players’ tone arms, amplified the turntable rumble to do-whistle intensity or beat on LPs with sticks than used the machine to play music. Then if vinyl wasn’t being scratched, the sounds from it were being played at warp speed, repeated endlessly for effect, sped up to warp speed or hand-propelled backwards. Meanwhile Rivière sawed or smacked whatever he got his hands on, with oversized circular blanks and other implements ricocheting to the ground as often as he played them. Meantime the unperturbed Turner soldiered on, using mallets, sticks and what appeared to be large red chopsticks to pummel his snares and toms for clip-clops, paradiddles and ruffs, pausing every so often to rub his drum heads with a small cloth or smack hand cymbals together.

Lacking a drummer, but able to summon the same rhythm, while bringing an original take to improvisations was Beirut-based Trio A. Consisting of bassist Raed Yassin, trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj and guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui – the later two also gave inventive solo concerts at Chapelle St. Jean – the textures evolved from Yassin’s bull fiddle foundation produced was mostly resting the instrument on its side and striking the strings with the bow or rubbing the wood at its belly and waist. Sehnaoui smacked his strings with a tuning fork or miniature balls with the guitar in table top position, or right-side up twanged taut claw-hammer licks or restricted himself to precision licks on its neck or on the strings below the hole. Capable of crying tremolo buzzes with plenty of tongue, Kerbaj also produced a malleable more reed-line tone as he deconstyructed his instrument. Besides blowing through individual parts, a balloon inserted between the mouthpiece and the horn’s body helped create unique multiphonic or staccato slurs, ranging from basso burps to altissimo airs. As trumpet grace notes turned to whistles and screams while the string players whapped the wood of their instruments the overall textures owed more to musique concrète than any Lebanese melodies. The finale was signaled by an unaltered trumpet blast.

Trumpet textures from staccato to soothing, plus contrasting percussion strategies, NUTS’ Noumatrouff concert supplied a positive Météo send off, as well as more examples of improvised music’s endlessly appropriate variety. Trumpeters Itaru Oki from Japan and American Rasul Siddik from are along-time combatants in the free jazz trenches, while Japanese drummer Makoto Sato and his French counterpart Didier Lasserre were a study in contrasts by themselves. Riding herd on this creativity was French bassist Benjamin Duboc. Preserving the steady chromatic nature of the interaction with thick arco strokes or using both hands to pluck, bow and vibrate a stiock placed horizxontally within the bass strings, Duboc gave plenty of space to the others. Upfront, wearing shades and a fedora, Siddik shook fragmented Don Ayler-like licks from his horn when he wasn’t banging a tiny gong with a mallet, ratcheting a selection of wooden implements or shaking maracas. Equally resplendent in slouch cap and silvery outfit, Oki blew liquid staccato timbres from his upturned horn, occasionally unfurling a rubber hose or blowing simultaneously on two wooden flutes to realign the wriggling contrapuntal output of the brass. Never trading fours, but always cognizant of each other’s movements, Sato and Laserre knit a rhythmic carpet. Using a standard kit, with more mallet work than per usual, Sato provided the beat. Limited to hi-hat, one snare and a bass drum, the percussionist broke up the time by scraping chains, a tambourine and a detached snare on his snare skin, as well as sawing on a cymbal in tandem with Ito’s flute flight. Besides this his rolls and drags were enough to project the rhythmic necessities.

Other performers, including those whose allegiance to too-heavy rock beats or overpowering electronic pulses as well as cerebral sound experiments also played, but no matter in what formation or surroundings, each to a greater or lesser extent confirmed Météo’s commitment to sonic diversity.

--For All About Jazz New York October 2010

October 6, 2010

Siddik/Sato/Oki/Lasserre/Duboc

Nuts
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Bondonneau/Chiesa/Lasserre/Lazro/Sassi

Humus

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Like many nations in Europe, France has a long-established, fully-developed and significant jazz and improvised music scene. Unlike players elsewhere however, in general French musicians appear most comfortable gigging within the country’s borders and collaborating with locals. Thus, to our detriment, appreciation for significant French talent is somewhat limited. However, these fine sessions could help rectify the situation.

For instance, Bordeaux-born drummer Didier Lasserre – featured on both discs – is inventive, technically adroit and a sympathetic accompanist. Over the years he has played with improvisers a different as American trumpeter Roy Campbell and French pianist Frédéric Blondy. Powerful bassists Benjamin Duboc (on Nuts) and David Chiesa (on Humus) have collaborated individually with reedists such as Jean-Luc Guionnet, Michel Doneda and Xavier Charles.

Instructively, while these sessions are built on this bass-drum rhythmic foundation, each gains its distinctive colors from other participants’ contributions. Unhurried and concerned with microtonal undulations, Humus showcases the sonic interpretations of veteran baritone saxophonist Daunik Lazro – who has worked with most major Euro improvisers – and tyro bass clarinetist Benjamin Bondonneau, who is also a painter.

More brassy, with jagged, discordant timbres and purposely incomplete textures, Nuts features a bass-drum team plus three expatriates who now make Paris their home. St. Louis-native Rasul Siddik, who has recorded with David Murray, and Kobe-born Itaru Oki, part of Japan’s first experimental musical unit in the late 1960s, both play trumpets and miscellaneous instruments here. Makoto Sato, a member of both jazz-rock band Marteau Rouge, and an off-beat Butoh dance spectacle with Oki, is the other drummer besides Lasserre.

Displaying earth-moving reverberations but in microtonal spurts, the four players on Humus work in an adagio tempo and soothingly puff through or scrape along the outsides of their instruments more frequently than they create conventional lines. Throughout, rim shots cracking and crunching hand pressure and buzzes on drum tops plus bass drum thumps interlace with dark, deep rubs and sul ponticello friction from Chiesa. Meantime staccato tones and counter tones from Bondonneau and Lazro reflect back upon each other’s aspirations, with basso runs sharing space with sudden altissimo shrills.

By the suite’s final variation, a sonic edifice of unison abrasions is erected. Multi-floored, the thickening interaction is built up from cymbal friction, sawed strings and colored air forced through the horns’ body tubes. Most spectacularly, at certain points both reed players blow with such force that partials and overtones are as noticeable as the root notes. Bronx cheer-like drones burble from the bass clarinet, while Lazro contents himself with tongue slaps and stops plus reed biting. The shape, material and fabrication of the horns are so involved here that the interpolated and expressed pitches appear to take on the character and viscosity of the instruments themselves. With the baritone saxophone’s vibrato gawkily perambulating within the spaces untouched by Bondonneau’s bass clarinet whistles, lip pops and fowl-like shrilling, the rhythm section provides concordance. This takes the form of cementing the horn warbles to swelling sul tasto string runs and unvarying rebounds, nerve beats and rattling rim shots.

More brutal and fulsome is the quintet interaction once the trumpeters turn from faint grace-note buzzing and intermittent silences caused by seed shakes and inner tube resonating. Soon the centre shell of Nuts is cracked with a steady, marital beat from both percussionists. While Duboc’s swaying bass slaps and Lasserre’s and Sato’s slashing cymbal timbres create a rubato beat, Oki and Siddik expose parallel brass interpolations. As one trumpeter snarls from his open-horn, the other peeps with a muted bell.

Half-way through the first track, as the tempo accelerates with percussive press rolls and ratamacues, one trumpeter – probably Siddik – introduces slurred air ripples. Responding with a faux-bull fight melody, the other brass man – Oki? – rends the air with roistering squeals and shrilling yelps. Beneath Lasserre’s rat-tat-tats, the bassist’s short bowed passages pull together the others’ ever-shifting tones, eventually downshifting the tune into a finale of grace notes and simple breaths.

Briefer but more roughhewn, “Nuts Society” features cymbal and side clipping beats from the drummers, plinks and plunks from the bassist and braying plunger lines and guttural smears from the trumpeters. After one brassman approximates “To the Colors”, with a bugle-like exposition, a contrapuntal response in the form of a martial march comes from the other four.

Reaching a defined crescendo, Duboc’s shuffle bowing mixed with horizontal stops and runs provides the perfect underpinning as trumpet tones divide again. With one man sounding a delicate wavy line and the other creating rough, broken-octave fills; concordance is evident only when each vies with the other to hit the highest-pitch. Thumping bass lines plus ruffs and drags from Lasserre and Sato define the bottom, until a low-key, straight-ahead solo from the bassist silences the others, and brings the piece to a logical finale.

Native-born or acculturated residents of France admirably representing their musical talents make both CDs equally satisfying. Sophisticated out-of-country listeners should carefully note the musicians’ names and hope that in future they all perform more often outside of their native land.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Humus: 1. Le Polytric 2. L’Hépatique 3. La Sphaigne

Personnel: Humus: Benjamin Bondonneau (bass clarinet); Daunik Lazro (baritone saxophone); David Chiesa (bass); Didier Lasserre (drums) and Laurent Sassi (sound)

Track Listing: Nuts: 1. First Nuts 2. Nuts Society

Personnel: Nuts: Rasul Siddik (trumpet, seeds and objects); Itaru Oki (trumpet, flutes and tubes); Benjamin Duboc (bass) and Makoto Sato and Didier Lasserre (drums)

December 18, 2008

Bondonneau/Chiesa/Lasserre/Lazro/Sassi

Humus
Amor Fati Fatum 016

Siddik/Sato/Oki/Lasserre/Duboc

Nuts

Sans Bruit sbr004

Like many nations in Europe, France has a long-established, fully-developed and significant jazz and improvised music scene. Unlike players elsewhere however, in general French musicians appear most comfortable gigging within the country’s borders and collaborating with locals. Thus, to our detriment, appreciation for significant French talent is somewhat limited. However, these fine sessions could help rectify the situation.

For instance, Bordeaux-born drummer Didier Lasserre – featured on both discs – is inventive, technically adroit and a sympathetic accompanist. Over the years he has played with improvisers a different as American trumpeter Roy Campbell and French pianist Frédéric Blondy. Powerful bassists Benjamin Duboc (on Nuts) and David Chiesa (on Humus) have collaborated individually with reedists such as Jean-Luc Guionnet, Michel Doneda and Xavier Charles.

Instructively, while these sessions are built on this bass-drum rhythmic foundation, each gains its distinctive colors from other participants’ contributions. Unhurried and concerned with microtonal undulations, Humus showcases the sonic interpretations of veteran baritone saxophonist Daunik Lazro – who has worked with most major Euro improvisers – and tyro bass clarinetist Benjamin Bondonneau, who is also a painter.

More brassy, with jagged, discordant timbres and purposely incomplete textures, Nuts features a bass-drum team plus three expatriates who now make Paris their home. St. Louis-native Rasul Siddik, who has recorded with David Murray, and Kobe-born Itaru Oki, part of Japan’s first experimental musical unit in the late 1960s, both play trumpets and miscellaneous instruments here. Makoto Sato, a member of both jazz-rock band Marteau Rouge, and an off-beat Butoh dance spectacle with Oki, is the other drummer besides Lasserre.

Displaying earth-moving reverberations but in microtonal spurts, the four players on Humus work in an adagio tempo and soothingly puff through or scrape along the outsides of their instruments more frequently than they create conventional lines. Throughout, rim shots cracking and crunching hand pressure and buzzes on drum tops plus bass drum thumps interlace with dark, deep rubs and sul ponticello friction from Chiesa. Meantime staccato tones and counter tones from Bondonneau and Lazro reflect back upon each other’s aspirations, with basso runs sharing space with sudden altissimo shrills.

By the suite’s final variation, a sonic edifice of unison abrasions is erected. Multi-floored, the thickening interaction is built up from cymbal friction, sawed strings and colored air forced through the horns’ body tubes. Most spectacularly, at certain points both reed players blow with such force that partials and overtones are as noticeable as the root notes. Bronx cheer-like drones burble from the bass clarinet, while Lazro contents himself with tongue slaps and stops plus reed biting. The shape, material and fabrication of the horns are so involved here that the interpolated and expressed pitches appear to take on the character and viscosity of the instruments themselves. With the baritone saxophone’s vibrato gawkily perambulating within the spaces untouched by Bondonneau’s bass clarinet whistles, lip pops and fowl-like shrilling, the rhythm section provides concordance. This takes the form of cementing the horn warbles to swelling sul tasto string runs and unvarying rebounds, nerve beats and rattling rim shots.

More brutal and fulsome is the quintet interaction once the trumpeters turn from faint grace-note buzzing and intermittent silences caused by seed shakes and inner tube resonating. Soon the centre shell of Nuts is cracked with a steady, marital beat from both percussionists. While Duboc’s swaying bass slaps and Lasserre’s and Sato’s slashing cymbal timbres create a rubato beat, Oki and Siddik expose parallel brass interpolations. As one trumpeter snarls from his open-horn, the other peeps with a muted bell.

Half-way through the first track, as the tempo accelerates with percussive press rolls and ratamacues, one trumpeter – probably Siddik – introduces slurred air ripples. Responding with a faux-bull fight melody, the other brass man – Oki? – rends the air with roistering squeals and shrilling yelps. Beneath Lasserre’s rat-tat-tats, the bassist’s short bowed passages pull together the others’ ever-shifting tones, eventually downshifting the tune into a finale of grace notes and simple breaths.

Briefer but more roughhewn, “Nuts Society” features cymbal and side clipping beats from the drummers, plinks and plunks from the bassist and braying plunger lines and guttural smears from the trumpeters. After one brassman approximates “To the Colors”, with a bugle-like exposition, a contrapuntal response in the form of a martial march comes from the other four.

Reaching a defined crescendo, Duboc’s shuffle bowing mixed with horizontal stops and runs provides the perfect underpinning as trumpet tones divide again. With one man sounding a delicate wavy line and the other creating rough, broken-octave fills; concordance is evident only when each vies with the other to hit the highest-pitch. Thumping bass lines plus ruffs and drags from Lasserre and Sato define the bottom, until a low-key, straight-ahead solo from the bassist silences the others, and brings the piece to a logical finale.

Native-born or acculturated residents of France admirably representing their musical talents make both CDs equally satisfying. Sophisticated out-of-country listeners should carefully note the musicians’ names and hope that in future they all perform more often outside of their native land.

-- Ken Waxman

Track Listing: Humus: 1. Le Polytric 2. L’Hépatique 3. La Sphaigne

Personnel: Humus: Benjamin Bondonneau (bass clarinet); Daunik Lazro (baritone saxophone); David Chiesa (bass); Didier Lasserre (drums) and Laurent Sassi (sound)

Track Listing: Nuts: 1. First Nuts 2. Nuts Society

Personnel: Nuts: Rasul Siddik (trumpet, seeds and objects); Itaru Oki (trumpet, flutes and tubes); Benjamin Duboc (bass) and Makoto Sato and Didier Lasserre (drums)

December 18, 2008