What Happens in a Year

Wong/Robair/Bozzi
Error Connection error
Rastascan Records RR BRD 071

Trio sessions involving a reed player and an electric guitarist are far removed from one another in conception and execution and not just because the third member’s instrument is different. Dedicated to quietly spacious Chamber-Improv, Cérémonie/musique mixes input from New York-based baritone saxophonist/bass clarinetist Josh Sinton, known for his work with Ideal Bread, guitarist Todd Neufeld, who has played with Samuel Blaser and Italian-born electric bassist Giacomo Merega, who has worked with Joe Morris. More wedded to melding electronic and acoustic impulses on Error Connection error are improvisers from three countries: French baritone/tenor saxophonist François Wong, usually involved with innovators like Barre Phillips; Italian prepared guitarist Fabrizio Bozzi Fenu, who plays with other advanced stylists such as Adriano Orrù; and American Gino Robair, using modular synth, blippoo box and energized surfaces, and who has recorded with a raft of international players including John Butcher.

Aiming for congruence with many parts of the sound spectrum, the New York trio’s strategy moves from fluently vibrated reed pitches and flanged string coloration to staccato aggression involving double-tongued slurps, jagged guitar runs and extroverted bass thumps. Sinton makes use of spetrofluctuation key pops and flattement, when narrow breaths are part ghostly echoes, the baritone saxophone’s subterranean scoops are heard on tracks like “Change of Scene”. Heavily pushed reed snores first play call-and-response with guitar vibrations than divide the sequence into layers with guitar frails on top and thicker, faster bass lines on the bottom. By disc’s end, Neufeld’s ratcheting timbral distortions, the result of note stabs and palm slaps on the guitar neck have become natural extensions of the slurred straight lines projected by Sinton’s horn. But this naturalness is possible because previous tracks such as “Netherland” have accelerated from mellow interface suggested by guitar strums, electric bass plucks and undulating reed peeps, In resolving these apparent contradictions the narrative shifts from near-static, near-silent exposition to a torqued dialogue between shattering split tones from Sinton and triplet-speed guitar licks.

Instrumental tessitura is also stretched past the comfort zone on Error Connection error, but this time the electronic oscillations are buzzes and twangs from guitar preparations as well as Robair’s collection of metallic clatters and voltage reverb mixed with percussion rumbles. While there are some wind-blowing-in-ghost-towns sequences, in the main the narrative is dense and sometimes impenetrable with aggressive reed tones adding to the multiphonic miasma. In fact some tracks like “Super Heterodynes” have so many droning wave forms coming in and out of aural focus that it’s almost as if no acoustic properties exit. That track and others are also palimpsest-like with suggestions of other timbres lurking just below the listening surfaces. Still the paramount instance of this mixture of electronic and acoustic qualities comes on “Unsafe as Milk”. It begins with lip-bubbling split tones from Wong in counterpoint with, rolls and slaps from Robair and shaking plops and echoing strums from Fenu. Eventually the piece reaches a climax that mixes raunchy bottom echoing tones from the baritone saxophone with a series of gamelan orchestra-like ruffs and rumbles from the percussionist.

Despite obvious differences both trios attain appropriate balances between bright and dark textures as well as acoustic and electric tones. Both also could be held up to define small contemporary improving ensembles.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: What: 1. La Politique des Auteurs 2. Algernon 3. Change of Scene 4. Sleepwalk Disgest 5. Untethered 6. Netherland 7. Music from a Locked Room

Personnel: What: Josh Sinton (baritone saxophone and bass clarinet); Todd Neufeld (guitar) and Giacomo Merega (electric bass)

Track Listing: Error: 1. In Forged Air 2. A Word with Hans 3. Riddles of the Sieve 4. Unsafe as Milk 5. Coupler 6. Super Heterodynes 7. Error Connection error 8. Zero Beat and the Reaction Set

Personnel: Error: François Wong: (baritone and tenor saxophones); Fabrizio Bozzi Fenu (prepared guitar) and Gino Robair (modular synth, blippoo box and energized surfaces)