Pat Thomas / Opry Robinson / William Parker / Hamid Drake / Elaine Mitchener

A hands-across-the-sea meeting of UK and US variants of worldly improvisation, the good news about Some Good News involves the vernacular musical lockstep depicted between London’s Black Top and the Yank rhythm team. What’s also apparent is the skill with which vocal, instrumental, acoustic and electronic textures are expressed during two 50-minute plus performances without any of the players having to put on the brakes. Familiar with the details of intricate sound collusion are New York bassist William Parker and Chicago percussionist Hamid Drake. In Britain, Black Top consists of vocalist Elaine Mitchener, pianist Pat Thomas and marimba player Orphy Robinson, who have been affiliated with innovators like Alexander Hawkins. Adding diversity to this newly created vehicle, Drake also plays frame drum, Parker, the one-string guimbri and Thomas and Robison use electronics. Mitchener’s very few words are secondary to sighs, shouts, yodels and gurgles she projects.

Mitchener’s speaking-in-tongues with garbled and scatted syllable expresses emotions that might be curtailed using words. Meanwhile as the tracks get speedier and elongated, the bassist and drummer create a swing groove that gives the other technical freedom. Thomas’ singular piano comping and Robinson’s atmospheric marimba coloration create double timed vibrations while the programmed electronics create oscillations resembling such motifs as video games rocket-ship travel and soft drink bottle cap pops. The vocalist’s sensuous vocals move to a Blues approximating cries and stutters at CD1’s half way point, first backed by keyboard echoes and guimbri strums, as marimba slaps approximate kalimba tones. Mitchener alternates between breathing timbres in low or high pitches as she makes the transition from Blues inflection to those which set up a non-Western grove, Linking clear words like “underground” with yodeling and scatting as the rhythm shifts back-and-forth from First to Third to Out-of-the World inferences, she accompanied by tightened piano, bass and drum swirls and oscillated squeals which approximate accordion runs and Tibetan trumpet blowing.

CD2 offers more of the same along with more unexpected inferences, especially when Drake vocalizes a Sufi praise song while smacking a frame drum at the same time as Mitchener’s pixie-voiced squeaks evolve beside him. Meanwhile the conventionality of keyboard clanks, drum raps and string thumps bring out the vocalists most outré sounds with Bedlam-like cries, strangled laughs and yaps. Words such as “fire” and “wartime” are audible at midpoint, within a gentling exposition. But experimentation is maintained instrumentally with a sul tasto bass solo and the reverberation when Robinson strokes his marimba tp sound like clanking plastic bottles. The latter half of the title track refocuses the accompaniment with chiming drum accents, cymbal hisses, woody marimba slaps, piano key clips and dynamic string stops as vocal growls and stutters become darker and grainier. The final sequence maintains the thickness and power instrumentally, but vocalized words like “cherish” and “you are” suggest a hopeful future.

More surrealism than swing, this double CD is not for those looking at the personnel and imagining the equivalent to laid-back Sarah Vaughan meets the Modern Jazz Quartet sounds. However those willing to be challenged by unique creations from five assured Euro-American improvisers will find much to appreciate.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: CD1: 1. Put the Brakes on CD2: Some Good News

Personnel: Pat Thomas (piano and electronics); Orphy Robinson (marimba and electronics); William Parker (bass and guimbri); Hamid Drake (drums and frame drum) and Elaine Mitchener (vocals)