Trapeze

Expanding the parameters of novel free music just a little further, three acoustic innovators meet up with a tuntablist for six tranches of uncommon creative sounds. While a singular configuration, each player is already skilled in the genre. French drummer Peter Orins works with Satoko Fujii among many others; German trombonist Matthias Müller is one member of Eve Risser’s Red Desert Orchestra, along with French saxophonist Sakina Abdou, who also plays often with Orins; while Swiss turntable manipulator Joke Lanz has worked with the likes of Sophie Agnel.

Adept at extended techniques, the saxophonist and trombonist accept fragmented voices, vinyl scratches, motor hums and flanged pulses from Lanz’s machine simply as novel tones to contrast with motifs like brass smears and reed split tones. Meanwhile the drummer is a minimal stylist, only occasionally adding woody clanks, bell smacks or brief rumbles to the sonic landscape.

When the whistling clips, plastic-tube-like raps or terse rolls move concisely to the foreground, it’s usually to intensify expositions that as on “Driving Lesson” are otherwise given over to burbling, brass continuum and thin trilling reed bites. Lanz’s distended and repeated vocal samples add to the pressure before all diffuse.

With the element of surprise paramount, unexpected connections are frequent. Horn bleats are accompanied by marimba-like pops from Orins; or pushed vinyl turbulence make up the background as plunger trombone pumps and repeated reed doits move up the scale while introducing a raspy near-lyrical line.

Robust polyphony created from tremolo whistles, distorted bel canto voices, cymbal crashes and stop-time tone fragmentation from the horns on the penultimate track create timbral suggestions realized in the concluding “A New Bike By Parcel” Expanding from the near quiet of Abdou’s tongue slaps and stops, Müller prolonging toneless air without valve movement, and Orins’ understated raps, and Lanz’s turntable wows and scratches add another layer to the result. Enlivened with singular brass growls, reed bites and drum rumbles climax is realized as a resounding timbral mash-up and finalized with a turntable-sourced burp.

That last noise is an uncommon musical textures, but so are many other tones on this disc. That’s what makes Level Crossing so unique and riveting.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. A Nap In The Drawer 2. Driving Lesson 3. Level Crossing 4. Trapeze 5. Disco Kid 6. A New Bike By Parcel

Personnel: Matthias Müller (trombone); Sakina Abdou (soprano and alto saxophones); Peter Orins (drums) and Joke Lanz (turntables)