Thursday, July 25, 2013

Moo Lohkenn Source of Sound, Trace in Mirror

Moo Lohkenn, singer-artist extraordinaire. Drummer great Lou Grassi was very kind to send me a CD she did with him and the impressive Leonard Jones on contrabass, as the trio Source of Sound, Trace in Mirror (Konnex 5188). I am so glad he did!

Moo is one of those very rare artists who can sing in the free improvisation jazz zone and make it work, really work. I've covered some others too here of course. But she is IT also. A woman from IT-land! The trio is a total gas, with bass and drums blowing up a storm, and then Moo comes in and she is a horn, and a great horn! When she directs herself to a quasi-song for a few times here and there she shows a powerfully alive, crackling implied super-sophisticated sense of time and/or an iconic archetypal inheritor of the Afro-American roots in the field-holler, the work-song, the spiritual, you hear all that in her voice and yet it's avant all the way.

Now the first time through, to be honest, I was puzzled because so few can do this sort of thing right, and she was doing it in such her own way that I was flabbergasted! The more I listened the more I got into her circuit, her wave length, patched into her crackling live-wire presence and from then on I was there! Grassi and Jones are one hell of a "backing" rhythm team, though they are truly co-equals here. And it works. Play it twice and see!

This is extraordinary music. It is extraordinary singing. And it's out like the way out is in. Really!

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