The Happymakers, Wolfgang Fuchs, Jacob Lindsay, Damon Smith, Serge Baghdassarians, Boris Baltschun

Who are the Happymakers? Will they make you happy? What music is this? The answer is yes. At least to the second question, provided you make yourself disposed towards the sounds that come at you in joyful torrents of improvised care. This is a five-person quintet of players who develop a special chemistry in the process of creating eleven segments of freely improvised avant music, all on the self-titled CD (Balance Point Acoustics BPA 008). Free jazz? You can call it that. It has some jazz rootedness, but then some rootedness in new music as well.

So who are these Happymakers? As of May 2003 they all were in Oakland California at least part of the time to record this album. After and before that they are from a diverse set of places, the US, Europe....and of course wherever they happen to be.

To be more specific, the Happymakers are Wolfgang Fuchs on sopranino saxophone and bass clarinet, Jacob Lindsay on Ab, Bb and bass clarinet, Damon Smith on double bass,  Serge Baghdassarians on guitar and electronics, and Boris Baltschun on electronics.

This is about the notes, but especially about how the notes are shaded with timbre-colors, how they lay out in pointillistic counterpoint, how each instrumental contribution fits in with an expressive whole. Everyone works together impressively well, listens closely and responds with creative musical strokes of their "brush" to creative a collective tone painting, or rather a series of them.

In truth this is a group with an unusual cohesiveness, a multi-being organism, a flair for creating an ever-evolving blend of differences-in-sameness. We can thank Damon Smith for getting this recording together, as Balance Point Acoustics is his baby and we tip our cap to him for the copiously absorbing fare that has come out on the label.

As for the various ins and outs of the artists and their backgrounds, I refer you to the lucid liners written by Lisle Ellis and Damon Smith. I find this one an essential for its skilled and exciting synthesis of Euro-American improv channels. Not a note is extra here. And yes, it WILL make you happy if you let it.