Certainly listening to the new album by the CP (Chris Pitsiokos) Unit, Before the Heat Death (Clean Feed 408) has been such a growth experience for me. The appearance of Weasel Walter on drums is no mere serendipity, as his presence in ensembles with Ken Vandermark and others as the Flying Luttenbachers in the '90s and beyond established a punkish electric avant jazz attitude that most surely influences the music to be heard here.
Alto saxophonist Chris Pitsiokos heads up the ensemble with his scorching heat and uncompromising frenetics. Brandon Seabrook, who first came to my attention and made the scene as a banjo player of great fire and technical chops, shows us that his guitar work here is no less important. Tim Dahl gives us on electric bass a rock steady presence that can let loose with torrents of notes along with the others or alternately providing bass bedrock to hold it all together. And Weasel is as always a great catalyst and creative force who goes far beyond playing time into participating with the ensemble in making rhythmic-melodic confluences and contrasts as much drum-oriented as bass-, sax- or guitar-centered.
The seven track EP gives us plenty of composed and improvised electric-organic anarchy that flirts with the most avant of rock ensembles while keeping in the end to the avant jazz path. The categories in the end are but rough indicators of what you might expect to hear. There are composed riffs and frenetic ensemble passages and there are solos of definite note.
What impresses especially is the rigor of concept and its all-fired application.
A bit of a monumental blow-out, this.
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