Dan Willis and Velvet Gentlemen, The Satie Project II

I am almost surprised to say this, but the stature of French renegade composer Erik Satie has grown. It was in part helped along by John Cage's set of piano pieces that paid homage to Satie, "Cheap Imitation". And these days there are composers who have learned something from the diatonic eccentricities and chromatic unpredictabilities that Satie was known for and made something new in their own way out of it all.

And now we have a very adventuresome Satie "cover band" so to speak. Dan Willis and the Velvet Gentlemen take Satie's music as a launching point and make some pretty outside rock-ish jazz from it. This on the disk at hand, The Satie Project II (Daywood Drive 1014), which reconfigures some of Satie's more interesting works for a ten-piece band.

Dan Willis heads the outfit, plays reeds in interesting and sometimes improvised ways, and arranges the music with a good deal of imagination.

There are moments that actually startle with reharmonizations or bold general treatment, here as an out-rock piece, there as a jazz-inflected segment, still further as an electric-acoustic contemporary through-recomposed song.

It takes a little getting used to, because nothing is exactly what you might envision. After two hearings I was surprised to find it quite enthralling. I expected Deodato's "Zarathustra" but it wasn't so facile, not a bit. It's way more interesting and involved.

Well, so I do recommend this!! It will surprise you.

Pete Mills, Sweet Shadow

When you sample many jazz disks like I do every week in my role as reviewer here and elsewhere, some releases let you know within a minute that they are very much happening. Others take a while and in any event I generally stay with the first hearing all the way through. The latest album by tenor saxophonist Pete Mills, Sweet Shadow (Cellar Live 070813) had that one-minute recognition feel to it.

After only the first minute I knew that a) The rhythm section was totally primed and swung incredibly well, and that b) Pete Mills was playing real-deal jazz on his tenor. The rest of the album told more of the story, of course, but I knew immediately what the entire album confirmed, that this was a hard-charging, very swinging set of modern contemporary jazz.

Pete Mills plays a present-day sort of tenor that reflects a post-bop stance without sounding derivative in any obvious way. I wont say he sounds like Joe Henderson because he doesn't. But he parallels Henderson in a way with strength and drive. He is in a league with Lovano-Brecker-Bregonzi-Garzone sorts of modern tenorism, but again it's only by analogy. He doesn't sound particularly like any of them in any direct sense. Pete also crafts some excellent and hip blowing tunes, 12 of them. Along with an Ellington-Strayhorn and a Roland Kirk classic they set things up well for the band.

And the band is something very good. Matt Wilson at the drums makes things swingingly combust, in excellent tandem with Martin Wind on bass. Pete McCann on guitar and Erik Augis on piano fill things out with nice comping and something to say in the solo department.

All I can say is. . . put this one on for a minute and you'll get it. Excellent!

The Sachal Studios Orchestra, Sachal Studios Presents Jazz and All That, In Memory of Dave Brubeck

In reality fusion has roots that go back some ways. Of course the Beatles set the stage for Indian-oriented rock combinations. Some of the music of Ravi Shankar, in his movie scores and on the US album Pather Panchali, precursed those developments. And the Bollywood soundtracks at their best combine Western and South Asian instruments and approaches and have been doing so for a very long time.

Out of all that comes a style of large group (studio orchestra) music where the phrasing manner of South Asian classical and some folk music--with melismas and microtonal bends--is taken on at times by the string group and the orchestra as a whole, but the Western component is also present.

We hear a very interesting and well-conceived program of Western songs, some jazz, rock and pop classics, arranged for a South Asian orchestra on Sachal Studios Presents Jazz and All That, in Memory of Dave Brubeck (Sachal Music 026). Why Brubeck? The group does an interesting arrangement of his "Blue Rondo a la Turk" for one thing. And Dave Brubeck at the height of his popularity did a number of tours with his band that stretched across the world. He and the band were fascinated with the musical traditions they found during their tours and did try to incorporate something of what they heard into their music while acting as champions of such sounds in the States. So it isn't really a stretch.

This album is mostly about the sort of large orchestra fusion of East and West that I refer to above. There is a full contingent of strings doing some of those really interesting melodic figures, there is an apt representation of Western instruments, plus South Asian classical instruments playing a prominent role--sitar, tabla, sarangi, bamboo flute, etc.

Producer Izzat Majeed has, I gather, much to do with the outcome we hear on this program. The orchestra operates out of Lahore from what I understand and they are a well-equipped and proficient set of musicians. The repertoire includes a number of what appear to be South Asian popular songs and they sound especially well. Then there is everything from "The Pink Panther Theme" to Stevie Wonder's "You've Got it Bad Girl", the wonderful Brazilian classic "Ponteio", the Beatles "Eleanor Rigby" and even R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts".

The arrangements work well once you get used to what is happening. Though there are easy listening touches contained at times within the music you get a shock as the Indo-Pak component comes forward and reminds you that no, this is not grandpa's Mantovani record.

I find the music fascinating. The string arrangements alone are something to focus on. In the end of course it has a total matrix going on and either you'll find it interesting or you won't. If you like Indo-Pak sounds to begin with you are halfway to where they are. Yes, I suppose this a commercial proposition over there, and for that I wish them all success. For us over here, if you really listen to this one, it has much more than song familiarity to offer. It is a special world of fusion, one not always experienced or appreciated in the West. Very well done!

The Curators, Thank You

Last October 11th I posted here on The Curators' online album Heavy Metal Spartacus. Today a look at their first album for Engine Records, Thank You (Engine 054). The trio comes across in the studio as less the in-your-face chaos-ticians that the online live album portrayed, and more as free players with a very together group chemistry and a wide spectrum of moods and attitudes.

Mikko Innanen sounds especially powerful on the baritone sax--one of the better new names out there on that instrument, in fact, but he also switches off to other members of the sax family with no less facility. He creates many bright moments throughout. James Ilgenfritz can bow very nicely and has pizz-power in the hands and fingers when he needs it. Joe Hertenstein has very good inventive freedom in the wide array of kitchen-sink percussive sounds he produces and a very effective asymmetric a-rhythmia that brings out a jagged-edged sort of feel that lays well with the free ventures of the two melodists in the band.

It's an open and well felt-thought session broken into ten interrelated sections. All of it has free avant ease of expression to it but plenty of traction when needed.

What's especially good about it all is that they never flag in invention. They are players inspired to come up with THE NEW spontaneously and they a do a great job of it.

The Curators are a free trio to be reckoned with. Thank You brings them into clear focus with some exciting and thoughtful sounds. Get it!

Greg Sinibaldi, Jesse Canterbury, Ascendant

Next up in Prefecture Records' provocative series of natural ambient music is the duo of reedists Greg Sinibaldi and Jesse Canterbury and their vinyl LP Ascendant (Prefecture 010). It was recorded live in a giant cistern which had an incredibly long-enveloped echo resonance. Such an acoustic environment does not lend itself that well to any series of rapid note articulations of a chromatic sort because the sustain turns it into mud, so the two wisely avoid that kind of playing.

Other than Monk's "Ugly Beauty" Greg and Jesse alternate compositions that have especially open and sometimes sparse soundings that allow the cistern to work its magic.

The result bears contemplation and active listening. The player-composers sound many different reed instruments alternately throughout the set, providing a wide spectrum of ambient sounds, suspended chords, unisons and a kind of organum of drone and tone, space and sound that is positively enchanting to hear.

Highly recommended!

Abdelhai Bennani, Duo #9, No Goal, with Alan Silva

Is there such a thing as an artist getting too much exposure, too many recordings? Not when there is a notable progression and/or a series of changing contexts for the music. In the case of free tenor player Abdelhai Bennani both progression and change are noticeable.

You can hear that on a fairly recent recording, Duo #9, No Goal (JaZt Tapes CD 043), a part of the JT series of artist demo releases available as quality CD-ROMs. Perhaps what most distinguishes this one is the presence of the great Alan Silva, who excels in his role here as free player of his "orchestral synthesizer" setup.

The recording was made a year ago January, live in Paris.

There is a cohesive spontaneity to be heard in the four improvised segments. Alan lays down some intriguing orchestral blankets of sound and Abdelhai comes through with his patented swallowed-note phrasing, sounding especially loose and limber.

They cover a good deal of territory with explorations of space music and some energizingly brittle, give-and-take pointillisms. The more you hear it, the better it gets. Thank you Abdelhai and Alan for the sounds!

For more information about this and other JaZt TAPES and to order the CD go to http://www.janstrom.se/6.-recordings/6.3.-jazt-tapes-6267605 (copy and paste the URL into your browser address window).

Urs Leimgruber / Roger Turner Duo, The Pancake Tour

Relative Pitch records has been releasing consistently interesting avant free jazz music for a number of years now. I return to one I didn't cover that is several years out, a focused duo between Urs Leimgruber on soprano and tenor and Roger Turner on drums. The Pancake Tour (Relative Pitch 1007) gives us seven improvisations recorded in Cologne in 2011.

The sound of this music is heightened by the deliberate limiting of the drums to just a snare, tom tom, hi-hat, cymbals, an "f-blade", a chain, and "the comb". What this does is to force Roger Turner to work deliberately albeit spontaneously on the timbres he can extract from what is available to him. He does this quite well. In the end he doesn't sound typically drummer-like in what he does much of the time, more new-music orchestral.

In that way he sets things up for Urs Leimgruber to respond with vertical timbres and textures on his saxes more than horizontal jazz-ish lines.

The hour of music on this recording continues working within those constraints with moments that are somewhat sparse, some in the middle zone of activity and volume, and a few minutes here and there of more intensive scorching.

I can't say I didn't appreciate this exploration in sound. I did. The more "traditional" side of my ear-digester wanted to hear more bottom--a bass drum and a contrabass. But the objective presumably was to make creative sound essays within these limitations and for that they succeeded perfectly well.

If you like the idea of free music that is almost brutally paired down, here is a case where it works, no question about it. As always when I hear something that doesn't complete a picture as much as sketch out a presence in part through erasure, I remember that there are plenty of recordings to hear afterwards that do something else. One does not need to assume that any one recording represents THE music of the future so much as A music of today that we can appreciate. If this isn't one of my "desert-island" disks, it doesn't matter. I am not packing for an extended desert-island stay, thankfully for that. So this is quite cool with me.