The Good Guy Always Wins: Behind the Mystery of the Daniel Bennett Group

| Tyran Grillo

On Clockhead Goes to Camp, multi-instrumentalist and composer Daniel Bennett took listeners on a storybook journey. But if that 2013 album was a Spirograph drawing, this 2015 follow-up is a Spin Art extravaganza. The Mystery at Clown Castle brings to fruition a reimagined lineup, situating the bandleader (who capably switches between alto saxophone, flute, piccolo, oboe, clarinet, and piano) among the fresh aliliance of guitarist Nat Janoff, bassist Eddy Khaimovich, and drummer Matthew Feick.

The present cast of characters is no less eclectic than the former, and guides the project along fruitful avenues of ingenuity. The roster change, as made clear in an e-mail interview, is in no way the result of creative differences, but instead born of the need for a touring band. “I never burn bridges,” Bennett assures. “My musicians are like family to me.” Bennett in fact continues to work with his Clockhead musicians on a regular basis, but has taken to test-driving newer associates through his monthly residency at Tomi Jazz in midtown Manhattan. The vibes honed on Tomi’s stage pay their dividends in the studio, where the band’s unities, but also its lively fragmentations, acquire full expressive reign.

The Mystery At Clown Castle

Although Mystery feels like a continuation or companion of Clockhead, it’s also very much its own animal—or should I say animals, because the set list is populated with them. “Paul Platypus” is the first of an evocative menagerie and finds the band firing on all cylinders. It’s also a mighty fine vehicle for Khaimovich, who Bennett calls “one of the busiest bass players in New York City” and who encouraged the bandleader to make use of electric bass for the first time. The instrument adds tactile shading here (and subtlety to the nocturnal carnivalesque that is “The Spinning Top Stood Still”), while fleshing out the lower spectrum beyond Janoff’s six singing strings.

The flute-led “Nine Piglets” is reprised from its last appearance on Clockhead in a fully reinvigorated arrangement. This radio-friendly tune, one of the band’s most requested, discloses Bennett’s overtly pop influences, which peek their heads above water on “Strange Jim And The Zebra” and “Uncle Muskrat.” The latter boasts the talents of pianist Jason Yeager, a prolific sideman whose backyard jam session chops lend further delights to two freely improvised tracks.

The album’s nonhuman considerations come at us like a stampede in the spoken poetry of Britt Melewski, who in “Morning” shouts, “What animal are you?” It’s a profound, if tongue-in-cheek, question to consider in such a whimsical musical universe, the answer to which can only be articulated in melodies without words. Such contrasts take to higher altitudes in his creepily auto-tuned “Minor Leaguer,” beneath which oboe and guitar lay down a beautiful stage.

DB solo
(Photo credit: Jesse Winter)

Opener “The Clown Chemist” is duly representative of Bennett’s style. Technically proficient yet full of sparkle and personality, its circularity opens the way for creative ornamentation. As throughout the album, the melody is primary, as attested by the fact that Bennett composes first at the guitar, as one would a song, before transferring to his lead of choice. Mystery is likewise recorded like an indie band. Producer MP Kuo does little to mask the band’s live sound, which breathes through tracks like “Flow” with cinematic clarity. When I asked Bennett about his nonmusical influences, his response was as multifarious as his music:

“You’re going to laugh, but I really love formulaic television shows from the 1980s. I love the ‘good guy vs. bad guy’ plots. And the good guy always wins. That’s the way it should be! There’s too much cynicism in this world. So I do it my way. I don’t follow jazz trends and I don’t push any political agenda with my music. I just want to make people feel good. I am on this earth to be a servant to others. A wise man once told me, ‘Worship God and serve the people.’”

It’s a fine philosophy to follow for a group just voted “Best New Jazz Group” in 2015 by Hot House Jazz Guide and, with another album already recorded, these cats are on their way to making the future of jazz that much brighter.

For more information, check out their official site here.

Enrico Rava Quartet w/Gianluca Petrella: Wild Dance (ECM 2456)

| Tyran Grillo

2456 X

Enrico Rava Quartet
w/Gianluca Petrella
Wild Dance

Enrico Rava trumpet
Francesco Diodati guitar
Gabriele Evangelista double bass
Enrico Morello drums
with
Gianluca Petrella trombone
Recorded January 2015, Artesuono Recording Studios, Udine
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Produced by Manfred Eicher
U.S. release date: August 28, 2015

Wild Dance documents yet another chapter in the career of Italian master trumpeter Enrico Rava, who for this outing has assembled one of his most exciting bands to date. Along with guitarist Francesco Diodati, bassist Gabriele Evangelista, and drummer Enrico Morello, he welcomes back into the fold trombonist Gianluca Petrella, whose darker brass has added memorable contrast to Rava’s quintet albums over the past 13 years. Just as many Rava originals, both new and old, populate the set list of this latest ECM collaboration, with a collective improvisation added in for good measure. The latter format, which falls penultimate in the set list, is a good litmus test for any jazz outfit, and in this respect the band succeeds beautifully. Overlapping just enough to yield thematic intimations while allowing each instrument to speak personal truth, it journeys with optimism on its sun-faded sleeve.

All of which makes “Diva” all the more alluring for noir-ish saunter. In keeping with that atmosphere, the band caresses every flutter of Rava’s hardboiled romanticism with austerity. Diodati and Evangelista are this opener’s heart and soul, stretching and tensing by turns as Rava walks the alleyways in search of connections. “Space Girl” continues the thread with similarly half-lit cinematography, by means of which Morello discloses the underlying bonfire of physiological activity required to pull this music off with such smoothness of intuition.

Rava and Eicher
Enrico Rava with producer Manfred Eicher (photo by Luca D’Agostino)

“Don’t” radically changes the album’s exposure, moving with that same swagger but opening up the aperture through Petrella’s delayed entrance. In his hands, the trombone becomes a fully vocal entity that is equal parts storyteller and troubadour. His notecraft bespeaks an itinerancy that never fears the unknown. Whether winding around Rava’s core melody at the end of this tune or jumping headfirst into the animations of the next (“Infant”), he plays with fire as a house cat might a mouse—batting it around just enough to stun without the need for a kill. Such restraint is required of all the musicians under the bandleader’s employ, for even at their most unleashed (as in the up-tempo gems “Cornette” and “Happy Shades”) they make sure to keep a sizable portion of their unity within frame. Further contributions from Petrella are studies in contrast, adding humor to “Not Funny,” liquidity to the title track, and bite to the otherwise smooth “Monkitos.”

Enigma is the name of the game in “F. Express,” which by electronic whispers opens a dialogue of swinging proportions. This also happens to be one of its composer’s finest throwbacks to hit the digital shelves in some time, and is an album highlight—not only for its atmospheric acuity, but also for the archaeological care with which it is unearthed. A lone bass introduces “Sola” at length before the core-tet fleshes its skeleton with dreamlike locomotion. As if talking in his sleep, Rava spills inner secrets with the offhandedness of a sigh. “Overboard,” for its part, recalls the album’s moodier beginnings and finds the band gliding over shifting waters. In tandem with the unmistakable trumpeting, Diodati surprises with a gritty solo that stands out in an album of many standouts.

All of this and more abounds in “Frogs,” which showcases the band’s vibrancy to its fullest. Every instrument sings in this roving gallery of impulses and rhythm changes, making for a fitting closer to one of Rava’s finest.

(To hear samples of Wild Dance, please click here.)

Dino Saluzzi: Imágenes – Music for piano (ECM New Series 2379)

| Tyran Grillo

2379 X

Dino Saluzzi
Imágenes: Music for piano

Horacio Lavandera piano
Recorded October 2013 at Rainbow Studio, Oslo
Engineer: Jan Erik Kongshaug
Produced by Manfred Eicher
U.S. Release Date: September 25, 2015

For a musician whose heart pulls so much blood from the tango and folklores both longstanding and personal, bandoneón master Dino Saluzzi is a composer in the same way that a poet is a writer. Every syllable takes on note value, which in the grander scheme of a finished piece yields shape and color. Whereas through his standby instrument he actualizes breath by way of a smaller “keyboard,” here Saluzzi bows to the interpretation of young Argentine pianist Horacio Lavandera at a much larger one in a sonic Decalogue of epic intimacy. The piano’s classical associations do nothing to obscure Saluzzi’s idiosyncrasies, which in this context mix two parts atmospheric to each melodic.

In his German-only liner notes, Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich characterizes Saluzzi’s piano music as speaking in “fragmented images.” From the rolling arpeggios that begin the 2001 title composition, we encounter a sound world that surely privileges fragments: of memory, of place, and of time. The proximity allowed by ECM’s longtime engineering ally Jan Erik Kongshaug assures listeners that the music is speaking not only to, but also into, them. Here is where the darkest hours of Saluzzi’s timekeeping are to be discovered, where every sweep of the minute hand is the arm of a shadow piecing together in slow desperation a coherent narrative of who it used to be. Moods and techniques vary accordingly, one moment rhapsodizing in sunshine while the next sinking into the depths of some forgotten, nocturnal lake.

Lavandera and Saluzzi
(Photo credit: Juan Hitters)

Although Los Recuerdos (1998) would seem to unfold at higher elevations, its plumbing is no less subterranean. With resolute sporadicity, Saluzzi-via-Lavandera (that the composer was present at the recording session is obvious, even without the candid liner photos confirming this) dabs from a psychological palette. A colorless abyss provides the backdrop for streaks of yellow and brown, splashes of red and lavender, and the occasional sparkle of gold. But the default is something far cloudier, a hue that cannot ever seem to settle on one constitution. In a supplemental liner note, guitarist Pablo Márquez, who like Saluzzi grew up around the mountains of Salta, confirms this: “Dino never allows himself to become trapped in one aesthetic; he is always somewhere unexpected.” Said genre-defying style only adds water to the composer’s stream of consciousness. His notecraft oars its way into the moonlit inlet of Media Noche (1990) and docks at the misty way station of Vals Para Verenna (1987) with equal attention to detail. Even the minute-long etude Moto Perpetuo (2000) is no less rich in imagery and association. Márquez’s sentiments further emphasize Saluzzi’s affinity for storytelling. In such pieces as La Casa 13 (2002) and Donde Nací (1990), one can feel his thick approach to description. Others, such as Romance (1994), which in its tuneful brevity relates the oldest story of them all, and the Satie-like Claveles (1984), come across as songs in search of words, even as they content themselves with mere hints thereof.

But as the program evolves in self-conscious order, slender shards of nomination cohere into wider scenes by the glue of minimal vocabularies. The majestic peaks of Montañas—which, having been composed in 1960, is the earliest of the ten—reach skyward with resolution of a younger soul, one who carves with fists over chisels yet who in doing so affords through the grime of experience that much more to consider.

From these portals of reflection, Lavandera emerges as a storyteller in his own right with pianism at its most impressionistic—which is to say: indelible.

(To hear samples of Imágenes, click here.)

Stephan Micus: Nomad Songs (ECM 2409)

| Tyran Grillo

2409 X

Stephan Micus
Nomad Songs

Stephan Micus ndingo, genbri, steel-string guitar, suling, voice, nay, rewab, rabab, twelve-string guitar, fourteen-string guitar, tin whistle, shakuhachi
Recorded 2012-2014 at MCM Studios
An ECM Production
U.S. release date: August 7, 2015

Pundits often speak of “going green” as if all it involved were more considerate allocation of resources and regulation of harmful industry. Yet with this comes the responsibility of creating more resources in turn and balancing injury with abundance. Greenness entails awareness of Earth in all its forms, physical and metaphysical alike. The music of Stephan Micus engages both persuasions, enriching the inner lives of those fortunate enough to hear it while encouraging a harmonious and, above all, creative relationship with the environment. A consummate traveler and student of traditional instruments from nearly every continent, Micus has drawn inspiration from a staggering variety of locations, but that makes him no mere collector checking off items on some cultural itinerary. Instead, he modifies these instruments to suit his needs and manifests his connections to them through truly original compositions, all while replenishing what the world has gifted him, and then some.

Micus has had a long association with ECM Records, known for its rigorous production standards (typically recording, mixing, and finalizing an album in three days) but which has come to give the German multi-instrumentalist free reign to record in his home studio and send in the master(ful) tapes for postproduction. Despite being his 21st album for the label, Nomad Songs is no less thoughtful than the 20 previous. If anything, it’s a return to the most essential forces of his physics: push and pull. This is not to imply conflict but balance in the music, whereby seemingly contradictory actions flow into one another in the manner of the tide, expanding and recessing to the beat of an invisible drum. Which is perhaps why Micus plays, for the first time on record, the genbri, a bass lute used by Gnawa of Morocco as an instrument of healing and, in his hands, a percussive force throughout these sequences. Also new is the ndingo, a kalimba-like instrument favored by the San, an indigenous people of Botswana stripped of their nomadism by African nation states. The album’s title thus has dual meaning, tracing Micus’s own itineracy and honoring those deprived of it.

“Everywhere, Nowhere” opens the 11-part odyssey with a duet between the two newcomers. The resonant buzz of the ndingo, enhanced by means of a wooden sounding box, is as organic as a human-made instrument can be. Like the throat of one who has sung for eons, it reveals lifetimes of knowledge with every utterance. The genbri, in the enlarged form heard here, could almost be mistaken for an upright bass and as such takes Micus in lucid directions, unveiling a little of the mystery of his expressions. Only one other piece, “The Spring,” features this same combination of roots and leaves. Like a row of people walking hand in hand through the night, it sneaks away into the hope of a future without hierarchy.

Such respect has always been at the core of the Micus soundscape: his music may be openly visual but is temporal at heart, compressing and decompressing long stretches of time as if they were matter to be molded. A kindred message prevails in the album’s two solitary pieces. “The Blessing” is a vocal solo that meshes Micus’s spontaneous language with wayfaring melody, yet it is the 12-string guitar of “The Stars” that acts the part of storyteller. Brief, delicate, and ending in sparkling harmonics, it is a meteor shower reduced, as the sky would have it, to a play of light against the yawn of night.

Whether pairing steel-string guitar and the Balinese recorder known as a suling (“Leila”), or two Irish tin whistles, played simultaneously (“Sea Of Grass”), the duo pieces are less conversational than they are integrational. These, too, glance back to Micus’s earliest work. In characteristic fashion, the more instruments he adds, the more uniform his sound becomes. The gamelan qualities of the three ndingo in “Under The Chinar Trees” mesh exceptionally well with shakuhachi and voice, making for one of the most beautiful experiences he has ever committed to record, while appearances by the Egyptian nay (“The Feast” and “The Promise”) and a 14-string guitar of Micus’s own design add fire and water in equal measure. The rewab (long-necked lute of the Uyghur people of Western China) and rabab (Afghan lute) expand the plectrum-heavy palette, culminating with guitars in “The Dance,” in which the rabab’s shamisen qualities pave an alluring detour.

Not only is this some of Micus’s finest work; it is also the most enchantingly recorded and mastered. Listening to it, one can hardly be surprised that his last name is an anagram of “music,” because everything he touches turns into nothing less. His gestures open arteries by linking them to a universal blood flow, in which the aneurisms of supernovas and the embryos of planets weave a path that he treads, for all a sage, crushing nothing beneath his feet except denial of eternity.

(See this article as it originally appeared in RootsWorld online magazine, from which you may also link to a sample track.)

Live Report: András Schiff at Carnegie Hall

| Tyran Grillo

Pianist András Schiff is a genius. By that I don’t mean to describe an artist of exceptional talent, which nevertheless Schiff proved himself to be with his appearance at Carnegie Hall on 30 October 2015. I intend the original Latin meaning of “generative power” or “inborn nature,” by which his playing was duly possessed. This embodied approach to performance has become clearest since his tenure with ECM started in 1997. Schiff’s latest for the label is an all-Schubert recital spanning two discs and culminating, as did the Carnegie performance, in the Piano Sonata in B-flat Major of 1828. Whereas the album documents his reckoning with a Viennese fortepiano built that same decade, an instrument of concave power that shores up the Schubertian temple against any resistance of preconceptions, for this appearance only the convexity of a Bösendorfer would do. For him these qualities have never been opposite but complementary, as was clear when he sounded Schubert’s ominous trill. But let us, like Schiff, save the best for last.

Schiff piano

In addition to its sublime musicianship, Friday’s concert sported a masterful program, sequencing the final piano sonatas of Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart and dear, ill-fated Schubert, in that order. Schiff finessed his way through Haydn’s picture-perfect Sonata in E-flat Major (1794) like a skilled orator: No gesture or utterance was wasted. His Adagio was all the more barren for being surrounded by two leafier branches, neither of which shed a single trident in the gusts of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 32 in C Minor (1821/22). The latter came only after Schiff had hunched over the keys, as if in prayer, to gather himself. Equal parts brush and chisel, its curious, two-movement structure revealed the independence of Schiff’s fingers, and the composer’s in turn for treating repeats as opportunities for self-discovery and, in the dolorous latter half, holistic expression. The coda nevertheless resounded with affirmation of life.

Had it not been sandwiched between two heavyweights, Mozart’s Sonata in D Major (1789) might have seemed like poor casting. But its placement after intermission was refreshing. Although a subpar sonata, one that inlaid its frame at the expense of a clear scene within it, its technical flourishes emitted from Schiff’s fingers with seaward force. Thus cleansed by lack of challenge, we could navigate Schubert’s winding paths, tenderized to receive their shadows. Schiff opened the sonata like a thumb-worn book and read it aloud to the audience with burrowing grandeur. Despite its length, the first movement was eclipsed by Schiff’s restrained handling of it, which assured that the impact of the final Allegro rung true. Between them were a passionate Andante, in which he barely touched the keys as his left hand arced back and forth over the right, and a sunnier Scherzo. Throughout, Schiff was always moving ahead with the future in mind and all the necessary construction materials at his fingertips.

Just as the Goldberg Variations belong to Glenn Gould, so too does Schubert to Schiff. All the more appropriate that he should end the concert with the second of two encores, playing the Aria from Bach’s masterwork. In his handling it became an open lattice, if not also the vine creeping up it, dreaming of its own birth from seed and soil. Before that we were treated to Schumann’s rarely performed Geistervariationen (Ghost Variations) in E-flat Major, featured on Schiff’s 2011 ECM recording of the same name. Although written on the brink of madness, it was as lucid as all else, and showed Schiff as, more than anything, one of the great listeners to ever grace the Carnegie stage. That he played it all from memory would have seemed amazing had it not felt so inevitable.

Schiff bow

(See the article as it originally appeared in The Cornell Daily Sun.)

Stefano Battaglia Trio: In The Morning (ECM 2429)

| Tyran Grillo

In The Morning

Stefano Battaglia Trio
In The Morning – Music of Alec Wilder

Stefano Battaglia piano
Salvatore Maiore double bass
Robert Dani drums
Recorded live April 28, 2014 at Teatro Vittoria, Torino
Engineer: Stefano Amerio
Concert produced by Torino Jazz Festival
Artistic director: Stefano Zenni
Album produced by Manfred Eicher
U.S. release date: August 28, 2015

Pianist Stefano Battaglia and his trio with bassist Salvatore Maiore and drummer Roberto Dani have redefined the capabilities of the jazz trio by going inward. Each of these musicians is capable of engrossing power, but expresses that power by increasingly vulnerable means. This is also the trio’s strength: in finding the gentlest persuasion into a tune, effects thereof linger as unbreakable memories.

Battaglia’s has always been a thematic trio. Having oared mythical waters in The River of Anyder and the follow-up Songways, they now take on the music of American popular songwriter Alec Wilder (1907-1980) in a set of seven tunes arranged by the bandleader. In this album’s press release, Battaglia recalls his early encounters with Wilder by way of Keith Jarrett, who had recorded such songs as “While We’re young” and “Moon And Sand” with his trio. One listen to the Battaglia’s trio take on the latter tune, and you’ll realize that, while they might not have the depth of output of Jarrett’s, there’s no denying their contributions will be deemed every bit as significant when ECM’s entire history is one day taken into account. Levels of phrasing, immediate structure, and narrative in this 2014 live recording are no less indicative of genius.

Battaglia Trio
(Photo credit: Caterina di Perri)

Wilder was proficient across genres, composing not only popular but also art songs, opera, musicals, film scores, and chamber music. If any claim to eclecticism can be read into his oeuvre, it will also be found in Battaglia’s approach to interpretation. His enchantment translates into an enchantment all its own. Such is obvious in the title track alone, which links the first in the concert’s chain of exquisite realizations. With its arid and rolling heartbeat, this morning song proceeds evenly for the most part, though half-step dissonances add a feeling of recoil and the sweet pain of trekking through uncharted improvisation. This tune also shows the trio at its most egalitarian. Even the bass solo seems to arise from among like elements in a slowly churning pool of energies—a matter of focus over form.

“River Run” opens with bass harmonics, shallow percussion, and dampened piano, all working a spidery craft into focus until botanical artistries emerge. Battaglia opens the keyboard like a book whose pages are thumb-worn by former journeys yet whose ink still glistens with the musings of this one. And while each album has shown the evolution of the trio as a unit, Dani in particular has grown into a master colorist. The way he wanders while sharing the spirit of Battaglia and Maiore’s interlock is astonishing here, perhaps more the result of committing to the moment than of arbitrary forethought.

At just over four minutes, “When I Am Dead My Dearest” occupies the least space of the set list, but with no loss of scope. Of all the tracks it is the most songlike, an etude of quality over quantity. From the shortest the trio moves to the longest. “The Lake Isle Of Innisfree” is an album unto itself, a dramatic piece that moves from abstraction to photorealism over the course of 16 minutes. The center cushions a bass monologue in the attention of an audience so rapt it hardly seems to be there. Battaglia’s re-entry is as drum-like as Dani’s is pianistic as both work these waters into a foam, exhaled along the shoreline through malleted cymbals.

“Where Do You Go?” is another beauty, swimming with ideas beneath its combination skin. Battaglia gives fullness to every utterance and allows the trio to land as surely as it takes off. Last is “Chick Lorimer,” which rearranges Wilder’s setting of Carl Sandburg into a wordless but no-less-poetic expression of freer textures. The trio closes the door with magic, leaving us spellbound for having partaken of its affinity.

(To hear samples of In The Morning, please click here.)

Manu Katché: Touchstone For Manu (ECM 2419)

| Tyran Grillo

Touchstone for Manu

Manu Katché
Touchstone For Manu

Recorded 2004-2012
Produced by Manfred Eicher
U.S. release date: August 7, 2014

Whenever we say artists have “left their mark,” we tend to mean they’ve taken something away from the surface of the context in question and left something of themselves in its place. In the case of drummer Manu Katché, however, it’s as if he has left a shadow behind—a melodic spirit, if you will—through which one might come to appreciate the glow of his music. The fact that ECM already had a fixed set of 40-album “Touchstones” series yet determined that Katché was deserving of his own outlying nod confirms this status: fully a part of the ECM canon yet always catching a thermal to the next horizon.

Touchstone For Manu is not only significant for Katché’s subtle grooves and intimate hooks, but also for attracting an all-star cast of musicians to join him in the journey. Trumpeters as diverse as Mathias Eick, Tomasz Stanko, and Nils Petter Molvær variously grace his jet streams, while saxophonists Jan Garbarek, Trygve Seim, and Tore Brunborg underscore the former’s silver with streaks of gold. Guitarist Jacob Young casts his quiet nets of influence, while pianists Marcin Wasilewski, Jason Rebello, and Jim Watson bring their distinctive touches to bear on the improvisational quotient. Bassists Slawomir Kurkiewicz and Pino Palladino round out the guest list, with Katché as maître d’.

Katché portrait
(Photo credit: Gildas Bouclé)

The starter is “Song For Her,” one of three tracks off his second ECM leader date, 2007’s Playground. For one who’s composing is prone to aerial atmospheres, this is an ideal place to start. Eick’s trumpet is a fine vehicle both here and in “So Groovy,” which in title and realization might as well be Katché’s mission statement. Proof also that, while these may sound to some like nothing more than simple exercises, a closer listen reveals the depth of talent needed to express their simplicity. The tonal purity of the musicians involved is no small feat, and to give this music the attention it deserves requires of the would-be Katché interpreter total commitment to feel and structure. Just listen to the synchronicity of Kurkiewicz and Katché as they navigate the changes, and Wasilewski with them as he dabs his spontaneous commentary during a stretch of downtime. Such decisions require a tactile, careful ear. In “Morning Joy,” too, we feel that artfulness of participation, and find further evidence of Katché’s diversity. He can linger with languor, laugh in slow motion, and soar on wings of memory rather than of matter.

Before the first and second tunes of this playground, however, we zoom out to reveal the 2005 ECM debut, Neighbourhood. As my first encounter with the drummer, it has always been a personal favorite, but regardless of your album affiliations it’s difficult to deny “Number One” as one of his most exquisite tracks on record. For starters, it boasts the finery of a dream band, fronting Stanko and Garbarek over two thirds of the Wasilewski trio and Katché’s metronome. The set-up to its piano-driven groove shows patience, tracing rims and cymbals in preparation for “Take Off And Land.” The pianism is top-flight, as are contributions all around, each playing an equal role in a macramé of forces.

From Katché’s 2010 Third Round we get the uninterrupted triptych of “Keep On Trippin,’” “Senses,” and “Swing Piece.” These represent the more upbeat of Katché’s albums, and one brimming with happiness. Palladino’s electric bass is a welcome color change next to that organic kit, and has a more focused sound in trio with Rebello’s piano. Young’s guitar and Brunborg’s soprano add water and light, respectively, in the first tune, while the second and third, smooth as an ice skater’s blade, take the leader’s egalitarian aesthetic to new depths.

When Katché gave an interview to NPR about his 2012 self-titled album, he discussed, among other things, the importance of tuning his drums throughout the recording process. I’ll never forget reading an online comment by someone who balked at this idea, claiming it as the mark of a “musical imposter.” Trolls will be trolls, but it bears elaboration to say that many drummers across genres, cultures, and time periods have relied on the benefits of tuning to match their instruments with others in an ensemble. Where, for example, would an entire tradition of Indian tabla playing be without it? Or, for that matter, the western classical orchestra, in which the timpani—which Katché studied at the Paris Conservatory—must be precisely tuned to suit the needs of the score. The tuning is obvious from the three selections of that album here. Just listen to the way in which his snare and cymbals seem to sing in “Running After Years,” a track that further shows Katché at the height of his compositional powers, blending all the characteristics of his previous efforts into a fresh and all-inclusive sound. Molvær is an ideal addition to the drummer’s evolving nexus, his resonant horn careening through the clouds with an attunement all his own, as Brunborg’s tenor traces parabolas alongside Molvær’s plane trails and Watson’s pianism reminds us of the earth we’ve left behind.

In “Slowing The Tides,” Molvær employs a technique made famous by Jon Hassell, adding harmonies by singing through his trumpet. Watson’s Hammond organ, here and on the final track, “Bliss,” adds simmering heat. Katché’s robust beat engenders wry twists from Watson, playing us out from a program of shape and shift. So are we reminded that no fireworks are needed to create wonderment in rhythm. Sometimes, a groove just needs room to grow.

Hideo Yamaki & Bill Laswell: Untaken Path

| Tyran Grillo

Untaken Path

Untaken Path is collision and collusion in one, an ad hoc meeting of drummer Hideo Yamaki and bassist Bill Laswell. Yamaki is a chameleonic musician, having worked across genres and continents and overlapping with many of Laswell’s past collaborators, including John Zorn, Bernie Worrell, and Hosono Haruomi, thus making him an inevitable, if ephemeral, partner in spacetime.

This duo gives fresher meaning to the term “drum ‘n’ bass,” stripping the rudimentary rhythmic expectations of the form by opening it to possibilities of unhindered emotion. And this is where both players excel: one by deepening the grooves laid before him, the other by grinding them to an even keel. They specialize in laying groundwork, doing so with such a feel for melody and color that full structures stand by the end of their exhalation. As they rack up the intensity, each finds an unlocked door in the other and proceeds through it, linking ouroboroses of metal, skin, and sweat. The locked-in jam that emerges is no small feat of confluence, but the result of a mutual regard that feels inherent to the context of this flame. They are the kindling shifting beneath the logs, sending up sparks with their audio sacrifice. Over the course of 15 and a half minutes, transformations occur second by second, Laswell’s enhancements rapid-fire one moment and glassine the next. It’s as if he and Yamaki were searching blindly through darkness, relying only on the sound of each other’s voices to guide them toward the light of a mutual ending which, when it does reveal itself, contracts with substance. There is pain but also healing, teetering but also equilibrium, which by the end of the performance reveals itself to be a reentry into its original spark. This is the solar system in a petri dish, spilled until it collects in the gutter of a black hole, only to be born again on the other side. Fantastic.

(For ordering information, please click here.)