Stripped down
N. Dorward | Toronto, ON Canada | 04/12/2004
(3 out of 5 stars)
"Fred Anderson is a veteran of the AACM who's never quite got his due. His discography has been rather erratic, with a handful of things from the late 1970s & early 1980s, & then a long gap until fairly recently, when Okkadisk & Delmark began to get him on tape in a serious way. He deserves credit among other things for fostering the talents of the young drummer Hamid Drake; their musical partnership goes back on disc as far as 1978. _Back Together Again_ is their first recording as a duet. It's a beautifully packaged disc, & Thrill Jockey have clearly taken a lot of trouble over it--even commissioning a filmmaker to document the session (complete video clips of three performances are included on a bonus CD-ROM, plus two long interview sequences). I was pretty hyped about it, so find myself rather disappointed that, while this is a good album, it's rather less remarkable than one might have expected.It is, to be sure, quite a pretty disc. Drake's buzzing hand-drums & buoyant kitwork are as good as always; he's largely playing in time here rather than "free", & the grooves he comes up with are quite infectious. You could wish, though, that he'd varied the tempos a bit more--a burner couldn't've hurt things, or at the very least some more variety from track to track (for instance, the first & second tracks are at virtually the same tempo). Anderson's improvising rarely gets too far from a blues & r'n'b feel, & in small doses it's very pleasing, soulful playing. But he seems to have lost the drive to _build_ solos rather than just riff, & so none of these pieces, even the longest tracks, ever gets much beyond its initial premises. Sometimes this is genuinely frustrating: "Louisiana Strut" starts like it's hot stuff indeed, but over 9 minutes Anderson never escapes the gravitational force of the piece's opening lick. Other pieces work out better: the opening "Leap Forward", for instance (with Drake overdubbing multiple hand-drum rhythms) is great stuff. -- Listeners may well be divided over "Lama Khyenno", the last track, which is a quarter-hour of Drake chanting the phrase over hand drums, with Anderson adding minimalist obbligatos. Like the rest of the album, it's a very nice mood-piece that doesn't really go anywhere & is definitely too long. Fans of Anderson & Drake will definitely want to check this album out, despite its flaws; as for me, I'm an impatient sort: 73 minutes of this is simply too much. Some tenor/drums albums are marvels of invention, pulling an improbable amount of colour & variety out of a limited instrumentation. This one, though, sounds _too_ stripped-down: you keep wishing that a bass player or second horn would step in & goose the players a bit."
A Waste of Two Gifted Players
Jason Gubbels | San Diego, CA | 12/05/2005
(2 out of 5 stars)
"What a frustrating album. A great tenor sax player and one of the most exciting drummers/percussionists around join up for a duo session. I was expecting sparks to fly, with long peals of improvisation flowing over complex beats. Well, there are good beats here - Hamid Drake can never disappoint in that regard. But Fred Anderson seems to have left his creativity at home on this one. The first track, "Leap Forward," is by far the strongest track here, and Anderson manages some interesting bursts alongside Drake's percussion. But after that, Anderson refuses to rise above dull, meandering single-tone statements. A track like "Louisiana Strut" is particularly angering, as Drake lays down a terrific funky beat, only to have Anderson stumble along on an annoying two-note phrase, over and over and over for 9 minutes. The worst track is the closer, with Drake moaning the title ("Lama Khyenno") for the entire 12 minute duration, as Anderson does nothing but softly blow one note. I'm not sure who this album was designed for - it certainly offers no memorable themes, and the improv is so limited in harmonic complexity as to put the listener to sleep."
Track Listings (8) - Disc #1