Search - Fieldwork :: Your Life Flashes

Full-out sonic assault

Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 05/21/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a group to contend with.You're not going to walk away from this session feeling slighted; instead, you're going to encounter the complete aural mugging. Are your up for it?You'd better be, if you want to engage this band where they're at.I'm thinking this is kinda like Ivo Perelman, only a lot more accessible. For one thing, Vijay Iyer, although firmly associated with the New Thing avant-garde jazz, has a lot more melodic content in his playing than someone like, for example, Cecil Taylor, Marilyn Crispell, or Irene Schweizer. Consequently, his music is that much more approachable. He has, it must be said, made some very fine and quite accessible music, such as Memorphilia, Architextures, Panoptic Modes, and Blood Sutra.Which is not to say that his out jazz bona fides are in any way suspect; just that he's somewhat more approachable than his above-mentioned jazz keyboard mentors and contemporaries.Lacking a bass player, this music engages a number of strategies to make up for a lack of bottom. Sometimes, it's a concious use of bass-drum sonorities ("In Medias Res," Sympathy") and sometimes, it's a bottom-heavy piano approach. Whichever strategy is employed, it seems to be equally effective. One scarcely notices the lack of a bass player. The net effect is to free up the music to move into sonic territories that, perhaps, might be limited by a traditional bass approach. In any case, what we've got here is full-bore post-modern trio jazz of the highest order. That one of their numbers is dedicated to the late, great Horace Tapscott just seals the deal. Recommended for all who seek edgy, transcendent, gloriously "out" jazz of the highest order."

Obambulatory multi-muon blossoms in pyroclasm

ted brinkley | H.M.S. Spinnaker......pacific ocean, planet earth | 12/19/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"San Francisco Bay Area residents have been familiar for a decade or more with the dynamic musical gifts these men offer. Happily now their NYC addresses provide the entire planet with easier access to the sonic wonders they investigate. The balance of elements in this music is sublime: the intensity never flags yets there is a relaxed flow that is psychedelic, even archetypal. Sure, there are themes and then improvisations but it no longer matters where one begins and ends. The level of Dialogue is so effortless, so natural that after its imminence it became immanent. If you want musical points of reference, I'll tell you that
these gentlemen can be found in the ensembles of others, such as Roscoe Mitchell, Andrew Hill, Omar Sosa, and Steve Coleman.
This music is beautiful. At times serene, then tumultuous and then simultaneously so.Rhythms coalesce, insist, ebb and flow....lava bubbles up and out, suddenly pungent blooming rock and ice shards crashing and splashing, bathing our cerebella with melting sonic ultra-nutritious cosmic mind candies.
This is an outrageously strong effort!! You will (not) be (dis)appointed."