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artist: Tim Berne Science Friction
title: The Sublime And
date: 2003
label: Thirsty Ear (Blue Series)
genre: Jazz
rls. date: Feb/2004
tracks: 06
bitrate: 192kbps
size: 152,2 MB
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Live In Winterthur, Switzerland on April 12th 2003
Tom Rainey - Drums
Craig Taborn - Rhodes, Laptop, Virtual Organ and Virtually
Tim Berne - Alto Sax
Marc Ducret - Electric Guitar
Tim Berne's latest band Science Friction is heard here for the
first time in front of a live audience in Switzerland in April
2003. A complete concert spread out over two CDs, Sublime And
offers a different view of Berne's ever-expansive compositional
ideas and how those notions meld into a unit of top-notch
improvisers: guitarist Marc Ducret, Craig Taborn on Fender
Rhodes and laptop, and drummer Tom Rainey. For starters, five
of the six compositions featured here are over ten minutes. Two
are over 20, and one is over 30, leaving fantastic amounts of
room for group interplay and improvisation. Musically, two of
these six selections and half of one are taken from the group's
self-titled studio debut and turned into entirely different
animals by the time they reach culmination. Berne's composing
for this unit is inspired in part by Ornette Coleman's dictum
of using repetitive melodies refracted against harmonic and
rhythmic extrapolation that linguistically and dynamically
commingles to create towering structures of tension, partial
release, and a field map of tonal possibilities realized by the
various unions achieved by the interplay of various
instruments. In this band, Ducret's guitar is used as the foil
and complement in Berne's melodic universe, which is
architecturally rendered as almost triangular in scope, ever
widening at the rhythmic bottom and tonal center of any given
work; the interval is used as a near modal device. Ducret solos
like the virtuoso he is, finding the outer reaches of Berne's
furiously complex harmonic universe ù as do Berne and Taborn ù
but that isn't necessarily the point. Ducret's tonal plane is
the one on which rhythmic and melodic concerns are extrapolated
in many directions (sometimes simultaneously) such as on "Van
Gogh's Retreat" and "Jalapeno Diplomacy/Traction." Also,
Taborn, playing a Rhodes and a laptop, forgoes the usual
notions of jazz pianism ù even free jazz pianism ù and roots
his technique in the fulfillment and expression of rhythm and
dynamics as devices for mode and meter to present, rather than
resolve, contradictions. The knotty, syncopated manner in which
"Mrs. Subliminal/Clownfinger" begins is Berne soloing along a
tight melodic pattern, gradually minimalized and extended
tonally as drums, then Taborn's laptop, and finally gorgeous
chords by Ducret come in to wash the entire middle before any
idea of the "solo" even occurs. A deep, blues-like melody
contrasts itself against ammodal concern, unfolding bar by bar
until the tune is somewhere in the stratosphere. Disc two's
"Smallfry," a glorious ambient piece, features Taborn using
both instruments, exploring large washes of electronic sound
rooted in compact melodic statements that leave, like Erik
Satie's Rosicrucian songs, untethered and unresolved triads to
float and engage the sonics wafting into the atmosphere. These
give way to the swing, sway, and almost rock & roll angularity
of "Jalapeno Diplomacy/Traction," which after over 20 minutes
is exhausted and gives rise to the most complex piece on the
set, "Stuckon U," where interwoven contrapuntal melodic frames
become rhythmic planks which then become centers of tonal
dissolution and creation. What a brilliant finish to an
exhilarating, moving, and very accessible concert, which will
leave the listener much as it must have left the concertgoer:
awestruck.
URL: http://www.thirstyear.com
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1
01-Van Gundy's Retreat [10:43]
02-The Shell Game [23:59]
03-Mrs. Subliminal-Clownfinger [30:18]
2
01-Smallfry [06:17]
02-Jalapeno Diplomacy-Traction [20:15]
03-Stuckon U (For Sarah) [19:14]
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110:4
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