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"HiGH ▀ iNTELLiGeNCE tRoLLS"
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a r t i s t : Shoup/Flaherty/Moore/Corsano
t i t l e : Live at Tonic
d a t e : 2003
l a b e l : Leo Records 639
g e n r e : Jazz
r l s. d a t e : June/2004
t r a c k s : 03
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 129,8 MB
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To celebrate our 4th anniversary, HiT2k brings you a rush of
releases from all over the musical map, but never within the
borders of the mainstream! Why not take this time to try
something new, and peek in the strange dark corners of music
where so many are afraid to? Many thanks to all the groups and
kindred spirits who've supported us and taken chances!
Should one wish to explore the thorny question of where "free
jazz" ends and "free improvisation" begins (I don't
particularly want to get into it, but..), it's perhaps the
continuing need on the part of some musicians to retain the
idea of a theme, a "head" (albeit symbolically) that ought to
be discussed (that and the role of the rhythm section ¡ bass
and drums, but that's another story). Despite its audacious
title, Ornette Coleman's "Free Jazz" followed the time-honoured
bop structure of head (ensemble) alternating with individual
solos (horns first, rhythm section last), and the idea of a
head remained central to Coltrane, Ayler and Frank Wright, to
name but three major players. Though it soon lost its earlier
role as central organising pillar (either vertical, as harmonic
"changes" to be played over ¡ the legacy of bop ¡ or
horizontal, as melodic/intervallic material to be developed by
the soloist ¡ Monk, Ornette, Lacy...) the head nevertheless
retained a structural function. (Ayler used it to delineate
form, marking the end of one solo and preparing the ground for
the next.) When American free jazz, as Sunny Murray put it,
"got lost" in the late 1970s (some musicians crossed over into
funk; others retreated into academia; some plied their trade
wherever they could in draughty lofts; others disappeared
altogether and died in the street), a few brave souls
established links with like-minded explorers in Europe and
Japan, where younger generations of players (free from the
constraints of the Tradition imposed by the American media,
that pompous self-appointed arbiter not only of what jazz is,
but also apparently of what's good and bad jazz), had taken the
plunge and dispensed with themes altogether.
Twenty years down the line, discovering that they can quite
easily do without the head, and the melodic and/or harmonic
information it contains, what do musicians improvise "over"?
Answer: they improvise full stop, they play, they take it to
the edge. Parameters other than pitch, harmony and rhythm (in
the strict metrical sense of the word) are less important here
than timbre, event-density and volume. To adopt an analogy from
the visual arts, we've moved away from figurative to abstract
expressionist ¡ it's no coincidence that a Jackson Pollock was
chosen as cover art for "Free Jazz", and no coincidence either
that many improvising musicians are also painters: Alan Silva,
Bill Dixon, Peter Br÷tzmann, Ivo Perelman, Jack Wright and, as
you can see, Wally Shoup.
Shoup and Paul Flaherty have doggedly pursued the goal of
improvised music for over two decades in a United States where
jazz (and its attendant codes of behaviour) still holds sway.
(This isn't to say that they are uninfluenced by it ¡ name me a
saxophonist who is ¡ both men possess a strength and purity of
tone and a determination to pursue musical ideas that clearly
points not only to Ayler and Coltrane, but further back to
Sonny Rollins and Coleman Hawkins.) Until recently they've had
to labour on in relative obscurity ¡ between 1984 and 1994's
"Project W" (Apraxia), Shoup only released his work on
self-produced cassettes, while Flaherty curated his Zaabway
imprint with kindred spirit Randy Colbourne until 2001's
magnificent "The Ilya Tree" (Boxholder) and the sensational
"The Hated Music" on Ecstatic Yod.
Guitarist Thurston Moore needs little introduction, of
course, neither as a performer in his own right with Sonic
Youth nor as a tireless champion of free music. In an interview
in 1998 with The Wire's Biba Kopf, he recalled the thrill of
his discovery of the "amorphous [...] spontaneous blowout" at a
New York loft session in the early 1980s featuring guitarists
Glenn Branca and Rudolph Grey (whose group The Blue Humans with
Arthur Doyle and Beaver Harris was one of the first
improvisation outfits to cross over into the ugly, noisy world
of No Wave). Moore subsequently asked writer Byron Coley to
compile some free-music tapes to take on a mid-80s SY tour
(Coley made sixty!) and "then someone gave me a copy of
[Br÷tzmann's] "Machine Gun" and it was all over..." Coming from
rock, Moore arrived in free music without the baggage of a jazz
soloist (i.e. notes matter ¡ he recalls being bemused the first
time he heard Derek Bailey) but with an arsenal of extended
techniques that would make any jazz guitarist (with the
possible exception of the late Sonny Sharrock) shudder with
fear.
Drummer Chris Corsano (who partners Flaherty to perfection on
"The Hated Music" and the more recent "Sannyasi" on the
saxophonist's new Wet Paint imprint) is, as he has to be in
such company, a veritable powerhouse, just as adept at
exploiting percussion's timbral potential as he is its rhythmic
propulsion. Sunny Murray would be proud of him.
It's only just that this magnificent work should find itself
on the venerable Leo label, and I for one can't wait to hear
more of it, especially now that the likes of Matthew Shipp,
William Parker and David Ware are sliding progressively back
towards orthodoxy, secure in the knowledge that the safety net
of Tradition ¡ be that bebop or hiphop ¡ lies beneath them.
It's good to know there's still somebody on the edge willing to
come back and remind us what it's like out there.
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01-Tonic One [35:00]
02-Tonic Two [23:20]
03-Tonic Three [14:44]
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73:04 min
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