Jazz Consumer Guide (18):
Little Innovations Run the World

Echoes of Basie, Mingus, Tyner, etc., with chops and abstractions all their own

by Tom Hull

Pick Hits

Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra: We Are MTO (Mowo!) Count Basie's ghost band is still working, available for gigs like their recent post-historic match with a batch of old Ray Charles tapes. They're still sharp and snappy, but nowhere near as fresh as Bernstein's MTO. Bernstein boned up on Basie while working on the soundtrack to Robert Altman's *Kansas City*, then transplanted the idea of a KC territory band to the Tonic in NYC, gigging once a week, not recording until they were too legendary to resist. Old pieces from Basie, Don Redman, Fats Waller, and others genuinely obscure; an old-sounding brass band "All You Need Is Love"; some vocals and modern flourishes like lead guitar and Charlie Burnham violin. I doubt anyone dances to them, but that doesn't mean it isn't fun. A

Vijay Iyer: Tragicomic (Sunnyside) With alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa waxing Coltrane-ish, it's tempting to cast Iyer as the new-model McCoy Tyner. He plays with equal facility, but with no swing in his swagger. He sets up rumbling rhythms, then busts them up into abstract blocks. He can delicately ponder a slow spot, and no matter how fast the pace picks up, he's always thinking ahead. He's actually more impressive. A

Ben Allison & Man Size Safe: Little Things Run the World (Palmetto) Like fellow bassist-composer Charles Mingus, Allison uses his titles to advertise public thoughts of no obvious relationship to the music. The title cut refers to the Gaia hypothesis -- that bacteria maintain the Earth as a habitable environment. "Man Size Safe" refers to Dick Cheney, with "Blowback" is the consequence. Unlike Mingus, Allison manifests little anger in his elegant and poignant postbop. A MINUS

Steven Bernstein: Diaspora Suite (Tzadik) A little overblown, but hey, what else do you expect of a suite? Using the Nels Cline Singers, plus extra guitar, as the core of his rhythm section, Bernstein sounds Ellingtonian with just two brass and two reeds. A MINUS

Dave Douglas & Keystone: Moonshine (Greenleaf Music) Several years of electronic dabbling finally pay off: DJ Olive's scratching and Adam Benjamin's Fender Rhodes are woven seamlessly into the rhythm, but the garbled Bush sample seems to be there just to make you wonder. New saxophonist Marcus Strickland more than lives up to his illustrious predecessors. And then there's the trumpeter: Douglas wins those polls not for his compositions -- he's too far over everyone's head for that -- but for his chops. A MINUS

Mike Ellis: Bahia Band (Alpha Pocket) The sweet spot between Ellis's sparsely avant Chicago Spontaneous Combustion Suite and his luxuriantly Mali-meets-Brazil Speak in Tones project Subaro: a group from the nordeste Brazilian melting pot, with a groove that can't stop, chants that don't get in the way, and the leader's soprano sax, which bites a little when he gets excited. A MINUS

Scott Fields Freetet: Bitter Love Songs (Clean Feed) Exorcising the "slime trail of bile that love leaves behind," Fields's guitar doesn't ramble for once: he is focused, calm, cool, concise. Bass and drums forego the avant free-for-all, keeping him on track without demanding attention. His misery is our gain. A MINUS

Fieldwork: Door (Pi) Steve Lehman's alto sax distills the acidic tones of his mentors Jackie McLean and Anthony Braxton, which might seem to limit him, but his trio support here from pianist Vijay Iyer and drummer Tyshawn Sorey is so brimful with clever ideas and good cheer that he simply brings them back into earthly balance. Too tight to be a supergroup, although the individual talents warrant that claim. A MINUS

David Murray/Mal Waldron: Silence (2001, Justin Time) Cut in Brussels a year before Waldron's death, this may now be seen as a remembrance of an all-time piano great, but Murray fills the room so prodigiously that you have to work to hear how skillfully Waldron ties it all together. A MINUS

Sun Ra: Some Blues but Not the Kind That's Blue (1973-77, Atavistic) Two "small group" sessions that fell through the cracks and wound up in Atavistic's remarkable Unheard Music Series. Mostly covers, familiar songs like "My Favorite Things" and "Black Magic" shot into unforseen orbits. The horns cut the grease, but the piano (or organ on the 1973 tracks) dominates: Ra's mix of stride, bebop, and something from the outer reaches of the galaxy is pretty amazing. A MINUS

Sonny Rollins: Road Shows Vol. 1 (Doxy/Emarcy) Who else could throw together an album of seven concert shots spanning 27 years, with five different drummers, and make it all sound of a piece, much less a tour de force? A MINUS

Vandermark 5: Beat Reader (Atavistic) Opening up feature space for cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm slows them down, drawing in Ken Vandermark's clarinet for approximate ballads. Still, most of this is loud enough, and when they crank it up, what you notice even more than Dave Rempis' lead sax lines is how strong an agile Vandermark has gotten on baritone. A composer's group with improvisers' skills, they haven't dropped a merely good record since 2000's *Burn the Incline*. A MINUS

Honorable Mention

Steve Reid Ensemble: Daxaar (Domino) Itinerant drummer, with Kieran Hebden's laptop in tow, meets up with Senegalese pros for a slick little groovefest.

Maceo Parker: Roots & Grooves (Heads Up) The WDR Big Band Cologne goes to heaven, backing the man with the keys to one disc of Ray Charles, a second of James Brown.

Art Pepper: Unreleased Art, Vol. III: The Croydon Concert, May 14, 1981 (Widow's Taste) A hot set with a "favorite group" he rarely recorded with -- remarkable as usual.

Peter Brötzmann/Peeter Uuskyla: Born Broke (Atavistic) Two discs, no bassist, less terror, more soul, vibrant as ever, aging with some grace, some bitterness.

Bobby Previte & the New Bump: Set the Alarm for Monday (Palmetto) Slick rhythm, with drums and vibes leaping over one another, but Ellery Eskelin and Steven Bernstein cut the grease.

Houston Person/Ron Carter: Just Between Friends (High Note) Pitching woo, directed more at old chestnuts than each other.

Jon Larsen: The Jimmy Carl Black Story (Zonic Entertainment/Hot Club) Grandmother of invention tells tall tales over chintzy avant-lounge.

Marcin Wasilewski Trio: January (ECM) A near perfect quietstorm of ECM piano, with every little detail carefully locked into place.

ZMF Trio: Circle the Path (Drip Audio) Avant violin, a Revolutionary Ensemble for liberal Vancouver.

Territory Band-6 With Fred Anderson: Collide (Okka Disk) Ken Vandermark's territory band makes more sense centered on Anderson, who breathes soul into the transatlantic avant's peculiar blues.

Louie Bellson & Clark Terry: Louie & Clark Expedition 2 (Percussion Power) A bang-up big band, the octogenarian leaders still swinging like they did for Ellington.

Willie Nelson/Wynton Marsalis: Two Men With the Blues (Blue Note) Neither man feels the blues, but call out a song and chances are they can wing it.

Esmée Althuis/Albert Van Veenendaal: The Mystery of Guests (Evil Rabbit) Guests like drummer Han Bennink and guitarist Corrie van Binsbergen flesh out a sax-piano duo with plenty of rough edges and unfinished ideas.

Mort Weiss/Ron Eschete: All Too Soon (SMS Jazz) Clarinet-guitar duets -- a late bloomer from the bebop generation, a young 7-stringer who can swing.

The James Moody and Hank Jones Quartet: Our Delight (IPO) Bebop upstarts, octogenarians now, relishing Gillespie and Dameron.

The Peter Brötzmann Octet: The Complete Machine Gun Sessions (1968, Atavistic) The original fount of saxophonic terror, a certified classic, still farther out than you really want to go.

Duds

Rob Mosher's Storytime: The Tortoise (Old Mill) More proof that jazz is the semipop classical of the 21st century. B MINUS

Lindha Kallerdahl: Gold (ESP-Disk) Near-solo voice, proof that the avant-garde can still find new ways to annoy. C PLUS

Kate McGarry: If Less Is More . . . Nothing Is Everything (Palmetto) Stupid pet tricks, without the cute factor. C

Addresses

Rated

This table provides a working guide to how the JCG is shaping up. This does not include anything moved to bk-flush: these include items relegated to Surplus, reviewed in Recycled Goods, or just passed over. Entries in black are written, gray graded but not written, red ungraded but with prospect notes (all these are at the bottom of their approximate grade levels, alphabetized). A-list, B-list and Duds are alphabetical; HM lists are ranked, with breaks for three-two-one stars.

Album count: 31; Word count: 1355 (graded 18: 1033; additional 13: 322).

Prospecting

I try to write up an informal note on every jazz record I hear the first (or sometimes second) time I play it. Those notes are collected over the course of a week, then posted in the blog. They are also collected here.

Surplus

The surplus file collects final notes when I decide that I cannot realistically keep a record under active consideration for the Jazz Consumer Guide. These notes are mostly written at the end of a JCG cycle and posted to the blog when the column is printed. In effect, they are the extended copy to the column. There are various reasons for this. For especially good records, it is often because Francis Davis or someone else has already reviewed it and my two cents would be redundant. For old music it is often because I wrote something in Recycled Goods and figure that was enough. Sometimes good records have just gotten old. Most of the time the records aren't all that interesting anyway. I can handle 25-30 records per column. It just doesn't make sense for me to keep more than 60-80 graded records in the active list at the start of a new cycle. In many cases, I decide the prospecting notes or Recycled Goods review suffices, so note that in the file.

Pending

Working on the following (both new and old). When done they will go to the print or done or flush file. When the column is published, the done entries will be dumped into notebook.

Pending: New

Pending: Old