What Happens in a Year's ceremonie/musique

My latest Vinyl Anachronist music review is now live at Part-Time Audiophile. You can read it here.

Kaze & Ikue Mori's Sand Storm

My latest Vinyl Anachronist music review is now live at Part-Time Audiophile. You can read it here.

Pat Battstone's The Last Taxi: New Destinations

My latest Vinyl Anachronist music review, of Pat Battstone's The Last Taxi: New Destinations, is now live at Part-Time Audiophile. You can read it here.

Joris Teepe's In the Spirit of Rashied Ali

My latest review for Part-Time Audiophile is yet another book review, albeit with a CD included. This is from bassist Joris Teepe--and his tribute to Rashied Ali. You can read it here.

Wadada Leo Smith's Rosa Parks: Pure Love

My latest review, Wadada Leo Smith's Rosa Parks: Pure Love, is now available at Part-Time Audiophile. You can read it here.

Jason Kao Hwang and Burning Bridge's Blood

"Driving down on an unlit highway, my headlights flashed upon the bleeding carcass of a deer."

So begins the liner notes of Jason Kao Hwang's new album, Blood. Whenever I see Hwang's name attached to a musical project, I know it's going to be a challenge, I know it's going to be out there. Hwang, an avant-garde violinist, has crossed my path before with Sing House, which prompted me to conclude that "I'm still working on it. One day I may work it out in my mind, or I might just go back to my Dean Martin, Julie London and Harry Belafonte albums." He also performed on Michael Moss' Heli, a free jazz fever dream that I called "a daunting task, especially when you consider that most mainstream jazz fans might night make it through to the end."

Blood, performed with the Burning Bridge ensemble, starts off just as jagged, a series of sonic blasts and noises created by an interesting cross-section of instrumentation including cornet, flugelhorn, pipa, erhu, trombone, drums, bass and tuba. As you might imagine, this can be a fascinating cacophony. But it's also surprising in the way it eventually irons itself out and starts a cohesive narrative. Hwang's tale of roadkill is a starting point--the sudden and shocking image of that deer triggers something deeper in his soul and reminds him of his mother's "harrowing experiences in China during World War II." Hwang explains the connection like this: "Through Blood the violence of deeply held memories are not relived but transposed into our sound."

This is a heady idea, yes, but once we pass through the angry free jazz of "Breath Within the Bomb," the 12-minute opener, Hwang combines a classic jazz sound, equal parts free and be-bop, with the Chinese instrumentation. Here he shows that connection between the two worlds, the carcass of the present and the horrors of the past, all happening across vast chasms of time and space. These middle passages are taut and musical--the liner notes suggest a cinematic approach that can be easily digested by the listener.

Despite your reservations about exploring yet another free jazz nightmare, you could find Blood to be utterly absorbing--especially in the way it paints such vivid pictures. Hwang's story is sophisticated and expansive, the tale of his mother surviving a bomb blast in a pharmacy is juxtaposed with his sadness for two fellow jazz musicians, Americans who fought in Vietnam where "the magnitude of pain and sorrow that they endured is unimaginable." Blood, as the title implies, is as far from lighthearted as it gets. But it is fascinating in its cerebral approach, which is wrapped in a thoroughly accessible veneer.

Rich Halley 3's The Literature

Saxophonist Rich Halley has released twenty albums of original compositions, and for release #21 he has decided to pay tribute to his mentors, legendary jazz performers and composers such as Monk, Coleman, Mingus, Ellington, Sun Ra and Miles Davis. This sounds like a fairly straightforward project, but Halley isn't a by-the-books kind of arranger. He and his trio (bassist Clyde Reed and drummer Carson Halley) live on the cusp of free jazz. That means Halley likes to preserve the original themes, often starting out with a coherent interpretation that is eventually and sometimes suddenly deconstructed in very unusual ways.

Sure, there a wild moments of chaos here and there, but the surprise here is that Halley's brand of free jazz is more introspective than most. This is, for lack of a better word, intimate free jazz borne from a stripped down trio where every instrument is dissected and laid out on the table for the listener to examine. Most trio albums have what I like to call a "crawl around inside" feel to the instrumentation. On The Literature, however, you get to explore every nook and cranny of tenor sax, bass and drums. In addition, you're treated to a clarity of thought that makes these tunes far more accessible than you'd expect.

That means you're getting complex renderings of these three musicians during their solos--there's a starkness to this recording that lets you dig right in and hear details that are often buried in more commercial jazz recordings. Halley's sax is perfectly melodic for most of these songs--the press kit mentions Sonny Rollins and I definitely hear those honey-dipped phrasings. The younger Halley is Rich's son, and he can deliver in a number of jazz styles, but I'm most impressed when he lets his tribal side emerge and he lets loose with a rolling, thunderous beat that creates plenty of tension. His work on his loose and snappy snare is also a pleasure to hear. It's also a pleasure to spend plenty of time in the cavernous recess of Reed's bass. I feel like I've been neglecting bassists lately--I realize that my last couple of reviews completely failed to mention them, which was not on purpose. But Reed is given plenty of opportunities in the spotlight, and his bass is earthy and he extracts a unique tone during his solos.

The Literature is not one of those wild and out-of-control free jazz albums that I periodically tackle. If you're flummoxed by one song, don't give up--there are different degrees of deconstruction here and you might be surprised when one clicks with your sensibilities. The trio's take on Ellington's "Mood Indigo," for example, consists of a very unusual arrangement that nevertheless preserves that one-of-a-kind melody, one that usually disconnects me from my troubles and causes me to float off into the distant past. Free jazz, after all, is about finding an entry point and jumping into the fray. There are plenty of spots to jump into here, and that makes The Literature one of the most intriguing and enjoyable free jazz expeditions I've joined.

Enrique Haneine's The Mind's Mural

It's been at least a couple of months since I've tackled any free jazz. It's interesting how jazz recordings seem to come in waves sometimes, one genre or another. I can think of a period, maybe a year ago or so, where I was inundated with free jazz releases. At first I felt challenged by this avalanche of chaos and doing my best--as I always say--to extract the structure from the cacophony. A funny thing happens when you dive into difficult music, however. It comes together. It makes sense. You don't shy from it. You might look around, as I often do, to see if anyone's nearby who's silently judging you. But my initial questions of who still listens to free jazz for enjoyment have been slowly replaced by the notion that every music has its place, and you just need to find the right mindset to explore that.

I mention this because I have this new CD from Enrique Heneine, a composer and multi-instrumentalist who was born in Mexico City but now plays in New York City. Haneine's new CD, The Mind's Mural, is free jazz by definition, but it is incredibly easy to digest--perhaps even to newbies. I couldn't put my finger on the reason until I read the liner notes. "[Through] the use of innovative rhythms in odd meter contexts and driving intervallic yet lyrical melodies, the free jazz conversation is achieved in a high caliber, sensitive linear setting." That hits the nail on the noggin, because Haneine's unusual compositions are framed in a percussive strategy that borrows from Latin and Middle East influences. (Haneine is also Lebanese.) Once those motifs are set, Haneine slowly builds the tension until he reaches those free jazz crescendos of noise, but the momentum is sure and helps to guide through the wilder ideas.

While Haneine plays the piano, he is also a thoughtful and curious drummer--he chooses drums, cymbals and an udu drum to push sax players Anna Webber and Catherine Sikora, along with bassist Carlo de Rosa, down this treacherous and exciting road. It's his drum work that stands out as the driving force since he's so fast and exact. It's quite simple--his drumming acts as the hand that's holding yours, while his sax players dance around and tempt you to stray off the main path. Drums and bass are forged together at points in a guttural conversation that whispers in your ear and tells you to keep moving forward.

In many ways, this free jazz is about vibration and resonance, which makes it intriguing on an almost subconscious level. Regardless of your feeling toward free jazz, you might find yourself surprised at Haneine's seductive instincts, that building of tension that echoes the faraway beating of drums somewhere deep in the Amazon jungle. I won't blame you if your cautious about free jazz, especially if you've been burned in the past, but this is such a mesmerizing entry point, one that will beckon you to come closer while it slowly unleashes the fury in a confident, measured way.