#earl cross

[soundpollution]

Noah Howard - The Black Ark

Personnel

Noah Howard - alto saxophone

Arthur Doyle - tenor saxophone

Earl Cross - trumpet

Leslie Waldron - piano

Norris Jones - bass

Muhammad Ali - drums

Juma Sultan - congas

Noah Howard - The Black Ark

[lovegloom]

In this week's newsletter: 1. The Festival on the Niger returns, 2. Dreaming of Elvin Jones 3. Refretting with 75 Dollar Bill 4. Finding trumpeter Earl Cross, 5. Goodbye Volcanic Tongue, 6. Manufacturing pro athletes. [Sign up.] https://tinyletter.com/lovegloom 

[dustedmagazine]

Earl Cross, Muhammad Ali, Rashied Al Akbar & Idris Ackamoor — Ascent of the Nether Creatures (No Business)

Pressed in a vinyl run that probably eclipses the number of copies it would have garnered if released when originally recorded in the Netherlands in the summer of 1980, Ascent of the Nether Creatures still isn’t an album interested parties should put off procuring. Doing so pretty much guarantees disappointment. Star-crossed trumpeter Earl Cross leads the roster but it’s very much a collective effort. Idris Ackamoor, multi-instrumentalist alum of Ohio-based spiritual jazz ensemble The Pyramids, shares the frontline on tenor and alto saxophone, while ex-pat drummer Muhammad Ali (brother of Coltrane alum Rashied) and bassist Rashied Al Akbar occupy the rhythm half of the ensemble.

It’s uncertain whether the title is a play on the host country, but the Dutch audience in attendance is attentive and appreciative, and the somewhat murky sound isn’t a distraction.

“Earl’s Tune” traffics in crowd-pleasing free-bop, both swinging and reflexive with the horns working over a syncopated theme together before extemporizing variations independently. Al Akbar walks his strings confidently while Ali deftly drops bombs, his bass drum particularly prominent in the mix. The addition of a mute sharpens Cross’ attack to a squeaky burnish, and he cuts compellingly through the cloudy acoustics. An extended spate of register leaping by Ackamoor leads to an improvisation by Al Akbar replete with energetic strumming that exudes a galvanizing tonal girth.

Ackamoor is responsible for the scripting the title piece, so long that it spills over onto Side B. The band opens with obvious homage to The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians by adopting an arsenal of “little instruments” as avenues for coloristic expression. Ali’s cymbal swells only heighten the Ancient to the Future processional mood as Cross adds spare muted explication from his corner before playing comparatively clean. The crowd is most audible during this relatively quiet section, but rather than eclipsing the ensemble their sounds becomes an ambient part of the performance dynamics. As these kinds of pieces go, it’s a fairly shambolic affair indexed by effective moments, like the anthemic horn unisons that tip over into the more accelerated and emboldened interplay that closes out the side with Ackamoor in particular reaching a frenzied pitch.

The title track picks up with Al Akbar mid-solo on the flipside, folding over into a polyrhythmic showcase for Ali with the bass drum once again a key component in the barrage and a collective finish that ecstatically evinces Coltrane. Two shorter collective improvisations complete the set. “Evenings” starts with an bass-heavy collective arco dirge leavened by twining colloquy of alto and trumpet that spools out into discursive solos from each. “4 for 1” brings things back to the free-bop-canted start of the set with crash-and-bash ensemble interludes broken by rapid fire solo statements from each of the players in succession sans the others. The structure is basic round-robin, but still bracingly effective in its execution and Ali in particularly stirs up an avalanche of racket.

Cross’ discography is almost nonexistent outside his collaborative efforts with saxophonists Charles Tyler and Noah Howard. Al Akbar isn’t even a footnote in most academic examinations of free jazz. Ackamoor and Ali are better known, but both are hardly household names even among free jazz fanatics. These realities make this set a relative rarity right out of the gate, but the music offers more than trading card scarcity in its snapshot of American players holding court in Europe at the cusp of the loft jazz era.

Derek Taylor