#hat hut

[dustedmagazine]

Jimmy Giuffre 3 - Graz Live 1961 (Hat Hut Ezz-thetics)

Jazz lore is littered with the exploits of epochal ensembles, many of them arguable as to the unreserved attachment of the adjective. A select few registers as unequivocal. The edition of the Jimmy Giuffre 3 that included Paul Bley and Steve Swallow is safely ensconced in that second rarified category. The reedist/composer led trios prior and subsequent, but the aural alchemy he created in the company of the pianist and bassist embodies a legacy on another level. Their advancements together influenced entire idioms outside of jazz with a musical vernacular that is instantly identifiable and indelible. Graz Live 1961 is a gift: Seventy-five minutes of music from a date on the trio’s sole European tour, previously only available in partial form as a bootleg.

Despite the combined confidence of the players and the massive strides they made together as a unit, their viability as a commercial interest always carried an air of precariousness. Two studio albums cut for Verve (and reissued almost forty-years later by ECM) quickly became collectors’ items. The songbook for the tour coalesced in part from those documents. Five of the disc’s eleven pieces are heard in concert incarnations for the first time in an authorized form, including a beautifully restrained and atmospheric rendering of the ballad “Brief Hesitation.” Spontaneous counterpoint figures frequently as fulcrum alongside divebombing rhythmic digressions with each man securing his place in the architectures while remaining instantly flexible to his colleagues’ deviations. 

Swallow’s “The Gamut” draws on the bassist’s keen ear, adroit fingers, and talent for germane titling as he threads variable speed lines through the vivid color field of harmonic obstacles erected by Giuffre and Bley. “Suite for Germany” contrasts as the notation-driven side of the trio’s program, unfolding as a series of episodes held together as much by what isn’t played as by the filament webs of sound spun by the principals. An epic ten-minute take on another dark-hued Giuffre tone poem, “Cry, Want,” milks the pastoral and melancholic components of the piece for all they’re worth through an austere meditation on unrequited longing. Playfully onomatopoeic and relentless in its forward propulsion, “Whirrrr” juxtaposes jump cut hijinks with the tensile strength of Swallow’s sprinting lines. 

The release is also important as the inaugural entry in a new imprint from producer Werner X. Uehlinger, Ezz-thetics, which builds on his earlier label ventures in presenting both archival and new releases. Uehlinger was previously responsible for releasing two later dates from band’s tour (subsequently reissued with additional material on the Emanem label). His Giuffre stewardship is longstanding and the full support from both Bley’s and Giuffre’s widows along with Swallow means that the presentation of the music is faultless. Swallow is the famous source of an anecdote connecting the trio’s initial demise to a Bleecker Street café gig where they earned less than a dollar in proceeds from the door. Welcome reunions would occur decades later, but this first tenure remains the true vine.

Derek Taylor

[merzbow-derek]

POST-SCRIPTUM 725

BLOW UP

Dans le livre de Nick Soulsby Thurston Moore, We Sing A New Language, pages 71 à 74, Jean-Marc Montera évoque ce qui fut à l’origine des disques MMMR, coproduction entre Xeric (sous-label de Table Of The Elements) et Numéro Zéro Audio, et Les Anges du péché, édité par Dysmusie et dont une face utilise la suite des bandes de MMMR fournie par Numéro Zéro Audio.

( Numéro Zéro, par là )

[dustedmagazine]

Steve Lacy Quintet – Stamps (Corbett vs. Dempsey/Hat Hut)

The superlative “classic” is scrupulously assigned to a select number of historic quintets in jazz. Miles Davis’ pivotal bands with John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter as well as Coltrane’s game-changing groups with Eric Dolphy and Pharoah Sanders represent four of the most readily referenced examples in the modern iterations of the idiom. A credible case can be cobbled for the Steve Lacy group gracing Stamps as well. The expatriate composer/soprano saxophonist had already tillered the ensemble for a handful of years when the two concert recordings that comprise the double-album were released as his 1979 debut on the Swiss Hat Hut label.

The band was an exceptional aggregate of talent and scope from its genesis. Lacy drew abuse that inexplicably still endures today for including his spouse Irene Aebi, a cellist and self-styled vocalist whose sing-song delivery frequently forewent strict pitch adherence for brio and exuberance.  Saxophonist Steve Potts was an easier sell, distinctive and soulful with both alto and soprano and voicing a rich vernacular that could both complement and contrast the sometimes more measured and meticulous vocabulary of his employer. Bassist Kent Carter brought a deep classical background and an elegant artistry with bow while Oliver Johnson conjured equal parts color and energy on drums.

Corbett vs. Dempsey does the package lavish justice, duplicating the gatefold design and original calligraphic font along with interior reproductions of action photos from the concerts. The first disc documents a late-summer of 1977 hit at the Willisau Jazz Festival with a bonus track added while the second preserves a Parisian club date from six months later. The set lists are stacked with lengthy renditions of Lacy tunes of the time, starting with the extended theatrical tone poem “Existence”, which opens with the grand existentialist gesture of invocatory gong and Aebi’s spoken-sung lyrics amidst spiraling horns and arco bass drone.

The other pieces are largely structured in more familiar Lacy fashion with tightly wound and knotted motivic patterns expanding into freer solo and ensemble statements, by turns prickly and buoyant. The stubborn influence of Thelonious Monk on Lacy is all over these originals in the slippery shuffle rhythms and trapdoor twists. Carter and Iebi scrape several layers of rosin from their strings with concentrated sawing on the acerbic “Ire” prefacing the violence and reconciliation of dueling sopranos by Potts and Lacy. “The Dumps” and the previously unreleased “Follies” shift from jaunty prancing earworms into churning abstraction and back in transitions that are at times jarring and disorienting, but always wholly intentional.

From the Parisian hit, the comparatively terse title tune embodies perhaps the best example of Lacy’s ability to contrast punishing, compacting repetition with soaring, optimistic elegance as he and Potts aim for the cloudless heavens above a roiling groundswell of drums and strings.”Duckles” features a blast of mic distortion and Lacy’s debut on Japanese bird whistle, each that feel wholly in spirit with the sharp angles and fractious, rambunctious flavor of the piece. Potts’ alto absolutely owns “Wickets” in a solo that’s near perfection in terms of emotive effulgence and emphatic impact. The composer gladly cedes the win and goes for a different direction in his subsequently limpid and systematic soprano statement.

Lacy would treat the quintet as adjustable template in ensuing years, adding and subtracting players and eventually steering the band into more conventionally structured straits. Potts remained a reliable foil with Jean Jacques Avenel and John Betsch assuming the bass and drums chairs in place of Carter and Johnson. Iebi remained a semi-regular too, attracting ill-considered opprobrium and shrugging it off in equal measure. Those later examples were often excellent, but there’s something unequivocally exceptional in hearing the original outfit holding eloquent and ecstatic court in its incandescent prime.

Derek Taylor

[dustedmagazine]

Joe McPhee – The Willisau Concert (Hat Hut/Corbett vs. Dempsey)

Numerous are the musicians who adopt the DIY tack and launch record labels to document their work. Relatively few are those that can claim an enterprise founded by others with the express purpose of releasing their music. Joe McPhee holds that latter distinction thanks to Werner X Uehlinger and the Hat Hut imprint. Up to 1975, McPhee had been dividing his time between occasional teaching engagements at Vassar College and a day gig at a factory in his hometown of Poughkeepsie, NY, fitting music into the time between and off from both. The Willisau Concert, Uehlinger’s second release on his fledgling label, documents an eponymous Swiss leg of a European tour undertaken by McPhee and his colleague John Synder in the fall of that year. South African drummer Makaya Ntshoko joined the group, but the chemistry between the three players was apparently off leading to a truncating of the tour soon after.

Comprising four McPhee compositions in lengthy forms, the original album tests the limits of vinyl duration. “Touchstone” is a volatile duet for drums and tenor with Ntshoko forcefully framing the ensuing interplay at start and finish with solo features. That dominance in approach may be in part what McPhee hints at in later reflections of the incongruous fit between sensibilities, but the piece is bursting with action as it moves from free form raucous blowing to a more measured and melodic conclusion. Early on, McPhee resorts to shouts and screams, his horn momentarily insufficient in voicing an appropriate amount of ecstatic release. “Voices” brings Snyder’s analog synthesizer and looped voice into play in a layering of low monastic drones that joins legato tenor phrases that are at once raw and delicate. The entrance of Ntshoko’s flexing tidal beats changes the tenor of the piece drastically, but they are sporadic and at times almost subsumed by the swirling electronic textures that pour forth from Snyder’s consoles.  

“Bahamian Folk Song”, a piece composed in honor of McPhee’s family ancestry opens from a place of diffusion. Audience whoops and hollers overlap with a synthetic rhythm by Snyder augmented by Ntshoko’s drum kit. McPhee’s explores a chirruping and soulful calypso motif, but once again the pervasive electronic elements of the music threaten repeatedly to overwhelm the acoustic ones. “Harriet” also honors heritage in an ode to the activist answering to the surname Tubman. McPhee’s tenor traces a fine-grained line as Snyder eases up on the volume and density of his contributions. The result still feels subtractive rather than additive in sustaining a mood of reflective reverence and Ntshoko’s disjointed press rolls carry the air of a player somewhat uncertain as to his role. The Corbett vs. Dempsey reissue duplicates the original LP gatefold packaging down to the calligraphic script describing concert particulars. Even more valuable is a bonus version of “God Bless the Child” ripe with resplendent McPhee tenor. Ultimately a mixed bag, the album is still an important entry in the leader’s near-half century as a recording artist.

Derek Taylor

[cdlistening]

Marion Brown, 'Capricorn Moon to Juba Lee: Revisited' CD (ezz-thetics)

Thursday, May 20, 2021, 5:51pm (full listen)

Got in on a sale on some of these new ezz-thetics CDs, a new sub-label from the Hat Hut records realm. Some really great playing on here, and both albums contained within sound really good, the CM half especially. Struck here by the strong sense of propulsion and "swing" on display throughout, even in the metrically free passages; it's something that doesn't always shine through in free jazz, but I suppose it's not super surprising here, as these dudes were close to source and are really only moving a few steps beyond, say, the most out Blue Note albums from the same era.

[dustedmagazine]

Albert Ayler - Quartets 1964: Spirits to Ghosts Revisited (Ezz-thetic)

Once the bane or boon of music collectors depending on where they found themselves regarding ownership of a given album, the signifier “out of print” no longer holds much weight or consequence. Thank the vast levelling access of the internet for that nullification of scarcity and the good, bad, and ugly that comes with it. But for those who still covet and delight in the tactile and ocular pleasures of a physical recorded object in the context of pioneering free jazz, Quartets 1964: Spirits to Ghosts Revisited will likely prove appealing both in terms of content and presentation.

Saxophonist Albert Ayler was advancing another sea change in his music when he recorded the two studio dates included on the disc. Seven months separated the New York City sessions and across that temporal distance, Ayler solidified a working band that would become arguably his most iconic. The music was released under different titles in the ensuing years with Witches and Devils an alternate identifier for Spirits and Vibrations replacing Ghosts on occasion, but the evolutionary differences in organized sound still evident between them. 

Ayler assembled bands for both that allowed him to jettison earlier and awkward adherences to jazz standard conventions made to accommodate convention-minded sidemen and focus instead on his own compositions. Spirits explores longer improvisational forms over four pieces with drummer Sunny Murray and bassist Henry Grimes slotting ably and enthusiastically into Ayler’s raucous theme-to-freedom frameworks. Trumpeter Norman Howard and bassist Earle Henderson fare less well by comparison. The former often resorts to abrasive scalar trills while the latter resorts at times to leaden thrums but each recoups in avidity what he might lack in facility. 

Ghosts benefits from better sound and augments a core trio of Murray and bassist Gary Peacock who took part in Ayler’s seminal Spiritual Unity session that summer by adding trumpeter Don Cherry. The launching themes are still elemental and protean in feel and intensity, but the resulting polyphonic barrages don’t show their seams as easily. Murray and Peacock are often a blur of concerted motion with Ayler and Cherry injecting grain and texture into their galvanizing horn bursts that are by turns jarring and beautiful. 

Aside from the convenience of bundling the sessions in a single package and a typically astute accompanying essay from Ayler expert Art Lange the release has other aspects to recommend it. Full licensure by the Ayler Estate for the contents means the proper parties are being compensated. Engineer Peter Pfister, like Lange a mainstay for project producer Werner X. Uehlinger, cleans up the recordings considerably with a fresh remaster completed this past summer. Seventy-plus minutes of Ayler is an investment, but nearly fifty-five years later there’s still nothing exactly like it.

Derek Taylor

[dustedmagazine]

Franz Koglmann Septet – Fruits of Solitude (Hat Hut/Ezz-thetics)

Polyglot sources have long been parcels in Franz Koglmann’s creative inventory. The Austrian composer/brass instrumentalist draws on a staggering array of influences in his music including Viennese chamber music, Cool Jazz, free improvisation, Third Stream and that’s just the musical side of the Koglmann kaleidoscope. Fruits of Solitude taps all of these and adds the arguable umbrella of Ellingtonia with the project’s title, an inexplicit nod to the Ducal chestnut “Solitude.” The ensemble enlisted is a typically diverse assemblage of instrumentalists who easily bridge improvised and classical music borders and the leader’s trumpet and flugelhorn feature into the LP-sized program’s eleven pieces sans undue emphasis.

Two variations on the title piece open each of the disc’s bifurcated program sides with a third version serving as a penultimate entry. On each, Koglmann plays with both structure and content, aligning and eliding the brass and wind instruments against the strings of cellist Atilla Pasztor and bassist Peter Herbert in droning snatches of cantilevered counterpoint that maximize tonal contrasts. John Clark’s French horn and Milan Turkovic’s bassoon jockey the oboe and English horn or Mario Acari. Daniele D’Agaro’s instruments betray his jazz background, but whether wielding tenor saxophone, clarinet or its bass sibling, he slots comfortably into the richly woven chamber-polished surfaces. 

Koglmann’s originals blend seamlessly with his cherry-picked and quietly radical reinventions of obscure jazz covers. “Martians Don’t Go Home Anymore” slyly references a similarly titled 1955 tune by West Coast trumpeter Shorty Rogers, retaining a walking bassline and only to distort and fragment it in a succession of terse horn features and harmonization. Jimmy Giuffre’s roughly contemporaneous “Finger Snapper” and Dick Twardzik’s “Yellow Tango” receive similar revisionist treatments that retain only structural remnants of their original incarnations but persist in reflecting the ghostly identities of their composers. Other than a still formidable technique, Koglmann’s ability to take materials vaguely familiar and historically important and fashion them into fresh forms of personal expression remains an enviable strength.

Derek Taylor

[merzbow-derek]

POST-SCRIPTUM 457

SUN RA ARKESTRA

SUNRISE IN DIFFERENT DIMENSIONS

HAT HUT RECORDS hatART 2101

SUN RA AND HIS IHNFINITY ARKESTRA

THE INTERGALACTIC THING

ROARATORIO ROAR 40

C’était une utopie en marche, SUN RA, création magique et rite initiatique opposés aux mythes blancs ; un combat de chaque seconde contre l’aliénation inhérente au blanchiment culturel occidental ; un exorcisme et un envoûtement galvanisés par l’appropriation d’éléments qu’on croyait étrangers au jazz, voire étrangers les uns aux autres.

C’était aussi la Grande Musique Noire en marche, SUN RA, son versant « intergalactique » de l’aveu même de l’intéressé, versant construit à partir d’unissons habités, de stridences et de chants « gospelisants », véritable rencontre de la tradition et d’un sacré d’essence particulière, sorte de mystique sans religion où l’électronique trouvait aussi sa place, au milieu des corps dansants une Afrique fantasmée sous forme de gesticulations brutes, non chorégraphiées, improvisées.

C’était un spectacle total, SUN RA, gestuel, visuel et auditif, un spectacle déambulatoire d’un réalisme jouissif, une agitation dont le plaisir était offert en partage, au diapason de polyrythmies archaïques distillant un sentiment de déferlement intermittent.

Les concerts de SUN RA, en effet, dessinaient une fresque ludique, une fresque paraissant animée d’un perpétuel bruissement, prêt à éclater la scène, à force que les musiciens l’arpentent tels des derviches tourneurs : les souffleurs de l’Arkestra jouaient en marchant, en dansant, excédaient le rapport à l’instrument, forts d’une débauche théâtrale de lumières et de costumes ; chez SUN RA musique et danses circulaient de manière autonome, sans jamais s’arrimer dans de quelconques formes préétablies.

Ceux qui ont fréquenté SUN RA savent aussi que la liberté chez lui se gagnait à force de discipline, seule condition possiblement génératrice de potentialités nouvelles et propres à sublimer toute célébration de l’instant. SUN RA, comme il l’expliquait dans le manifeste imprimé sur la pochette d’un disque sorti au milieu des années 1950, produisait une musique autre : celle de la « grande Transition vers l’Invisible où la musique du passé devient dérisoire », celle de « l’ère spatiale » à laquelle « il faut habituer les esprits terrestres », en quête d’une « Conscience Musicale Universelle » : la mission de SUN RA était d’ordre cosmique, qui consistait à mettre au monde toutes les beautés, à réveiller d’ancestrales connaissances, à annoncer la possibilité de lendemains meilleurs, préoccupations d’ailleurs également à l’œuvre chez Coltrane et Ayler. « L’air est musique, la musique est puissance » clamait SUN RA en écho à la « force guérissant l’univers » chère au cœur d’Ayler. A tel point que son orchestre reflétait toutes les combinaisons libres du bonheur et de la beauté, incarnant le véhicule chargé de transmettre l’impression d’être « vitalement vivant », coordonnant les esprits en quête d’un monde meilleur, « en une approche intelligente d’un futur vivant » comme le déclarait SUN RA dont l’orchestre travaillait la mémoire collective dans un exercice d’universalité. La question posée était : si nous sommes venus ici de nulle part, pourquoi ne pourrions-nous aller ailleurs ?

SUN RA n’a jamais joué qu’une musique qu’il a lui-même qualifiée « d’intergalactique », une musique ne s’accordant qu’à l’infinité de l’univers éternel, une musique au-delà des seules notions de Bien et de Mal terrestres : apprendre, étudier, réaliser, accomplir, expérimenter en constituent les clés. Hier comme aujourd’hui.

( Coltrane, par là )