| “Essential listening for anyone interested in the work of either man.” The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD 4th edition 1998. (UK).
Double album, double solos of two distinctive musicians, becoming duets in a relatively rare space between solo playing and ensemble. Reed and percussion start at different places, the one working through breath, the other pulse of materials being struck, one typically characterised by line, the other by attack, producing in the first pitch configurations, in the second beat patterns (Prévost doesn’t use the specifically pitched mallet instruments). Each player comes with a distinctive sonic identity, but they’re frequently crossing. The main intersection is sonority. The saxophone can splutter, click and gesture, notably in the extreme registers and the rapid shifts between them, with just sound. Prévost makes long, sustained attackless sounds by bowing his cymbals and gong, and his invented string drum tosses up melodic fragments. Percussion drives and saxophone sings, but Parker can drive just as hard and Prévost make a singing sound. Sometimes you can’t tell which of the two’s sounds you’re hearing. There’s a lot of music here, like a long book, on eight tracks, each with with particular sound and overall shape, but all parts of a large, continuous process, coherent.
This is matchless all right. There is almost nothing in the way of language a review of these astonishing recordings can say. It is easier to talk about them then to reveal what they are about musically or esthetically. Master percussionist Eddie Prevost — who regards bowing strange things on metal objects percussion as well as drums, and right he is — and saxophonist Evan Parker have recorded a double CD of duets that is so invigorating, confounding, and hysterically beautiful, no one could blame either man if he gave it up right now. There are nine selections between the two discs, ranging in time from nine and a half minutes to over half an hour. All of the titles are quotations from Francis Bacon, who would have been proud to have his spirit evoked during them. This isn't simply improvisation; this is investigation in the same way that Charles Olson's Maximus poems were investigations, in the same way that Pico Iyer and Bruce Chatwin's journeys were investigations, and in the same way that Stockhausen's Hymnen is an investigation. These pieces go after the rooted heart of sound itself, the veiled face of that magical echo that dwells inside and outside of everything, in order to find out how it spells its name and how it decides which hearty to beat. There are flurries and drones and conflicts and resolutions and downright mystical moments of pure Blakean illumination. This is music that's about so much more than music that it cannot be addressed in merely musical terms. This is the very case in point of Henry James' definition of art: this is the "thing that can never be repeated."
Review:
In Britain, the two earliest groups of committed free improvisors were the musicians based in AMM and those based around the Spontaneous Music Ensemble. There was surprisingly very little interchange between these two groups. The reason for this appears to be that they had two distinct approaches to improvisation. AMM seemed to be exploring a more textural and spatial group approach as opposed to SME's more conversational and cellular method. Of course, the disctinctions were not so cut and dry but they clearly approached the issue from two different directions. Drummer/percussionist Eddie Prévost has been one of the main constants of AMM and over the course of the past 3D-plus years has both refined his percussive approach and (through side projects) demonstrated the scope of his abilities. Prévost's side quartet is a solid (and underrated) jazz group and an earlier Matchless recording, 'Premonitions' by the Free Jazz Quartet (which included trombonist Paul Rutherford, an Incus/SME stalwart) showed his familiarity with the methods of the 'opposing' camp. Saxophonist Evan Parker has made similar investigations. His duet album with electronic musician Walter Prati didn't sound too far away from AMM's sonic landscapes. One would think the two would have moved even further away from each other stylistically over the years. But, ultimately, free improvisation in a group situation is about finding common ground and these two individualists do just that on this series of remarkable duets recorded in a in February and April last year. This is not a case of two diametrically opposed styles coming together. Rather, each has enough improvising technique and intelligence to work with the other, drawing on the other's approach and applying his own technique to it. Over the years, Parker's sax style (especially when playing solo) seems to have become denser and he seems to have pared space in his music down to a minimum. Yet, here he seems to be reaching back to his earlier style of improvisational architecture and he allows a lot more breathing space (so to speak) into his music. This is most evident on 'That More Might Have Been Done, Or Sooner'. (By the way, all titles are taken from Francis Bacon, hence the older English spelling.) By the same token, on 'Nil Novum', a skittering duet with Parker on soprano, Prévost's tuned drums gives the impression that Parker is dialoguing with another horn. Then there's the astonishing passages of textural exploration with Prévost's bowed cymbals and deeply tuned cavernous drums matched by Parker's clicks, pops and spectral harmonics. And then there's the final duet 'Chastise Me, But listen' which seems the closest to American 'free jazz' that these players have come. It's almost as if they're paying homage to the John Coltrane/ Rashied AIi duets on 'Interstellar Space.' Although the two have recorded together before in group situations, most notably on 'Supersession' in the mid-'80s, 'Most Materiall' seems like a project that's been fermenting for over thirty years. I guess it's true, good things are worth the wait.
Robert lannapollo |