Most of what you can read about the life and music of Iannis Xenakis (29 May 1922 – 4 Feb 2002) is centered on how the remarkable facts of his biography and his expertise in a wide variety of artistic and scientific fields shaped his music. This narrative is fascinating, compelling, and an important part of Xenakis’ place in late 20th century Modernism.
But the sound of the music—aggressive, abrasive, dense, transparent, jet-fast, and geologically slow—is what stays with me. My favorite Xenakis piece is Pithoprakta (1956; two trombones, xylophone, wood block, strings; ca. 10’). Xenakis composed Pithoprakta (“actions through probability”) using calculations based on Daniel Bernoulli’s “Law of Large Numbers” and Ludwig Boltzmann’s “Kinetic Gas Theory”, which, to make it short, deal with the behavior of large numbers of small, independent objects, like molecules in a cloud. (See David Foster Wallace’s Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity for a fascinating pop introduction to some of the ideas and issues surrounding large sumbers.) It is, in my view, a mistake to hear Pithoprakta and other works like it as being “about” these theories and formulas or even being “representations” of them, but rather they are embodiments of the principles involved, turned into music.
Again, it is the sound of Pithoprakta that is so remarkably expressive. Clouds of sound first appear with the string players (there are 46 individual string parts) tapping on the bodies of their instruments in irregular rhythms and with constantly shifting densities. As the piece progresses (questions of musical structure and form are raised in very radical ways by music like Xenakis’s, but I come here today to dig him, not to analyze him), the sound clouds are variously made of pizzicato (plucked) notes, glissandos (slides) both plucked and bowed, clusters of sustained notes, and short angular gestures by the individual string players.
With Xenakis, as with the other artists whose work tasks the age-old assumptions that build up around artforms, what’s needed to “get it” is an open mind and heart. Understanding is beside the point.
Here’s a two-part interview in English, with German subtitles:
French saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh has been fascinating me for a couple of years now. In November 2010, I reviewed I Will Follow You, a CD he did with guitarist (and frequent partner) Ben Monder and drummer Daniel Humair. That album blended abstraction, both melodic and noisy, and swing in ways I would eventually discover were trademarks of Sabbagh’s (and Monder’s). The two albums they’ve made together, as a quartet with bassist Joe Martin and drummer Ted Poor, have a kind of delicate approach to rhythm and group interaction that’s very reminiscent of Paul Motian‘s bands—no surprise, then, that both Sabbagh and Monder played with Motian for several years prior to the drummer’s death. (Read Sabbagh’s memories of one such gig.) What’s surprising to me is how well I like the sound they achieve, since Motian’s rhythmic concept is not one I typically embrace; I’m much more drawn to a forceful backbeat and groove. But Sabbagh’s deliberate, patient explications of a piece’s melody, his slow unwinding solos, work very well over a kind of abstract shuffle, and I’m not so sure they would work as well were he to be driven forward by a more aggressive player.
Anyway, when I heard Sabbagh’s new album was going to be called Plugged In and feature electric keyboards, I naturally assumed Monder would be present, too, as his best work (to my ear) is when he steps on the pedal and cranks it up in a manner reminiscent of Bill Frisell with Naked City or the Ginger Baker Trio at their farthest out. I guess I was expecting something in the vein of Tony Williams’ Lifetime, plus saxophone, or Larry Young‘s Lawrence of Newark. But there’s no guitar at all on Plugged In. The band is Sabbagh on saxophone, Jozef Dumoulin on keyboards, Patrice Blanchard on electric bass, and Rudy Royston on drums. And while the music is occasionally fierce and biting, much of it is smooth and fusiony, sometimes in disconcerting ways. For example, while the album opener, “Drive,” lets Dumoulin take a skronky solo over rumbling drums from Royston, the fourth track, “Jeli,” is overly busy and built around a melody that sounds like Weather Report-as-cruise ship band. Royston’s assaultive solo and Dumoulin’s zapping synths can’t save it from Blanchard’s too-slick-by-half burbling.
There’s a lot of music to take in on Plugged In—14 tracks in 65 minutes. The longest is the 7:10 “Aisha,” an atmospheric and somewhat vaporous ballad; the shortest is the 2:15 “Boulevard Carnot,” which is mostly a showcase for the keyboardist, who sounds like he’s imitating Keith Jarrett‘s work with Miles Davis in 1970, until Sabbagh briefly joins him in the piece’s last 30 seconds. If I’m making the album sound disappointing, it’s not; the saxophonist’s cardinal virtues, namely his insistence on patiently stating and restating a melody without throwing in a half-dozen tricks to impress his music-school buddies, are as present as ever. And Royston is a terrific drummer who improves every band he’s in. He supports Sabbagh in much the same way he bolsters JD Allen in that man’s trio. The unpredictability of Dumoulin’s keyboard sounds also adds more excitement than might be present with a lesser player around. Only the choice of electric rather than upright bass feels like a mistake, and even that works more often than it doesn’t. This is a weird, jazz-rock but not “fusion” record that’s likely to open itself up to the listener more and more each time it’s heard.
Frequent readers of this site will know we love Japanese teenage fashion blogger turned pop star Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. Even if her more recent work hasn’t lived up to the hallucinatory brilliance of her first single “Ponponpon,” she’s still a hilarious burst of radiant energy who’s always worth paying attention to. Which is why we’re presenting these two live clips from a recent performance at Club Quattro in Japan.
Here’s “Kyary An-An”:
And here’s “Ponponpon”:
She’ll be on tour in Japan from June 2 to June 29; no U.S. dates have been announced, unfortunately.
Alto saxophonist Darius Jones (who I profiled in Burning Ambulance #2) has performed with different personnel on each of his AUM Fidelity releases to date. His debut release, Man’ish Boy (A Raw & Beautiful Thing), featured Cooper-Moore on bass and diddley-bo, and Rakalam Bob Moses on drums; the follow-up, Big Gurl (Smell My Dream), featured bassist Adam Lane and drummer Jason Nazary. (This trio was also heard on a hidden bonus live track at the end of Man’ish Boy.) He and Nazary are also members of the quartet Little Women, alongside guitarist Andrew Smiley and tenor saxophonist Travis Laplante; their full-length debut, Throat, was released in 2010, and a follow-up may be coming soon. He can also be heard on Betweenwhile, by drummer Mike Pride‘s group From Bacteria To Boys. Most recently, Jones duetted with pianist Matthew Shipp on Cosmic Lieder, which R. Emmet Sweeney reviewed last April. In every case, his voice remains distinctive and identifiable; he is always himself, even when burrowing into a collective storm of sound, as on Throat. Like Ornette Coleman, Peter Brötzmann, or any other great stylist of the horn, he causes others to come to him, rather than disguising his fundamental nature in order to fit in. And yet, he does fit in, because he is possessed of an openness of spirit that welcomes collaboration. His bands are not support staff, but partners.
On his latest CD, Jones fronts a quartet that includes pianist Matt Mitchell, bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer Ches Smith. Dunn and Smith are players whose work I have heard in a variety of contexts, from Mike Patton‘s group Fantômas, John Zorn‘s Moonchild ensembles, and the jazz group Endangered Blood (Dunn) to multiple out-jazz ensembles led by folks like Marc Ribot, Mary Halvorson and Tim Berne…and the noise-rock trio, led by former Fudge Tunnel mainman Alex Newport, Theory of Ruin (Smith). They also played together on a 2004 CD by Dunn’s Trio Convulsant. The fact that they have chosen to work with Jones, who, while flirting with noise-rock in Little Women and some Weasel Walter-led projects, nevertheless comes quite clearly out of a post-Albert Ayler, spiritual jazz context, is immediately interesting.
Book of Mae’Bul begins with “The Enjoli Moon,” a tender ballad that allows Jones to unfurl its melody slowly and with great care. He allows the notes to flow through the horn almost as though a balloon is deflating, never hurrying to the next one but wringing all the harmonic energy out of each before proceeding. Mitchell’s piano playing follows his example, and Smith’s drumming, while energetic and occasionally even aggressive, never overpowers the piece. Dunn is a subdued presence, taking only the briefest of solos with delicate support from Mitchell.
As the album progresses through its eight tracks, the tenderness manifested in “The Enjoli Moon” fades, replaced with a muscle-flexing tension that makes Book of Mae’Bul a “difficult” listen, in that it demands that you engage with it. It will not sit in the background. Jones, Dunn and Smith—more than Mitchell, though he does it too—play with great force, even on slow pieces. They don’t go for stereotypical “free jazz” blare, of course. The saxophonist isn’t interested in that, and neither is Smith. There’s a moment toward the end of “Be Patient With Me” where he rolls across the toms in almost direct imitation of Elvin Jones backing John Coltrane in 1964, but otherwise, he seems determined—without making it into a Thing—to do the unexpected, to react in a way that a typical “jazz drummer” would not, even as the music remains firmly rooted in jazz.
I think if this music swung more, it would be easier to just relax and enjoy. But there’s a twenty-pound-boots feel to its rhythms and momentum most of the time. And then there’s the final track, “Roosevelt,” which features the entire band but in its final minutes boils down to the interaction between Jones and Smith. The saxophonist is emitting fierce murmuring squeals as the drummer scrapes his cymbals and clatters bits of the kit, and the music—in a surprising bit of studio-craft—slowly fades down to silence, as though this furrowed-brow, AMM-ish back-and-forth could go on indefinitely. (Almost a threat, that.) This track, as much as anything else, encapsulates Book of Mae’bul and the Darius Jones Quartet. They are men doing difficult work, and every note shines with the sweat of their efforts. Which may be why they want you, the listener, to put as much effort into hearing them as they have put into the sounds they make. If you’re up for the challenge, it’s an intense and rewarding album. If you’re not…I totally get that, too. There will be plenty of days where I will scan through the contents of my iPod and go right past this album, thinking, Nope, I need something more basic and elementally fulfilling. Comfort food. But there will be days when I will be damn glad this record exists. If you’re visiting this website, I suspect the same will be true of you.
Here’s a shortish (just under 10 minutes) clip of this group performing at Roulette in NYC in 2010:
