Timothy Young with very special people

(Endless, 1997)

Guitarist Timothy Young has performed in Seattle rock bands The Scabs, Scallywags and Devilhead. He also plays with great local musicians like Robin Holcomb, Eyvind Kang, Bill Frisell, Julian Priester and Michael White. He collaborates closely with Wayne Horvitz's bands called « Sweeter Than The Day » and « Zony Mash ». And he spent five years touring with Cambodian master musician Dr. Sam Ang Sam performing traditional Pin Peat repertoire.
Here, it's his first solo album and he leads a huge cast in creating a fascinating and kaleidoscopic album somewhere between « Sgt. Pepper’s » and Mister Bungle !

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Mylab

(Terminus)

Tucker Martine and Wayne Horvitz have worked together a lot over the last decade or so, with Martine generally acting as engineer (his role in the 4 + 1 Ensemble was "limited" to live processing), but Mylab is their first fully collaborative effort together. The songs started with Martine taking various ancient public-domain folk recordings (from around the turn of the last century), which he then sampled and looped in order to form the basis for new compositions, fleshed out by Horvitz and Martine together. A long list of Seattle's musical luminaries was then brought in for overdubs, sometimes adding new parts and sometimes replacing the part created by the old samples. The result is a thoroughly modern-sounding recording built from the familiar rhythms and melodies of the folk music tradition that country, blues, and rock & roll were built from. It's a fascinating juxtaposition made more interesting by the fact that many of the instruments and the samples themselves were treated further, so sometimes it's difficult to discern whether the source is the old recordings or the recent playing. And given the modus operandi, the amount of stylistic ground covered is impressive. "Varmint" is built on a mournful fiddle figure, with Danny Barnes' dobro adding a further bluegrass flavor, which is tempered by one of several excellent Bill Frisell solos. The next track, "Fancy Party Cakes," is loaded with crazy electronic squelches, programmed (or highly treated) drums, and backward effects. "Phil and Jerry" (an ode to the Grateful Dead?) starts out sounding very African, thanks to the ngoni playing of Kassemadi Kamissogo, then moves into Pharoah Sanders territory with Skerik on sax. The title "Old Days" might be an allusion to Horvitz's old band the President, as the tune strongly recalls that band (with Andy Roth doing his finest Bobby Previte imitation on drums, while Previte appears on several other tunes). Despite the fact that there are a lot of different styles on display here, Horvitz's tonal palette on keys and individual compositional voice really ties all the songs together. Mylab is a unique-sounding project that has succeeded in making an album that is interesting and challenging while being utterly approachable. This is sonic alchemy of the highest order. Well done.

Sean Westergaard (Allmusic)

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Jacek Kochan : "New expensive head"

(Gowi, 2003)

Jacek Kochan is a monster drummer. Born in Poland, he has been active in the musical scenes of Poland, USA, and Canada since the late 1970s. He is also an arranger, imaginative composer and music producer, but most of all - a superior drummer. His very distinctive modern drumming style is jam-packed and full of rhythmical gradations with stylistic references from the whole history of jazz. He is fully aware of versatile jazz and contemporary music traditions, but at the same time is completely immersed in contemporary fusion, funk, electronic and club beats. He is also very fluent in the language of free jazz, but in contrary to many others modern European drummers, he has no complex of avant-guard. He is a master of sound sampling, and has an exceptional gift of time and style. His smart and intelligent music is filled with nuances, full of space, with layers of acoustic and electronic sounds, and complex textures. As a drummer he does not over-emphasize the role of his instrument, but in contrary he focuses on collective sound, melodies, adventurous arrangements, original harmonies and rhythms.

Kochan's astonishing improvisational creativity makes him one of the most highly regarded and in-demand drummers on the Polish and European jazz scenes. His music engages the listeners, keeps them interested, sometimes puzzled, but always longing for more. Furthermore, Kochan excels in a recording studio environment, where he is able to masterfully utilize many wonders of the modern recording technologies, and at the same time able to restrain himself from the traps of artificial apparatus.

During the last decades, Kochan has played with many of the most important figures of American and European jazz :
in early 80-ties he moved to New York. There he have played and recorded with jazz, funk and r&b bands and studied among the others.with Jaco Pastorius, Mike Clark, Robbie Gonzales.
By the mid 80's, Jacek moved to Montreal, where he further expanded his musical lexicon to include writing for choirs and orchestra (Tudor Singers, Repercussion) as well as playing and recording ethnic music (latin , african , balkan). There he worked with Michel Donato, Karen Young, Andrew Leroux, Yannick Rieu, Oliver Jones, Jean-Pierrre Zanella, Michel Cusson, Katleen Dyson, Helmut Lipsky, Lazaro Saucedo, Geoff Lapp, Johnny Scott and many others, perfoming at the clubs and jazz festivals.
In 1990, after moving to Toronto, he started to work as a leader and sideman in countless live and recording projects with artists like John Abercrombie, Jerry Bergonzi, Pat Labarbera, Kenny Wheeler, Don Thompson, Mike Murley, Neil Swainson, Reggie Schwager, Lorne Lofsky, Bernie Senensky, John MacLeod, Dave Restivo and Brian Dickinson.
In 1995 he returned to Europe where he continues to compose, play, tour and record music with artists like Dave Liebman, Greg Osby, Marc Copland, Gary Thomas, Joey Calderazzo, Palle Mikkelborg, Eddie Henderson, Dave Tronzo, Briggan Krauss, Cuong Vu, Eric Vloeimans, Lars Danielsson, Dave Fiuczynski, Bo Stief, Christian Spering, Michel Benita, Furio DiCastri, Franz Hautzinger, Klaus Dickbauer , Eddie Schuller, Uchihashi Kazuhisa, Axel Dorner, Ernesto Molinari, Francois Corneloup, Krzysztof Knittel, Skerik, Tomas Stanko, Zbigniew Namyslowski, Adam Pieronczyk, Piotr Wojtasik, Assif Tsahar, Tomasz Szukalski, Maciej Sikala and Piotr Baron.

(notes from www.polishjazz.com)

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Crack Sabbath : "Bar slut"

(2004)

Skerik is a bi-coastal man who plays the saxophone. He is a sax lord, a cyclone of skill and activity. His musings are flashpaper origami bulls. Skerik has many musical incarnations : he is Les Claypool Frog Brigade's sax player, collaborates with Stanton Moore (Garage à Trois), Bobby Previte and Jamie Saft (Beta Popes), Wayne Horvitz (Ponga) and Peter Buck from R.E.M. (Tuatara). Four of Skerik’s more active Seattle creations are Critters Buggin, Crack Sabbath, Skerik’s Syncopated Taint Septet and Dead Kenny G’s :

What do the Dead Kenny G’s sound like ?

Like a free-jazz version of the Melvins.

Could you talk about your sax ?

My saxophone is black, and made of metal, and I only play STRIBORG saxophones and reeds.

Where does all the saliva go ?

It goes into a special de-humidifier that is attached to my soul, I rent it at the tool rental place in White Center. It needs to be emptied regularly.

What’s all this about mouth exercises and embouchure ? Do you do mouth exercises ?

My mouth is pink and is filled with ponies and a castle, the embouchure is connected to the moat in front of the castle, no exercises.

How did you first start playing the saxophone ?

I was forced to play by parents seeking amusement, with a guilt-ridden self-deprecating agenda.

Talk about the mechanics of the sax, how do you play ?

You blow as hard as you can and twitch your fingers fast as possible, that makes the metal heat up under the keys, causing a fissure of undulating magma.

Any special treats for the Crack Sabbath show ?

We will be featuring a regular tirade against ANYTHING by our Jewish organist Ron Weinstein. Because there is right, and there is RON. He makes Rush Limbaugh sound like Martha Stewart. We will also play a cover of the new WEEDEATER song “God Luck and Good Speed”. Every show for us lately has also been a tribute to the MELVINS and CHARLES MINGUS.

(excerpts taken from « Lineout, music & nightlife in Seattle » blog)

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Ponga

(Loosegroove, 1999)

Entirely improvised from start to finish, this collection of what were essentially jam sessions (both live and in the studio) captures some moments of extremely heavy jazz. On Ponga, fusion giants Wayne Horvitz (keyboards) and Bobby Previte (drums) are joined by two relatively upstart Seattle musicians Skerik (sax) and Dave Palmer (keyboards). All four players had credible resumés when Ponga was assembled in the late '90s, but nothing they had done (especially recently) suggested the power and rare musicality of this eponymous debut. The music is difficult to describe and the word fusion comes to mind most often, but with so much wrongheaded jazz and barely salient prog titles often listed under the lowly rubric, well, it wouldn't be a fair description. The minimal "Awesome Wells" is a standout only for its spacious, bluesy texture that effectively gives the listener a break from the full-tilt progressive and noisy jazz that comes before and after. Cacophonous but utterly musical, Ponga is first-rate funk, experimental racket, and free jazz combined into one righteous package.

Vincent Jeffries (All Music)

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