Pink Noise saxophone quartet : "The jig is up"

(Pink Tomato, 1998)

Pink Noise Saxophone Quartet, often accompanied by a rhythm section, packs some good-time originals into their first release, The Jig Is Up. Many of these players finally started getting some recognition by the late '90s (Briggan Krauss' gritty, wailing horn, for example, has become an increasingly familiar sound). And though all are active players in N.Y.C.'s avant-garde jazz scene, this music is quite structured; the music is barely "out" at all. Whenever a horn takes a solo to the outside, the rest of the band keeps the rhythm flowing and the tempo up front. The tightly working horn and rhythm sections funk some heavy grooves: New Orleans brass, staggered marches, Klezmer jump, and a whiskey binge wailer. The Jig Is Up has all the drama of a good pulp novel, and all the subtlety of a big party.

Joslyn Layne (All Music)

HERE

The President : "Miracle mile"

(Elektra, 1992)

To set the record straight, the original band was called The President of the United States of America. We often called it The President for short, and of course I had been living in Seattle for a while when the “other” band came along. The band with Elliott Sharp and Frisell played at a dive in midtown Manhattan, the name of which I forget. It was there that some folks from Nonesuch came down. They had already heard Dinner at Eight and The President and it was all of the former and some of the latter that they released, or rather re-released. Both those records were made for budgets in the hundreds of dollars.
Bring Yr Camera was made for a budget much, much larger, at the Power Station in NY, and predictably there are many things I like about the low-budget records better in hindsight. I did record many of the classic President tunes on Bring Yr Camera, especially Andre’s Mood (Andre was a favorite cat) and 3 Crows. Neither of them are my favorite readings of these tunes. I felt compelled to fill up a lot of space on Andre’s Mood that traditionally was left more spare. My favorite soloist on 3 Crows was always Stew Cutler, and I just didn’t get that from Elliott. Ironically, it was the newest tunes that sounded best, and speaking of Elliott, his solos on Philip and Hearts Are Broken are incredible, and when he hits the IV chord on Philip I always get chills. This was written years ago for my younger brother, who passed away a few years ago, and the only time I have played this tune since the band broke up was at his memorial at St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery with Doug, Tim Luntzel, Kenny Wollesen and Stew Cutler. I like Our Hands of Water a lot as well. It was one of those things where suddenly we get the big studio and the expensive engineer and it was almost too much. I remember we were all on a “no reverb” kick because we hated the sound of all those ECM records that were swimming in reverb, and actually the engineer had worked with Pat Metheney a lot. The mixes had no vibe and we went back with our tails between our legs and begged for reverb. It was also the era of 20 mikes on the drum set. A lot of reviews back then mentioned the “great Hammond B-3 samples.” Of course it was a real B-3, but that was the decade between the B-3 being forgotten and the great B-3 revival of the 90s and since. We got a lot of nice notices, including my favorite, which mentioned “Sonny Boy Williamson in a Zen Temple.” It was interesting that a lot of critics said it was like fusion music, but anti-fusion at the same time. I could relate to that because I hated what fusion had become – really wretched music, but early Weather Report and Electric Miles Davis meant the world to me. The President didn’t sound like that but it certainly helped to inspire us. Dave Tronzo had replaced Bill Frisell, and he sounded killer, and we had a tour of Europe that had its ups and downs.
The next, and last, CD was Miracle Mile, which was somewhere in between. It was all new tunes, and some of it was done like a solo recording, with sequences and some drum machine and some real drums, samples but also lots of real playing. Recorded in NY and Seattle, I think it is a fine record for the most part. Ironically, not that many tunes ended up in the live repertoire. Some of them were hard to reproduce, and probably the most successful tune live was also the most unlikely -Variations on a Theme by W.C. Handy. I started doing a 6 piece version but with only 1 guitar for a while, with Kermit Driscoll on bass, J.A. Deane on samples and amplified trombone, and Stew Cutler. I liked this version because it wasn’t as guitar heavy, and the ambient stuff that Dino did was a perfect contrast to Stew, who tended to lay it down more in the pocket in a way that I think served the original intention of the band. At the same time, beside Elliott’s stellar solos and Tronzo’s, there are moments where Bill’s playing on the first President disc is some of my favorite moments of anything I have ever recorded. Speaking of guitar, with all that talent I still turned to Doug to lay down some of the rhythm guitar. He just had the right thing happening.
The last tour was a fun one, with Fred Chalenor on bass, and back to a 5-piece band. This was always a hard band live. The balance had to be just right, and by stripping it down in a way this was by far the most workable incarnation, and we had a good time. Bobby, Doug, Stew, myself and Fred. One day Fred and Stew kept looking at me on the train, and finally Stew said to me, “Man, you can really keep it together.” I asked him what the hell he was talking about. Turns out they had been drinking the night before and got the clever idea to stack a bunch of stuff in front of my hotel room door as a “surprise” in the morning. Thing was, they had the wrong room. Who knows who got the surprise.

By Wayne Horvitz himself on his blog.

HERE

The President : "Bring yr camera"

(Elektra, 1989)

First rehearsal today, just with Keith Lowe on bass and Steve Moore on keyboards and trombone. So much of this music was worked out over years of rehearsal and throwing around ideas, and now I am scoring it and teaching it to new folks in a matter of hours. Lots of small mistakes in the parts, but we accomplished a lot. It is great to be sharing this music with these folks, and I am very much looking forward to hearing Tim Young, who I have played so much music with in this last decade, dig into this material from the past.
The President is the oldest of the five projects that will be presented next month. The recorded output of the band is sort of a reverse accounting of the compositions in terms of their chronology. I may have a few details wrong, but if memory serves me, I started the band within a year or so of moving to New York in 1979. In the fall of 1979, five Santa Cruz transplants rented a small basement on Morton Street in the West Village. A few things inspired me to start this assemblage. When I arrived in New York, I was at the tail end with an all out obsession with the music of Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Ornette, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, etc. Sometime that first winter Robin (Holcomb) and I went uptown and saw The Last Waltz. I had been a fan of The Band, and many of the folks in that movie, for years, but somehow I had lost a connection. Indicative of that was the fact that in all my college years at UCSC lots of great bands came through town, and yet I rarely went to hear anything outside of the “free jazz” world with the exception of one memorable Captain Beefheart gig, and as I recall, some incarnation of the Jefferson Airplane. The Last Waltz was a wake up call though, and shortly thereafter I became aware of and part of all that was happening at CBGB’s, Danceteria, Mudd Club et al. A few other things…Bobby Previte and I met via Elliot Sharp. I became very aware of The Meters through my friend Dave Hofstra, and something was in the air. The original band was based off of a few bass lines and guitar licks. I was playing bass at the time. We rehearsed at Studio Henry and played some early gigs at CBGB’s, Studio Henry and other places. The band was myself, Previte, Dave Sewelson on sax, Kevin Cosgrove on guitar and Joe Gallant on bass. Kevin was a friend from junior high, and I have no idea where he is now. Joe Gallant I gather is a porn star and producer, and Dave remains a dear friend and great baritone player. I really don’t remember a lot, but over time Doug Wieselman replaced Sewelson. I was hearing tenor and a different concept. Dave Hofstra took over on bass, and Bobby’s friend from Buffalo, Stew Cutler, started playing guitar.
I was interviewed on radio on few years later by Tania Leon, who mentioned that I seemed to be influenced by minimalist music. I was sort of taken aback, although I suppose it made sense. The only thing I could think to say at the time was that maybe Reich, Glass and that group had some influences in common, but I didn’t see why repetition and overlapping rhythmic cycles was the property of the Minimalists. The early tunes evolved from simple riffs, working with early sequencers and drum machines, and of course DX-7. I never played Gamelan music, but I was around a lot of it in college. I suppose there was some influence from that as well, in the various cycles of various lengths that inform a lot of the music, but the most important thing I took away from Indonesian music was the role of the soloist. I was particulary taken with a tape a friend of mine had given me of Kachapi/Suling music – the place of the Suling and the Rebab.
Simply put, the “improvising soloist” was less of a featured role and more inside the texture of the music. In jazz and blues music I was hearing, the soloist was stretching farther and farther out over standard changes. I became attracted to the improviser playing relatively “inside,” particularly in a modal or blues fashion, against different harmonic ideas. I suppose it was sort of polytonal, like reharmonizing a folk song, something that I have played with ever since I first played simple Bartok pieces from the Mikrokosmos.
When I moved to San Francisco in 1985, for a year the band was on hold. I made a record with Butch Morris and William Parker that was much more open, and I had formed the HMP trio. I got a DX-7 and a drum machine and made a sort of solo record called Dinner At Eight. This later made up most of the Nonesuch release, This New Generation. Many people thought the title was a reference to our music scene, but actually it referred to the pending birth of my first child. This record started a sort of second stage of writing with certain types of beats and cycles. Back in New York I started another set of pieces, all on a Tascam 4-Track, but Previte played triggered drums. We couldn’t have drums in the 5th floor walk up in which I was recording. Both Elliott Sharp and Bill Frisell played guitars. I titled this record The President. Even though the band was now almost 7 years old, it had almost faded, but this was the start of a period of greater activity and recording that would last several years.

by Wayne Horvitz himself on his blog.

HERE

Christy Doran's Phoenix'

(Hat Hut, 1990)

Irish-born, Swiss-bred, Christy Doran is among the least heard — in the U.S. at least — yet most innovative guitarists on either side of the Atlantic. His many bands and guitar duos have taken to stages across the globe as either a collaborator or a sideman. But this date, in a sense, is all his. These very intimate, and often humorous, duo improvisations with a host of innovative musicians create a gem of an album, one that features a stunning array of musical styles and expressions, yet all characterized by the singular, disciplined talent of Doran. On "Beyond Words," Doran and Marty Ehrlich move through a short, slippery Delta-styled blues into an off-Basie jazz mode where Doran's guitar dictates interval and Ehrlich claims the mode. They don't sweep around each other so much as play through the itinerant voicings created by the microtonalities of each instrument — and swing on top of it! On "The Warm Up," Doran and Ray Anderson slide through bebop phraseology toward frenetic harmonics based on major and augmented chords. Anderson strikes out first with lines that quote both J.J. Johnson and Curtis Fuller as Doran trades him a Frippian counterpoint — and via a delay box, plays double counterpoint to his own guitar! "Spiral" with Urs Leimgruber is the monolith on this set. Fifteen-plus minutes of guttural groans, shifting timbres, collapsing overtones, and shimmering harmonics whipped into a spacey intensity that is almost unbearable. Leimgruber is a fiery soprano player. He's sophisticated, inventive, and passionate. Doran's sounds here create an ominous orchestral tension as Leimgruber ghosts his way through in mournful phrases and sonant moans. Hank Roberts' cello is as painterly as Doran's guitar. Sound upon sound, textured ambiences, and chorale lines emanate from both of them on "Song for Sonny." Hendrixian feedback and droning melodies carry the two through each other's voices, creating an openness of intervallic wonder and delight. Doran's Phoenix is an astounding showcase of the colors, textures, tones, and diverse abilities of one of the world's most original guitarists.

Thom Jurek (All Music)

HERE

Slideride

(Hat Hut, 1995)

On this unusual date, the instrumentation is simply four trombones: Ray Anderson, Craig Harris, George Lewis, and Gary Valente. The bones perform eight originals, Billy Strayhorn's "Lotus Blossom," Johnny Hodges' "The Jeep Is Jumping," and Duke Ellington's obscure "Oclupaca." The performances are mostly pretty concise with free sections segueing logically into more arranged sections. No one trombonist emerges as the main star; in fact there is no attempt in the liner notes to point out who plays what although Anderson's high notes give him away at times. The adventurous music is clearly not for everyone but it generally works and one does not miss other instruments. Worth hearing.

Scott Yanow (All Music)

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Sonny Sharrock band : "Seize the rainbow"

(Enemy, 1987)

The follow-up to Sonny Sharrock's entirely solo comeback album, Guitar, Seize the Rainbow puts the guitarist at the helm of a rock-styled power trio featuring bassist Melvin Gibbs and Abe Speller and Pheeroan akLaff on drums (producer Bill Laswell also plays bass on one cut). The overall sound of the album is surprisingly straightforward, heavy metal-tinged jazz-rock, though the caliber and taste of the musicians makes it something far more than what rock guitar virtuosos of the period were recording. Still, there isn't too much way-out craziness, aside from some of Sharrock's trademark slide-guitar explorations on the spiritual title track and the riff-driven rockers "Dick Dogs" and "Sheraserhead's Hightop Sneakers." For the most part, Sharrock's playing on Seize the Rainbow is more concerned with melodic themes and traditional single-note solo lines than textural experiments. Fortunately, his tone is still gloriously skronky, and his playing is no less passionate. Bill Laswell's production is bright and immediate, and the rhythm section's agility breathes a spark into the straight-up rock rhythms they're often asked to play. Even if it isn't quite as evocative as the solo sound paintings of Guitar, Seize the Rainbow does place Sharrock's playing in one of its most accessible settings, and it's perhaps the best starting point for rock fans wondering what the fuss is about.

Steve Huey (All Music)

HERE

"Live at Tonic : 1999 to 2002"

HERE