HurdAudio Rotation: Berned at the Cross Roads

Tim Berne/Science Friction: Mind Over Friction (collection, the): a re-issue of the classic Science Friction Live and Studio Recordings. 2001, 2003. Screwgun: 16892 88452-1.

Tim Berne: alto saxophone
Tom Rainey: drums
Craig Taborn: rhodes, laptop, virtual organ
Marc Ducret: electric guitars, acoustic guitars

In many ways Science Friction is an ideal band. Relentless, uncompromising charts with plenty of twists and time changes that fill in the details of their hyper-composed structures with the improvisational prowess of the individual members of the quartet. And the world of sonic damage brought into the mix by those four players is substantial. The first disc offers up the studio sound of these wicked tunes while the second and third disc open the ears to how this music works in a live context. Both settings are devastating. Marc Ducret is a complete monster on guitars coursing through this music like a beast just barely contained. When paired with the electronic machinations of Craig Taborn the creative textures never let up. Tim Berne's compositions provide some shelter from the storm of sound while allowing him to do plenty of ripping on his own horn. The fact that the Tom Rainey effect is in full force here (in my experience, Tom Rainey is never less than exceptional and has the effect of transforming any group into something transcendent) is almost too much. The Science Friction sound is must have as far as these ears are concerned.

Brian Auger: Planet Earth Calling. 1987.
Garland: GRZ010.

Brian Auger: hammond organ, yamaha CP 70B, electric grand piano, prophet 5 synthesizer, rhodes electric piano, acoustic piano, minimoog, cabasa, gogo bells, freeman string symphoniser, tambourine, vocals, cowbell
Ho Young Kim: guitar
George Doering: guitar
Dave McDaniels: electric bass
Dave Crigger: drums
Steve Evans: electric bass
Tom Donlinger: drums, waterphone, wind gong, gong
Terry Baker: drums

This one is just a bad record. Good musicians. Miserable material. It's come up in the rotation a few times before and each time I bring fresh ears. It really is stunning how bad it is given the ability and talent involved. It feels like the victim of the worst of the late-'70s and early '80s fusion impulses.

Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings (disc one). 1990: CBS Records: C2K 46222.

Robert Johnson: guitar, voice

Haunting evidence of a voice reaching out from the Delta of the early twentieth century. Many voices have followed in Robert Johnson's wake. But to hear him is to hear the source inspiration for so much that has followed. There's an undeniable feeling to his inflections and the intonation of his guitar that speaks broadly to the human condition. An important touch stone that deserves more attention.

HurdAudio Rotation: Filing Under not THERE

John Cage: Freeman Etudes. 1995. Newport Classic: 85616/2.

Janos Negyesy: violin

Nothing compliments a warm evening with the windows open like solo violin music mingling with the calm breeze. With John Cage the music often resembles nature itself as he plumbs a beauty of wild, abandoned spaces. The first two books of the Freeman Etudes are performed on this double-CD as Janos Negyesy deftly navigates a work that is both difficult and tranquil. The aleatoric details of this music are subsumed by a larger frame of time and soloist. The allure of this sound is found in actively listening without preconceptions about form and melody in much the same way one admires the stark horizons in an unpopulated and unfamiliar landscape, or the star-filled night sky that was in fact the generative source material for this piece.

Tim Berne/Science Friction: Mind Over Friction (collection, the): A re-issue of the classic Science Friction Live and Studio Recordings. 2006. Screwgun Records: SC 700018.

Tim Berne: alto saxophone
Tom Rainey: drums
Craig Taborn: rhodes electric piano, laptop, virtual organ
Marc Ducret: electric guitar, acoustic guitar

Expansive, free-wheeling music that could almost be described as "progressive jazz" if it didn't completely blur the unsteady lines that divide (and conquer) genres. Even the text in the packaging includes a "file under: not THERE" as a self-aware comment on the music found on these three discs. And this is music to submerge one's ears with the generous helpings of Science Friction's rough edges and twisting forms. This excellent quartet sustains long periods of intense creative playing into something defiantly consistent and beautiful through washes of odd transitions, angular melodic lines and mixed meters. It's a good place to start for the ear not yet initiated to the Berne sound.

Brian Auger: Planet Earth Calling. 1981 - re-released in 1987. Garland: GRZ010.

Studio recording with various combinations of the following:
Brian Auger: hammond organ, yamaha CP 70B, electric grand piano, prophet 5 synthesizer, rhodes electric piano, acoustic piano, miniMoog, cabasa, gogo bells, freeman string dymphoniser, tambourine, vocals, cowbell
Ho Young Kim: guitar
George Doering: guitar
Dave McDaniels: electric bass
Dave Crigger: drums
Steve Evans: electric bass
Tom Donlinger: drums
Terry Baker: drums
Michael Barsimanto: drums
Alex Ligertwood: vocals

This is the third spin through the rotation for this disc and I've expressed disappointment each time. There is some good in this music. The band is excellent. And a number of the Brian Auger solos do in fact "rock." The sadness comes as the whole thing careens into the nausea of something between smooth jazz and disco. Too gentle and unchallenging on the ears to allow the rockin' musicianship to redeem the experience.

Bloodcount = O-positive

Tim Berne's Bloodcount @ An Die Musik, Baltimore, MD
Saturday, February 9, 2008

Tim Berne: alto saxophone
Chris Speed: tenor saxophone, clarinet
Michael Formanek: bass
Jim Black: drums

Bloodcount has two significant qualities that give their sound such a gravitational pull: Tim Berne's excellent compositions and the astonishing musicianship of this quartet. After a hiatus of nearly a decade, Bloodcount has reassembled to apply new material to a proven lineup.

Jim Black is one of the more visually intense drummers to experience live. On recording one is left to puzzle out which extended techniques he uses as part of his expansive percussion timbre pallet. Dragging chains along the side of the drum body, generous helpings of bowed cymbals, strummed hand-held tines amplified against the membrane of a tom tom and a junked-out cymbal that looks like it's been run over by a truck make up a small part of Black's bag of tricks. With Bloodcount, these sounds are pulled toward a driving, often funky groove with equal parts sonic variety and tight pulse.

Michael Formanek is the other half of this enviable rhythm section. When he wasn't anchoring a groove with Jim Black - often working a tension between steady pulse and a propulsive energy to obscure that pulse through aggressive counter rhythms - Formanek would leap into the horn range with bowed tones that would match and drift apart from sustained notes with a beautiful cascade of harmonic beating and chorusing effect. His ability to apply a range of plucked, bowed and col legno techniques made for a natural compliment to the extended percussion sounds in the air.

Out in front were the two horns of Speed and Berne. Each building upon the sonic terrain provided by the rhythm section and unknotting the complicated forms and lines of Berne's compositions. Speed has a wonderful tone on clarinet and there wasn't nearly enough of it in the second set. When locked together, the alto-tenor combination pulled a strong focus to the linear materials of this music - linear logic being one of Berne's great strengths as both composer and improviser.

HurdAudio Rotation: Razumovsky and Jalapeno Diplomacy

Ludwig van Beethoven: The Complete Quartets, volume III. Performed by the Orford String Quartet in 1986. Delos: DE 3033.

String Quartet in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1 ("Razumovsky")
String Quartet in A Major, Op. 18, No. 5

Andrew Dawes: violin
Kenneth Perkins: violin
Terence Helmer: viola
Denis Brott: cello

Opus 59 is the main attraction for me on this disc as this first of the three "Russian" quartets is such an outstanding mash-up of Classical and Romantic sensibilities. There are some abrupt transitions, unresolved dissonances and arrested harmonic transitions that keep this one interesting. In the wake of that piece, the Opus 18 feels like a polite, after-dinner work that squares away with familiar Classical conventions.

Albert Ayler: Holy Ghost [box set] disc 2. 2004. Revenant Records: 213.

Albert Ayler Trio - June 14, 1964 at the Cellar Cafe, NYC
Albert Ayler: tenor saxophone
Gary Peacock: bass
Sunny Murray: drums

Albert Ayler Quartet - September 3, 1964 at Cafe Montmartre, Copenhagen, Denmark
Albert Ayler: tenor saxophone
Don Cherry: cornet
Gary Peacock: bass
Sunny Murray: drums

Burton Greene Quintet - February 1966 at Slugs', NYC
Burton Greene: piano
Albert Ayler: tenor saxophone
Frank Smith: tenor saxophone
Steve Tintweiss: bass
Rashid Ali: drums

Once Ayler found his sound and his signature tone on the tenor he augmented the entire experience with the kindred spirits of his ensembles. This time through disc 2 I'm simply floored by Gary Peacock. How cool would it be to have Peacock and Sunny Murray in your rhythm section? And then you add Don Cherry for the Copenhagen set and come away with some outrageous creative fire. The loss of Ayler in 1970 seems more acute when you consider the careers of Peacock, Murray and Cherry over the span after 1964. The single track from the Burton Greene Quintet is a raging torrent of sonic fury with Ayler screaming (via his tenor) in the thick of it.

Tim Berne: Mind over Friction (collection, the): A re-issue of the classic Science Friction Live and Studio Recordings. 2001, 2003. Screwgun: sc700018.

Tim Berne: alto saxophone
Tom Rainey: drums
Craig Taborn: rhodes piano, laptop computer, virtual oragan
Marc Ducret: electric guitar, acoustic guitar

I've heard precious little of Tim Berne's music, but what little has hit my eardrums has been profoundly enjoyable enough to prod a deeper listening. And with this triple-CD re-issue of the Science Friction material I have a chance to drink from the fire hose of Berne's creative output. Or in this case, take a direct shot at point blank from a Screwgun.

With tightly wound compositions, improvisations, and dense, shifting textures Berne crafts a loud musical territory that is as much progressive rock as it is jazz - if not more on the prog side of the equation. The live sets found on discs 2 and 3 stretch the material out along much longer durations than the studio recording of the first disc. But there's a surprising continuity of sound between the David Torn post-processed mixes and the live recordings with Craig Taborn's electronic sounds and rhodes piano balancing well against Marc Ducret's intense guitar material. I'm stunned at how relentless this music is and how profoundly appealing it all is. These four players are incredible musicians. Music this complicated would be a complete disaster with anything less than what these guys bring to the mix and I'm anxious to hear more.

Ripped and Berned at the Clef Club

Philadelphia Clef Club - Saturday, May 19, 2007
David Torn/Prezens
David Torn: guitar, live sampling, electronics, gobs of effects, processing
Tim Berne: alto saxophone, baritone saxophone
Michael Formanek: acoustic bass
Craig Taborn: Rhodes electric piano, synth, gobs of effects, bent circuits
Tom Rainey: drums

Michael Formanek/Tim Berne Duo
Michael Formanek: acoustic bass
Tim Berne: baritone saxophone

HurdAudio took a special field trip up to the city of brotherly love to check out the Tim Berne/David Torn scene at the Philadelphia Clef Club - a venue that seemingly sits just beyond the reach of the gentrifying forces of the 4-star hotels, national steak house chains and theaters just a few blocks north on the Avenue of the Arts. Music from the fringe never seemed more literal.

The Michael Formanek/Tim Berne Duo opened the evening with a set-long performance of "The Offbeat Manifesto." This is an epic, through-composed work for acoustic bass and baritone saxophone that explores extended linear lines for each instrument. There's a lot going on in this composition and I was completely engaged throughout. The middle section had some nice interplay between the bowed bass of Formanek against a texture of multiphonics from Berne.

The second set featured the big sound of David Torn/Prezens. Lurking in the center of the stage - in the center of Prezens - was an acoustic trio of saxophone, bass and drums flanked on either side by the electronics emanating from Torn and Taborn. And the compositional and improvisational leadership was coming from David Torn at stage left as he sculpted large soundscapes from his effects, live sampling, and occasionally his electric guitar. The quintet was often working with multiple layers of sound of varying thickness as they navigated a healthy range of drone-based sonic textures.

Improvising with live electronics - and especially live sampling - can be a mixed bag. And Prezens would hit moments of great sonic beauty sandwiched between stretches of meandering awkwardness. The high points would come when the players would either lock into a resonance with the electronic sounds as the players would build upon the sound as a collaborative whole or they would give in to a steady groove and ride a wave of pulse and tempo. At other times, the acoustic trio seemed to be caught in the middle and swimming upstream against the amplified tides. The difficulty with improvising with live sampling is that it often comes across as a one-way conversation between a player and something they played just moments earlier. It can be useful for constructing some intense sonic textures. But it can also be relentlessly non-responsive - leaving the "live human" performer with a larger burden in improvised contexts. It can also lead to a predictable pattern of sample-then-improvise - a pattern that Prezens deftly avoided most of the time.

I was particularly impressed with the drumming of Tom Rainey throughout the second set. He changed the sound he was getting from the drum kit over the course of these long pieces by focusing on a narrow range at any given time. At times just playing the snare, or just the cymbals, or just the rims of the toms, or just the high-hat. Yet he would always cut through the overall sound with what he was doing and he often seemed to be the instigator for some of the most satisfying waves of sound from the evening.