Elevation

opis:
multikulti.com * * * * 1/2
Zjednoczone siły amerykańsko-portugalskiej muzyki improwizowanej w doskonałej, pulsującej odwagą i precyzją emanacji. Rafael Toral z Portugalii (znany ze znakomitego Space Quartetu), z dwójką chicagowskich mistrzów - Marsem Williamsem (występował z Peterem Brötzmannem, Kenem Vandermarkiem i różnymi zespołami rockowymi) i Timem Daisy'm (Ken Vandermark, Dave Rempis, John Tchicai, Aram Shelton, Daniel Levin) z onirycznej palety dźwięków utkali majestatyczną narrację, pełną gardłowego saksofonu, warkotliwych trylów Williamsa, zagęszczonej a zarazem bardzo czystej elektroniki Torala oraz przepysznych małych perkusjonaliów Daisy'ego. Polirytmiczna siatka perkusji tworzy swoistą rytmiczną podłogę, na której Williams z Toralem dialogują w mistrzowski sposób.

Amerykańsko-portugalskie trio nagrało album, złożony z trzech długich precyzyjnie skonstruowanych kompozycji, które zachwycają zarówno na poziomie motoryki, jak i brzmienia. A co ważne, to moc kreacji i siła ekspresji nie opuszczają muzyków aż do wybrzmienia statniego dźwięku.
autor: MAd
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freejazzblog.org - * * * * 1/2
Clicks, bird calls and chirps, toms and brushes, slow and then hastening, a subdued anxiety leading to a throatier sax and growled trills over snare rolls spilling out round the edges. That Rafael Toral
plays “feedback, modified amplifiers and electric oscillator” gives his dialogue with Mars Williams’ saxophone an electric edge that toys with the notions of sound, tonality, and lead instrument. In addition to “saxophones,” Williams is on “toys & busted-up autoharp.” They make a whole lot of something from nothing, grabbing sounds from the detritus of noise making, not turning it into monument – more like the feeling of the air in a room turning into weather, or a quick-sketch of some delectable with sprinkles slowly turning edible

Throughout these three long-form pieces, Tim Daisy’s percussiveness allows the other two musicians a rhythmic floor over which they can work, but if your ears shift focus (especially on the first two tracks), the percussion becomes the all, and the richer noises turn out to simply ornament the drier pulses of the drum kit. At times we’ve got for the most part three percussionists playing at different registers with different toys. The third track becomes almost a lullaby, like those urban night noises over tinnitus that keep you awake at the edge of sleep slowing coalescing into morning birds and car alarms when you realize you’ve finally slept. Incidental music for the free noise fan.

Portugal-based Rafael Toral, whose aesthetic this record most embodies, explains his approach as heavily influenced by Zen, trumpeter Sei Miguel and John Cage, identifying the “defining features in [his] practice and thinking [. . .] as space, silence, unpredictability, agency, responsibility and acceptance . . . .” I prefer Elevation to Toral’s Live in Boston (with Chris Corsano) which as a more stripped down version (drums & feedback noises) has less sonic surprise built in.

Tim Daisy owns and operates Relay Records and is an important player in Chicago’s free-improv scene. My colleague Tom Burris (in his review of Daisy’s 2014 very excellent, but more “free jazz” record, October Music Vol. 1: 7 Compositions for Duet) calls Daisy “Chicago’s most imaginative drummer.” Daisy’s work on Elevation underscores the deep continuity that underlies free improvisation using traditional jazz instrumentation and what we find here, noise electronics with saxophone & other percussion subordinated to that concept.

Mars Williams has performed with Peter Brötzmann, Ken Vandermark, and various rock bands. With Paal Nilssen-Love’s trio, Boneshaker on Thinking out Loud or Fake Music, Mars Williams’ playing is a mix of fiery and meditative. Here on Elevation, Williams uses his saxophone less as an expressive extension of intention, and more as another miscellaneous toy adding playful, inventive, thoughtful incursions into the feedbacks and silences.
By Gregg Daniel Miller

avantscena.wordpress.com
“Elevation” is a new album recorded by three great jazz masters – here we have an opportunity to hear out Mars Williams (Saxophones, Toys & Busted-up autoharp), Rafael Toral (Feedback, Modified amplifiers, Electrode oscillator) and Tim Daisy (Drums, Percussion, Radio) improvising together. Three experienced and talented jazz masters certainly are the main figures of international avant-garde jazz scene. Their creativity, fantasy, modern innovations and experience playing together with other famous jazz masters makes an effort to evocative, expressive and original sound.

The basics of avant-garde jazz are the fundaments of the compositions. It’s not the only style which is used in the compositions. The musicians have a tendency to get together absolutely different and contrasting music styles and make the eclectic stylistic combos. The basics of avant-garde jazz are blended with experimental music, electronics and modern innovations of contemporary academical music. Awakening and bright sound, expressive and rich musical language, luminous culminations and wild riffs are the main elements of the compositions. All music is based on open form and free improvisation – that gives an opportunity to experiment and get on drastic, shocking, original and effective musical decisions. An innovative instrumental section is filled with acoustics and electronics organically brought together. Innovations, experiments, extended and evocative playing techniques, special effects, computer sounds and all the other ways of playing are joined here in organic and multi-layed section. Independent melody line is created with pleasure, drive and expression. It’s generally kept by saxophonist Mars Williams. An experimentator, innovator of avant-garde jazz and original improviser is always filled with evocative ideas, inventive decisions and inspiring sonoristic experiments. Mars Williams get on adventurous culminations full of frantic hysteric riffs, fantastic exciting solos, impressive passages, gorgeous ornaments and remarkable driving melodies. Turns, twists, contrasts and surprises are frequently used – frantic and driving pieces are highly contrasting to murmuring, relaxing and contemplative samples, minimalistic series or silent pauses. Expressive and vital saxophone is accompagnied by busted-up autoharp sound and colorful, strange or weird tunes of toys and other objects. Original, extended and specific playing techniques are used all together with extraction of strange timbres, special effects, dynamic changes, urgent or radical decisions which comtpletely change whole mood and sound. Mars Williams improvisations have a bright, inspiring and expressive sound. Rhythmic section is masterfully created – it’s luminous, driving, crazy and wild. Tim Daisy is doing his best – expressive, hysteric, rising, aggressive, booming and wild rhythms, breaking driving sessions or lyrical meditations, minimalistic samples and steady beats are connected here. Drums and percussion’s tunes are connected together with electronics, radio sounds, computer and other electronics tunes, synth, amplifications, electrode oscillators, feedback, modified amplifiers and other electronics which are powered and mastered by Tim Daisy and Rafael Toral. The music of this album has an evocative, bright, expressive and innovative sound.


Rafael Toral, born in Lisbon, 1967 has been intrigued by the potential of sound and the functions of music since he was a teenager. As a producer, composer and performer, he has been deeply involved with Rock, Ambient, Contemporary, Electronic and Free Jazz music in different periods of his life.

Working with electric guitar and electronics, in the 1990’s he created a blend of Ambient and Rock and recorded acclaimed albums like Wave Field or Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance. By the early 2000’s he arrived to a sense of accomplishment about his previous 15 years of work, also realizing the world needed a different creative response. He decided to start something new, as radically different from the previous phase as possible. In a transition to vulnerable action, he launched the alien-sounding Space Program in 2004, using experimental electronic instruments. It was an ambitious long-term project exploring an approach to electronic music based on silence, through decision making and physical gesture, in a way inspired by post-free Jazz. The resulting music, “melodic without notes, rhythmic with no beat, familiar but strange, meticulous but radically free – riddled with paradox but full of clarity and space”, has been described as “a brand of electronic music far more visceral and emotive than that of his cerebral peers”.

In the last 15 years he’s been thinking and practicing an understanding of silence as “space”, with a clear function in music creation but also as a metaphor for social relationships and a statement on information and sensory overload.


Mars Williams is an open-minded musician, composer and educator who commutes easily between free jazz, funk, hip-hop and rock, Mars has played and recorded with The Psychedelic Furs, Billy Idol, Massacre, Fred Frith, Bill Laswell, Ministry, Power Station, Die Warzau, The Waitresses, Kiki Dee, Pete Cosey, Billy Squier, DJ Logic, Wayne Kramer, John Scoffield, Charlie Hunter, Kurt Elling, Swollen Monkeys, Mike Clark, Jerry Garcia, Naked Raygun, Friendly Fires, The Untouchables, Blow Monkeys and virtually every leading figure of Chicago’s and New York City's "downtown" scene.

John Zorn credits Mars as "one of the true saxophone players--someone who takes pleasure in the sheer act of blowing the horn. This tremendous enthusiasm is an essential part of his sound, and it comes through each note every time he plays. Whatever the situation, Mars plays exciting music. In many ways he has succeeded in redefining what versatility means to the modern saxophone player."


Tim Daisy is an American drummer and composer working in the fields of improvised and composed music. Tim moved to Chicago in 1997 and since that time has performed, recorded, and toured with many national and international improvised musicians and ensembles. He was a member of the Vandermark 5 from 2002 to 2010.

He has also performed with Dave Rempis, Jeb Bishop, Mars Williams, Steve Swell, Jaimie Branch, Katherine Young, Fred Lonberg-Holm, James Falzone, Russ Johnson, Katinka Kleijn, Elizabeth Harnik, Christof Kurzmann, Ikue Mori, Rafael Toral, Mikolaj Trzaska, Per Ake Holmlander, Darren Johnston, Havard Wiik, Jason Stein and Michael Zerang.

In 2011 he received the New Music America Composers Assistance Award and in 2011, 2012 and 2017 the ASCAP Plus Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers . He has recorded over one hundred and thirty albums as a sideman or leader for labels including Relay, (which he owns and operates), Not Two, Clean Feed, Astral Spirits, Aerophonic, Audiographic, Sonorus, Trost, Utech, New World, and Okka Disk.