CD Review: Josh Sinton - b.

 

Josh Sinton
b.

(FiP) music.joshsinton.com/album/b

On Josh Sinton's last solo album, krasa, his instrument of choice was the contrabass clarinet. Some sections of the album sounded like punk rock guitar noise, since Sinton used some pickup microphones and ran them through some amplifiers. b. finds him returning to one of his primary instruments, the baritone saxophone. He has released some solo baritone tracks before, but Pine Barren was a split disc, shared with the Caveat Trio. This album features 10 tracks of pure Sinton.

Stop me if I've said this before, but solo reed albums can be appealing for the way they zero in on musical techniques that can otherwise be missed in a group setting. Method of attack, multiphonics and even the use of silence take on greater significance when all ears are focused on a single horn. At the same time, the performer's sense of direction can be under greater scrutiny. If an improvisation seems to wander, or if different tracks come off sounding merely like displays of various techniques (altissimo here, overtones here, reed squeezing next), that becomes clear too.

I mention all that because Sinton does not fall into any of those traps. Even when he devotes seven minutes to simply blowing air through the big horn, never registering notes, the piece maintains some level of suspense, even if it doesn't exactly pay off. While the remaining tracks vary in shape and dynamics, they all come off like fully realized ideas. 

Although each has a clinical title ("b.1.i" through "b.1.iv" followed by "b.2.i" through "b.2.v" which gives it the feel of a record even though it's a CD), most of the tracks sound less like pure improvisation than compositions with some sense of structure. The early tracks especially feel like they could be pieces played with a group responding to Sinton's angular lines ("b.1.i"), lithe tone and balance of silence and melody ("b.1.ii") or ballad feeling ("b.1.iv"), the latter which doesn't get lost as he sneaks in some overtones.

The second half of the album gets more visceral, most notably on "b.2.iii" which conjures volcanic eruptions akin to Pharoah Sanders, with some adding vocalizing underneath, a la Dewey Redman. It can be a challenge to hear it, and Sinton realizes that. He varies his attack as the piece moves on, again ensuring that the performance is more about the music (or "sounds," in this case) than it is about mere delivery (or "chops"). He also follows this onslaught with a piece full of quiet long tones which often comes off like gongs or gamelans. 

b. offers a wide range of emotions from gentle to jarring, which might also lead to some head scratching between tracks. But when that happens, just turn up the volume for answers.