RogueArt, the great French label devoted to adventurous music, has been prolific since its inception in 2004, but lately founder Michel Dorbon and his crew have been on a creative roll. Earlier this year, the Art Ensemble of Chicago released a two-disc concert performance on RogueArt, The Sixth Decade - From Paris to Paris, documenting the current large-scale version of the group. The trio of Mat Maneri, Joëlle Léandre and Craig Taborn play together on the new hEARoes. The label has also published several books, the most recent being Clifford Allen's detailed look at Matthew Shipp's work on the label, Singularity Codex.
These two albums fall in with the latest batch of releases, chronicling a long-time master of free improvisation and shedding a bit more light on another who could have used some greater recognition in his lifetime.
Fred Frith & Susana Santo Silva
Laying Demons To Rest
A late friend once told me about a Fred Frith appearance at Penn State University which consisted of the great guitarist doing little more than manipulating two short wave radios for a whole set. At this point, I have no easy way of fact-checking that, but the mere possibility of it having happened speaks to the random, anarchic approach that Frith brings to music, even to this day. At 74, he continues to create at a pace that is almost hard to keep up with.
Laying Demons To Rest consists of one 41-minute track that captures Frith and trumpeter Susana Santos Silva live at the 2021 Festival Météo in Mulhouse, France. The two have worked together before, Silva having played with Frith on some of his Intakt albums, but this album comes off like an extended discussion.
It's always interesting, at least to my ears, to hear how long it takes Frith to produce a genuine guitar-like sound in a free situation like this. True to form, he begins with some static and moves into some rapid noises that evoke burrowing insects. Notes eventually begin poking through and by the third minute, he's picking, while Santos Silva wails on her horn. The blend they create, which sounds pretty, at least for a moment, proves that they're working together, not two people who are merely playing at the same time.
The power of a piece like this lies in the way the sound keeps shifting and how the duo reacts to one another. Frith taps a low E and adds some howling shards of sound to compliment the trumpet's melodies. Silva gets low and flatulent, albeit briefly. Frith makes the guitar sound like a kalimba, adding tranquility while the trumpet wails, as she's testing the space to see how such a sound will come across.
Frith is such a skilled player that it almost seems like blasphemy to think of him using effects pedals. Yet moments of organ sounds and looped backwards chords indicate that he isn't above such sound modifications, which add to the texture. Silva hits her mouthpiece percussively, and unleashes some rapid tonguing that sounds rhythmic. The performance has a slow wind down, where augmented trumpet arpeggios get interrupted by more organ-type noises, eventually heading into what feels like a droning, tranquil walk into the sunset. For those of us who weren't there, the music offers plenty of visual evocations of how this musical scene could have looked like to the audience.
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For Jemeel - Fire From the Road
A cursory look at the discography of alto saxophonist Jemeel Moondoc (1946-2021) reveals that many, if not most, of his albums come from live performances with few taking place in a formal studio. It makes sense, as the saxophonist played constantly after returning to music in the mid '90s. This three-disc recording comes from as many shows in 2004 and 2005 with trombonist Steve Swell's Fire Into Music. William Parker (bass) and Hamid Drake (drums) complete the group.
A more unified quartet might be hard to find and that becomes apparent on Disc One. It consists of one 55-minute performance by the band from 2004, live in Houston, Texas. Although it's listed as an improvisation (and from the announcements, it was their second set that night!), the track sounds like a composition at the start, with Moondoc and Swell playing a loose but languid and connected melody. Moondoc sounds slow and mournful, but not really sad. Swell knows right when to join him, and sounds perfectly at home blowing across the whole range of his horn. The rhythm section debates going into a set tempo but chooses to roll around freely. Everyone gets time to shine, including Parker, who uses a bow to conjure some rapid harmonics, and Moondoc, who reemerges later with a beefy sound that only slips into wails and squeals as punctuation for his deep lines.
Disc Two, recorded a week later in Marfa, Texas, includes a 31-minute slab of inspired improv bookended by two lengthy compositions. Moondoc's "Junka Nu" and Swell's "Space Cowboys" reveal how the band could balance steady, sometimes groove-based rhythms with harmonic liberty. Moondoc's rugged tone sounds like a kindred spirit to Ornette Coleman, sometimes feeling shaky even as it executes a more technical set of ideas.
As strong as the saxophonist and the always inventive Swell sound here, the rhythm sections almost steals the spotlight. Drake constantly creates ecstatic variations with the 3/4 rhythm in "Junka Nu" while Parker's solo sounds as close to a hard bop as he ever has. During the improvised track, the duo swaps a 4/4 pulse for 7/4 briefly during the horn solos, as if such an off-the-cuff shift were as effortless as a blues vamp. The tumbling riff of "Space Cowboys" is equally enthralling. It's interesting to observe that the audience in Ballroom Marfa adds a lot of background noise during the set's quieter moments, but the band also receives enthusiastic cheers at the appropriate times as well.
Eleven months later, Fire Into Music appeared at the Guelph Jazz Festival in Ontario, and three tracks from that set appear on the final disc. Along with another strong version of "Junka Nu," they dig into two Swell compositions. "Box Set" begins in a fairly straightforward direction but shifts gears, with Moondoc sounding more tart and aggressive while the rhythm section evolves underneath. "Swimming in a Galaxy of Goodwill and Sorrow" gives the quartet a chance to cut loose and blow freely, before everyone lines up midway through behind Swell's muscular blowing, which really gets its place to shine on this track. Another multi-part piece, it works perfectly as a concluding statement to this strong document.
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