Wally Shoup is here again, but the line-up is different: Paul Flaherty on
tenor and alto sax, Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth fame) on guitar, Chris
Corsano on drums. As Dan Warburton writes: "It is only just that this
magnificent work should find itself on the venerable Leo label, and I for
one can't wait to hear more of it, especially now that the likes of Matt Shipp,
William Parker and David Ware are sliding progressively back towards
orthodoxy... It's good to know there's still somebody on the edge willing to
come back and remind us what it's like out there."
Recorded live at Tonic, New York, to the ecstatic reception of the crowd.
Duration: 73'05.
Should one wish to explore the thorny question of where "free jazz" ends and
"free improvisation" begins (I don't particularly want to get into it,
but..), it's perhaps the continuing need on the part of some musicians to
retain the idea of a theme, a "head" (albeit symbolically) that ought to be
discussed (that and the role of the rhythm section � bass and drums, but
that's another story). Despite its audacious title, Ornette Coleman's "Free
Jazz" followed the time-honoured bop structure of head (ensemble)
alternating with individual solos (horns first, rhythm section last), and
the idea of a head remained central to Coltrane, Ayler and Frank Wright, to
name but three major players. Though it soon lost its earlier role as
central organising pillar (either vertical, as harmonic "changes" to be
played over � the legacy of bop � or horizontal, as melodic/intervallic
material to be developed by the soloist � Monk, Ornette, Lacy...) the head
nevertheless retained a structural function. (Ayler used it to delineate
form, marking the end of one solo and preparing the ground for the next.)
When American free jazz, as Sunny Murray put it, "got lost" in the late
1970s (some musicians crossed over into funk; others retreated into
academia; some plied their trade wherever they could in draughty lofts;
others disappeared altogether and died in the street), a few brave souls
established links with like-minded explorers in Europe and Japan, where
younger generations of players (free from the constraints of the Tradition
imposed by the American media, that pompous self-appointed arbiter not only
of what jazz is, but also apparently of what's good and bad jazz), had taken
the plunge and dispensed with themes altogether.
Twenty years down the line, discovering that they can quite easily do
without the head, and the melodic and/or harmonic information it contains,
what do musicians improvise "over"? Answer: they improvise full stop, they
play, they take it to the edge. Parameters other than pitch, harmony and
rhythm (in the strict metrical sense of the word) are less important here
than timbre, event-density and volume. To adopt an analogy from the visual
arts, we've moved away from figurative to abstract expressionist � it's no
coincidence that a Jackson Pollock was chosen as cover art for "Free Jazz",
and no coincidence either that many improvising musicians are also painters:
Alan Silva, Bill Dixon, Peter Br�tzmann, Ivo Perelman, Jack Wright and, as
you can see, Wally Shoup.
Shoup and Paul Flaherty have doggedly pursued the goal of improvised music
for over two decades in a United States where jazz (and its attendant codes
of behaviour) still holds sway. (This isn't to say that they are
uninfluenced by it � name me a saxophonist who is � both men possess a
strength and purity of tone and a determination to pursue musical ideas that
clearly points not only to Ayler and Coltrane, but further back to Sonny
Rollins and Coleman Hawkins.) Until recently they've had to labour on in
relative obscurity � between 1984 and 1994's "Project W" (Apraxia), Shoup
only released his work on self-produced cassettes, while Flaherty curated
his Zaabway imprint with kindred spirit Randy Colbourne until 2001's
magnificent "The Ilya Tree" (Boxholder) and the sensational "The Hated
Music" on Ecstatic Yod.
Guitarist Thurston Moore needs little introduction, of course, neither as a
performer in his own right with Sonic Youth nor as a tireless champion of
free music. In an interview in 1998 with The Wire's Biba Kopf, he recalled
the thrill of his discovery of the "amorphous [...] spontaneous blowout" at
a New York loft session in the early 1980s featuring guitarists Glenn Branca
and Rudolph Grey (whose group The Blue Humans with Arthur Doyle and Beaver
Harris was one of the first improvisation outfits to cross over into the
ugly, noisy world of No Wave). Moore subsequently asked writer Byron Coley
to compile some free-music tapes to take on a mid-80s SY tour (Coley made
sixty!) and "then someone gave me a copy of [Br�tzmann's] "Machine Gun" and
it was all over..." Coming from rock, Moore arrived in free music without
the baggage of a jazz soloist (i.e. notes matter � he recalls being bemused
the first time he heard Derek Bailey) but with an arsenal of extended
techniques that would make any jazz guitarist (with the possible exception
of the late Sonny Sharrock) shudder with fear.
Drummer Chris Corsano (who partners Flaherty to perfection on "The Hated
Music" and the more recent "Sannyasi" on the saxophonist's new Wet Paint
imprint) is, as he has to be in such company, a veritable powerhouse, just
as adept at exploiting percussion's timbral potential as he is its rhythmic
propulsion. Sunny Murray would be proud of him.
It's only just that this magnificent work should find itself on the
venerable Leo label, and I for one can't wait to hear more of it, especially
now that the likes of Matt Shipp, William Parker and David Ware are
sliding progressively back towards orthodoxy, secure in the knowledge that
the safety net of Tradition � be that bebop or hiphop � lies beneath them.
It's good to know there's still somebody on the edge willing to come back
and remind us what it's like out there.
Dan Warburton
