High on the improv side of life…
In the liner notes, the question is asked “What happens when musicians improvise without knowing what the others are playing?”. They to differ that the result is chaos, but these seven “songs” state otherwise.
With AnnaMarie Ignarro/cl, Noel Taylor/bcl, Helen Espvall/cel and Joao Madeira/b there is a taking turns of intros, with Ignarro passing the torch on the fragmented “Adieu Amennotep” giving long tones with Taylor on “Raices” and teaming with some bass pizzicatos for “The Anatomy of Disquiet”. The bow almost saws the bass in half on the altissimo “Destinee Arbitraire” and there’s more edginess than a Hitchcock slasher on “Amateur of Velacipedes”. Dali to music.
Bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck brings together a series of mostly spontaneous duets with various moods and atmospheres. She digs deep into subtones with drummer Harris Eisenstadt on “O’Saris” and creates spacey atmospheres of ambience when Nels Cline handles the bass and guitar duing “Lullaby”. Mark Dresser bows his modern classical bass to “Absence” while pianist matt Mitchell scrambles on the eerie “Auger Sgtrokes”. There’s lots of free form work, with Roscoe Mitchell’s soprano sax on “Chordata” and Nicole Mitchells’ flute ln the ominous “Sand Dune Trilogy” while Peggy Lee scratches out a cello improv on “Suspend a Bridge.” Most successful is a parlored “Sugar” with Robin Holcomb joining in on voice and piano. Intuitive tunes.