Search - Josh Abrams :: Cipher

The beautiful avant-garde

Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 04/29/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I'm looking forward to the day when adventurous bands like Cipher have all the contracts they want and empty traditionalists from New York via the Crescent City have to hold bake sales to make ends meet. Ok, that's a little harsh.Not to mention just plain stupid. Just goes to show, I guess, what writing reviews three-sheets-to-the-wind does to the old synapses . . .But I thought I'd try something new. Or maybe I'm just stymied. With nothing to say. But I don't think so. I NEVER have nothing to say. I'm not claiming it'll be coherent; just at least mildly interesting.Down to brass tacks. Lot's of listeners, it seems to me, are scared off by the words "avant-garde." Why should I listen to dense chord clusters, a-tonal wailing, anti-swing, droning, moaning, zoning-out aural chaos, when I can listen to snappy rhythms, delicat/ough harmonies, swinging-your-butt-off hard bop, they're thinking? Why indeed? But does it need to be either/or? Why not both/and?I for one am really coming to love the more out jazz. It's just more interesting, at least to these ears. What could be better than several musicians going three or four or ten directions at once and it all making a crazy kind of sense? What could be better than to hear entire schools of jazz slyly referenced in a single piece? What could be better than listening to Alex Dörner on this absolutely fabulous disc blat white noise through his trumpet, all the while subtly modulating, caressing, coaxing the tones only suddenly to burst into actual tonal playing while keeping up the blatting, kind of like how Donald Duck talks? What could be better than to hear beautiful sounds coalesce out of aural madness? Nothing.Therefore, I designate myself as the Amazon.com Apostle of the Avant-Garde. Yes, you can still count on me for updates from my myriad preoccupations--Latin jazz, Afro-Cuban jazz, Brazilian jazz, Jamaican jazz, jazz beat, Nu jazz, Nu Latin jazz, world jazz, a-referential freak-out jazz, heartland jazz, gonzo jazz--but I'm going to make a special effort to find, listen to, and review avant-garde jazz. Problem is, Amazon doesn't carry a lot of the stuff I'd really like to review. For example, one of my all-time favorite bands is called Polwechsel, comprising John Butcher (sax), Burkhard Stangl (guitar), Michael Moser (cello & guitar), and Werner Dafeldecker (double-bass, guitars, & electronics), but you won't find them on this site. Perhaps my just about all-time favorite disc, Spellings, by Frisque Concordance, featuring John Butcher--again--(sax), Georg Graewe (piano), Hans Schneider (double-bass), and Martin Blume (drums) also ain't here. And I could go on and on. No Ogun. No Ramboy. No Bvhaast. No Random Acoustics. No Celp. No Fresh Sound. These labels and their formidable artists simply are not carried by Amazon. Here are a few groups I'd like to review, but can't: Lebombo; Available Jelly; Spirits Rejoice; Viva la Black; Bush Fire; If, Bwana; Badal Roy & Amit Chatterjee; Tobias Delius 4tet; Steve Cardenas, and most of the other Fresh Sound catalog; all of Andre Jaume's Celp recordings; all of Michael Moore's Ramboy discs; and lots of other stuff. Actually, even though I'll be somewhat handicapped in my role as Apostle of the Avant-Garde by virtue of not being able to tackle artists such as those listed above, I'll still do my darnedest to fulfill my high calling. That is, I will go through my thousands of jazz discs and cull out everything even remotely avant-garde. Then I will assiduously review every last one of them, if it takes me the rest of my life.Call it a labor of love.Starting tomorrow, I'm on it like burr stuck to a pant leg.Or, maybe not. Stay tuned to find out."