The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis – s/t (Impulse!, 2024)

When I saw this album on the shelves I was curious and skeptical at the same time. Curious because in Eye of I (Anti-, 2023), net of the recognizable influences (Ayler, Coltrane, Ware, Brotzmann) that were available through Lewis’ elocution and that made me classify him in the limb of the musicians that still need to find their own distinct voice, the closing composition featuring The Messthetics, even if reminding of Albert Ayler’s The Last Album (Impulse!, 1969), created interest in me for future releases.

But now, with this disc in my hands, I was also skeptical because I was fearing to listen to a derivative musician. The critics that praised JBL in these last year weren’t mistaken, after all even Wayne Shorter at the beginning of his career had a strong tie and connection with Coltrane as a soloist, but being accustomed to listen to every sort of failed attempt possible in order to give life to a proper improv or avant garde music in the last ten years or so, I surely expect to be disappointed even by the most emblazoned artists.

After some listenings I can say this is partially the case. On a way, the album reminds the listener of the stylistical changes of Henry Rollins’ Black Flag, prepared by the previous albums but come to a well defined metal-free jazz shape with the EP Process of Weeding Out (SST, 1985), a record that opened the doors for a plethora of bands that incidentally prepared the audience for the future evolutions of post-rock and stoner rock; on the other hand, more than a well defined bunch of compositions, the album seems to be nothing more than a recorded jam session. Good stuff but far from the intentionality we all exspect from some pieces of recorded music.

Even because the LP herein reviewed is without title or, if you prefer, titled with the name of the band, as is to say ‘this is our music’. Not that much for a self presentation. But let’s go with some order. Messthetic is an experimental post punk trio comprised of the rhythm section by the now on long breaks Fugazi (Joe Lally on bass and Brendan Canty on drums) plus guitarist Anthony Pirog, a musician acclaimed at his appearance on the scenes since his versatility and multifaceted style of playing, who collaborated with the likes of Elliot Sharp and Henry Kaiser.

Arrived at their third album with this release, Messthetics have been formed because both Lally and Canty wanted to keep on experimenting with shapes and dynamics as they did since Fugazi’s Red Medicine (Dischord, 1995). Their encounter with James Brandon Lewis came in occasion of the last album of the latter Eye of I and this album can be considered as an extention of the last track of that LP. The album opens with L’Orso where we can listen to a thick but relaxed dialogue between guitar and saxophone and some unison moments on a theme used by many jazz musicians as a device for improvisations: all well done but nothing really new or exciting but the feeling.

Emergence start showing Pirog virtuosity on guitar and evolve in a mid tempo punk progression with Lewis on the stands that suddenly turns into a ride where one can appreciate the tenorist efforts to give life to a more precise style, confrontational and a little bit less derivative, even if maybe this impression is a result of the sum of the parts. That Thang start with another well abused riff that leave space to Pirog and Lewis evolutions on guitar and tenor, this last more deconstructed, so to speak, than the guitar parts.

Three Sisters starts as a ballad becoming a nice progression, and since its use of dynamics is one of the most intriguing pieces on the album even if it lacks some elements of surprises (that stop and go moments, dub parts etc.) that were typical of some of the musicians’ mothership. Boatly is a composition that follows in the same furrow and gives life to a nice, melancholic melody that suddenly turns into an anthem, while The Time is The Place is another attemp to give life to a nice ground for Lewis and Pirog respective soloing.

Railroad Tracks Home is yet another abused jazz riff launched in order to give space to soloism. As far as personal tastes, I find this alternation of rock and jazz stylistic features a little bit predictable, and that this way the four musicians would produce an enormous quantity of albums, that, as an example, is what King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard are doing right now. If you’re a great musician it is easy to jam and produce something reasonable, but instantaneous composition is definitely another matter.

Finally with Asthenia, a soft ballad, and Fourth Wall, which have a more sustained rhythm, we’ve gone at the end of this journey and we can say for sure this music is good enough to become something we want to put on a plate just to relax while drinking something good, but not enough good as a tool to learn something new about music developments. For this, maybe James Brandon Lewis and/or the Messthetics will help us with their future releases. For the moment we can take note about the fact that they are able to enjoy their time playing but the spark is still far from shining.  

 

 

Your favorite critic is too busy with his own woman to mind about the future of the music

I have to admit it: since I write only for passion, without any income – I don’t even host banners on this blog, because I hate when I try myself to read something through my laptop or telephone and all those bright squares appear abruptly – it is easy to write what I want, being also my own publisher. But tonight I want, while I listen to some good music like Oliver Nelson’s The Blues and The Abstract Truth and Pharoah Sanders’ Thembi, to remove some pebbles from my shoe.

Fact is that Italy is a strange place if you want to be a critic. In every musical genre, the mantra is always “you don’t like it, you don’t talk about it”. This way, a critic is not a critic anymore. The market is full of horrorful material and art places are, or better said were, full of horrorful concerts. But let’s start with some order.

First of all: the ego affair. I was attending a concert by pianist Vijay Iyer some years ago. I was part of the press staff, since I was writing reviews for an Italian webzine called Mescalina. That meant I had my own seat. In front of me an old guy, another critic, told litterally everyone in the (deconsacrated) church near him: “Let’s see if tonight I’ll discover a great pianist as I discovered Brad Melhdau many years ago”. I didn’t knew who the guy was. But this is a first problem.

Mr. Iyer was still discovered. Blow Up, an Italian magazine that is our version of The Wire – mine is a conservative country so we always copy everything from foreign countries, artistically speaking – still issued reviews of records and concerts by the New York based pianist and composer. There was no need to re-discover him. What the critic meant was possibly: Iyer need to be brought to the masses. I’ll do it. What the critic unconsciously was saying was: Iyer need to be brough to my ear because if I don’t know something, this something is previously unheard by virtually all those who matter.

And this is the ego affair. There’s no such thing as humility in the music world. Every critic – even me, for what it worths – has his own idiosyncrasies – let’s talk about mine: I can’t stand melodic jazz if played after bebop was born, with notable exceptions by singers like Nina Simone, but as far as pianists they have to beat it or prepare it, at the opposite if you’re a drummer and don’t own little percussions you’re out.

Obviously I listen to every styles of music, but when it comes to jazz it has to be as much distorted. I’m joking about myself, but if you don’t play free jazz in the present time you’re not adventurous enough for me. And this is a limit, because I heard a beautiful Italian singer dedicating a project, an entire CD, to David Sylvian few years ago and I didn’t even write about it because the arrangements were too smooth to me. See what I mean?

Now, let’s get over it. Every critic has his own idiosyncrasies, that was the main point. But every critic – even me? I’m asking myself right now and I don’t have so a proper answer – at least in my own country believes his own tastes are the only tastes that matter. That’s why it would be interesting to have other hands to strum that laptop keyboard for this blog other than me. But I’m a maniac of control as everyone else in this business. I think it as to do with the fear people would write with too much indulgency.

Now, let’s move forward to the second point. In this industry, you have to be controversial to be successful (and be paid). This is often misinterpreted for having your own vision. Let’s make an example. There was a guy, another critic, who now is one of the spearheads of a famous Italian jazz magazine. Before, he had his own blog as me. Being older, possessing a record shop and having more time than me to listen and read is a good difference. Another are his own judgments over my world, that of free jazz and improvised music in general.

Nothing against Coltrane or Ayler, but Dolphy as an example was not completely at ease with composition during his career for this guy – maybe I suggest because Dolphy died at an early age and always had few money in his pockets: why aren’t we talking about all the musicians that left the business to play litterally along the road like Giuseppi Logan or Charles Gayle? And the reason was? The business in itself, not giving enough money to the musicians and leaving the most part of it to the labels and their managers.

But the judgment about Dolphy was motivated in his dissertation about some recent re-releases of Chico Hamilton featuring the multi-instrumentalist, so I have nothing basically against it but that if you are a music critic you also need to be a little bit of an historian and an sociologist. Just a little bit, because you cannot always know everything, but it helps a lot. And what about Peter Brotzmann? This guy wrote in his blog many years ago that the German reedist was a “paper mache figure”, with no further explanation.

The guy also wrote and published a book full of judgement more argued and debated, but this is the tenor, more or less. Interestingly enough we had an email exchange in which I asked him why music and jazz also worldwide was, with notable exceptions, deteriorating. During those years the Turkish scene was exploding, and it was a good thing for the experimental music scene in general, but at the same time I heard in my country people whose attitude was really the one stigmatized by Mingus like, “fuck the school, I’ll play free”.

I was invited in person to attend at concerts where the musicians involved, releasing records also for their own little label, were not even able to LISTEN the one the other and react properly. Same in the world of contemporary music. So, I asked this now famous critic what were his thoughts about it, and he wrote me something like he was too busy with his own woman to think about this topics. I think he was saying I was loosing my time trying to separate the sheep from the goats.

This leads me to the third point: there’s no critic at all. An Italian musician once told to a friend of mine, that as me wanted to write about music: if [name of a famous American saxophonist] plays in a way you don’t like it, you can always write or say that he “played like it was”. This, with the other advice other people gave to me about “you don’t like it, you don’t talk about it”, it’s the end of my (unpaid) job.

It’s the end of the games, the end of the music also. No critic, no aspiration to create interesting, fresh and new music to be defined as such. No new music, welcome to the ego trip occupying the space originally devoted to creativity. I started with the last point, but now the cycle is complete I believe. Now. In Italy there is a horrible situation for music. In the world is the same. The old masters are leaving us, the young ones are interesting, sometimes very interesting – a couple names we discussed also here: Mary Halvorson, Patrick Shiroishi, Lao Dan – but none of them is renewing the palette bringing new colors to the light, at least this is my opinion.

Maybe it is not the right time: politically speaking this decade is worse than the 1980s. Economically and socially our civilization is in pieces. It is not a surprise we have great talents, but no innovators – I’d love to discuss this topic in the future with Anthony Braxton, after rereading some of his books – the real problem is that no one wants to talk about it. I lost an interview many years ago – my entry ticket to the press in my country on paper – because of my attitude, my need to define what’s good to me and what’s not, taking my own risks.

Because, if I look at what’s happening in my country, this is the scenario. On one hand, you have trap music dominating the hit parade, together or aside with Italian pop music. On the other hand, you have virtually nothing. People who are in their 20 years or less are not even interested in rock, alternative or experimental music. People of my generation, the Seventies, think ‘serious music’ is only Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin – or The Cure, or Depeche Mode – they don’t even know about Idles or Algiers, who are rock bands of the present time.

As far as music played live, it is full of 40/50 years old people playing that kind of rock music for old boring people as them. Young guys are interested mostly in people like Dark Polo Gang and their values: money and success. There is no such a thing as a counterculture in my country anymore. I truly believe this is also your future if you don’t pay attention to it. From where do we want to start, right now? 

 

 

An Hommage To Peter Brotzmann

On June 22, 2023 multi reedist, composer, improviser and fluxus alumni Peter Brotzmann has sadly passed away. This article is our way, after a long interview released many years ago, to remember him. Peter Brotzmann during the 1970 was the true face of European avant garde jazz, and along with his partner and mutual friend Evan Parker one of the pivotal figures of improvised music.

A close friend of visual artist Nam June Paik and others pertaining to the Fluxus movement, Brotzmann tried to incorporate elements of this iconoclastic idea into his own playing. Brotzmann style at saxophones is assertive, violent, abrasive and a little bit ironic. In the following years, after being cherished by Don Cherry and other American avant-garde artists more than by European critics, he started playing with musicians coming from the other side of the ocean like William Parker, Ronald Shannon Jackson and Bill Laswell.

This is a quick introduction to his discography. The first album you have to listen is Machine Gun (FMP, 1968). Here Brotzmann is leading an octet featuring Willem Breuker, Evan Parker, Fred Van Hove, Peter Kowald and Han Benning among the others. The music is surprisingly violent, with at the beginning the horns section imitating the sound of machine guns, in an attempt to give life to an  anti militarist concept. But the music is texturally rich, with the various musicians giving life to a multi structured creature.

You can find the same assertiveness on subsequent records like Nipples (FMP, 1969) and Fuck The Boere (FMP 1970), an album dedicated to the South African musician Johnny Dyani who died in the same years. An album that is worh of attention and of deep listenings, a true testimony of creativity and fantasy, is Schwarzwaldfahrt (FMP 1977), in which Brotzmann and mutual friend Han Bennink recorded a live set of free music into a forest, with Bennink beating logs and other natural elements with his sticks and Brotzmann utilising his many saxophones so to create a site specific music inspired by nature.

During the 1980, a period not favorable for experimentations, Brotzmann gave life to the quartet Last Exit, with U.S. musicians such as Sonny Sharrock, Ronald Shannon Jackson and Bill Laswell. The music here is even more heavy and dense, and in a way it anticipates what John Zorn at the end of the decade will create with his band Naked City. Now finally accepted as the uncompromising musician he is, Peter Brotzmann can finally manage to give life to various line up and various musical creations.

During the 1990s, his most important combo is the Die Like a Dog Quartet, an hommage to Albert Ayler that featured again U.S. musicians like William Parker, Hamid Drake and japanese trumpet player Toshinori Kondo. The quartet issued four albums of pure existential poetry, in which reflecting on life and death through notes is part of a project that is one of a kind. While in effect many musicians like Marc Ribot tried to hommage Ayler playing his own music, Brotzmann quartet gave life to new material instead of reproposing old tunes.

A second life, if necessary, was given to Brotzmann music during the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the new century by the Peter Brotzmann Tentet, featuring musicians such as Ken Vandermark, Jeb Bishop, Joe McPhee, Paal Nilssen-Love and Fred Lonberg-Holm among the others. The tentet and his various combinations in duos, trios, etc. gave life to a live adventure that brought Brotzmann all around the world performing fresh and harsh music, making the old master known to younger generations of musicians and fans.

As every master musician, Brotzmann is particularly fond in the art of soloing, even if that part of his own work is not completely above the banner of his most recognised art. Two albums in particular can be advised to the listeners issued in recent years: No Nothing (FMP 1991) where Brotmann imagines a different concept for each of his instrument like e-flat clarinet, alto sax, bass sax, tenor, tarogato, and I Surrender Dear (Trost 2019) where he reinvents classics like Lover Come Back to Me or Con Alma at tenor saxophone.

Having toured extensively during the last years, Brotzmann has played with an enormous variety of musicians, among which Keiji Haino and many others coming from all over the world: from the East to the West, many artists payed a tribute to the complex art of Peter Brotzmann playing with him. Impossible to imitate, difficult to be inspired by, Brotmann was one of a kind for technique and vision. Possibly his leaving is the sign of the end of an era.  

 

Peter Brotzmann, Cecil Taylor, Roscoe Mitchell: The Last Masterpieces?

A couple of years have passed since I grabbed my copies of three records I wanna review even if some other years are passed after their release. The point is that these albums have marked the passing of time and maybe they have put the word ‘End’ to the possible evolution of a musical genre like jazz. A jazz contaminated with both contemporary music and tradition, but it’s not by chance that this backlash comes from three aged musicians – one, Taylor, died four years ago.

In fact, I can’t hear novelties in the world of free and contemporary jazz, even if there IS interesting stuff – search in this blog for any – from younger musicians, but they are quite often incomplete. Some are missing the developing of a personal language, some are missing the developing of a structure that can sustain their personal language, some lack vision. So, since these three discs have collected enthousiastic reviews, I wonder if by chance they are the last word on a world of sound, on a vision, on a musical practice.

Let’s start with Cecil Taylor’s At Angelica 2000 Bologna. I’ve written extensively about Taylor’s music through this post so I ain’t gonna repeat myself. Taylor was the most important pianist to mix contemporary music and jazz music, and still is nowadays. Every contemporary pianist, from Andrew Hill to Matthew Shipp, owes him something, even indirectly. Angelica, instead, is an important and renowned festival that takes place in Italy since 1990 and that hosts the most interesting music in the fields of contemporary jazz, contemporary music, experimental music.

I remember when I had the opportunity to listen to the precious music by Pauline Oliveros, Roscoe Mitchell, John Tilbury and Wadada Leo Smith in 2011 on May 8, on various combinations. Angelica not only gives us the opportunity to hear such music, but also releases on CD and vinyl some of the most intriguing performances. In 2020, the I Dischi di Angelica label released an intriguing double album by Cecil Taylor. The first disk features the solo performance held at Angelica 2000 by the maestro, while the second features a one hour long interview with Taylor.

The music in this album is Cecil Taylor at his best. Not only you can hear the melodic and the strumming phrases he is well known for, but also the structure of the music – do you remember when Taylor talks about Calatrava bridges? – is quite audible and comprehensible. Obviously one pays the price for Taylor fire, for his poetry, for his mastery in mixing hints of stride piano and contemporary structures, but this is in my opinion, after hearing many of his records and having seeing him also live with his Feel Trio (with Tony Oxley on drums and William Parker on bass), his best performance ever, his spiritual and musical will.

To accomplish this mission there’s also a beautiful libretto with the text of the interview, for those of you who don’t understand english as native language and can have difficulties in listening to an american man talking. The second album for this collective review is another solo, Peter Brotzmann’s I Surrender Dear. Apparently less iconoclastic, noisey and harsh than his usual outputs, this solo album released by Troast Records in 2019 with a beautiful cover by Brotmann himself with crayon on cardboard is like an intimate confession.

I still remember a concert I attended in Oslo in 2011 where he played with pianist Masaiko Satoh but leaving us with a beautiful coda of solo tenor with all our tears spread along the road of our listening experience. This album is different because in a way we can hear, as someone wrote in another review, Brotzmann in an intimate situation, playing standards of jazz but giving them new shape and blood, on the other hand this operation will push us to ask ourselves what is an intimate act – this is, in fact, the Fluxus side of Brotzmann.

In fact we all are accustomed to listen to solo standards as something personal – paradoxically: as far as it seems, in jazz you are yourself the most when you play other people’s music, and the oldest as possible: it is a true topic or it is a convention? – and this is what Brotmann tries to do, but transcending the pieces of music in a personal way, even if renouncing to his usual confrontational approach. Surprising as it can be, a similar attitude will leave the listener with many questions more than with the pleasure of a ‘beautiful’ sonic experience. And this is Brotzmann at his best, conceptually and practically.

And now for the third album, another double: Roscoe Mitchell’s Bells For The South Side, released by ECM in 2017. The oldest of this trio of albums, is also possibly the most fascinating. I still remember when I was reading in my own language the books by philosopher Davide Sparti, who was applying Foucault theories to jazz music. According to him, jazz music is the music of musicians who know where they start but don’t know where they will arrive to, and who they will be at the end of the performance.

But in listening to this trio performances of compositions by Mitchell, who sometimes acts as a musicians and sometimes lead the trios, you don’t hear such trasmutation, but something new: like a Zen quality of being, immutable and eternal, like the definitive expression of a pure soul. Described by some critics as the best compositions of music after Beethoven’s last quartets – I ain’t joking, the review is available through the internet although written in Italian – Mitchell’s pieces of music represented here were mysterious to me at a first listening, but they have this quality of reproducing sound cells and expressions in a way that really remind me the Zen meditation process.

This way, Mitchell pushes jazz faraway over its boundaries. From a research for a new identity to the affirmation of pure being. Pianos, trumpets, reeds, electric guitars, percussions, drums, noise, all is worth to create a realm of sound that give the listener the sensation of being absorbed in something that is out of time or fully in time, for what is worth. We will not hear easily music of such beauty as the one contained in these three records. So I really believe they are a milestone in contemporary jazz and it’s time for youngest musicians to get over it but starting from it. Unluckily it’s not time for enthousiasm in the realm of music, I can hear more struggle to tell the truth ... 

 

 

Episode 8 – Dedicated to Peter Brötzmann and Henry Grimes

Don Cherry: Symphony for Improvisers from “Symphony for Improvisers” (1966) [19.44] – Peter Brötzmann, Fred Hopkins, Rashied Ali: No Messages from “Songlines” (1994) [12.38] – Sonny Rollins: Summertime from “Sonny Meets Hawk” (1963) [5.56] – Peter Brötzmann and Keiji Haino: excerpt from “Evolving Blush or Driving Original Sin” (1997) [10.15] – Marc Ribot Spiritual Unity: Spirits (live broadcast) [9.14] – Peter Brötzmann: Tell a Green Man from “Nipples” (1969) [15.32] – Henry Grimes Trio: Flowers for Albert from “Live at the Kerava Jazz Festival” (2004) [7.48]

Henry Grimes (born November 3, 1935, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is a jazz double bassist, violinist, and poet. After more than a decade of activity and performance, notably as a leading bassist in free jazz, Grimes completely disappeared from the music scene by 1970. Grimes was often presumed dead, but he was rediscovered in 2002 and returned to performing. As a child, Grimes took up violin, tuba, English horn, percussion, and finally the double bass at age 13 or 14. At Juilliard, established a reputation as a versatile bassist in the mid 1950s. He recorded or performed with saxophonists Gerry Mulligan and Sonny Rollins, pianist Thelonious Monk, singer Anita O'Day, clarinetist Benny Goodman and many others. When bassist Charles Mingus was experimenting with a second bass player in his band, Grimes was the person he selected for the job.

Gradually growing interested in free jazz, Grimes performed with most of the music's important names, including pianist Cecil Taylor, trumpeter Don Cherry, saxophonists Steve Lacy, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, and Albert Ayler. He released one album, The Call as a trio leader for the ESP-Disk record label in 1965.

In the late 1960s, Grimes career came to a halt after his move to California. It was commonly assumed Grimes had died. Then Marshall Marrotte, a social worker and jazz fan, set out to discover Grimes's fate once and for all. In 2003, he found Grimes alive but nearly destitute, without a bass to play, renting a tiny apartment in Los Angeles, California, writing poetry and doing odd jobs to support himself. He had fallen out of touch with the jazz world and was unaware Albert Ayler had died, but was eager to perform again. Word spread of Grimes's 'resurrection', and some musicians and fans offered their help. Bassist William Parker donated a bass (nicknamed "Olive Oil", for its distinctive greenish color) and with David Gage's help had it shipped from New York to Los Angeles, and others assisted with travel expenses and arranging performances. Grimes's return was featured in The New York Times and on National Public Radio. A documentary film is planned, as is a biography.

Peter Brötzmann (born 6 March 1941) is a German artist and free jazz saxophonist and clarinetist.

Brötzmann is among the most important European free jazz musicians. His rough timbre is easily recognized on his many recordings. He studied painting in Wuppertal and was involved with the Fluxus movement, but grew dissatisfied with art galleries and exhibitions. He experienced his first real jazz concert when he saw American jazz musician Sidney Bechet while still in school at Wuppertal, and it made a lasting impression. Brötzmann has designed most of his own album covers. He first taught himself to play various clarinets, then saxophones; he is also known for playing the tárogató. Among his first musical partnerships was that with double bassist Peter Kowald.

For Adolphe Sax, Brötzmann's first recording, was released in 1967 and featured Kowald and drummer Sven-Åke Johansson.

1968, the year of political turmoil in Europe, saw the release of Machine Gun, an octet recording often listed among the most notable free jazz albums. Originally the LP was self-produced (under his own "BRO" record label imprint) and sold at gigs, but it was later marketed by Free Music Production (FMP), In 2007, Chicago-based Atavistic Records reissued the Machine Gun recording.

The album Nipples was recorded in 1969 with many of the Machine Gun musicians including drummer Han Bennink, pianist Fred Van Hove and tenor saxophonist Evan Parker, plus British free-improv guitarist Derek Bailey. The second set of takes from these sessions, appropriately called More Nipples, is more raucous. Fuck De Boere (Dedicated to Johnny Dyani) is a live album of free sessions from these early years, containing two long improvisations, a 1968 recording of "Machine Gun" live (earlier than the studio version) and a longer jam from 1970.

The logistical difficulties of touring with an octet resulted in Brötzmann eventually slimming the group to a trio with Han Bennink and Fred Van Hove. Larger groups were put together again later, for example in 1981 Brötzmann made a radio broadcast with Frank Wright and Willem Breuker (saxes), Toshinori Kondo (trumpet), Hannes Bauer and Alan Tomlinson (trombones), Alexander von Schlippenbach (piano), Louis Moholo (drums), Harry Miller (bass). This was released as the album Alarm. In the 1980s, Brötzmann flirted with heavy metal and noise rock, including a stint in Last Exit and subsequent recordings with Last Exit's bass guitarist and producer Bill Laswell.

Brötzmann has remained active, touring and recording regularly. He has released over fifty albums as a bandleader, and has appeared on dozens more. His "Die Like A Dog Quartet" (with Toshinori Kondo, William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake) is loosely inspired by saxophonist Albert Ayler, a prime influence on Brötzmann's music. Since 1997 he has toured and recorded regularly with the Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet (initially an Octet).

To listen to the podcast, go to Podomatic website and search for 'completecommunion'.

To send me material to be featured on the podcast, email me at galasi.g [at] virgilio.it or gianpaolo.galasi [at] gmail.com

Café OTO - Note by note, the making of the avant-garde

Words and photos: Gian Paolo Galasi

The Thing (Mats Gustaffson, Ingebrigt Haken Flaten,
Paal Nilssen-Love), October 3, 2011

If you're a passionate lover of experimental music and would like to hear the refined textures of saxphonist Roscoe Mitchell, the prolonged and hypnotic blues moans of Loren Mazzacane Connors, the harsh, devastating haikus of Keiji Haino, composer Charlemagne Palestine teaming up with younger avant/droner Oren Ambarchi, or dazed and surprised by younger or still not wider recognized talents such as guitarist Havard Skaset, or pleased by the genius of a rare performance by CC Hennix, Café Oto in Dalston, Ashwin Street, is the must-go if you're having a trip in London or residing in the UK's capital. 

Martin Brandlmayr, Cafe Oto, Sept. 30, 2011

Open since 2008, Cafe Oto - 'oto' meaning 'noise' in Japanese - is the ideal venue in which to enjoy the best in live avant garde music nowadays, introduced by the notes of John Coltrane's Kulu Se Mama, Moa Anbessa by The Ex featuring Getatchèw Mékurya before the beginning of the concert, or the likes. 

Spanning from AACM experimental jazz to European radical improvised music, from electro glitch to avant rock, from obscure folk heroes to weekly Eddie Prévost seminars, Cafe Oto's program is one of the most rich, in the city, full of concerts every day of the week. 

Oto's calendar is managed by CIC Otoprojects, a non-for-profit organization responsible also for special events, as last April Peter Broetzmann residency in celebration of his 70th birthday and the first Tentet's performance in London, or this year panel discussion, in collaboration with the art agency Electra, with composer Ghedalia Tazartes with Mark Harwood of Penultimate Press. Oto team is also curator of the selection for the Free Music Archives, an interactive library of high quality legal audio download.

Rogelio Sosa, Sept. 30, 2011

But Café Oto is not only the  place in which to listen to always fresh and exciting music. As in every music club worth of its value, merchandising blossoms as music, with the same attitude.

Here you'll find the CDs, vinyls, leaflets provided by the musicians themselves, often in collaboration with local graphic designers. Finally, Café Oto is opening its own label, Oto RUKU, dedicated to document, share and support Oto's activity. 

The first release, available since March 26, 2012, is the 180gr vinyl of Peter Broetzmann/John Edwards/Steve Noble ... the Worse the Better, a performance recorded at the club in January 2010, and gifted with a beautiful two color Broetzmann's silkscreened artwork printed on acid-free archival card stock. As celebration, on March 28, the three musicians will reunite for a concert, while in the meantime is still possible to preorder the vynil and, since 26 March on, the record will be available also as digital download.

Café Oto

18 22 Ashwin St

Dalston, London E8 3DL

Peter Broetzmann/John Edwards/Steve Noble '... The Worse The Better' Lp Launch

Wednesday March 28 2012 

Doors: 8pm

Music as a matter of personality - Part 1

Interview with Peter Broetzmann

Milano, May 8, 2011

Words + Photos: Gian Paolo Galasi

Artwork: Peter Broetzmann

Onie Onstadt Kunstsenter, Feb. 2011

It’s the beginning of May, and I’m in Bologna just to follow the first AngelicA weekend. The night before my trip there, I was in O’ following an exhibition of Gak Sato and Steve Piccolo, part of the MiLand Festival. Filippo Grieco, who’s part of MiLand and TRoK! team, asks me if on Sunday morning very early I could go on Malpensa airport, just to take Peter Broetzmann, that at night will play with Gianni Mimmo on reeds, Xabier Iriondo on guitar, and Cristiano Calacagnile on drums, so to drive him at his hotel. Then, there would be a couple of hours, time to prepare a room for Mr. Machine Gun, for a talk. I rapidly mind at what will occur me, from Bologna to Milano in Sunday, and then back after the interview (I’ll miss the concert but I just planned yet to see Wadada Leo Smith and Roscoe Mitchell playing) and give my positive answer. I’ll not go to take Peter Broetzmann with my car, since I don’t have one; another guy will lead him there, but it’s still ok for the interview. Me and Peter met at 9.30 a.m. in the hotel room. We met yet in Oslo, when he played with pianist Masahiko Satoh; there, I asked him just to sign up a copy of one of FMP last output, but at the end of that concert, outside Onie Onstadt Kunstsenter doors, me and my friends widely greeted him for their astounding performance. We had a couple of hours, sat in the hotel little garden inside, smoking and talking freely. This is the almost unedited transcription, in which Brotezmann talked to me about his entire career: the beginning as a painter, Nam June Paik, the Fluxus movement; his fellow musicians Toshinori Kondo, Peter Kowald, Ken Vandermark and Mats Gustaffson; politics, art and music world; the past and future of music business, and the meaning of it all, as a matter of personal view, the one he built up in almost 50 years of career. A very relaxed chat, a good environment in which to talk openly. After the interview, he told me that the day before his performance in Milano he would fly in Istanbul just to play with konstruKt fellows, about which there would be material coming on Complete Communion within few days. But our chat begins with him complaining about not getting in touch anymore with the Italian improv music scene of the present times.

The Berkshires, Watercolor on paper, 2005

So you are more aware of the older generation of musicians, like Tiziano Tononi maybe … the drummer from Italian Instabile Orchestra …

Yes, but there’s not any much to play for us in Italy, so there’s not really a contact to Italian musicians. Only guy I’m working with is Massimo Pupillo, and you don’t see them in the other parts of Europe, you don’t see them in Germany …

Pupillo played in the U.S. because his last record was published by Mike Patton, Zorn’s fellow … so they made a little tour there … I was talking with Wadada Leo Smith and he was telling me that in the last ten years there weren’t that much musicians trying to make things from anew, some new forms of music or of art, and he was prompting that no one in this moment has the courage of doing something different, of going outside the mainstream, be it improvisation or other styles of music … maybe, there were times in which lots of people were doing new things, like Ornette out of the Sixties, but there are times in which you have only to try and understand what people do, and this is satisfying …

Oh, I don’t believe in these new forms of music, new forms in arts. It all develops, and if you’re listening now to Ornette Coleman, to the music out of the Sixties, it’s very nice reed music, not the revolutionary thing we thought in those years. You do hear Coltrane nowadays in every fucking diner in the U.S. I would complain that there is very little of ideas, of new organisation coming from the very young ones; in the Fifties we were dealing with the same problem: in Berklee School of music, or in Cologne Music Highschool, it’s all the same shit they learn, it’s everywhere the same, it’s all boring music, and it’s so bad music actually; out of this schools nothing will come, I think. And another point also very important is, even the young guys want to make some money, and you can’t make money if you’re out of the mainstream, on the edges. And the mainstream, as I can see in our northern part of Europe from Germany to Scandinavia, is getting narrow, more and more, and what is on the side of it doesn’t count anymore. So lot of the young people of course they want to make money, I understand that truly well.

But when you started your career, it was the same?

It’s always the same, the problems look a little bit different, but of course music industry nowadays is much more narrow, focused on money making than it was in the Sixties when I started. And the whole music scene was much more spread out and there was space for everybody, but nowadays it’s really this money making mainstream. If you want to do something different, you have to be strong, very patient, you have to know what you want, and you can’t forget about making money, so you have to look for some other sources, which I did in my early years too: I did all kind of jobs to survive. But I’m missing ideas of the young people … it’s my seventy years, and I’m still avant-garde, then something is wrong. That is the point.

I didn’t see people asking you so much about you being a painter … In your first years, you started with Nam June Paik and Joseph Beuys …

I had the great chance to work for Nam June Paik for a couple of his exhibitions, and I of course did know Beuys, and the guys from the Fluxus movement, which was for me of course very important and very encouraging too, because these was the only people that always said, ’Brotzmann, do your thing’: in the early Sixties the musicians around me they all said ‘oh no, come on ..’; if I showed up some, people started to laugh or to run away …

Before other musicians like Carla Bley, Don Cherry, or artists like Nam June Paik, people like that …

The Americans were very helpful to me, people like Carla, but much more people like Steve Lacy: he was living already in Paris these years, and he toured in Germany quite a bit, solo or with his trio and quintet, and I met Steve very very early, and he was always very very helpful, he made the connections to Don Cherry, to Carla Bley. I would say, from musicians side, Don Cherry and Steve Lacy were not really influent but good people behind me, a good background, good friends.

And that maybe it’s more important than making money, at some point, to have people near you …

Yeah, it’s very funny when Don Cherry invited me for a weekend to come to Paris and join his quintet with Gato, Karl Berger …

… Aldo Romano …

… or this young Danish guy, I can’t remember. When I came back home then, people respected me, you see how the trouble goes, stupid as it did; soon after that, Carla invited me, and the first time I met Cecil Taylor, Jimmy Lyons, and Andrew Cyrille, with whom I later worked quite a bit together with. So I must say even a man like Lee Konitz when he heard me the first time, came to me and said ‘hey Brotzmann, don’t worry’ …

Landscape, 1959, Tar paper and earth on canvas

… he was more open minded …

… oh yeah, that’s sometimes a good thing with Americans …

… maybe because being a musician he was able to understand you directly, usually criticians have more boundaries …

Yeah, but Americans in general, and American musicians, compared to Europeans. Europeans always like to put things in boxes: you as a free, and you as a bebop, and you as a big band … all bullshits: if you look at American jazz history, the best music just appeared when, for example, Rollins played with Coleman Hawkins, and Paul Bley was in the band: these guys are much more open.

Like yesterday night, in Bologna, with John Tilbury playing with Leo Smith … after the concert, a friend told to me that Wadada was the one who was improvising, but in the end the thing is, the music is working, so, who cares …

If it’s working is fine. I played before he died with Walter Perkins, a drummer who started with Robert Barry together in the early Sun Ra band in Chicago, and then he went through all the bebop times, he was long time member of Sarah Bonds and Lou Donaldson. A real bebop guy, and I met him while William Parker and him decided to do a little tour in the States. That was so fine, to be together with this old experienced man, we played exactly the same what he ever did. Coming together was one of the best times of my life, and then he soon planned a European tour but he died of cancer and very quickly. So, it’s all bullshit to put things in boxes, you just have to listen. American music history is full of very strange combinations, people in Europe shouldn’t be so afraid of each other, it’s nonsense.

So when we usually look at the United States thinking about those guys with war paranoia, it’s the same for us, culturally speaking …

[thinking about it, then really convinced]  … yes …

Maybe they are more pragmatic, that’s why they feel free to play with people and mix things, never mind about being, for example, an improviser that has to play with a contemporary musician …

I see the music I’m doing, the history of jazz music as a history of personalities, much more than of styles. I’m interested in finding, even if I look among the younger ones, personalities that know what they want to do without getting disturbed by anything, so I found, my friends in Chicago, of course because I’m quite free in it, but I found in Europe Mats Gustaffson and Paal Nilssen-Love, a great drummer in its young years … I need people who can pursue something, and then I can respond, and then music starts to develop … in my band, the Tentet, or in the smaller bands I never tell people what to do, I do my thing and I try to do it very clearly, but I wait and I see what respose I get, and all the things converge together …

As far as self-expression, Peter Kowald said that when he was playing the bass, he could express every aspects of his personality, that maybe socially he couldn’t, like, using his words, “I can cry on the bass, and people can feel that, whereas, going on the street, I really can’t start crying” … as a matter of being true with yourself, in some way, to what you feel …

That’s what in general art is about … writers sit and write their bullshits, and we as musicians are trying to do the same in our language. I see music as a kind of language too, and of course standing in front of an audience, if you want or not, that’s the way it goes, you have to open yourself and give some pieces and parts and thoughts and feelings a way … when I was very young and listened first times to jazz music I always wanted to be a singer but I was not courageous enough, so I needed a horn …

Music as a matter of personality - Part 3

The politics of time. FMP and the music business: art, revolution, responsibilities.

Interview with Peter Broetzmann

Milano, May 8, 2011

Words + Photos: Gian Paolo Galasi

Artwork: Peter Broetzmann

Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy (public photo archive)

For human life …

For human life anyway, yeah, people don’t like it, but our society is so fucking boring because everything …

… it doesn’t work either …

It doesn’t work at all, no … I mean look at your country, look at my country, and look at all that they call democracy, and that’s a joke …

… think about Europe …

… man, what’s happening in Europe nowadays, it’s a joke …

People always talk about planning things, but actually I don’t know what they’re planning to cope with that situation; not before the so-called ‘crisis’, nor after, in order to sort out of it …

Yes, and for sure politics developed in this ways, none of these guys we call Government care about people anyway …

No, they care about money …

It’s about money, it’s about … I don’t know …

They care about power …

For sure not about normal people in the streets, not at all anymore …

You know, one of the things about power is that you can be, in a way, distant from yourself … we were talking about responsibilities in music: having power is kind of the opposite maybe … I don’t want to talk about Berlusconi, because it’s silly … [Peter laughs] … yes, because it’s an easy target to shoot at … but the thing is, why he likes living like that, and why he is admired? Because maybe people around him will ever say that it’s ok, nobody can criticize you … and troubles, they always come from left-wing … so it’s a way to avoid to manage with yourself, personally …

Yeah, yeah. We will not talk about Berlusconi, but you know, I remember times in Italy, the first years I came down here to play all the big festivals organized by L’Unità, by the Socialists. Italy was a different country in these times. Berlusconi’s just one stupid guy, but look at my government there … Madam Merkel’s so fucking stupid … she’s kind of clever, but she has no idea what to do and what is going on. And the same if you look around …

Maybe she’s able to manage with things, but …

Yes, she’s administrating things, she has abilities to build up networks just to sustain power, that is her. Look at this little Napoleon there … man, what a crooky he is… And so on, you can name them all, and is everywhere the same. Look at the development: when I was young, my first front country was Holland and Amsterdam, because it was very close and through the art business I had connections very early. It was for me always great to go to Amsterdarm, because there’s much more openness, breath a much more open air; but it’s such a racist society nowadays, it’s just about money and power, and underdogs have such a bad hard time; same in Denmark, that was always a country that welcomed everybody, frankly opened with good social ideas on building up a community; nowadays all government are moving more and more to the right-wing. I wouldn’t call them fascists, but they’re on the way; and so, anyway what’s going on on the Balkans, that’s what we would see later. So the whole idea of this Europe, even in the very beginning might have had some good sources, but it doesn’t takes people in to work for the whole thing, it just excludes people, and it’s just something up there, and there being interested in money, dealing with money, means having power, and that’s what they like. And I’m very often in the States, and I stay sometimes longer, I left Chicago as a town. I remember it was the election days, when Obama was elected I was in town, and I remember what kind of hopes people had. Now he’s doing worse than Mr. Bush ….

When he tried to change the welfare system, there was a huge right-wing campaign against Obama, using those images, like KKK, and nobody talked really about what he really wanted to do with insurance companies. In some ways, political communication is a kind of perversion of art. Republicans was using the same elements that Fluxus was using, images: the face of Obama and the triple K under his face, but in order to prevent people to have the possibility to analyze things; so it’s really the opposite of a form of art. As far as Obama himself, maybe even some Democrats were thinking that having a good black guy as a flag, could be good in the election times …

… but the black guy had to learn very fast that he depends on other powers, and other powers is money, and they said ‘no’, then he has no chance, and on the other hand I know people who went to school with him, and all of them said that he always was like an anchorman, a good actor. If you listen to his speeches, they are perfect; but at least what he says, it’s fucking nothing all the time …

If, as you said before, the stream is narrowing, and if you want to take part of that, you have to proof that you will be faithful, when the decisions will be taken, so it’s very difficult to try to change things … and on the other hand, it’s difficult to stay outside and mind doing your own thing, so alone, because all things other people would do, will have a feedback on your life, so as a single person you can only try to find and share resources, use your mind and keep yourself informed … and try to share all of this with other people, in order to build something better …

That’s very interesting. Travelling through the States, sometimes by car, and not taking just the big highways, driving so the country and the smaller town, you always find very interesting people who do that. They get out of the society, and they do whatever they want: they make their own farms, their own art communities, whatever, but I don’t think I could do that.

No?

No, I mean, my business, if we talk about music, I have to travel, I depend on support money, not for myself but the clubs need money; if clubs disappear, we do not work anymore. I’m in the middle of this shit and I have, willing or not, to deal, because I want to work with my guys, and running away it’s not my cup of tea.

FMP Box accompanying book

So, FMP starts working again, after having some difficulties …

That’s a long difficult story. After George Cables decided to give part to FMP, to some other persons, these other persons fucked the whole thing up …

Really?

Yes, and then, he always was working in Berlin as a social worker, and yet FMP was his sight business, but at the time he had to go in sanktionen and then he moved away from Berlin, then the other persons really have fucked up what he left … he started again, but he had to realize that working in the music business nowadays, without any support, is so difficult. You have no functioning distribution anymore, you have here small things, you have there small things, and the market, because producing cds is so easy and relatively cheap, is small but overcrowded, and the ninety per cent of it mostly is shit. And so, it doesn’t function anymore, and now he decided a year ago that I would do my last thing, my box with tapes out of the archives, and things like that. I’ll make a nice book and that’s the end of FMP. The box is out, and it is not only beautiful, it is a great document, the book is fantastic with all the last 40 years of European improvised music in there, it’s really great. But to get into business again, nowadays it’s impossible.

How if someone would like to know about that music in the next, say, forty years? The risk is not to have really a continuum, and I don’t talk only about FMP, but about all people making something in their own right, with a vision to realize and other people experiences on their back. Because, usually, behind an artistic development there is a human development; so the risk is to break with the relationship between generations … what will happen in the next fifty years?

But there we come back to the younger people, it’s really up to them to develop other ways of doing things. I think the guys around me, like Ken or Mats, all of them are trying to continue that thing together, it has to work in other ways I think. One of the good things of the development of the last twenty years is that the domination of American music is not there anymore; European brought in a lot of new ideas, a lot of ways of doing things, and if you look at the developments in America, there’s not coming very much; I mean you have some good guys, some good players, and you have the same in Europe too …

There are many in other parts of the world, like in Israel …

I have a couple of friends traveling a lot going to far away places, in the Middle East, in the West Sahara and in countries where now a little kind of revolution takes place, in the Northern African countries; there’s a strong new music scene going on to it, from Lebanon to Algier to Egypt to everywhere, but it will take time to develop, and of course it has not very much to do with what I was growing up, which is jazz music. But I like to go to the Middle East very much, I had set in Lebanon, Yemen, Egypt … It’s another way of doing things, on Marocco, a lot of good musicians. The danger is, beside of that moment for them music is a kind of tool of making some part of freedom for them, or contributing to all development in this countries too, to open up things, but of course if there is really something good going on, I’m afraid that the music business will come and fix it in.

Maybe it’s not only a matter of money. Sometimes when I go to exhibitions, and I see works of people like Shirin Neshat, as an example, I think: ok, she’s talking about Iranian women, here in Europe; we allow her to talk about it, so at first sight we feel more liberal than governments in that country, and maybe this feeling is delivering us from taking care of the real situation, as a matter of self-excuse, and this is part of the problem. I can invite the Master Musicians of Joujouka or Tinariwen to play here, and it’s good for them, because they earn money, but at the same time we can feel ourselves as free from our duties …

I see what you mean, yes …

So we have to be aware of that and discuss about that also … I mean people like me that write about music … you are doing your own thing playing, that’s your duty, but I have this feeling … There is an Israeli documentarist, Eyal Sivan, who drew back his last documentary about Jaffa and Israel politics through the advertising imagery from Cannes Film Festival, because he doesn’t wanted to risk to legitimate Israel democracy, as liberal, because it allows a moviemaker to show a movie that is 'in opposition'. So, he opted for talking about that issue instead of presenting his documentary … it’s a matter of being aware of the contradictions that are taking place …

Yes …