MULTICOLORED MIDNIGHT / I’m a Senator! Shit Changes. Fidgety. Capiscum Annuum. Should Be Cool (Michael Formanek). Song for Mr. Humphries. Future Reruns & Nostalgia. Should Be Cool. Brutality and Beauty (Tomas Fujiwara). Survival Fetish. Multicolored Midnight. Swirling Lives (Mary Halvorson) / Thumbscrew: Mary Halvorson, el-gt; Michael Formanek, bs/elec; Tomas Fujiwara, vib/dm / Cuneiform Records RUNE 485
Thumbscrew is an avant-garde jazz trio, two of whose members also play with the current Tomeka Reid Quartet (see my review of their latest album, 3 + 3), thus although this album preceded hers by two years I decided to review it.
Whereas, in Reid’s quartet, the rhythm is driven in part by the cellist and in part by bassist Jason Roebke, bassist Michael Formanek is clearly the driving force in Thumbscrew—not just in terms of his (legitimately) “heavy” bass, but also in terms of composition, since he wrote five of the 11 pieces on this album. And surprisingly the opener, I’m a Senator!, is less multi-tempoed. The music here has a regular beat even when the melody and/or harmony lean towards bitonality.
As in the case of the Reid Quartet, Halvorson plays jazz electric guitar and not rock electric guitar, and for that I am very grateful. No, I don’t mind a few R&B licks now and then, but I do mind that metallic, whiny, screaming sound that to my ears is not only anti-jazz but anti-musical. Hell, even Alvin Lee of Ten Years After played a more legitimate-sounding electric guitar than that.
Another thing I liked about this album is that the written themes and the improvisations dovetail seamlessly. There is little or no feeling of “OK, this is a written theme, now here comes a one- or two-chorus solo.” Fujiwara’s composition Song for Mr. Humphries is an excellent example of this as well as a lesson in how to construct a multi-rhythmed piece in such a manner that there is no impeding of forward momentum. Formanek plays one rhythm while Halvorson plays another; Fujiwara is now with one, now with the other, now off in his own rhythmic world, yet somehow it all mixes nicely. Interestingly, the guitarist is the only soloist on this track, and she is utterly fabulous, as she was on 3 + 3, moving in and out of harmonic realms but never losing sight of the “long line” of her improvisation. I’m willing to bet that she has had a good education, either academically or self-taught, in compositional structure since she never ever falters in this respect.
The third track is her own composition, Survival Fetish, and from the beginning it is the least rhythmically steady piece so far. In fact, the rhythm is so complex on this one that, without seeing a score, I had a difficult time ascertaining just what rhythm they were in for most of the time, though it does move into a steady 4 just prior to the mid-point. Interestingly, Halvorson plays her guitar on this track with a lot of bottleneck slides, yet she somehow manages to avoid sounding like either a blues or a country or a Hawaiian guitarist. On the contrary, it sounds really weird, and as the rhythm disintegrates once again she becomes involved in some incredible free-form improvisation. I think I’m in love with her playing. Every modern-day jazz guitarist wrthy of that title should be forced to listen to her and pick up some tips.
Shit Changes finds Fujiwara on the vibes rather than the drums, playing both with and against Halvorson, but here it is Formanek who takes charge of both theme and improvisation while the other two interact behind him. There are more bottleneck guitar slides, here intermixed with the vibes, which are more often used for color (using rapid mallet strokes to create a shimmering sound) that melodic lines. Yet the guitar and vibes are so fascinating to listen to that you need to consciously focus on Formanek’s solo to hear just how creative and interesting it is. Since he does not overplay his bass, it tends to sound more like a background to the other two…or, perhaps more accurately, his bass and the other two together are playing entirely different lines that intersect rhythmically but not thematically, at least not until 3/4 of the way through the piece when the trio suddenly coalesces.
There are all sorts of surprises to be heard throughout this album, i.e. the electronic distortion that accompanies Formanek’s bass in the opening of Fidgety which eventually morphs into a contrapuntal duo between him and Halvorson which moves in and out of various tempi. Yet what the guitarist plays here is not highly structured, nor does it seem intended to be so. On the contrary, it is a series of musical gestures, some of them repeated and none of them really coalescing with the others to form a coherent line…but then, consider the title of the piece.
Future Reruns and Nostalgia is by far the most ambient and least “formed” piece on the record. The three musicians (Fujiwara on vibes) interact in such a way that they create a rhythmically formless mood, but then pull it together into an asymmetric rhythm with the bassist leading the way and the guitarist adding lightly picked commentary, later creating swirling lines of her own against the string tremolos of the bass. There’s something about this track that, to me, sounded like a musical realization of what it feels like to be lost without a vehicle in open country on a dark, starless night; you wander about looking for some kind of sign that you are emerging from it, but this doesn’t materialize for some time. Even the ending is uncertain. And dark. This is offset by the following piece, Capisum Annuum, which does have a rhythm but an odd one. It put me in mindof some of Henry Threadgill’s pieces.
Indeed, there is so much going on in each and every track on this remarkable CD that it would take up too much space as well as spoil the fun for listeners to give all of it a moment-by-moment description. Nonetheless, I would characterize this disc as presenting formed music with formlessness, yet the formlessness is conscious and well-designed; it’s not just splattering notes up against a wall to see what sticks. And as on the Tomeka Reid CD, Fujiwara’s drums are alternately rhythmically driving and multi-rhythmed but never so intrusive that they bury the lead voices (guitar and bass). Indeed, there are several moments where Fujiwara either does not play at all or plays so subtly as to be more of an ambient sound than an intrusion. He has the good taste to know when to be an audible presence and when to back off.
Multicolored Midnight is, in short, an extraordinarily complex but rewarding and enjoyable album that will reward the listener with multiple playing, provided that you have an open mind.
—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley
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