Tim Berne’s music always reminds me of two other famous composers: J.S Bach and Charlie Parker. There’s something utilitarian about it: like Bach’s music, it can be played on any combination of instruments (with a little bit of work). And like Parker, the written music seems directly related to the improvising, as if (surely not!) the processes are pretty much one and the same. Back in the eighties, I loved the lack of stylistic boundaries of the so-called “downtown” musicians, especially in the face of mounting conservatism regarding what was and wasn’t jazz, but within that broad based eclecticism, Berne always seemed to me to emphasise language over “style”.
Hank Roberts is another instantly recognisable voice from that scene, a singular “wail” shot through with a demon groove. He shares with Berne a deep understanding of music that flirts with tonality without being right inside it – many will know him from Bill Frisell’s game changing quartet with Kermit Driscoll and Joey Baron, but his own albums are full of heavy detail and playful whimsy in equal amounts.
Accordionist Aurora Nealand was someone new to me, but a bit of online searching revealed that she’s a veritable celebrity of New Orleans repertoire and can sing it like it’s easy. How she ended up in this band is a question left delectably unanswered, hanging in the air like the thick clouds of sound that begin this second set at The Vortex.
At first the weight of it is almost overwhelming, the accordion sounding huge in this intimate space, but looking back it was all about the long, slow build. Roberts seems unperturbed by the wall of frequencies that seemed almost to drown him out, but the way he stays where he is and emerges in his own time is an object lesson in musical patience. Berne is, to me, the inventor of a whole language that scratches at tonality without quite puncturing its surface, seemingly able to twist a line out of its impending resolution without it feeling gratuitous. Nealand has immense power at her fingertips, walls of bellowing bass and shifting chords, but also listens for the tenderness of quiet moments, often using her voice so lightly that it seems to blend with the air itself.
This gig is all about blend. Slowly shifting harmonies veer between lush and bracing, cataclysmic clusters dissolve to reveal gentle grooves. At times, with Berne pushing the horn into its highest register, the intensity feels close to breaking the room apart, but quieter spaces soon open up with Roberts’s uniquely sighing sounds and Nealand’s vocal mutations. Extended technique and stretched registers have always played a big part in improvised music, but there’s something different about the patience with which they are employed here. Sounds that jump out, almost as if by chance, are allowed to stay incongruous. Nothing is rushed, nothing is forced. Where the music is challenging, it never rips through into pure noise, and where it’s tender, it always stops short of sentimentality. Some of my favourite moments seemed to ask the question “how much longer can they sit on this?”, particularly in the longer sustain passages, which could start off like Morton Feldman and end up closer to Albert Ayler.
There’s a kind of doggedness about the way things move, as there is with Berne’s career, a willingness to do what feels honest and wait for the rest of us to catch up. Berne and Roberts are instantly recognisable, their sounds moulded over years of mutual association and wide-ranging experimentation. Nealand, in this somewhat intimidating company, is both fearless and precise, a catalyst of tonality around which Berne’s lines take on a new context somehow (fans of his duos with Bill Frisell will find a lot to love here). Subsequently, it feels like there’s a warmth to the sonic palette, the uncharacteristic and unavoidable presence of old fashioned “chords” casting the downtown aesthetic in a new light.
This is free improvisation played, it seems to me, by composers. There’s an eye on the long form whilst, at the same time, fascinating and compelling interactions happen in the moment. Just not every moment: this band bides its time, seems to wait until the tension becomes almost unbearable before moving into new areas. It’s an immersive and cumulative experience, where somehow things make more sense the longer they hang around.
At the opening of the gig, Berne said “…the Vortex is one of my favourite places to play in the world…and I’ve played almost nowhere…” This kind of self-deprecating wit should earn him a UK passport in my eyes, but at the same time it doesn’t fool me. With this band, he must be wondering why it isn’t playing everywhere.
One Response
Completely brilliant review, Liam. This is pretty much exactly what I feel about the wonderful Oceans And trio and album: TB as the inventor of a “whole language” and musical world; the weight and tenderness, the intensity and “long slow build”; “free improvisation played by composers”; yes, the gloriously stubborn “doggedness” (in the best sense of the word) of it all. Very much wish I could have been there.