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Forever Sharp & Vivid, self-titled (CD, 59:42); LoLo Records 014-2, 1998
Hired Gun Marketing
730 East Elm Street
Conshohocken, PA 19428
Cyberhome: www.lolorecords.com
Forever Sharp & Vivid has released as its self-titled debut a
polished and engaging recording that straddles the worlds of
instrumental improvisation and contemporary electronic techniques
such as tape looping and drum-synth triggering. The core
instrumentation, drums/guitar/woodwinds, calls to mind Marshall
Travis Wood as well as Lovano, Frisell, and Motian, but the sound
here is less "garage" than the former and less jazz than the latter.
Drummer/percussionist Chris Massey is consciously indebted to
Motian, as is evidenced not only by his drum set playing on much of
the disc, particularly Annette Peacock's "Nothing Ever Was, Anyway,"
but also by the inclusion of a Motian composition, "The Hoax." The
whacked-out free improv of the body of this tune is pure Motian, as
is the ensemble arrangement of the angular melody, which returns at
the end after a strategic, brief silence. Massey is impressive on the
exotic Udu drum on "Breath" and "The Undertow." His laid back 7/4
groove on "Gore" is a highlight, as is his keep-them-guessing
stickwork on "Ascension."
Guitarist David Torn looms large on the record. On "Breath"
he plays acoustic, combining percussive slide stabs and down-home
bluesy riffs with big open-string harmonics and suspended harmonies
that call Ralph Towner to mind. The acoustic returns later in the
program on "Godzilla and Rodan." The tracks "Gore" and "A Short
Visit" feature Torn on electric with subtle distortion playing
singing, sustaining single-note melodies that recall Allan Holdsworth
and at times Bill Frisell. Threaded throughout the album is his
ethereal, atmospheric, heavily processed and looped presence,
credited on the sleeve as "various effected sounds." I like the
low-octaved tracking effect on "The Hoax" and the wild, digitized
decay of his notes on "Nothing Ever Was, Anyway."
David CasTiglione (aka "CasT") plays hip lines and dark tones
on bass clarinet and plaintive melodies on tenor sax. His mastery of
harmonics is on display on the drums/sax duet "Fertile Crescent." He
also contributes three strong compositions of his own (all the other
original material is credited to the trio collectively). "A Short
Visit" is a terrific, moody piece with a subtly suggested tempo; "The
Undertow" is a hypnotic feature for bass clarinet and Udu drum; and
the closer, "Fudomaio," is an ethereal swingscape with jazz-inflected
ride cymbal and a pretty, uplifting melody on tenor.
In short, this is very unusual and very listenable stuff. The
collaboration between these three avant-garde veterans has worked,
and one hopes they will continue to record together in the future.
~ David R. Adler
Robert Creeley/Chris Massey/Steve Swallow/David CasT/David Torn
Have We Told You All You'd Thought To Know? (57:16)
Cuneiform Records
Rune 144, 2001
www.cuneiformrecords.com
On this live disc, the trio known as Forever Sharp & Vivid (guitarist David
Torn, reedsman David CasT, drummer Chris Massey) teams with bassist Steve
Swallow, setting the poetry of Robert Creeley to music. The poems - ten in all -
are read by Creeley himself. Torn's ambient noise pervades most of the
selections, giving Creeley a highly abstract backdrop for his readings,
although several tracks nudge their way into tempo, at least briefly. In some
cases the tracks segue seamlessly, although many end with fades, revealing that
the performance was heavily edited for release. The poems are generally short,
although one of the shortest, "Words scattered," inspires music that lasts for
over 17 minutes. (Most of the other pieces are less than half as long.)
Dan Bailey's liner notes detail the fruitful relationship between jazz and
poetry, going back to the Beat era. A handful of jazz musicians - Luciana
Souza, Andrew Rathbun, Frank Carlberg, and Henry Threadgill, to name a few -
have done recent work that furthers this history. A live performance like this,
however, in which musicians accompany the poet in the flesh, is still rather
unusual. While the music on its own doesn't consistently hold one's interest,
it does lend a certain openness and clarity to Creeley's spoken-word. His
closing stanza, in particular, prods us into a kind of infinite questioning:
"Is wisdom just an empty word?/Is age a time one might finally well have
missed?/Must humanness be its own reward?/Is happiness this?" ~David R. Adler
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