Back to the Grind
Bill Nace with the Gunn-Truscinski Duo, Mary Jane Leach, Dave Rempis, and Frank Gratkowski's Fo[u]r Alto
Bill Nace and his old running buddies
I’m not sure why more people don’t pay attention to Bill Nace, who over time has consistently floored me with his adaptability, curiosity, and sharp exploratory impulses. He’s not at all chameleonic or Zelig-like. He always sounds like himself, but depending on the context he’s able to masterfully tailor it to the situation. It’s taken me time to fully realize this, but after doing a profile on his Open Mouth label last year ago I really got the chance to dig deep, absorbing and understanding that quality, which reveals his sharp listening skills and his musical generosity. The two albums he’s made for Drag City with the help of Cooper Crain are both fantastic, marked by radically different sculptural approaches, and his ability to find common ground feels utterly organic, whether with Susan Alcorn or Chik White.
He’s got a significant history with both guitarist Steve Gunn and drummer John Truscinski, but when I learned that they had made an album together I struggled to see how it would work, further illustrating my slow grasp of Nace’s elasticity. Glass Band (Three Lobed) is one of my favorite albums this year, a dusky collision of parched grooves and rude sounds whipped into submission. Over nine tracks spread over both sides of an LP and 7” (or a single download!), the trio kind of toggles between an almost rural placidity and a more gritty, caustic landscape, but naturally, nothing falls into any single camp. Gunn alternates between acoustic and elastic guitar figures that deliver something marginally closer to the rock-based language of licks and riffs, but that’s a relative judgment, mostly because Nace zeroes in on weird abstractions of noise and motion that cycle and churn through subtle but magnetizing shifts. But ultimately, both guitarists are doing the same thing, more or less simultaneously, using entirely different language. Sometimes one drops out— in fact, both Gunn and Truscinski do so for the last part of the opener “Entrance,” leaving Nace’s numbing grind to spool out for some thirty seconds—or pushes against the grain. It’s always changing.
Gunn’s plays more spacey acoustic figures, fed through some channel-splitting delay while the drummer taps out rolling, rumbling grooves. Beneath this almost pastoral landscape Gunn emerges like a strafe, with an acidic spray of gnarly guitar noise hushed under the control of a volume pedal that rises and falls though “On Lamp.” Gunn calmly embroiders exploratory, sweet-toned melodies on “Tape,” with Truscinski adding more circular lines; again, Nace abrades the rustic serenity with something more visceral, and vaguely metallic, parts that seem to fill in the gaps in a widescreen sense, but are actually meticulously formed, controlled, and self-sufficient even if they do benefit from the radiance transmitted by his collaborators.
On most of the tracks it feels like the vibe is set out by the duo, and Nace deftly finds his way in, but there are tracks when it’s his noise establishing things, as with “Venus,” which remains in levitation mode, with ambient clouds drifting and slashing, over three-and-a-half drifty moments. For a brief flash “Corner Dogs” seems like a dip into folk-rock shambling, before it’s revealed as a wobbly tape loop adorned with shaggy tangles of string sound in real-time. Every piece on the album carves out its own sound world, and all of them are places I could conceivably spend a lot of time in, but apart from the 11 cosmically thrumming minutes of “Fencer,” most of the tracks are remarkably succinct. Nace sounds like he’s channeling Terry Riley. Check it out below.
Mary Jane Leach’s ongoing renaissance
It’s been heartening to witness people, myself included, discovering the music of Mary Jane Leach, an overlooked composer who’s steadily gained traction thanks to her heroic efforts in shining light on another overlooked composer, Julius Eastman. Leach’s research led to the monumental 2005 3-CD set Unjust Malaise (New World), which introduced Eastman’s work to a new audience. Her work continues to radiate outwards, with Eastman’s music now heard today far more than it was during his lifetime.
Earlier this summer Modern Love issued its second album of Leach’s music with Woodwind Multiples, which collects four compositions spanning 1985-2020. As the title makes clear, each piece features massed sounds of a given woodwind, with the performer playing a lead over a recording of overdubbed parts on a single instrument, a context that’s characterized her last few albums. The composer has a thing for the way clusters of the same instrument can generate new sonic realities, so much so that her liner note essay uses the observation “subsequent pitches and phrases occur naturally, and are then notated later on in the piece, which in turn create other notes and phrases” is more or less applied to two different works.
As she said in a 2019 interview published by Toneshift, she explained how she loves the collision of tones and the acoustic phenomena that results:
I’m fascinated with the sound, I just like it. But I’m also intrigued by how you can get some mysterious sounds without resorting to extended techniques. Plus, there is something powerful with the overall sound, perhaps because it is based on natural physical properties. I consider that most music is analyzed as if it were algebra, with always one result, while in actuality it is like calculus, with the different elements varying – pitch, instrument, space, volume, etc., so the results vary. In other words, hearing more than just the notes on the page, that a piece played on flute will be very different when played on clarinet – hearing the overall sound, and not just the fundamental notes on the page.
Such qualities abound on these four pieces. The album opens with the oldest work, “8B4,” a piece originally composed in 1985 for New York’s DownTown Ensemble that was only performed once. She changed the original instrumentation—alto flute, English horn, clarinet, and voice—in 2022 for this account by Italian bass flutist Manuel Zurria (check it out below). There are four separate parts, only three of which are heard at any given point, as one is perpetually handing the baton to a new one. There’s a gentle churn of sustained sound that regularly surges upward as a new line enters. But for the most part we experience an almost serene presence, teased by an inescapable tension with exquisite beating patterns. Within a drifting mass of sound—dare I say drone!—there is endless movement and shifting perspectives.
The other pieces here display a loose connection to early music. The 1993 piece “Xantippe’s Rebuke,” played by oboist Libby Van Cleve, features the musician playing lead over a recording of eight taped tracks of her instrument, a glorious swarm of buzzing, resonating sound that takes on the timbre of bagpipes. There’s a kind of an acoustic sleight of hand, as the multiplied instruments seem to conjure phantom sounds and it’s sometimes hard to tell what Van Cleve is doing on top, and what actually results from the interaction of the massed oboes laid on tape. There’s something similar about the 1992 piece “Feu de Joie,” written for bassoonist Shannon Peet, with a single live line played over six taped parts. In both works Leach gets a remarkable world of sound from the way these clusters sit with one another, opening up new melodic and harmonic shades with every turn. The newest piece is “Charybdis,” written for and performed by clarinetist Sam Dunscombe. This one explicitly references early music, with “a somewhat obscured reference to ‘Weep You No More,’ a John Dowland piece,” but as with the pieces mentioned above, it’s more about the way the lead interacts with the taped parts, creating elusive skeins of beauty and genuinely haunting atmosphere.
Take a bow, Dave Rempis
This past Saturday an email turned up in my inbox from Chicago reedist Dave Rempis, a newsletter updating his upcoming gigs. On Thursday, August 31 he’s presenting a new quartet with vibist Jason Adasiewicz, bassist Joshua Abrams, and drummer Tyler Damon at Elastic. Tucked away in the mention is the fact that this is the final show Rempis has programmed in his long-running improvised music series, which began at the old 3030 space on Cortland Avenue back in April of 2002. He estimates that he organized about 900 shows, and next to the slightly older Sunday Transmission series at the Hungry Brain, it might be the longest running jazz and improvised series in the city. His participation in the venue has been crucial to its survival over two decades. It’s the end of an era for sure, and Rempis—one of the most important and supportive figures in Chicago’s creative music community—certainly deserves a break. He will continue to work for the Hyde Park Jazz Festival and he may participate in other events here and there, but he has no other plans at the moment. I wrote a feature about Rempis in the Chicago Reader in 2018 that detailed his selfless endeavors, but his importance can’t be overstated. It’s a bit shocking how I haven’t heard more about this change, and while some upcoming improv-related gigs are listed on the Elastic calendar, a note about the series seems to indicate that it has reached its endpoint.
Luckily, Rempis continues to make music. His Aerophonic label keeps churning, and there’s a terrific upcoming album featuring the reedist with electric bassist Farida Amadou and pianist Jonas Cambien called The Blink dropping on October 10, but I’ve been riveted by Sirocco, a trio recording with long-time Rempis collaborator Tim Daisy on drums and Mark Feldman—a Chicago native who moved back to town after decades in New York—during the pandemic. The album contains two extended pieces, offering a rare opportunity to hear the violinist is a purely improvised setting. In fact, the blend of these three voices seems to push all of them into fresh terrain, whether it’s the reedist sharing a more delicate side of his aesthetic or Feldman pushing more into abstraction. Daisy brilliantly ties everything together. Below you can hear it for yourself on the opening track, “Ostro.”
RIP John Kezdy
In shocking and seriously depressing news from the Chicago area, John Kezdy, the vocalist for the pioneering punk band the Effigies, died on Saturday, August 26 from injuries sustained last week in a bike accident with an illegally parked Amazon delivery van. He was was 64. I didn’t know him well, and it has been decades since I had spoken with him, but I did a story on the Effigies back in 1986 (I think) for the old Chicago-area zine Non-Stop Banter, and Kezdy was thoughtful, kind, and skeptical—he made a strong impression on me. The band’s music didn’t all age well, but the group’s impact was deep, and the group refused to remain mired in its punk roots.
Frank Gratkowski’s sonic research
Frank Gratkowski, one of Germany’s most resourceful and resolute improvisers, turned 60 back on March 30, and he’s been celebrating the milestone all year. He’s a ubiquitous performer, so nothing has changed on that front, and he’s dropped a slew of recordings, whether Artikulationen III (ImproDimensija), a bracing solo album, or Tender Mercies (Clean Feed), a series of serene, sometimes story duets with pianist Simon Nabatov. Gratkowski’s primary aesthetic thrust comes straight out of jazz tradition, but another of his projects continues to reveal a broader array of interests and concerns.
I surely listened to the first album by his Fo[u]r Alto project when it dropped on Leo Records back in 2012, but it didn’t stick with me. The group, of course, is named after the classic 1971 solo saxophone album by Anthony Braxton, For Alto (Delmark), which had been recorded two years earlier—the first full length “jazz” solo saxophone album. It’s entirely possible I felt a bit bored about the saxophone quartet format at the time, but that was stupid. As Battle Trance uses only tenor saxophones, Gratkowski’s group sticks with alto saxophones exclusively, and the music really has little to do with the sort of approach embraced by more famous sax outfits like ROVA or World Saxophone Quartet.
The group recently released its second album 2 Compositions by Frank Gratkowski (Impakt) and it hit me hard enough to revisit the debut album. Indeed, the opening piece “Tamtam 4a” on the debut has a silken timbre that evokes Ellington a la WSQ—although there’s plenty of this quartet’s own thinking beneath that gauzy surface—but the last of the album’s four compositions, “Sound 1,” feels quite different, opening up an area of exploration resumed on the new album. From the start Gratkowski was aiming for a more unified sound, opting for richly striated texture rather than the expected counterpoint, and on this last 31 minute epic the horns, while often distinguishable as individual components, fuse into something headier and more transformative. The results almost feel electronic, with sustained tones forming an airy drone marked by endless internal interactions and psychoacoustic effects. The music was recorded in 2011, but “Sound 1” feels very much like something one might encounter in Berlin today, which might explain why I didn’t catch on to its power a decade ago. I don’t think I would have picked up on its richness.
But the two pieces on the new album—played by Florian Bergmann, Christian Weidner and newer member Leonhard Huhn (Benjamin Weidekamp played on the first album)—go further. Both compositions are constructed around limited pitch material, with the opener “Um-H” using shorter phrases in a lapidary fashion, initially forming a sustained line with constant alterations in the make-up of the group sound, with a kind of rhythmic drive embedded within a static form. Eventually, the players begin to improvise in swarm-like patterns, almost like an aural approximation of murmuration, until silence enters in, and each pop, smooch, and tongue slap feel like satellites in orbit. Eventually the tones come back together. Still, it’s the second piece, “Harmonics,” that has knocked me out most—check it out below. The horns ascend in microscopic movement, slowly rising in a gentle eddy of marbled, uninterrupted sound. In the days since I first heard the album I’ve repeatedly lost myself in the magisterial beauty and calm of the performance, which gets its power from the subtle tensions that drift through the entire epic. The quartet, with Salim Javaid subbing for Weidner, kicks off a four-date German tour on Thursday, August 31 at Musikinstrumenten-Museum. Admission is free.
Recommended Berlin concerts this week:
August 29: Kollektiv Nights Festival: Szelest (Kit Downes, Lucia Cadotsch, Ronny Graupe); Taiko Saito; Schlapitzki (Felix Wahnschaffe, Marc Schmolling, Mathia Pichler, Moritz Baumgärtner), 8 PM, Kuntsfabrik Schlot, Invalidenstraße 117, 10115 Berlin
August 29: Boris Baltshun performs Desert Dictionary (with Katharina Bévand, Bryan Eubanks, and Benjamin Flesser, 8:30 PM, Morphine Raum, Köpenicker Straße 147, 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)
August 30: Kollektiv Nights Festival: Vorwärts Rückwärts (Maike Hilbig, Johannes Fink, Gerhard Gschlößl); Camina (Laura Robles, Peter Ehwald, Johannes Lauer); Libelle (Wanja Slavin, Percy Pursglove, Shannon Barnett, Ruth Goller, James Maddren), 8 PM, Kuntsfabrik Schlot, Invalidenstraße 117, 10115 Berlin
August 30: Håvard Wiik, Devin Gray/Julius Gawlik Duo, 8:30 PM, Donau115, Donaustraße 115 12043 Berlin
August 31: Kollektiv Nights Festival: Erosão Viva (Angelika Niescier, Filipe Nader, Moritz Wesp, Matthias Müleer, Carl Ludwig Hübsch, Reza Askari, Mariá Portugal); Isabel Anders & Marc Schmolling; Felix Henkelhausen’s Deranged Particles (Phillipp Gropper, Percy Pursglove, Evi Filippou, Elias Stemeseder, Felix Henkelhausen, Philip Dornbusch), 8 PM, Kuntsfabrik Schlot, Invalidenstraße 117, 10115 Berlin
August 31: Nissen/Saunders ARCHE Feat. Marius Wankel, 8:30 PM, Donau115, Donaustraße 115 12043 Berlin
August 31: Frank Gratkowski’s Fo[u]r Alto (with Florian Bergmann, Leonhard Huhn, and Salim Javaid), 7 PM, Musikinstrumenten-Museum, Curt-Sachs-Saal, Tiergartenstraße 1, 10785 Berlin
September 1: Zinc and Copper & Robyn Schulkowsky play Christian Wolff, 8 PM, Kulturraum Zwingli-Kirche, Rudolfstr. 14 10245 Berlin
September 1: Potsa Lotsa XL plays André Hodeir, 8 PM, Institut Francais,
Kurfürstendamm 211, 10719 Berlin
September 2: Ignaz Schick plays “Mechanical Garden,” 8 PM, Morphine RaumKöpenicker Straße 147, 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)
September 3: Ignaz Schick plays “Mechanical Garden,” 8 PM, Morphine RaumKöpenicker Straße 147, 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)