Horns and More Horns

David Murray, Mattie Barbier & RAGE Thormbones, BROM, Peder Simonsen & Jo David Meyer Lysne

David Murray’s New Century

David Murray is a musician who looms large in my personal history. His brilliant 1983 octet album Murray’s Steps (Black Saint) was the first jazz record I ever bought and not long after I fully internalized all of the music, including the remarkable solos, I saw a version of the band live in Philadelphia, making him the first jazz artist I witnessed live. At that point in my life I had only seen rock bands, which led me to expect to hear the same exact solos from the recordings on stage. Murray’s killer band, which included Baikida Carroll, Craig Harris, and a very young Steve Coleman, disabused me of that expectation. I was fucked up in the best way. For the next 15 years or so I religiously collected every Murray recording I could find. Over time his music became less central to my listening, and I found his recordings in the 21^st century inferior to his earlier work. As much as I loved his playing and indelible themes like “Flowers for Albert” and “Morning Song,” I lost interest in keeping up. That all changed a couple of years ago when I heard him perform with Tarbaby at Big Ears in 2023. He sounded better than he had in ages, and that renaissance has proven both real and sustained.

David Murray (photo: Emiliano Cocco)

Earlier this year he released a strong new album called Francesca (Intakt) with a new quartet featuring pianist Marta Sanchez, bassist Luke Stewart, and drummer Russell Carter. That agile ensemble not only nails the buoyant energy and melodic generosity of his newer compositions, but they give the leader the kind of springy, brisk support on which he thrives, unleashing solos on both tenor saxophone and bass clarinet that seem as though they could carry on for eternity. You can hear the title piece below. The vibe of this band definitely harks back to the excellent quartets Murray led in the 90s, where masters like John Hicks, Ray Drummond, Idris Muhammad, Wilber Morris, Dave Burrell, Fred Hopkins, and Ralph Peterson Jr., routinely played alongside him. And the tunes are as catchy as ever.

I’m hoping that his quartet eventually makes it to Berlin in the near future. But the other combo Murray has been working with in recent years—a trio with the Norwegian rhythm section of bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love—makes its first performance in Berlin this Friday, November 29 at the Institut Francais. Håker Flaten and Nilssen-Love have worked together for decades, particularly in Atomic and the Thing, and Murray’s music was also a key guidepost for them, and when the Thing folded a few years ago they began working with the elder reedist. They’ve yet to release any recordings, but you can check out this fiery performance from the Bimhuis in Amsterdam from September of 2023.

Mattie Barbier’s Rippling Brass

This week the remarkable Los Angeles trombonist Mattie Barbier rolls into town for several concerts, including the premiere of is this the land I wish death to find me, a new work for six brass musicians and electronics as part of Aparat’s expansive concert series at KM28 on Wednesday, November 27. They’ll also reconnect with Aparat’s Weston Olencki for a RAGE Thormbones performance at 90mil on Monday, December 2 (for some reason 90mil only seems to list events on its website after they’ve taken place!). Earlier this month Barbier released a haunting solo album called paper blown between the spaces in my ribs (Dinzu Artefacts) that contains a pair of harrowing long form works. The opening piece, (lamentations) for éliane, features a prepared euphonium delving into sustained, rumbling low-end tones rooting around similar microtonal terrain as the work of the piece’s dedicatee, Éliane Radigue, as well as that of contrabass clarinet master John McCowen. Barbier carves out a sepulchral space in which lumbering slabs of vibratory, almost rheumy long tones are regularly cleaved by brief silences, allowing us to ponder how we hear the reverb-heavy sounds decay into rich sonic strata, as if parsing the initial tone’s component elements in real time. The meditative epic never plays it easy. The sounds are alien and sometimes harsh, and to fully experience the way the material functions, a commitment to fully inhabit the stark sonic environment is required. It’s worth the effort.

Mattie Barbier

The title piece was created for a performance in Chicago in which Barbier first visited Lake Erie to make geophonic recordings in frozen water, but in a reflection of our inexorably accelerating climate crisis, there was no ice to be found. The resulting episodic composition conveys a kind of underwater murk, as if our ears are filtering sounds with a steady gurgle of liquid, upon which an initial mixture of what sounds like church organ, clustered brass, and field recordings present an unnerving din that can variously be read as cataclysmic or hopeful, depending on one’s perspective. (To be clear the credits only mention prepared euphonium, Geofón recordings, and phantom brass ensemble.) As the piece unfolds its elements are reduced into a kind of electric drone distinguished by a constant shuffle of details that morph at the speed of poured molasses. Again, for the piece to yield serious dividends the listener must surrender to the action. You can hear it below.

The new RAGE Thormbones album Breaking Ships (Tripticks Tapes) inhabits a related sound world, with the paired trombones burrowing into viscous, subterranean muck on “things in the dark that ought not to exist.” The twinned brass unleash an aural mindfuck of psychoacoustic mayhem, roiling from the same sort of juddering vibrations that Barbier explores with his prepared euphonium, but as the twenty-minute piece unfolds—all sustained tones with the inhalations required for circular breathing marking time in a weird way—we get to marvel how the microtonally close pitches defy logic. As the duo explains, “millimeters of difference between air flow, microphone placement, and embouchure manipulation fuse to create entire ecosystems of sound and vibration.” In my previous encounters with the duo different pieces seemed to have focused on specific techniques and sonic phenomena, but this work is more subtle, insinuating its depths more subtly and slowly. It didn’t connect with me like previous RT work on the first couple of listens, but then I felt a shift, and I allowed myself to fall into this alien turf. At its best, the piece makes me feel as if I’ve woken up inside a subwoofer, but instead of pure low-end violence I experience a truly psychedelic trip of brilliant, uncanny prismatic depth. In the final minutes an unholy screech of piercing, feedback-like churn arises from the increasingly active din, as the attack thins out into a sleek, razor-sharp paroxysm that'll surely make your pet canines howl . Check it out below. The second piece , “Diapason Normal (for Y.W.)” is a lacerating ripper that nominally seeks to translate the massed reeds of the Yoshi Wada classic Off the Wall for two wild trombones, as if the brass became crushing organ stops.

BROM Build on a Hallowed German Freebop Tradition

Last week I wrote about a terrific new album from a Berlin freebop trio called BUBU, and I’m happy to note another local ensemble that’s celebrating their own new album. BROM, an agile group led by tenor saxophonist Alexander Beierbachc with bassist Jan Roder and drummer Christian Marien actually released its third album A Night and 43 Seconds (Tiger Moon) back in June, but it’s belatedly marking that occasion on a double bill with labelmates Insomnia Brass Band (which also includes Marien on drums) on Sunday, December 1 at Industriesalon Schöneweide. I’d never heard of Beierbach prior to encountering this new album, but he’s been a fixture in Berlin since he moved here 2002, founding Absolutely Sweet Marie, a quintet devoted to the music of Bob Dylan. More recently he formed Cloud and Stone with vibraphonist Taiko Saito and bassist Maike Hilbig. He also co-owns Tiger Moon with Insomnia Brass Band saxophonist Almut Schlichting. But BROM, which has existed for nearly 15 years, has been his primary outlet, and the new album reveals an impressive bond between the musicians, who work toward a gritty yet soulful strain of post-bop.

BROM—Jan Roder, Alexander Beierbach, and Christian Marien (photo: Alexander Beierbach)

The music on the new album is both measured—with the steady transmission of collective ease as the trio navigates the saxophonist’s sturdy, tuneful themes—and charged with an exploratory energy that allows the trio to push and pull against the forms, ebbing and flowing in intensity. Roder is one of Berlin’s most reliable musicians, a bassist with impeccable time who possesses a big, woody sound. He’s worked closely with drummer Michael Griener—check out Be Our Guest (Trouble in the East), the recent double CD of their long-running partnership in all kinds of contexts—and he’s a founding member of Die Enttäuschung, and paired with Marien’s elastic, hard-hitting drumming, he sculpts a thick yet agile foundation for Beierbach’s extended improvisations. As you can hear below on “Glimmer” the saxophonist’s skeletal compositions are at once melodically handsome but open enough to accommodate regular alterations in tempo, attack, and density. He possesses a richly striated tone, marbled with upper register overtones and a throaty low-end, and that spectrum is reflected in the way he moves between post-bop lyricism and free jazz abstraction. The trio embraces a familiar sound and ethos—there’s nothing in BROM’s sound that you haven’t heard before—but within that familiar terrain they scratch a certain itch, and the interplay between these musicians is strong enough to prove consistently alluring and captivating.

Spectral Drones from Norway

On Saturday night I had a blast hearing Gard Nilssen’s Acoustic Unity play a killer show at Sowieso. I happened to be sitting next to Peder Simonsen, the Norwegian tuba player that’s one-third of Microtub. Earlier this year he released a terrific album with guitarist Jo David Meyer Lysne titled Spektralmaskin (Sofa), and I’ve been chastened by the fact that I had only given it one perfunctory listen back when it was released. Simonsen let me know that the duo was performing at Morphine Raum on Monday, December 2, which led me to cram in some last-minute listening for this week’s newsletter. The project began when Lysne began experimenting with sliding e-bows—a device he built from repurposed magnetic hard drives. E-bows can open a fascinating world of sound when used on guitar strings, but the process is unstable and unpredictable, yet Lysne enjoyed the process of patiently waiting for those fleeting moments when various factors line-up and the harmonic splendor of the technique opened up. He shared his research with Simonsen, who proposed using a guitar tuned in just intonation, a concept which cemented the new partnership.

Peder Simonsen & Jo David Meyer Lysne (photo: Letizia Cigliutti)

On the recording Simonsen complements Lysne’s guitar sounds with a mixture of microtonal tuba, modular synth, sine tones, and various sized Pyrex bowls. They also invited several excellent improvisers—percussionist Ingar Zach, the agile violin and double bass duo Vilde (Sandve Alnæs) & Inga (Margrete Aas), reedist Espen Reinertsen, and horn player James Patterson—to join in, thickening the timbre and triggering further harmonic collisions. Each of the three pieces operate like sustained drones, but within each chunk there’s a ridiculous amount of harmonic richness and motion. Each listen has yielded greater depth and detail, at once offering a lovely strain of hypnosis while simultaneously unveiling a platter of brain-teasing activity. Below you can check out the opening piece, “I,” which includes support from Vilde & Inga and Reinertsen.

Simonsen and Lysne have been in Berlin working on new music, and a couple of local musicians have pitched in along the way: trombonist Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø and saxophonist Otis Sandsjö. The former’s participation makes loads of sense. Nørstebø is a virtuoso in multiple realms, but he has a strong affinity for the sort of harmonic exploration at the heart of this project, and he’ll play an opening solo set before joining Simonsen and Lysne during the headlining performance. The inclusion of Sandsjö, however, threw me for a loop, as the aesthetic of his work, particularly through the lens of his Y-OTIS project, couldn’t seem further apart. The Swedish expat loves groove and melody, and as heard on the project’s third and most recent album Y-OTIS TRE (We Jazz), he and bassist/producer Petter Eldh have forged a seductive, super hooky strain of instrumental funk that that melds J Dilla-style boom bap with almost folkish tunefulness. More often than the saxophonist plays terse, hooky gestures, working over licks in tight arrangements with Eldh’s slithering basslines, jagged beats played by Lukas König and Tilo Weber or programmed by the bassist, and keyboard colors from Dam Nicholls, his little phrases put through a motivic wringer and transformed by various electronic effects. Ordinarily it’s not the kind of thing that appeals to me, but the compactness of the production and the melodic grace and generosity of the tunes Sandsjö and Eldh create have hooked me. Below you can check out the simultaneously rubbery and stuttery “perla/moln.” I’m still figuring out how to reconcile that sort of attack with what Simonsen and Lysne are putting down, but I’m eager to hear it all unfold before my ears (and eyes).

Recommended Shows in Berlin This Week

November 26: François Houle, clarinet, Liz Allbee, trumpet, Emilio Gordoa, snare drum, electronics, Alexander Frangenheim, double bass, 8:30 PM, Kühlspot Social Club, Lehderstrasse 74-79, 13086 Berlin

November 27: Heroines of Sound Edition #4 – A Tribute to Else Marie Pade: Zafraan Ensemble; screening of Else Marie Pade: Sound on Life, 8 PM, Kuppelhalle, Silent Green, Gerichtstraße 35, 13347 Berlin

November 27: Schlippenbach/Walsdorff Quartett (Alexander von Schlippenbach, piano, Henrik Walsdorff, alto saxophone, Antonio Borghini, contrabass, Jan Leipnitz, drums), 8 PM, Panda Theater, Knaackstraße 97 (i.d. Kulturbrauerei, Gebäude 8) 10435 

November 27: Apparat + plays Mattie Barbier, is this the land I wish death to find me for brass sextet and electronics (Mathilde Conley, trumpet, Samuel Stoll, horn, Max Murray, tuba, Weston Olencki, Mattie Barbier, and Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø, trombones; Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø, solo trombone & electronics, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin

November 28: Heather Frasch, Flickerings for objects, instruments and electronics (Heather Frasch and Andrea Neumann, objects & electronics, Fredrik Rasten, guitar, Grégoire Simon, violin); Fredrik Rasten, Murmurations VII for real-time retuning guitars and e-bows, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin

November 28: FJE Trio (Joe Foster, trumpet, electronics, percussion, stuff, Jean-Paul Jenkins, guitar, electronics, percussion, Bryan Eubanks: woodwinds, percussion, physical feedback); Annette Krebs, Konstruktion #4, and Peter Cusack, guitar, electronics; DJ Lousy Cappuccino, 8:30 PM, Petersburg Art Space, Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 101, 10553 Berlin, entrance in the courtyard, Aufgang II, 1 OG

November 29: Free Punk Jazz Gulasch (Ignaz Schick, alto and baritone saxophones, Christian Kühn, guitar, Vinicius Cajado, electric bass, and Joe Hertenstein, drums), 8 PM, Peppi Guggenheim, Weichselstrasse 7, 12043 Berlin

November 29: David Murray, tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, double bass, and Paal Nilssen-Love, 8 PM, Institut Francais, Kurfürstendamm 211, 10719 Berlin

November 29: Carla Boregas, syntheszier & electronics, Claire Dickson, voice, synthesizer & electronics, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin

November 29: Angelika Niescier, saxophones, and Mariá Portugal, drums, 8:30 PM, Sowieso, Weisestraße 24, 12049 Berlin

November 30: Arnold Dreyblatt, new work for hyperorgan; Gamut INC, new works for hyperorgan, 8 PM, Auenkirche Berlin, Wilhelmsaue 119, 10715 Berlin

November 30: Jessie Marino and Serge Vuille's Caotchouc for violin, percussion, voices & electronics; Dina Maccabee’s Underachiever for voice & viola, 8:30 PM, KM28, Karl Marx Straße 28, 12043 Berlin

November 30: Tongue Depressor; Jake Muir; Max Eilbacher, 9 PM, Roter Salon, Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, 10178 Berlin

December 1: BROM (Alexander Beierbach, tenor and soprano saxophones, Jan Roder, double bass, and Christian Marien, drums); Insomnia Brass Band (Anke Lucks, trombone, Almut Schlichting, baritone saxophone, and Christian Marien, drums), 3:30 PM, Industriesalon Schöneweide, Reinbeckstraße 10, 12459 Berlin

December 1: Yan Jun Mini Fest (Carina Khorkhordina + Lorena Izquierdo; Yan Yan+ Seiji Morimoto + Makoto Oshiro; Mario de Vega; Yan Jun + Eric Wong + Takako Suzuki), 6 PM, Jugend[widerstands]museum Galiläakirche, Rigaer Str. 9/10, 10247 Berlin

December 2: Alex Zhang Hungtai; RAGE Thormbones; Elif Gülin Sogusku, 7 PM, 90mil, Holzmarktstrasse 19-23, 10243 Berlin

December 2: Peder Simonsen, modular synth, electronics, microtonal tuba, Jo David Meyer Lysne, guitars, mechanical instruments, with Otis Sandsjö, alto saxophone, and Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø, trombone; Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø, trombone solo, 8:30 PM, Morphine Raum, Köpenicker Straße 147, 10997 Berlin (Hinterhof 1. Etage)