ENGLISH SPEAKING READERS KINDLY SCROLL A BIT DOWN FOR THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE VERSION OF THE REVIEW REPLACING ALL CRITICAL ANALYSIS AND MUSICAL THEORY WITH SATANIC IMAGERY AND FETISHISTIC PORN POETRY

Jazz Nedeljom je zamišljen kao serija vinjeta koje će ići (možda ne?) svake Nedelje, nudeći preporuku u vidu jednog jazz albuma koji sam tog dana slušao. Ovo nema pretenziju da bude ni ultimativni prikaz neke klasične ploče niti otkrivanje nekog budućeg klasika, već zaista samo to, da se kažu reč-dve o albumu koji sam tog dana rado slušao. Ponekada će to biti stare, proverene klasične stvari, ponekada najnovije izdanje koje sam izvalio na Bandcampu, hoću reći, neće biti pravila. Kako i treba. Kako i mora.

Čovek tako bude miran i gleda svoj posao kad odjednom sa svih strana kreću bubnjevi, kao da je neko bataljon Orka nahranio ljutom paprikom i podelio mu automatsko oružje, onda odozgo krene kontrabas kao tepih bombardovanje nakovnjima, hiljadama nakovnja i uz sve to stiže saksofon da vas ubode prstima pravo u oči, kao nekakav kjokušinkai majstor, ali taj kjokušinkai majstor je u stvari tvor a prste je prethodno umočio u najljući wasabi sos koji možete kupiti a da ne dospete na listu osoba osumnjičenih za terorizam. Sve to pa još i nadrealistički, morbidni ali istovremeno melanholični imaginarijum, oh, VRATILI SMO SE BEBO i bit će prelijepo!

Kada sam jutros došao u kancelariju, nismo imali vode. Incident koji bi inače imao snagu nuklearnog napada na miroljubivu, pacifističku zajednicu humanitarnih desk džokeja sam jedva registrovao jer su mi u glavi još odzvanjali božanski zvuci albuma James McKain, Damon Smith & Weasel Walter: …seeing the way the mole tunnels…. koji sam slušao na putu do posla. U godini u kojoj je već izašlo PREVIŠE odličnih džez albuma upravo nam je stigao jedan koji zakrivljuje realnost oko sebe, zahteva svu pažnju koju imate i rearanžira ćelije mozga na opasne načine. Priđite da se ne derem, sve mi još uvek zvoni u glavi.

Pre nekih godinu i po dana James McKain je svojoj mejling listi poslao prilično mračnu poruku. „Od sutra brišem ovu Bandcamp stranicu. Molim vas da daunloudujete šta želite, ali nemojte kupovati nikakav merčandajs. Ako vam dugujem neke pare za nešto što vam nisam poslao, pošaljite mi imejl na (CENZURISANO). Više ne verujem u ovu muziku.“

Ovo su poruke kakve šalju ljudi kada se nalaze u najdonjem delu sinusoide koja opisuje promene depresivnih stanja u čovekovoj ličnosti i mada se uz dosta napora iz ove jame mnogi izvuku, u tom partikularnom trenutku im se čini da nema ničega više ispred njih, da je sve gotovo i da ni jedan napor koji se potencijalno može napraviti neće doneti nikakav rezultat.

James je, znamo to i pisao sam o njegovim izdanjima više puta, jedan od najboljih i najzanimljivijih saksofonista koji trenutno rade u široko shvaćenom kontekstu avangardnog free jazza. Uzgojen na kombinaciji klasičnog ekstatičnog jazza i marksizma, James je jedan od aktuelnih heroja brizantne, beskompromisne muzike koja intenzitet improvizacije i revolucionarnost avangarde shvata i dalje smrtno ozbiljno i nema nameru da se u skorije vreme preseli u nekakvu distanciranu postmodernu poziciju.

Hoću da kažem, kada je James napisao „Više ne verujem u ovu muziku“ moja prva pomisao bila je „Ne verujem Jamesu kada ovo kaže. Ovo ne piše on. Ovo piše depresija.“ Kao neko ko gotovo celog života koketira sa distimijom, mogu da kažem da znam kakav je to osećaj. Ali naravno da ja nisam psihijatar i naravno da je u ovakvim trenucima najviše što možete da uradite da čoveku date prostora da se zaleči i da mu javite da ste tu za njega onda kada on bude ponovo hteo da bude tu za druge ljude.

McKain je, ipak, čini se prilično uspešno prebrodio plavu fazu i, kako u kratkom tekstu koji ide uz ovaj album piše, prošle se godine pridružio dvojcu Damon Smith i Weasel Walter i prvo u studiju zabeleženo  svedočanstvo ove saradnje je album  …seeing the way the mole tunnels…. snimljen u Ilinoju petnaestog Decembra prošle godine. James mi ga je jutros poslao, ja sam stavio slušalice na uši, izašao iz kuće i nije prošlo više od dva minuta prve kompozicije, adekvatno naslovljene Wrecked brain in the capital, a koju sam odvrnuo na najjače, kako se ovakva muzika samo i sluša, pre nego što sam se sudario sa kamionom. Da bude sasvim jasno, kamion je išao polako a ja sam išao peške, ali da sam išao malo brže najebali bismo i kamion i ja. Živ sam, dakle, ali da sam i poginuo, bio bi ovo proverbijalni DOBAR NAČIN DA SE UMRE, sa razuzdanim free jazzom koji mi vrišti u ušima dok krvarim na asfaltu.

Za Jamesove biografske podatke, ako ih već ne znate napamet, možete skočiti do mog prikaza albuma Blekingegade od pre dobre tri godine. Takođe, kupite taj album ZA IME SVETA, u pitanju je apsolutni moderni free jazz klasik.

Za biografske podatke ostala dva člana ovog trija se možete vratiti nekoliko meseci unazad i čitati moj prikaz albuma One Head Four People kvarteta koji predvodi veteran Roscoe Mitchell, ali nekako mislim da većina ljudi koja ovo čita već u najmanju ruku zna ko je Weasel Walter. Čovek na kraju krajeva ima tridesetogodišnju karijeru na OZBILJNO krvarećoj oštrici avangardnog džeza i srodnih muzika (u koje, TAKOE, ubrajamo i death metal), a i vrlo detaljnu stranicu na wikipediji, skoro sigurno detaljniju od bilo koje lasice koja se rodila na planeti u poslednjih sto godina. O Smithu sam, takođe pisao prošli put opširnije pa ću samo reći da je ovo ekstremno raznovrstan kontrabasista koji je svirao sa Henryjem Kaiserom, Peterom Brötzmannom, Cecilom Taylorom, Elliottom Sharpom…

Na …seeing the way the mole tunnels…. ova tri muzičara pristupaju free jazzu iz jedne relativno izmeštene pozicije. Ako ste kod McKaina na prethodnim izdanjima često mogli da vidite otvorene i entuzijastične posvete konceptu harmolodije koji je izmaštao veliki Ornette Coleman i direktne spone sa američkom tradicijom ekstatičkog sviranja saksofona u free jazz kontekstu, ovde se brzo primeti da su stvari nešto drugačije. I trio naglašava da je album bliži free jazzu u evropskoj tradiciji, dakle, udaljeniji od bebopa i bluza makar za širinu jednog okeana, sa „angularnim pristupom materijalu i inovativnom formom“.

To je mnogo reči da se opiše kako je ovo album vrlo intuitivno razumljivog free jazz improvizovanja od strane trojice ljudi koji već godinama sviraju onoliko brzo i žestoko koliko to ljudska biologija, pogurana do svojih krajnjih granica, uopšte dopušta. Pomenuta Wrecked brain in the capital, koja album otvara je jedanaest i po minuta frenetične razmene vatre sa tri strane, free jazz tobogan iz pakla u kome niko ne svira „normalno“ a svi nekako svinguju. „Evropska free jazz tradicija“ ovde – meni – najpre znači da nema mnogo spontano formiranih fraza koje bi se razvile u blues ili gospel smeru onako kako smo to znali da čujemo kod Coltranea, Sandersa, Aylera i sam McKain ovde svira sa mnogo intenziteta ali sa jednom, čini se, novom čistotom, novom mirnoćom, notama koje traju duže i vibriraju sigurnije, sa manje harmonije nego ranije ali, ako je moguće, sa više ubeđenja.

Wrecked brain in the capital je i neka vrsta privjua za ceo album, čitava intenzivna ali sa dobrodošlim dinamičkim varijacijama. Pred kraj kompozicije Walter i Smith sviraju sami i to je TOLIKO gusta, dobra i moćna svirka da se čovek za trenutak glasnim šapatom zapita je li njima dvojici uopšte trebao McKain. A onda McKain ponovo sebe uvede u sliku držeći duge, meditativne tonove koje onda zalomi u smeru distorziranog štektanja da se odmah ujedete za jezik i shvatite da su vaša izdajnička usta počinila jeres.

She sucks in the rose of the cold je onda kompaktni, kondenzovani nastavak. Smith inače svira kontrabas proteran kroz pojačalo i koristi sve nepoštene prednosti koje mu amplifikacija daje, nudeći svu najmračniju dubinu najmračnijih registara svog gigantskog instrumenta da grmi i valja planine ispred sebe, ali i cvrkućući nestašnim flažoletima i atonalnom škripom svaki put kada pomisli da McKainu treba plesni partner u tenor-opsegu. Naravno, McKain zna mnogo trikova pa je za ovu, drugu kompoziciju, on na bariton saksofonu nudeći duboka, meditativna brujanja i opijene, teturajuće fraze sa pokojim skokom u overblowing vrištanja. Smith se valja duboko u crnini a Walter obojicu nosi kao cunami.

A cloud which does not last je onaj predah koji očekujete posle petnaest i po minuta juriša koji album otvara. Ovo je ono što ljudi u biznisu zovu „neidomatskom improvizacijom“ osim što je ona sa decenijama postala idiom za sebe. No, McKain, Walter i Smith to rade sa toliko spretnosti, ubeđenja i inventivnosti da čak i kompozicija u kojoj nema ritma, nema fraza, i muzičari se samo (!!!) dobacuju najapstraktnijim zvukovima koje mogu da proizvedu, zvuči kao audio verzija nekog istočnoevropskog eksperimentalnog crtanog filma za koji ste sigurni da ste ga negde 1990. godine neočekivano videli na televiziji u nekom bizarnom terminu i sad ćete provesti celo popodne na JuTjubu pokušavajući da oživite u sebi taj osećaj apsolutne slobode i kosmičke ekspanzije uma koji ste tokom tih desetak minuta imali.

Iako sam rekao da je McKain ovde „čistiji“ i „mirniji“, njegova svirka je i dalje intenzivna, samo na nove načine. U jednom trenutku na ponovo brutalnoj i brzoj Its corpse is strewn with flowers njegov tenor saksofon zvuči kao da se dva gavrana svađaju putem telegrafske veze, šaljući jedan drugom pasivno-agresivne uvrede Morzeovim kodom. „Tvoja majka nosi jaja a ne znaš ni čija BEDNIČE“ „Uzmi taj tvoj kljun i zabij ga sebi u smrdljivu kloaku jer ionako ceo mirišeš na guano!!!!“.

No, izvinićete me što moram da posvetim još malo vremena oduševljavajući se Walterovom svirkom. Ovaj čovek, da se razumemo, svira i druge instrumente sem udaraljki, ali na bubnjevima je on postigao ono što je sveti gral i sanjani ideal svakog muzičara: sopstveni, unikatni glas. Waltera ćete UVEK prepoznati, ma ko da su drugi muzičari u ansamblu i to je valjda najveći kompliment koji umem da smislim. Njegov stil sviranja – koji bismo mogli opisati kao da slušate hardbop big-bend sastavljen od samih automatskih pušaka i sve pucaju rafalno u isto vreme – je istovremeno agresivan, oslonjen na mukotrpnim, decenijskim vežbanjem građenu tehniku, ali i suptilan, sa puno osećaja za dinamiku, teksturu, ali i zvuk svake note. Walter, koji je ovo i miksovao i masterovao (inženjer zvuka je bio Ryan Wasoba) naravno ima mozak drugačiji od nas ostalih, onaj koji je u stanju da individualno čuje svaku od stotina i hiljada nota koje je vlasnik tog mozga odsvirao na albumu, svakoj nađe idealnu poziciju i onda joj omogući da se čuje na najbolji moguć način. Bring me Schnapps, Fame & Love ali pogotovo The Shit of four thousand years koja album zatvara prikazuju Waltera na vrhuncu moći ali i ostalu dvojicu kako uzleću u spirali uz orkan free jazza što se kreće NEMOGUĆOM brzinom i završava se u produženoj Super Saiyan detonaciji kakvu vam niko drugi na kugli zemaljskoj neće prirediti. Slušajte!!!!!!!!!

https://jamesmckain.bandcamp.com/album/seeing-the-way-the-mole-tunnels

AND NOW FOR THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION FROM HELL

A person will be calmly minding their own business when suddenly there’s an attack. The drums come in from all sides, as if someone was feeding an Orc battalion with nothing but chilli peppers for a week and then handed out automatic weapons to each and every them, then the double bass swings down from above to carpet bomb you with anvils, thousands of anvils, and just as you are trying to get your bearings, a saxophone arrives to stab you right in the eyes with its fingers, like some kind of kyokushinkai master, but that kyokushinkai master is a skunk and he previously dipped his fingers in the hottest wasabi sauce you can buy without getting on the terror suspects list. All that PLUS surrealistic, morbid but at the same time melancholic imagery, oh, WE’RE SO BACK BABY. And it’s going to be beautiful!

When I came to the office this morning, there was no water in the pipes. And I barely registered the indignity that would otherwise have had all the force of a nuclear attack on a peaceful, pacifist community of humanitarian desk jockeys, because the divine sounds of the album James McKain, Damon Smith & Weasel Walter: …seeing the way the mole tunnels…. which I listened to on the way to work were still ringing in my head. In a year that has already seen TOO many great jazz albums, we’ve just got one that bends the reality around itself, demands all your attention, and rearranges your brain cells in dangerous ways. Come closer so I don’t have to shout, my head is still buzzing hard.

About a year and a half ago, James McKain sent a pretty dark message to his mailing list. “As of tomorrow, I am deleting this Bandcamp page. Please download what you wish, but do not purchase any merchandise. If I owe you any money on merchandise owed, please email me at (REDACTED). I no longer believe in this music.”

These are the messages that people send when they are in the lowest part of the sinusoid that describes changes in depressive states of one’s personality, and although many people get out of this pit with a lot of blood sweat and tears along the way, at that particular moment to them it looks like there is nothing left, that it is simply OVER and that not a single thing you can do will have any effect.

James, we know this, and I have written about his releases several times, is one of the best and most interesting saxophonists currently working in the broadly understood context of avant-garde free jazz. Raised on a combination of classic ecstatic jazz and Marxism, James is one of the current heroes of explosive, uncompromising music that still takes the intensity of improvisation and the revolutionary avant-garde ideas seriously and has no intention of moving into some kind of detached postmodern position anytime soon.

I mean, when James wrote “I don’t believe in this music anymore” my first thought was “I don’t believe James when he says this. He did not write this. Depression wrote this.” As someone who has danced with dysthymia for most of my life, I can say that I know how it feels. But of course I’m not a psychiatrist and of course the most you can do in moments like this is to give the person space to heal and let them know that you’re there for them when they want to be there for other people again.

McKain, however, seems to have successfully surfaced out of the blue phase and, as the short writeup accompanying this album says, last year he joined the Damon Smith and Weasel Walter duo and the first recorded testimony of this collaboration in the studio is the album …seeing the way the mole tunnels… recorded in Illinois on December fifteenth of last year. James sent it to me this morning, I put my headphones on, left the house, and it was less than two minutes into the first composition, aptly titled Wrecked brain in the capital, which I cranked to the max – as god intended when he was designing free jazz – before I collided with a truck. To be clear, the truck was going slowly and I was on foot, but had I walked just a tiny bit faster, both the truck and I would have been fucked up. And I mean FUCKED UP. I’m alive, then, but if I did die, this would have been the proverbial GOOD WAY TO DIE, with savage free jazz screaming in my ears as I lie bleeding out on the asphalt.

For James’ biographical information, if you don’t already know it by heart, you can jump to my Blackingegade album review from a good three years ago. Also, buy that album FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT’S UNHOLY, it’s an absolute modern free jazz classic.

For biographical information on the other two members of this trio, you can go back a few months and read my review of the One Head Four People, a quartet album fronted by veteran Roscoe Mitchell, but somehow I think most people reading this already at least know who Weasel Walter is. The man, after all, has a developing thirty-plus-year career on the SERIOUS bleeding edge of avant-garde jazz and related music (which ALSO includes death metal), and a very detailed wikipedia page, almost certainly more detailed than any weasel born on the planet in the last hundred years can boast. Last time I also wrote about Smith in more detail, so I’ll just say that this is an extremely versatile double bass player who played with Henry Kaiser, Peter Brötzmann, Cecil Taylor, Elliott Sharp…

On …seeing the way the mole tunnels… these three musicians approach free jazz from a relatively fresh position. If in McKain’s previous releases you could often see open and enthusiastic dedications to the concept of harmolodics invented by the great Ornette Coleman, as well as direct links with the American tradition of ecstatic saxophone playing in a free jazz context, here it is quickly noticed that things are somewhat different. And the trio emphasizes that the album is closer to free jazz by way of the European tradition, therefore, further away from bebop and blues at least by the width of an ocean, “approaching the material with angular methods and novel form”.

That’s a lot of words to say this is an album of very intuitive free jazz improvisation by three people who have been playing as fast and furiously as human biology, pushed to its limits, allows for years. The aforementioned Wrecked brain in the capital, which opens the album, is eleven and a half minutes of frenetic exchange of fire from three directions, a free jazz roller coaster from hell in which no one plays “normally” and yet everyone somehow swings. The “European free jazz tradition” here – at least to me – primarily means that there aren’t that many spontaneously conjured phrases that would develop in the direction of blues or gospel the way we used to hear them on Coltrane, Sanders, Ayler etc. records, and McKain himself plays here with a lot of intensity but with, it seems, a new purity, a new calmness, with notes that last longer and vibrate more confidently, with less harmony than before but, if possible, with more conviction.

Wrecked brain in the capital is also a kind of a preview for the whole album, wall to wall intensity but with welcome dynamic variations. Towards the end of the composition, Walter and Smith play without the third member and it is SO thick, good and powerful that one can’t help and utter a loud whisper wondering whether the two of them needed McKain at all. And then McKain reintroduces himself into the picture with long, meditative tones that he then breaks into a distorted bark that makes you immediately bite your tongue and realize your traitorous mouth has committed the sin ov heresy.

She sucks in the rose of the cold is then a compact, condensed sequel. Smith plugs his double bass into an amplifier on this album and takes all the unfair advantages that amplification gives him, offering all the darkest depth of the darkest registers of his gigantic instrument to thunder and roll the mountains in front of him, but also chirping with mischievous high-frequency harmonics and atonal screeches every time he thinks McKain needs a dance partner in the tenor range. Of course, McKain is a man full of tricks, so for this, the second composition, he plays baritone sax offering deep, meditative hums and intoxicated, swaying phrases with the occasional leap into overblown shrieks. Smith wallows deep in the blackness and Walter then rolls over both of them like a tsunami.

A cloud which does not last is the chance to catch some breath you expect after the fifteen and a half minute rush that opens the album. This is what people in the business call “non-idiomatic improvisation” except that over the decades it has become an idiom unto itself. But McKain, Walter and Smith do it with such dexterity, conviction and inventiveness that even a composition in which there is no rhythm, no phrases, and the musicians are merely (!!!) throwing around the most abstract sounds they can produce, sounds like an audio version of some Eastern European experimental cartoon that you’re sure you somehow saw on TV sometime in 1990, stuffed in some bizarre time slot on a forgotten channel, and now you’ll spend the whole afternoon on YouTube trying to relive that feeling of absolute freedom and cosmic expansion of the mind that you had during those ten minutes.

While I said McKain is “cleaner” and “calmer” here, his playing is still intense, just in new ways. At one point on the again brutal and fast Its corpse is strewn with flowers, his tenor sax sounds like two ravens arguing over a telegraph link, sending each other passive-aggressive insults in Morse Code. “Your mother is laying eggs and you don’t know whose you MISERABLE BASTARD” “Take that beak of yours and stick it in your stinking cloaca because you smell like guano anyway!!!!”.

But you’ll have to excuse me for using a little more time to geek out over Walter’s playing. This man, let’s be clear, plays other instruments besides percussion, but on the drums he achieved what is the holy grail and a coveted ideal of every musician: his own, unique voice. You will ALWAYS recognize Walter, no matter who the other musicians are in the ensemble, and that’s probably the biggest praise I can think of. His playing style – which we could describe as listening to a hardbop big-band where every instrument is an assault rifle and they are all blasting at the same time – is simultaneously aggressive, based on brilliant technique honed over painstaking decades of practice, but also subtle, with a lot of feel for dynamics, texture, and the sound of each note. Walter, who mixed and mastered this album (the sound engineer was Ryan Wasoba) of course has a brain different from the rest of us, one that is able to individually hear each of the hundreds and thousands of notes that the owner of that brain played on the album, find each one its ideal position and then allow it to be heard in the best possible way. Bring me Schnapps, Fame & Love, but especially The Shit of four thousand years, which closes the album, are Weasel Walter at the peak of his power, but please don’t ignore the other two soaring on a spiralling trajectory up a hurricane of free jazz that moves at an IMPOSSIBLE speed and ends in an extended Super Saiyan detonation that no one else on Earth will give you. Listen!!!!!!!!!

https://jamesmckain.bandcamp.com/album/seeing-the-way-the-mole-tunnels