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.

ENGLISH SPEAKING READERS KINDLY SCROLL A BIT DOWN FOR THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE VERSION OF THE REVIEW THAT IS LIKELY TO MAKE YOU STAB YOUR EYES OUT IN SATANIC EXXXSTASY

Danas slušamo električnu muziku, gitare, bubnjeve, pojačala, škripu i večeramo u paklu. Kao i svaka osoba od časti i ukusa. Toadal Package: Toadal Package je drugi album benda  Toadal Package i četvrto izdanje izdavača JPN, a koji je samo jedan čovek. Koji, naravno i svira u  Toadal Package. Ali KAKO svira, sestre moje i braćo, usraćete se. U pozitivnom smislu.

Perceptivniji čitalac će već na osnovu inicijala naslutiti da je taj čovek od čije je svirke sevap usrati se niko drugi do James Paul Nadien, bubnjar i perkusionista koji u ovom momentu živi i radi u Bruklinu i bio je tokom poslednjih nekoliko godina umešan u mnogo zanimljivih muzičkih projekata. O Jamesu sam već pisao, par puta, govoreći o njegovim saradnjama sa Jamesom McKainom, jednim od najurnebesnijih savremenih tenor saksofonista i ekspanzivnim kontrabasistom i avangardistom Calebom Duvalom. Nadien je školovan, klasičan perkusionista koji je završio konzervatorijum Nova Engleska i svira i klavir pored bubnjeva, sa istorijom saradnje sa veoma uglednim imenima kao što su Joe Morris, Anthony Coleman, Stephen Gauci, te legendarni njujorški bubnjar William Hooker. Nadien sa Duvalom ima i interesantan električni kvartet, Stalwart u kome sa još dvojicom muzičara rade kompleksne, bučne, amplifikovane improvizacije. Imajte to na umu ako vam se dopadne Toadal Package, jer koliko god da je Toadal Package, jelte, total package, možda vam neće biti dosta.

Nadien je, dakle muzičar nemirna duha, sa mnogo interesovanja da improvizuje u različitim kontekstima, i ljubitelji hermetične, hardcore free improv avangarde treba da poslušaju njegov solo album single surface sounds and so silently sails, napraljen od piskavih i škripavih zvukova stiropora, gumenih dečijih igračaka i drugih predmeta, ukljućujući Jamesova usta. Nekom će ovo zvučati dementno i „nemuzički“, drugima će se pogled ozariti i fraza „bruklinski Pierre Henry“ će im se sama popeti uz larinks, kroz usnu duplju i do usana, slobodna da pravi štetu u spoljnjem svetu pre nego što iko stigne da pomisli da li TREBA da bude izgovorena. AL SAD JE KASNO.

Toadal Package je nastao kako ovakvi bendovi često nastaju, kroz neobaveznu džem-sesiju troje muzičara koji se svi ovako ili onako znaju, a koji su onda, 2020. godine zasvirali zajedno, videli da im se to dopada i, voila, odjednom je Toadal Package postao bend koji svira turneje i snima albume. OK, ne baš ODJEDNOM, za rađanje benda vezana je i jedna bolna priča.

James i basistkinja Brenna Rey se poznaju iz škole a Brenna je gitaristu po imenu Cosmo Gallaro upoznala 2018. godine, na studijama na Institutu za tehnologiju Stevens. Gallaro je, inače, ne samo talentovan muzičar – pored gitare on svira i klavir i bas-gitaru – već i talentovan naučnik, u ovom trenutku doktorand na Prinstonu, fizičar koji se bavi plazmom. Sad vi mislite „postoji li uopšte način da ovaj čovek bude JOŠ VIŠE cool“, pa vredi da se kaže da Gallaro pored svirki sa Jamesom McKainom ima upisane saradnje sa Joeyjem Sullivanom ali ne TIM Joeyjem Sullivanom već Joeyjem Sullivanom koji svira bubnjeve u Bark Culture i bučnom country-ansamblu Florry, a onda i sa Steviejem Van Zandtom. Da, TIM Steviejem Van Zandtom.

Brenna je sa svoje strane svirala sa nekim kul likovima kao što su Kevin Shea, Sandy Ewen, James McKain, Danny Kamins, bila članica benda Slipstream Time Travel uglednog njujorškog bubnjara Marca Edwardsa i trenutno svira bas gitaru i u bendu PAK koji predvodi takođe njujorška legenda, Ron Anderson. Brenna svira i gitaru i na Bandcampu možete čuti njen minialbum eksperimentalne muzike Landed, izašao prošlog Decembra, snimljen uživo, sa devetnaest minuta preparirane električne gitare i pravovernih analognih efekata.

Toadal Package su, pak, manje apstraktna grupa i ovo je mnogo više klasičan „power trio“ sastav koji spaja slobodnu improvizaciji i free jazz sa bučnim, električnim prog rock i no wave zvukom. Prvi album benda, Final Entrance, izašao 2023. godine bio je saradnja sa kultnim saksofonistom David Tamurom koji je preminuo svega dva meseca nakon što je ovaj studijski snimak urađen. Nadien kaže da je Tamurina želja na samrti bila da se ova sesija publikuje i to je onda Jamesa podstaklo da utemelji JPN, a zatim i Toadal Package da odradi svoju prvu turneju.

Novi, drugi album trija je, ako ćemo da ga opišemo samo jednom rečju, totalni urnebes. OK, to jesu dve reči, uhvatili ste me u laži, ali taj moj dovitljivi semantički trik i sugeriše maksimalističku prirodu ove muzike. Cosmo, James i Brenna na ovom albumu zvuče kao čopor hromiranih rok mašina povezanih na red i instruiranih da sviraju free jazz ali tako da slušalac nakon završetka albuma ima snage samo da pridigne ruku sa patosa, ponovo pritisne „play“ i stisne zube jer MNOGO DOBRO boli kad vas u lice udari oluja usijanih šrafova, pokidanih žica, polomljene armature. Znate one scene u Tetsuo: The Iron Man gde komadi metalnog otpada počinju da se kreću sami od sebe, spajaju se i tvore strašne, žive skulpture animiranog mašinskog đubreta? E, pa, Toadal Package je ceo ta jedna scena podeljena u pet činova.

Toadal Package su prvu pesmu na albumu nazvali Yes, You Are Alive i mada možemo nagađati da se njome obraćaju senseiju Tamuri koji sluša odozgo i smeška se, jednako je fer pretpostaviti da gledaju i prema slušaocu koji će zaista svakom ćelijom svog organizma osetiti kao da se odjednom našao u blizini supernove i jedini način da preživi TAJ susret je da po ubrzanom postupku evoluira u Galaktusa. Na Toadal Package ne samo da nismo više u Kanzasu, drugarice moje, nismo više ni u trodimenzionalnom prostoru.

U power trio bendovima se često može čuti koji je muzičar „glavni“, bez obzira koliko su ostali dobri. U Motorheadu je to bio Lemmy, u Primusu Les Claypool, u Victims Family Ralph Spight, u Zeni Geva je to KK Null itd. Ali onda imate i bendove kao što su, recimo, Boris ili, evo, Cream, gde su svi glavni. Toadal Package spada u ovu drugu kategoriju, nudeći anarhični free-improv izmešan sa progresivnim rokom u kome sve troje muzičara sve vreme jedni druge pretiču, jedni drugima zadaju domaće zadatke i izazove, zvučeći stalno kao potpuno organska, potpuno prirodna celina. Samo sa mnogo neprirodnih izraštaja i oštrih uglova.

Zvuk je sirov, Cosmo i Brenna koriste brdo pedala i njihovi instrumenti cijuču, reže i savijaju se onako kako euklidovska geometrija nije predvidela da se to dešava u ovom univerzumu. Njihova pojačala prave bolesne količine buke čak i dok ne sviraju jer znate da je ovo muzika u kojoj struja radi i dok ljudi ne rade. Cosmo je svuda oko slušaoca, sa stereofonijom koja dezorijentiše i šalje mozak u neistražene predele psihodelije, panike i provoda kakav nećete dobiti od nekakvog „običnog“ free jazz komboa, a Brennin bas žvaće, gazi i guta sve pred sobom. Jamesovi bubnjevi su glasni, sa činelama koje miksetu drže u crvenom sve vreme čim on zasvira malo jače i ovo NIJE free improv u kome se muzičari gledaju i razmišljaju o svakom sledećem tonu kao da im ga naplaćuju po premijum tarifi, puštajući tišine da govore glasno koliko i same note.

I, striktno gledano, ovo i nije free improv, ili bar ne sve vreme. Od pet kompozicija na albumu četiri potpisuju članovi Toadal Package i, partkularno na početku albuma, one imaju i prebrojive ritmove i harmonske progresije koje biste čuli i u „normalnoj“ muzici. Yes, You Are Alive je, tako, brutalan komad free-rock gaženja kakvo biste čuli od Altered States ili Ruins ili, recimo, od Minutemen da su ovi ikada džemovali sa ranim Husker Du, ali da su svi bili ODVALJENI od spidčine.

21st Century Transsexual E-Girl počinje komplikovanim funk-jazz poliritmijama i postepeno morfuje u free-jazz vožnju. Ovde se, uprkos tome što na početku možda deluje da će Toadal Package biti SVA buka SVE vreme, čuje da je bend sastavljen od iskusnih, već sazrelih muzičara koji razumeju dinamiku, ideju narativa, evolucije kompozicije.

Supernova koju smo pominjali pre nekoliko pasusa dolazi da naplati svoje usluge sa trećim komadom, Premature Supernova i ovo je punk-jazz visokog tempa koji kreće brzo i žestoko ali sa merom virtuoznosti u svojoj poliritmičkoj strukturi i slobodnom jurnjavom kroz skale. Sa više od dvanaest minuta trajanja, ovo je najduža kompozicija na albumu ali i kompozicija sa najvećim dinamičkim rasponom i jedina kojoj se može pripisati i – privremeni – meditativni kvalitet. Naravno da se sve završava frikautom.

Big Legacy, kako se zove četvrta kompozicija, i jeste ono kako ja vidim položaj Toadal Package, benda još uvek mladih muzičara a koji su svesni na čijim ramenima stoje i čiji je zadatak da ne budu paralisani tim ogromnim nasleđem što ih gura napred. Brenna i Cosmo ovde kao da se mačuju svojim instrumentima, izvodeći strahovito brze napade, finte, blokade i pariranja i, sa Jamesovim zaslepljujuće složenom ritmičkom podlogom sve deluje pomalo kao da sve Samurai Shodown igre igrate odjednom na 150% brzine. Već negde oko trećeg minuta Cosmo i Brenna prestaju da budu individualno razaznatljivi i puštaju svoje instrumente da eruptiraju užarenu lavu sto metara uvis, ali ovo je kompozicija koja, kad najmanje očekujete ima vrlo disciplinovane momente zajedničkog sviranja fraza i ritmova, pre nego što se završi u apsolutnom haosu.

To bi čak bilo i dovoljno za ovaj album, ali trio ga završava osmominutnom verzijom pesme Illusions Arthura Blythea i mada je teško Blytheu odsvirati posvetu kada u postavi nemate saksofon, treba se setiti i koliko bi bilo teško – sve i da saksofon imate – postići osobeni karakter agresivne a sofisticirane svirke koji je krasio Blytheov stil a da stvari ne deluju kao puki pastiš. Toadal Package – koji su inače ime dobili na osnovu slike Joeya Allgooda što ju je Cosmo našao na jednom sajmu a koju, tu sliku možete videti na Bandcamp stranici benda i u ovom samom prikazu – se onda đavolski trude da se u Illusions čuju ONI, onako kako bi Blythe voleo da čuje svoje naslednike, nastavljače i duhovne potomke, a ne ON, i to ispada FANTASTIČNO. Slušajte Toadal Package, bolju, vitalniju i naprosto ZABAVNIJU ponudu električne improvizacije ovog leta nećete dobiti:

https://toadalpackage.bandcamp.com/album/toadal-package-2

AND NOW FOR THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION FROM JIGOKU ITSELF

Today we listen to electric music, guitars, drums, amplifiers, screeching and also we dine in hell. Just like any other person graced with honour and taste would be doing in our place. Toadal Package: Toadal Package is the second album by the band Toadal Package and the fourth release on JPN Records, a show run by one person. And that person, naturally, plays in Toadal Package. But the WAY they play, my sisters and brothers, is likely going to make you shit yourself. In a toadally positive sense.

A more perceptive reader has already guessed – based on the initials used for the name of the label – that the man whose playing produces pleasurable albeit involuntary incidents of righteous defecation is none other than James Paul Nadien, a drummer and a percussionist who currently lives and works in Brooklyn and has been involved in many interesting musical projects over the last couple of years. I’ve written about James before, a couple of times, talking about his collaborations with James McKain, one of the most exciting contemporary tenor saxophonists, and the expansive double bassist and avant-garde, er, guardist, Caleb Duval. Nadien is a trained, classical percussionist who graduated from the New England Conservatory and plays the piano in addition to the drums, with a history of collaboration with very distinguished names such as Joe Morris, Anthony Coleman, Stephen Gauci, and the legendary New York drummer William Hooker. Nadien and Duval also have an interesting electric quartet, Stalwart, in which they perform complex, noisy, amplified improvisations with two other musicians. Keep that in mind if you like the Toadal Package, because as much as the Toadal Package is, well, the total package, you might be hungry for more after you’re done.

Nadien is a musician burdened with a gloriously restless spirit, with a lot of interest in improvising in different contexts, so fans of hermetic, hardcore free improv avant-garde should listen to his solo album single surface sounds and so silently sails, filled to the gills with squealing and screeching sounds of styrofoam, rubber toys and other objects, including James’s mouth. To some, this will sound demented and “unmusical”, to others, well, their eyes will go wide and the phrase “Brooklyn’s own Pierre Henry” will climb up their larynx, wrestle through their mouth and surface on their lips, free to do damage in the outside world before anyone has time to think if it SHOULD be uttered. TOO LATE NOW!!!!!

Toadal Package was created as bands like this often are, through an informal jam session of three musicians who all knew each other in one way or another, and so, in 2020, they played together, saw that they liked it and, voila, suddenly Toadal Package became a band that plays tours and records albums. OK, it was not actually that easy, there is also a painful story connected to the birth of the band.

James and bassist Brenna Rey know each other from school, and Brenna met a guitarist named Cosmo Gallaro in 2018, while studying at the Stevens Institute of Technology. By the way, Gallaro is not only a talented musician – in addition to the guitar, he also plays the piano and bass guitar – but also a talented scientist, currently a PhD student at Princeton, a plasma physicist no less. Now you’re thinking “is there any way to make this man sound EVEN COOLER”, so it’s worth saying that in addition to playing with James McKain, Gallaro has done collaborations with Joey Sullivan, but not THAT Joey Sullivan, this is Joey Sullivan who plays drums in Bark Culture and the noisy country-ensemble Florry, and also with Stevie Van Zandt. Yes, THAT Stevie Van Zandt.

For her part, Brenna has played with some cool cats such as Kevin Shea, Sandy Ewen, James McKain, Danny Kamins, she was a member of the band Slipstream Time Travel of the distinguished New York drummer Marc Edwards and currently plays bass guitar in PAK, a band led by another New York legend, Ron Anderson. Brenna also plays guitar and on Bandcamp you can hear her experimental mini-album Landed, released last December, recorded live, with nineteen minutes of prepared electric guitar and glorious analogue effects.

Toadal Package, on the other hand, are a less abstract group and this is a much more classic “power trio” combo that combines free improvisation and free jazz with noisy, electric prog rock and no wave chaos. The band’s first album, Final Entrance, released in 2023, was a collaboration with the iconic saxophonist David Tamura, who passed away just two months after that studio recording was made. Nadien says that it was Tamura’s dying wish that this session be published and that then prompted James to found JPN and Toadal Package to do their first tour.

The new, second album of the trio is, to describe it in just one word, absolute riot. OK, that’s two words, you got me, but we’re using small semantic tricks here to communicate the maximalist nature of this music. On this album, Cosmo, James and Brenna sound like a pack of burning chrome rock machines connected in a row and instructed to play free jazz, but so that after the end of the album, the listener only has so much leftover strength to raise their hand from the floor, press “play” again and grit their teeth because it hurts SO GOOD when a storm of white hot metal bolts, broken wires, and pieces of rusted construction frames slams you right in your fucking face. You know those scenes in Tetsuo: The Iron Man where pieces of scrap metal start moving on their own, joining together to form terrifying, living sculptures of animated mechanical junk? Well, Toadal Package is that scene all the time, divided into five acts.

Toadal Package entitled the first song on the album Yes, You Are Alive and although we can guess that they are addressing sensei Tamura who is listening from above and smiling, it is equally fair to assume that they are also looking at the listener who will, with every cell of their body feel as if they were standing next to an unannounced supernova and the only way to survive THAT encounter is to speedrun their evolution into Galactus. With Toadal Package, not only are we no longer in Kansas, my friends, we are no longer in three-dimensional space.

With power trio bands, you can often hear which musician is the “boss”, no matter how good the others are. In Motorhead it was Lemmy, in Primus it’s Les Claypool, in Victims Family it’s Ralph Spight, in Zeni Geva it’s KK Null, etc. But then you also have bands like, for example, Boris or, well, Cream, where everyone is equally in charge. Toadal Package fits into the latter category, offering anarchic free-improv mixed with progressive rock with all three musicians constantly outdoing each other, giving each other lots of homework and daring challenges, always sounding like a completely organic, completely natural unit. Only with many unnatural tendrils whipping from the surface and sharp corners to throw you off.

The sound is raw, Cosmo and Brenna use a fuckton of pedals and their instruments hiss, cut and bend in a way that Euclidean geometry wasn’t designed for. Their amps make sick amounts of noise even when they’re not playing because you know this is music where the electricity works even when people don’t. Cosmo is all up in your face and everywhere around you, his stereophony disorienting your brain and teleporting it into alien domains of paranoia, panic and pleasure that you won’t get from a “regular” free jazz combo, while Brenna’s bass chews, stomps and swallows everything in its path. James’ drums are loud, with cymbals that keep the mixing desk firmly in the red as soon as he plays a tiny bit louder and, let me tell you, this is NOT free improv where the musicians look at each other and think long and hard about each subsequent note, letting the silences speak as loudly as the notes themselves.

And, strictly speaking, this is not free improv, or at least not all the time. Of the five compositions on the album, four are written by Toadal Package members and, particularly at the beginning of the album, they have both countable rhythms and harmonic progressions that you would hear in “normal” music. Yes, You Are Alive is, then, a brutal piece of free-rock stomping that you’d hear from Altered States or Ruins or, say, the Minutemen if they’d ever jammed with early Husker Du, but everyone in the room being out of their head on speed.

21st Century Transsexual E-Girl starts off with complicated funk-jazz polyrhythmia and gradually morphs into a speedy free-jazz ride. Here, despite the fact that at the beginning it may seem that Toadal Package will be ALL noise ALL the time, one hears that this is a band is of experienced, already matured musicians who understand the dynamics, the idea of the narrative, the evolution of the composition.

The Supernova we mentioned a few paragraphs ago rolls in like a motherfucker with the third piece, Premature Supernova and this is a high-tempo punk-jazz that moves fast and hard but with a measure of virtuosity in its polyrhythmic structure and daring fret runs. With running time exceeding twelve minutes, this is the longest composition on the album, but also the composition with the greatest dynamic range and the only one that can be said to have a somewhat – how ever temporary – meditative quality. Of course it all ends with a freakout.

Big Legacy, as the fourth composition is called, is how I see the position of Toadal Package, a band of still young musicians who are aware of the shoulders they stand on and whose task is not to be paralyzed by that gigantic legacy that keeps pushing them forward. Here Brenna and Cosmo sound as if they were sparring with their instruments, performing lightning fast attacks, tricks, blocks and parries and, with James’ dazzlingly complex rhythmic foundation, it all feels a bit like playing all the Samurai Shodown games at once and at 150% speed. Somewhere around the third minute, Cosmo and Brenna stop being individually discernible and let their instruments belch a hot lava column a hundred metres tall, but this is a composition that, when you least expect it, has refined phrases and recognisable rhythms, before it, of course, ends in absolute chaos.

That would even be more than enough for this album, but the trio ends it with an eight-minute version of Illusions by Arthur Blythe and although it is difficult to pay a tribute to Blythe when you don’t have a saxophone in the line-up, you should also remember how difficult it would be – even if you did have a saxophone – to achieve the distinctive aggressive and sophisticated character that adorned Blythe’s style without collapsing into a mere pastiche. Toadal Package – who by the way got their name based on a Joey Allgood painting that Cosmo had run into at a fair and which you can see on the band’s Bandcamp page and also in this very review – then try their hardest to make us hear THEM in Illusions, the way Blythe would like us to hear his heirs, successors and spiritual descendants, rather than just offer us a watered down version of HIM, and that turns out FANTASTIC. Listen to the Toadal Package, you won’t get a better, more vital and simply MORE FUN offering of electric improvisation this summer:

https://toadalpackage.bandcamp.com/album/toadal-package-2