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 WILL MAKE YOU LAUGH, CRY AND PERHAPS EVEN WET YOURSELVES BECAUSE YOU KNOW YOU NEED THIS EMOTION ALL THE WAY AND GOOGLE TRANSLATE WILL NEVER BE GOOD ENOUGH BABY

Kada je najteže, niotkuda se pojavi James Paul Nadien, (niotkuda = direktno iz Bruklina) da pita da li me zanima da čujem njegov novi album a koji je snimio sa Alexom Wardom u Londonu prošlog Avgusta. Da li me zanima? To je kao da pitate čoveka što puzi kroz Saharu poslednjih šest meseci da li bi da popije čašu vode. Dobro, nije da poslednjih šest meseci nisam slušao mnogo dobrih free improv i free jazz albuma, ali ja sam se za ovih par godina opasno navukao na Nadienov urnebesni stil svirke i obećanje njegovog susreta sa Wardom je kao da ste siromašnom duvaču lepka ispred nosa mahnuli ukusno, artistički napravljenim spidbolom povećih domenzija. Ni jedna cena, ako se razumemo, u tom trenutku ne deluje previsoko.

Alex Ward / James Paul Nadien: Voracity je svakako korektno naslovljen album. „Proždrljivost“ već kao reč na srpskom ima tu visceralnu, sočnu dimenziju da vam se čini kako žvaćete polomljene slogove dok je izgovarate a sa svih strana pršte sokovi i ispadaju komadići i muzika koju su ova dva čoveka privolela na traku u punoj meri prenosi ovaj osećaj u zvučnu ravan. Voracity je obilna, skoro preobilna ploča dugačkih, spektakularnih improvizacija. U naporu da mi razgori glad do nekontrolisanih granica, James je u mejlu naveo: kako je ovo „Five insane tracks of really detailed improvisations“, ali ovaj opis dobacuje do možda 40% onoga što ćete čuti na Voracity. Nakon ove granice počinjete da vidite zmajeve a nakon TOGA čućete i momente gotovo čistog džeza gde klarinetista i bubnjar, dok oko njih lete komadići pulverizovanog građevinskog materijala i pocepane armature, svinguju kao da su u nekom kafeu na Menhetnu i sviraju poslednju stvar pre nego što će otići na pauzu da sabiju po jedno hladno pivo i smotaju marokanski džok.

O Jamesu Paulu Nadienu sam pisao mnogo puta, poslednji put baš letos, peneći od oduševljenja na drugi album njegovog trija Toadal Package. Ovo je bila ploča power-trio improvizacija sa količinom distorzije od koje bi i Chaos UK malo trepnuli a volumenom odvrnutim tako da bi vam i Extreme Noise Terror iz druge sobe doviknuli da malo smanjite to, jebote, ne može da se misli. Generacija Z, ha? Ispostavlja se da su gluvlji nego mi koji četrdeset godina sluh bacamo na samo najteža iskušenja samo najfinijim izborom najglasnije buke.

Tako da o Jamesu ne moram da ponovo detaljišem, da objašnjavam koje je škole završio i sa kime je sve svirao. Dovoljno je da ovom prilikom kažem da momak iz Bruklina sa ovim albumom prilazi opasno visoko samom vrhu moje liste savremenih free jazz bubnjara, toliko blizu zapravo da može da namiriše gel za kosu koji koristi Weasel Walter, a sigurno ga koristi otkada je pre više od dvadeset godina rešio da izda hardkor i napusti vetroviti Čikago za račun kalifornijske klime i bogate palete sladoleda.

Radije, da kažemo da je Alex Ward, Jamesov sparing partner na ovom albumu, neko za koga ste verovatno čuli ali možda niste bili svesni da je u pitanju neka vrsta free improv wunderkinda. Ward je Britanac, rođen 1974. godine u Linkolnširu, danas baziran u Londonu i većina ljudi ga zna pre svega kao muzičara koji je sarađivao sa Thurstonom Mooreom u projektima kao što su Galaxies i New Noise Guitar Explorations. No, mi nismo većina ljudi i Alex Ward je pre svega klarinetista i njegov rad na free improv sceni seže još u  osamdesete godine prošlog veka kada je kao dvanaestogodišnjak 1986. godine susreo Dereka Baileyja. Patrijarh britanske slobodne improvizacije je u Wardu prepoznao vanserijski talenat i počeo da ga uključuje u sesije koje je radio sa svojim projektom Company, rotirajućom grupom muzičara što inače možda ne bi imali prilike da rade jedni sa drugima. Tako se klinac odjednom zatekao usred formacije kroz koju su prolazili i takvi likovi kao što su Evan Parker, Anthony Braxton, Tristan Honsinger, Misha Mengelberg, Lol Coxhill, Fred Frith, Steve Beresford, Steve Lacy, Lee Konitz, Jamie Muir, Johnny Dyani, Wadada Leo Smith, Han Bennink, Eugene Chadbourne, Henry Kaiser, John Zorn, Buckethead…

Ward je dalje nastavio da radi u polju slobodne improvizacije i eksperimentalne muzike, sarađujući sa raznim muzičarima kao što su Steve Noble, Dominic Lash, Kay Grant, Joe Morris, Weasel Walter (notabilno i kao jedan od članova The Flying Luttenbachers a gde je i James Paul Nadien odradio svoje smene), a predvodeći i neke svoje projekte. Nabrojaću bendove u kojima on svira ili ih predvodi a koje treba da pronađete i čujete, kao što su Dead Days Beyond Help, (This is Not) This Heat (sa Bullenom i Haywardom), Alex Ward Quartet (Steve Noble na bubnjevima) i svakako Deadly Orgone Radiation, razorni noiseprov trio sa Weaselom Walterom na bubnjevima i Jamesom Sedwardsom na gitari.

No sve ovo jedva da će vas lubricirati da izdržite intenzitet sa kojim Voracity istrčava na teren i umesto da šutne loptu sa centra, kreće direktno kopačkom u glavu. Ovde se igra bez faula, na kontakt, žestoko i do koske.

Ward je prevashodno klarinetista, da, ali na dve kompozicije na ovom albumu on svira gitaru i, OH JEBOTE, koliko on dobro svira tu gitaru. Deceitful Mechanics koja album otvara stiže od nula do 666 pre nego što ste stigli da trepnete i ovde Nadienov energični, senzitivni ali agresivni stil svirke, sa mnogo udaraca i čestim promenama smera, tempa i boje nalazi opasnog sparing partnera u Wardu.

Ward je, ispostavlja, se, VEOMA jak gitarista, pogotovo što su, u skladu sa tim da je prve profesionalne momente imao svirajući sa Derekom Baileyjem, njegova tehnika i zvuk mnogo više old school od onoga što ste, recimo, slušali na Toadal Package. Tamo su ljudi koristili mnogo efekata i svoje gitare provlačili kroz šumu pedala i kablova. Ovde, pak, a u skladu sa baileyjevskom ugodno purističkom estetikom, Ward uglavnom pronalazi brisani prostor između električne gitare i njenog pojačala, bez mnogo dodatnih efekata, koristeći pre svega „nativne“ efekte i izvanrednu tehniku da od nečeg poznatog napravi nešto vanzemaljsko. Ovde nema stereo-pedala, digitalnih kompresora, flendžera, gejtovanja, njegova gitara je distorzirana sirovo i „prirodno“ a zvuk koji on proizvodi se modifikuje pre svega rukama, dakle, spretnim denflovanjem i oslobađanjem žica, perfektnom kontrolom volumena pomoću potenciometra na samoj gitari.

Wardova svirka je svakako agresivnija od onog što bi bio neki prosek za Dereka Baileyja (mada, poslušajte još jednom šta je pokojni titan uradio Patu Methenyju na Sign of the Four), i u njoj ima i propisnih „metal“ ili noisecore elemenata. No, najimpresivnije je to sa koliko se autoriteta dvojica muzičara iz dve različite generacije, sa dva različita kontinenta, a koja su ovom prilikom prvi put svirala zajedno, iz muzike koja u prvih trideset sekundi deluje kao ejakulatorni krešendo za koji ne možete da verujete da je potrajao i ovoliko (i da li je to uopšte ZDRAVO), izvlače OGROMNU kilometražu. Niko ne bi trebalo da ume da svira ovoliko agresivno ovoliko dugo a da je to pritom ovoliko inventivno sve vreme. Deceitful Mechanics traje skoro petnaest minuta i ide skoro sve vreme uzlaznom putanjom, kao da vam na svakih dvadeset sekundi kotrljajućim australijskim naglaskom govori „Thats’ not a crescendo. THAT’S a crescendo“. Kada pri kraju Ward ubaci u najvišu mogući brzinu imate utisak da mu se ruka do lakta uplela u žice a Nadien na ovo odgovara najtežim oružjem iz bubnjarskog arsenala ispaljujući rafale blastbitova kao da su devedesete godine prošlog veka a on svira u grindcore bendu koji sprema svoje prvo izdanje za Hydrahead.

Rebirthed on a Whim* koja kreće posle ovog pokolja je, nominalno, nežnija jer ovde Ward prelazi na klarinet pa je čisto u pogledu boje i teksture u pitanju nešto džezerskiji komad. Ali ni intenzitet ni inventivnost ne opadaju. Nadien i Ward jedan drugog očigledno čuju jako dobro ali i imaju telepatsko, instant-razumevanje onog što ovaj drugi radi pa je ova kompozicija ponovo jedan apsolutni pljusak nota i ritmova. Nadienovi bubnjevi su naštimovani visoko i denflovani tako da njegova hiperkinetička svirka zvuči kao armija mrava koja trči preko bojnog polja a klarinet je onda kao bombarderska formacija bumbara koji ga nadleću i spuštaju se nadole u vrtoglavim piruetama.

*WTF. Kada je „rebirthed“ postala reč? Zašto me Niko nije obavestio? Da ne uleti lingvistička policija i polupa nas sve zajedno ovde?

Weasel Walter u svom tekstu koji stiže uz album ukazuje da muzičari na ovom albumu, pored agresivne, razuzdane svirke imaju i momente ranjivosti, ali ne znam čak i je li to prava reč. U Rebirthed on a Whim čujemo Warda kako svira razdragane džezerske solaže a Nadien na par mesta zaista pređe u sving i ovo je više jedna relaksirana, sve-je-dopušteno-ako-zvuči-dobro improvizacija ljudi koji imaju skoro totalno poznavanje popularne i avangardne muzike, nego nekakvo programsko otvaranje grudnog koša pred publikom da ona dotakne živo, kucajuće srce.

No, hitam da dodam, Voracity je POTPUNO iskrena, potpuno neposredna ploča, bez glume i prolaska kroz obavezne sastave, improvizovana na vrhovima prstiju i sa svim rizicima koje uobičajeno podrazumevamo za artiste na trapezu. Naravno, Ward i Nadien ne rizikuju živote u svojoj muzici ali siguran sam da osećaju isti adrenalinski pljusak u sebi dok protrčavaju kroz skale i ritmove i trude se da ne poginu ni pri jednoj harmonskoj promeni ili ulasku u novi tempo. Voltvitmenovska Contains Multitudes je onda srazmerno kraći ali ne zaista „tiši“ komad, možda najbliži „pravom“ džezu od celog materijala. Ward ovde na klarinetu radi mnogo i snažno a Nadien svira više ritmova u isto vreme.

Za Skiffle 2 Nadien zvuči distorzirano i agresivno već u prvih par taktova a Ward je opet na gitari. I ovo je nešto kraći komad od onog koji je album otvorio ali buka koju muzičari dižu je STRAHOVITA. Ipak, ni ovde se zvuk ne otima izvođačima i osećaj vratolomnog kretanja unapred, u istom smeru, sa istim ciljem nikada ne nestaje.

Poslednja, Eels With Wings je povratak u duže forme i mada je u proseku apstraktnija i komparativno kontemplativnija nego najveći deo albuma do tog momenta, i ovde ćemo čuti mnogo vratolomnih momenata promena smera i volumena. Ward je strašan klarinetista, pa i ovde, kao i u nekim prethodnim momentima čujemo kako jezik koristi da notama da poseban, dodatni vibrato a Nadien u ovoj kompoziciji podseća da nije samo brkato, humanoidno pakovanje dinamita i nudi ljupke teksture i dobar sving.

Voracity je album slobodnih improvizacija koje, uprkos agresivnoj svirci i abrazivnom zvuku zapravo sve vreme zvuče uzbudljivo, zanimljivo, pa i primamljivo, čak i za ljude koji inače ne slušaju ovakvu muziku. Da iskoristim najprirodnije moguće poređenje, dakle, video igre: Voracity je kao da igrate igru Bayonetta 2 i u bosfajtovima u kojima nemate pojma koje su šeme napada vaših protivnika sebe hvatate kako intuitivno reagujete na svaki od njih pravilnim izmicanjima, pravovremenim skokovima i vešto odmerenim komboima. Nekako, iako se borite, vi i protivnik istovremeno izvodite vrtoglavo kompleksni ples u kome se umesto rastrzanosti i strave vide sklad i lepota. Voracity je BAŠ TAKVO iskustvo.

Slušajte ovaj album – izašao za Jamesovu etiketu JPN – a onda i bombardujte Jamesa i Alexa porukama gde ćete zahtevati da isteraju ovaj šou na proverbijalni drum i tokom te turneje obiđu i nas. Naprosto, ovo je suviše dobro da bi se završilo na jednom jedinom albumu:

https://wardnadienduo.bandcamp.com/album/voracity

https://alexward.bandcamp.com/album/voracity

AND NOW FOR THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION THAT IS A GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING BUT ALSO WILL STAB YOU IN THE BACK AS SOON AS YOU TRY TO LEAVE

As I was just about to hit rock bottom (that somebody pissed all over to boot), James Paul Nadien appeared out of nowhere (straight from Brooklyn WHICH IS THE SAME THING) to ask would I be interested in hearing his new album, recorded with Alex Ward in London last August. Interested? It’s like asking a man who’s been crawling through the Sahara for the past six months if he’d like a glass of water. Now, it’s not like I haven’t consumed TONS of good free improv and free jazz in the last six months, but I’ve become dangerously addicted to Nadien’s outrageous style of playing in the last couple of years, and the promise of his meeting with Ward was like waving a tastefully, artistically made king size speedball in front of a poor glue sniffer’s nose. No price, if you catch my drift, seems too high at a moment like that.

Alex Ward / James Paul Nadien: Voracity is certainly a correctly titled album. Say “proždrljivost” in Serbian and you’ll feel that visceral, juicy dimension of chewing through the broken syllables, as juices and little pieces are bursting out from all sides, and the music that these two men made fully conveys this feeling on a sonic plane. Voracity is an abundant, almost too abundant record of long, spectacular improvisations. In an effort to supercharge my hunger, James said in his email: “Five insane tracks of really detailed improvisations”, but this description is sufficient for maybe 40% of what you’ll hear on Voracity. After you reach this limit you will start to see dragons and after THAT you will hear moments of almost pure jazz where the clarinetist and the drummer, pirouetting between pieces of pulverized construction material and torn rebar that flies around them, swing as if they were in some Manhattan cafe and are about to play the last song before breaking to crush a cold beer or two and roll a Moroccan spliff.

I’ve written about James Paul Nadien many times, most recently this summer, gushing over the second album of his trio Toadal Package. This was a record of power-trio improvisations with the amount of distortion that would make even Chaos UK blink, and the volume turned up so high that Extreme Noise Terror would shout at you from the other room to turn it down a bit, motherfucker, they can’t hear their own thoughts over this racket. Generation Z, huh? It turns out that they are deafer than we are.  And we spent forty years ruining our hearing with only the finest selection of the loudest noise.

So I don’t have to go into detail about James again, to explain which schools he graduated from and with whom he’s played. Suffice it to say on this occasion that, with this album, the lad from Brooklyn rockets dangerously high on my list of favourite contemporary free jazz drummers, so high in fact that he can smell the hair gel used by Weasel Walter, and he MUST be using it since more than twenty years ago he decided to betray hardcore and leave The Windy City for the Californian climate and their extravagant selection of ice cream flavours.

Rather, let’s talk abuout Alex Ward, James’ sparring partner on this album. Alex is someone you’ve probably heard of but may not have realized he is some sort of free improv wunderkind. Ward is British, born in 1974 in Lincolnshire, today based in London and most people know him primarily as a musician who collaborated with Thurston Moore in projects such as Galaxies and New Noise Guitar Explorations. But we are not most people and Alex Ward is first and foremost a clarinetist and his work on the free improv scene dates back to the 1980s, when he met Derek Bailey as a twelve-year-old in 1986. The patriarch of British free improv recognized Ward’s outrageous talent and began including him in sessions he did with his Company, a rotating group of musicians who might not otherwise have had the opportunity to work with each other. So the kid suddenly found himself in the middle of a squad that hosted such characters as Evan Parker, Anthony Braxton, Tristan Honsinger, Misha Mengelberg, Lol Coxhill, Fred Frith, Steve Beresford, Steve Lacy, Lee Konitz, Jamie Muir, Johnny Dyani, Wadada Leo Smith, Han Bennink, Eugene Chadbourne, Henry Kaiser, John Zorn, Buckethead…

Ward continued to work in the field of free improvisation and experimental music, collaborating with various musicians such as Steve Noble, Dominic Lash, Kay Grant, Joe Morris, Weasel Walter (notably as one of the members of The Flying Luttenbachers, with James Paul Nadien also doing some work there), and leading some of his own projects. I’ll list the bands he plays in or leads that I think you should hunt down and give a good listen to: Dead Days Beyond Help, (This is Not) This Heat (with Bullen and Hayward), Alex Ward Quartet (Steve Noble on drums) and of course Deadly Orgone Radiation, a devastating noiseprov trio with Weasel Walter on drums and James Sedwards on guitar.

But all this will barely lubricate you for the intensity with which Voracity runs out onto the field and instead of kicking the ball from the center, does a devastating flying kick directly to your forehead. These lads, you see, play the game dirty: no fouls, lots of contact, fiercely and to the bone.

Ward is primarily a clarinetist, yes, but on two tracks on this album he plays guitar and, OH SHIT, does he play that bleeding guitar! Deceitful Mechanics, which opens the album, goes from zero to 666 before you can blink, and here Nadien’s energetic, sensitive but aggressive playing style, with many individual strokers and frequent changes of direction, tempo and color finds a dangerous sparring partner in Ward.

Ward, it turns out, is a fierce guitarist, especially since, in line with the fact that he had his first professional experiences playing with Derek Bailey, his technique and tone are much more old school than what you heard on, say, the Toadal Package album. There, people used a lot of effects and ran their guitars through a veritable maze of pedals and cables. Here, however, and in keeping with Bailey’s pleasantly purist aesthetic, Ward mostly explores the unstable space between the electric guitar and its amp, with few additional effects, using primarily “native” effects and extraordinary technique to transmogrify something familiar into something alien. Here there are no stereo-pedals, digital compressors, flangers, digital gates, his guitar is distorted in a raw and “natural” way, and the sound he produces is modified primarily with his hands, by deftly muting and releasing the strings, and through perfect volume control using the potentiometer on the guitar itself.

Ward’s playing is certainly more aggressive than what would be an average for Derek Bailey (though, listen again to what the great late titan did to Pat Metheny on Sign of the Four), and has proper “metal” or noisecore elements. But the most impressive thing is the level of authority with which the two musicians from two different generations, from two different continents, who on this occasion played together for the first time, get HUGE mileage out of music whose first thirty seconds seems like an ejaculatory crescendo that you can’t believe lasted this long (and is that shit healthy at all). No one should be able to play this aggressively for this long while being this inventive all the time. Deceitful Mechanics is almost fifteen minutes long and climbs an upward trajectory almost the entire time, as if every twenty seconds it tells you in a rolling Australian accent “That’s not a crescendo. THAT’S a crescendo.” When, somewhere during the final stretch, Ward kicks into the highest possible gear, you get the impression that his arm is entangled in the strings up to his elbow, and Nadien responds to this with the heaviest weapon in the drummer’s arsenal, firing bursts of blast beats as if it were the 90s and he’s in a grindcore band recording its first Hydrahead album.

Rebirthed on a Whim*, following up on this carnage, is, nominally, gentler because here Ward switches to the clarinet, so purely in terms of colour and texture, it is a slightly jazzier piece. But neither the intensity nor the inventiveness decreases. Nadien and Ward obviously hear each other very well, but they also have a telepathic, instant understanding of what the other one is doing, so this composition is once again an absolute hail of notes and rhythms. Nadien’s drums are tuned high and muted so that his hyperkinetic playing sounds like an army of ants running across the battlefield, and the clarinet is like a bomber formation of bumblebees flying over and descending in dizzying pirouettes.

*WTF? When did “rebirthed” become a word? Why didn’t anyone let me know? Is language police coming to lock us all up now?

In his liner notes Weasel Walter indicates that the musicians on this album, in addition to aggressive, wild playing, also have moments of vulnerability, but I don’t even know if that is the right word. In Rebirthed on a Whim, we hear Ward playing excited jazz solos and Nadien really switches to swinging in a couple of places, and this is more of a relaxed, anything-is-allowed-if-it-sounds-good improvisation by people who have almost total knowledge of popular and avant-garde music, than some sort of programmatic opening of the ribcage in front of the audience so that the audience can touch a living, beating heart within.

But, I hasten to add, Voracity is a COMPLETELY honest, completely straightforward record, bereft of cosplay and generic playing, an album improvised on the tips of these people’s toes and with all the risks that we usually ascribe to trapeze artists. Of course, Ward and Nadien don’t exactly risk their lives in their music, but I’m sure they feel the same adrenaline rushes as they race through the scales and rhythms and try not to stumble and die at harmonic changes or shifts to a new tempo. Walt-Whitman-referencing Contains Multitudes, then, is a relatively shorter but not really “quieter” piece, perhaps the closest to “real” jazz of the entire material. Ward’s clarinet gets a hard, sweaty workout here and Nadien just plays several rhythms at the same time.

For Skiffle 2, Nadien sounds distorted and aggressive already in the first few bars, and Ward is on guitar again. And this is a slightly shorter piece than the one that opened the album, but the noise the musicians make is FORMIDABLE. Nevertheless, even here, the music does not manage to get away from the performers and the feeling of breakneck movement forward, in the same direction, with the same purpose, never disappears.

The last piece, Eels With Wings, is a return to longer forms and although it is on average more abstract and comparatively more contemplative than most of the album up to that point, here too we will witness many breakneck changes in direction and volume. Ward is a great clarinetist, so here, as in some previous moments, we can hear how he uses his tongue to give notes that special additional vibrato, and Nadien reminds us that he is not just a mustachioed, humanoid dynamite pack by offering some lovely textures and a good swing.

Voracity is an album of free improvisations that, despite the aggressive playing and abrasive sound, actually sound exciting, interesting, even tempting, even for people who don’t normally listen to this kind of music. To use the most natural comparison possible, video games: Voracity is like playing Bayonetta 2, and in boss fights where you have no idea what your opponents’ attack patterns are, you find yourself reacting intuitively to each one with proper dodges, well-timed jumps, and adequate combos. Somehow, even though you are fighting, you and your opponent simultaneously perform a dizzyingly complex dance in which harmony and beauty are on display rather than dismemberment and fear. Voracity is EXACTLY THAT kind of experience.

Listen to this album – out now on James’ label JPN – and then bombard James and Alex with messages demanding that they take this show on the proverbial road and visit us during that tour. Simply, this is too good to end up on a single album:

https://wardnadienduo.bandcamp.com/album/voracity

https://alexward.bandcamp.com/album/voracity