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 ARE KINDLY REQUESTED TO SCROLL A BIT TOWARDS THE BOTTOM WHERE THEY WILL FIND THE TRANSLATION OF THIS REVIEW THE WAY SATAN WOULD DO IT IF HE WAS UNAWARE THAT MACHINE TRANSLATION IS NOW IN FACT A THING. THANK YOU.

Nema mnogo lepših načina da se uđe u Septembar od toga da vam se James McKain relaksirano javi i kaže „hej, snimili smo novi album“, kao da je to nešto što se događa svakih par dana. Ne događa se. Ako ništa drugo, moj život bi bio značajno bogatiji da u njemu ima više Jamesa McKaina. No, ovog puta u pitanju je zaista poseban događaj, ploča koju bi, da je bokser opisivali kao „razarača teške kategorije iz Bruklina“, koju bi Rocco Siffredi, da je sretne u mračnoj ulici sa malo zebnje pitao „Ko si ti?“ a ona bi odgovorila „Ja sam ti, ali jači“. Nije neodgovorno reći da je T.J. Borden, Vinny Golia, James McKain & James Paul Nadien: The Pure Products of America Go Crazy nešto najbolje što njujorški free jazz u ovom trenutku ima da ponudi svetu i samo ostaje nejasno kako su autori, koji su ovo snimili još Februara 2025. godine, uspeli da na ovom materijalu sede i publikuju ga, evo, punih devetnaest meseci kasnije, kao da svetu nije svo ovo vreme bilo potrebno lečenje! Lično, krivim Weasela Waltera!

O dva Jamesa koji čine polovinu ove ekipe za eksplozivne diverzije sam pisao već mnogo puta. McKain je jedan od najmoćnijih, najglasnijih i istovremeno najzvonkijih tenor saksofonista istočne obale u ovom trenutku naše povijesne zbiljnosti i njegovo skakutanje između gradova sa bogatim džez-tradicijama kao da je trenutno umireno i on se skrasio u Bruklinu. Tamo sarađuje sa svojim uobičajenim saborcima i saveznicima (Caleb Duval, Kevin Murray, Weasel Walter, naravno James Paul Nadien) i njegov je koncertni kalendar ove godine zdravo popunjen. Diskografska aktivnost mu je, da tako kažem, u ovoj fazi stvaralaštva, odmerena i McKain kao da se više opredelio za kvalitet nego za kvantitet, pažljivo birajući šta će se od snimljenih sesija i kada objavljivati. U tom smislu, poslednji put sam o njemu pisao prošlog leta kada su on, Damon Smith i Weasel Walter izbacili danas već legendarni album …seeing the way the mole tunnels…. Ako do sada niste slušali McKaina, to je greh, ali greh koji se lako može okajati a kada jednom vidite svetlo, želećete ga sve više.

James Paul Nadien, veličanstveni bubnjar i kompozitor baziran u Njujorku je poslednjih godinu dana više puta bio zastupljen na ovim stranicama, prvo sa urnebesnim free jazz-no Wave trijom Toadal Package a onda i na ime jednako eksplozivne kolaboracije sa Alexom Wardom. Nadienu je trenutno glavni projekat TYPO!, kvartet koji okuplja neke od najzanimljivijh njujorških muzičara u ovom trenutku da bi pravio originalnu, energičnu kombinaciju free jazza i progresivnog roka (samo bez ijednog rokenrol instrumenta u postavi; pored njegovih bubnjeva tu su violina, klavir i violončelo). Nadam se da će TYPO! uskoro nešto snimiti pa da imamo čemu da se radujemo kod kuće – fragmenti živih snimaka koji su do sada dostupni na internetu VEOMA obećavaju – a ako se zateknete u Harlemu sad u Utorak, možete ih pogledati uživo u klubu MISE-EN_PLACE.

Dobro, u TYPO! pored drugih muzičara svira i T.J. Borden odnosno Tyler J. Borden, violončelista iz, takođe, Bruklina (u koji je došao sa zapada države Njujork). Borden je diplomac Bruklinskog muzičkog konzervatorijuma i muzičar hvaljen za svoje „vrhunsko izvođenje superiorno komplikovanih modernističkih solo-kompozicija.“ Borden, naravno, radi na preseku moderne klasične muzike i improvizacije, a u kojoj se tesao radeći sa muzičarima kao što su Jack Wright, Brandon Lopez i Steve Baczkowski, ali i solo. U klasičnoj orbiti radio je sa kompozitorima kao što su Brian Ferneyhough, Ambrose Akinmusire, Catherine Lamb i legendarni Alvin Lucier a svira sa postavama specijalizovanim za savremenu kompoziciju kao što su [Switch~ Ensemble], Ghost Ensemble i Mivos Quartet. Takođe je jedan od organizatora festivala High Desert Soundings u Kaliforniji, a na njegovom bandcampu ćete naći pregršt interesantnih izdanja gde eksperimentiše sam ili sa kolaboratorima.

Kvartet upotpunjuje jedna autentična legenda njujorškog džeza. Vinny Golia je rođen još 1946. godine u Bronksu i od kraja sedamdesetih radi na čitavom spektru uglavnom drvenih duvačkih instrumenata, krećući se u domenima jazza, free jazza, slobodne improvizacije, savremene  kompozicije. Golia je tokom svoje karijere obišao mnogo kontinenata sa mnogo različitih postava svirajući modernu kompoziciju i jazz, napisao desetine komada po narudžbini za ugledne institucije, nadobijao se nagrada koje verovatno ni sam danas ne bi umeo da nabroji. Predvodio je mnoge postave, ali istorija – sa dobrim razlogom – uvek pominje da je još 1982. godine osnovao Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, pedesetočlani orkestar, i dalje aktivan, koji izvodi njegove kamerne i džez kompozicije.

Lista Golijinih saradnji tokom decenija je praktično ko-je-ko poslednjih četrdeset godina avangardnog jazza i srodne muzike, pa ćemo pomenut samo nekoliko imena koja svi znaju: Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Tim Berne, George Lewis, Eugene Chadbourne, Peter Kowald, Misha Mengelberg, Han Bennink, Lydia Lunch, Alex Cline, William Parker, i naravno Weasel Walter.

Walter je možda bio i ona kopča koja je ova četiri muzičara povezala, mada on nije bio snimatelj ove sesije. Tu je ulogu imao Jason LaFarge koji je kvartet snimio u bruklinskom studiju Seizures Palace, nakon što su muzičari održali jedan koncert u njujorškoj Downtown Galeriji, ali je Walter onda bio zadužen za miksovanje i mastering i, kao i obično, obavio izuzetan posao. The Pure Products of America Go Crazy je free jazz snimljen tako da se kristalno jasno čuje svaki POGLED muzičara razmenjen u ovom haosu i bezumlju, a onda miksovan i masterovan da bude glasan i energičan – čak i agresivan – a opet topao, živ, umiljat. U nekom drugom univerzumu Walter bi bio bogati producent sa honorarima koji bi mu omogućili rekonstrukciju onih scena iz stripova Carla Barksa kada Baja Patak pliva u novcu, a u ovom univerzumu mi, koji slušamo free improv, free jazz i svu tu bučnu muziku treba da smo svesni koliko smo srećni što ga imamo.

Možda i prečesto pričam o produkciji kada su free jazz izdanja u pitanju ali imam utisak da smo tek poslednjih nekoliko godina došli u fazu da inženjeri zvuka i ljudi koji rade mastering i miksovanje kolektivno prepoznaju da ova muzika ZAHTEVA određeni sluh kada ste za pultom, da puka reprodukcija snimljene sesije ne koristi ZAISTA kapacitete studija kao alata da se muzika u svoj svojoj veličanstvenosti prenese do slušaoca. Albumi kao što je The Pure Products of America Go Crazy su najbolji argument za to koliko je „studijski free jazz“ sada kategorija za sebe i zašto tu kategoriju treba proučavati i profesionalno negovati.

The Pure Products of America Go Crazy je inače prvi stih iz poeme To Elsie originalno samo označene brojem 18 jer je bila osamnaesta po redu u zbirci Spring and All američkog modernističkog pesnika po imenu William Carlos Williams. Poema je inspirisana ženom po imenu Elsie, dadiljom koja je iz sirotišta došla da radi u porodici Williams, ali se njoj ne obraća direktno i zapravo je koristi kao motiv oko koga gradi meditaciju o mračnom dobu američke kulture i običaja. Ovo je poema puna doomerskih slika o eksploatisanoj sirotinji i stihova poput „kao da je zemlja pod našim nogama izmet nekog neba, a mi poniženi zatvorenici osuđeni na glad sve dok ne počnemo da jedemo prljavštinu“, ali i nesputane energije u svom ređanju evokativnih prizora, erotskih pulsiranja i fasciniranog očajavanja.

Kada ovaj kvartet krene u Mr. Hee Wonderful, koja album otvara sa skoro četrnaest minuta glasne, bučne svirke, (a što je i najkraći komad na albumu) prosto čujete odjek Williamsovih stihova, snažne emocije i epske širine pogleda na okruženje. McKain iz bariton saksofona izvlači moćne, distorzirane note a Giola je na sopraninu, ali u prvih nekoliko minuta je muzičar koji dominira čitavom muzikom Borden sa svojim moćnim radom gudalom i bogatim zvukom. Duvači će od violončeliste preuzeti primat tek negde oko trećeg minuta, nudeći bogate dronove i inspirušući Nadiena na sve grčevitije eksplozije u pozadini. Kada Borden počne da svira prstima i pokaže da može da se trka sa bilo kojim free jazz kontrabasistom koji vam pada na pamet, i da nikada ne izgubi, svesni ste da slušate nešto posebno. Mr. Hee Wonderful do kraja ostaje tenzični, veličanstveni sudar modernističke kamerne kompozicije i ekstatičnog free jazza sa završnicom u kojoj Golia radi piruete na sredini scene, izazivajući ostatak kvarteta da stane ako sme.

Ali ovo je zaista samo zagrevanje. Druga kompozicija, The Rakuyo traje gotovo dvadeset minuta i ovo je jedan od najfinijih primeraka kamernog slobodnog improvizovanja koji ćete naći u divljini. Golia ovde sve vreme svira pikolo i to kako se on i McKain – koji za ovu kompoziciju svira sopran saksofon – prepliću na njenom početku, kako komuniciraju i ostaloj dvojici nameću zaslepljujući tempo i gustu teksturu je za udžbenike. The Rakuyo je karakteristična po tome da kvartet nikada ne gubi taj kamerni senzibilitet, čak ni kada se muzika usija do beline i Nadien ovde uglavnom svira po obodima i metalnim delovima svog seta, prepuštajući Bordenu da se dotiče najnižih frekvencija kada i koliko je to ovde uopšte potrebno.

A nije potrebno mnogo. The Rakuyo je lepršav, zabavan komad koji tokom čitavog svog trajanja perfektno radi sa smenom dugačkih pedalnih tonova i modalnih sazvežđa koja lebde i okreću se oko istovremeno dementnih i detinjastih udaraljki. U pozitivnom, naravno, smislu. Takođe, Golia ovde koristi i svoj glas i to je briljantno.

Sa Narcense at X, Narcense at Y Golia se hvata klarineta i McKainov sopran sa njim pravi nesvetu leguru. Boje ova dva instrumenta se savršeno uklapaju u urnebesno zapletenom paralelnom soliranju dok ostala dva člana skidaju limitere sa motora i spremaju se da ovu mašinu pošalju u orbitu. Narcense at X, Narcense at Y – pretpostavljam inspirisana glavnim junakom romana Le Chiendent francuskog pisca po imenu Raymond Queneau – je propisan free jazz u kome Nadien pored svojih komplikovanih poliritmija redovno stvari razreši upadanjem u grinderski blastbit, a Borden je pouzdani MVP koji ne dopušta da bude sveden na puku pratnju i radi u svim planovima kompozicije kao opsednut.

Poslednja, Save Your Ass je onda sedamnaest minuta čistog freakouta i spržene zemlje. Saksofonisti su ovde na ivici implozije, ispaljujući stotine nota u nebo kao da flakom brane Bruklin od invazije iz svemira, udaraljke i gudala su svuda oko vas i bodu sa svih strana, a energija kojom se album zatvara je uprkos svemu što smo sve vreme svesni da se oko nas dešava, optimistična i pokretačka. Ne znam da li smo ovakvu PLOČETINU zaslužili, ali drago mi je da smo je dobili.

https://jamesmckain.bandcamp.com/album/the-pure-products-of-america-go-crazy

AND NOW FOR THE ENGLISH VERSION OF THIS REVIEW THAT WOULD GET A PANICKED „FLY YOU FOOLS“ REVIEW ON TRIP ADVISOR IF IT WERE MASQUERADING AS A POTENTIAL TOURIST SPOT.

There officially aren’t many better ways to start your September than to have James McKain ping you oh-so-casually. “Hey, we got a new album”, he’ll say, as if this were no big deal, as if records with James McKain playing sax on them drop every couple of days. I assure you that they don’t. If nothing else, my life would be significantly richer with more James McKain in it. But this time it’s genuinely a special event. Were this album a boxer, it would be described in hushed tones as “the heavyweight crusher from Brooklyn”. If Rocco Siffredi bumped into this album in a dark alley, he would utter a feeble sounding “Who are you?” and the album would reply “I am you, but stronger”. It definitely is not an irresponsible exaggeration to say that T.J. Borden, Vinny Golia, James McKain & James Paul Nadien: The Pure Products of America Go Crazy is the best music that New York free jazz has to offer to the world at this moment and it remains unclear how the musicians, who recorded this back in February 2025, managed to just sit on this material and publish it, GASP, a full nineteen months later. As if the world didn’t need its divine healing all this time! Personally, I blame Weasel Walter!

I’ve written about the two Jameses who make up half of this demolition squad many times. McKain is one of the most powerful, loudest and at the same time most poetic tenor saxophonists of the east coast at this moment in history and his hopping between cities with rich jazz traditions seems to have come to a stop as he settled in Brooklyn. There he collaborates with his usual comrades and allies (Caleb Duval, Kevin Murray, Weasel Walter, and sure enough James Paul Nadien) and his gig schedule seems to be healthy and diverse this year. His studio activity, on the other hand moves at a much more measured pace and McKain seems to have opted for quality rather than quantity, carefully choosing which recorded sessions should be released and when. Thus, the last time I wrote about him was last summer when he, Damon Smith and Weasel Walter released the now legendary album …seeing the way the mole tunnels…. If you haven’t listened to McKain before, that’s a sin, but repentance happens to be really easy and once you see the light, you’ll only need more of it in your life.

James Paul Nadien, the magnificent drummer and composer based in New York has been featured on these pages several times in the last year. First it was the outrageous free jazz-no wave trio Toadal Package and then his equally combustible collaboration with Alex Ward. Nadien’s main project at the moment seems to be TYPO!, a quartet that brings together some of the “most riveting and original musicians” New York has to offer, to create an original, energetic combination of free jazz and progressive rock (only without a single rock and roll instrument in the line-up; drums are here accompanied by a violin, piano and cello). I hope TYPO! considers recording an album soon so we have something to look forward to at home – the fragments of live recordings available online so far sound VERY promising – and if you happen to be in Harlem this Tuesday, you can catch them live at the MISE-EN_PLACE club.

Now, one of the musicians in TYPO! is T.J. Borden aka Tyler J. Borden, a cellist also from Brooklyn (originally from west New York). Borden is a graduate of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music and a musician acclaimed for his “astounding performances of superlatively difficult modernist solo works.” Borden, of course, works at the intersection of modern classical music and improvisation, which he honed by working with musicians such as Jack Wright, Brandon Lopez and Steve Baczkowski, as well as solo. In the classical orbit he has worked with composers such as Brian Ferneyhough, Ambrose Akinmusire, Catherine Lamb and the legendary Alvin Lucier, and plays with groups specializing in contemporary composition such as [Switch~ Ensemble], Ghost Ensemble and Mivos Quartet. He is also one of the curators of the High Desert Soundings festival in California, and on his Bandcamp page you will find a bunch of interesting releases where he experiments alone or with collaborators.

The quartet is completed by an authentic legend of New York jazz. Vinny Golia was born in 1946 in the Bronx and since the late seventies he’s been playing a whole range of mainly woodwind instruments, moving through the worlds of jazz, free jazz, free improvisation, and contemporary composition. During his career, Golia visited many continents with many different lineups playing modern composition and jazz, wrote dozens of commissioned pieces for prestigious institutions, won awards that he probably wouldn’t even be able to recall today. He led many ensembles, but history – with good reason – always mentions that back in 1982 he founded the Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, a fifty-piece orchestra, still active, that performs his chamber and jazz compositions.

The list of Golia’s collaborations over the decades is practically a who’s who of the last forty years of avant-garde jazz and related music, so we will mention only a few names that everyone knows: Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Tim Berne, George Lewis, Eugene Chadbourne, Peter Kowald, Misha Mengelberg, Han Bennink, Lydia Lunch, Alex Cline, William Parker, and of course Weasel Walter.

Walter may have been the link that connected these four musicians, although he was not the recording engineer of this session. That role was played by Jason LaFarge, who recorded the quartet at Brooklyn’s Seizures Palace studio after the musicians played a show at New York’s Downtown Gallery, but Walter was then in charge of mixing and mastering and, as usual, did an outstanding job. The Pure Products of America Go Crazy is fucking free jazz recorded so well that you can hear every single time any of the musicians so much as GLANCES at each other through all the ongoing chaos and mayhem, and then mixed and mastered to be loud and energetic – even aggressive – and yet warm, alive, dare I say it cuddly. In another timeline, Walter would have been a rich studio producer getting fuck off royalties that would allow him to recreate those Carl Barks scenes with Uncle Scrooge swimming in money. In this timeline, however, we, the listeners of free improv, free jazz and all that noisy music, should count our blessings and be thankful that we have him on our side.

I may have a tendency to fixate on production when it comes to free jazz releases, but I have the impression that only in the last couple of years have we reached a stage where sound engineers and people who do mastering and mixing collectively recognize that this music NEEDS sophisticated listening when you are at the desk, that the mere reproduction of a recorded session does not REALLY use the studio’s capacities as a tool to convey the music in all its magnificence to the listener. Albums like The Pure Products of America Go Crazy are the best argument for how “studio free jazz” is now a category in itself and why that category should be studied and nurtured professionally.

The Pure Products of America Go Crazy is the first line from the poem To Elsie, originally only called 18 because it was the eighteenth in the collection Spring and All by the American modernist poet William Carlos Williams. The poem is inspired by a woman named Elsie, a nursemaid who came from an orphanage to work for the Williams family, but does not address her directly and actually uses her as a centre of gravity around which the poet spins a meditation on the dark age of American culture. This is a poem full of doomer images about the exploited poor women and lines like “as if the earth under our feet were an excrement of some sky and we degraded prisoners destined to hunger until we eat filth”, but also unrestrained energy in its arrangement of evocative scenes, erotic pulsations and fascinated despair.

When this quartet kickstarts Mr. Hee Wonderful, opening the album with almost fourteen minutes of loud, noisy playing, (also, the shortest piece on the album) you can hear the echo of Williams’ lyrics, strong emotions and epic breadth of his gaze at the surroundings. McKain draws powerful, distorted notes from the baritone saxophone and Giola is on sopranino, but in the first few minutes it is Borden who dominates the entire soundscape with his powerful bow work and rich, sonorous sound. The brass won’t take over from the cellist until around the third minute, when they launch into thick drones and inspire Nadien to produce increasingly spastic detonations in the background. When Borden starts playing with his fingers and shows that he can race any free jazz double bass player you can think of, and never lose, you know you’re listening to something special. Mr. Hee Wonderful remains a tense, magnificent collision of modernist chamber composition and ecstatic free jazz until at the end Golia does elegant pirouettes centre stage, challenging the rest of the quartet to stop if they dare.

But, really, this is just a warm-up. The second composition, The Rakuyo goes on for almost twenty minutes and is one of the finest examples of chamber-level free improvisation you will ever find in the wild. Golia here plays the piccolo throughout and the way he and McKain – on soprano saxophone for this composition – intertwine at the very beginning, how they communicate and impose a blinding pace and dense texture on the other two is one for the textbooks. The Rakuyo is notable because the quartet never loses that strong chamber music sensibility, even when the music is white-hot and Nadien here mostly plays around the rims and metal parts of his set, leaving Borden to touch up the lowest frequencies when and how much is needed here.

And not much is needed indeed. The Rakuyo is a breezy, fun piece that throughout its duration works perfectly with alternating long pedal tones and modal constellations that float and spin around at once demented and childlike percussion. I mean this in the most positive of senses, of course. Also, Golia uses his voice here and that’s simply brilliant.

With Narcense at X, Narcense at Y Golia takes up the clarinet and McKain’s soprano merges with it to create an unholy alloy. The tembres of these two instruments blend perfectly through dynamic, intricate parallel soloing as meanwhile the other two quartet members disengage the limiters from the engine and prepare to send this machine into orbit. Narcense at X, Narcense at Y –inspired by the main character of the novel Le Chiendent by a French writer named Raymond Queneau I imagine – is honest-to-god free jazz in which Nadien, in addition to his complicated polyrhythms, regularly resolves things by breaking into a grindcore blastbeat, and Borden is a reliable MVP who will never allow himself to be reduced to a mere support musician and moves through in all planes of the piece like a man possessed.

Then the last one, Save Your Ass, is seventeen minutes of pure freakout and scorched earth. The saxophonists here are on the verge of implosion, firing hundreds of notes into the sky as if they are manning flak cannons defending Brooklyn from an invasion from outer space, the percussion and bows are everywhere, stabbing from all sides, and the energy with which the album closes is, despite all of us knowing full well we’re on a collapsing machine of a planet, optimistic and uplifting. I don’t know if we, as a species, deserve this magnificent monster of a record, but I’m glad we got it.

https://jamesmckain.bandcamp.com/album/the-pure-products-of-america-go-crazy