SPRING HEEL JACK - The Blue Series Continuum – Masses (2001)

Label: Thirsty Ear – THI57103.2
Series: The Blue Series – (Artistic Director of Blue Series: Matthew Shipp)
Format: CD, Album; Country: US - Released: 2001
Style: Abstract, Downtempo, Free Improvisation, Free Jazz
Recorded upstairs at the Strongroom, London & Sorcerer Sound NYC, 2001
Executive Producer – Peter Gordon; Producer – Ashley Wales, John Coxon
Mastered By – Nick Webb
Mixed By – Oliver Meacock
Recorded By – Chris Flam, Oliver Meacock

The British electronica duo Ashley Wales & John Coxon with Tim Berne, Guillermo E. Brown, Roy Campbell, Daniel Carter, Mat Maneri, Ed Coxon, Evan Parker, William Parker, Matthew Shipp and George Trebar.

Review:

Spring Heel Jack entered the electronica scene in the mid-90's, clearly on the living-room listening side of the drum-n-bass spectrum. The beats on 1996's 68 Million Shades came complex, but despite their rapid pace the overall sonic texture was subdued, making for a smooth, pedestrian vibe. The following album, Busy Curious Thirsty, locked into the harder dance groove that was developing at the time, though a closer listen showed that the real intent was the creation of a roughened, more diverse sound. The new direction lost a lot of their audience, though, and the ambient pieces were numbingly repetitious. In a typical major label move, Island dropped the duo from its roster.

Since then, John Coxon and Ashley Wales have been working hard, and each of their recent endeavors have been more successful-- from the driving, eerie Treader to the slightly softer, more cinematic Disappeared and the noisy ambient experiments collected on Oddities. They've also taken a cue from Fila Brazillia, who produced the strangely pristine luster on Greg Dulli's Twilight Singers project. Coxon & Wales collaborated with Low in 2000 on the Bombscare EP, in which all junglist tendencies vanished, subsumed into Low's stark minimalism; likewise, Alan Sparhawk & Co. found their fragile song frames reinforced by a mesh of synthetic subtlety and carefully controlled drones. The union got called "experimental" mostly due to the uncomfortable tension the album evoked.

Masses invigorates the Thirsty Ear label's fusion project, "The Blue Series Continuum." Spring Heel Jack have toyed with jazz since their early days-- sampling a brassy trumpet trill here, employing a live percussion sample from Tortoise there-- but as time progressed, they showed interest in jazz as a structural template rather than cut-and-paste decoration. For Masses, they recorded a number of ambient soundscapes composed of crackling feedback and found sound (once again absent of breakbeats), and gathered choice labelmates to improvise over the recordings. Some of the most influential names in the new breed of free jazz participated, from the dynamic duo of pianist Matthew Shipp and double bassist William Parker to mercurial saxophonist Evan Parker. The result is the most intense, fascinating album of Spring Heel Jack's career.

"Chorale" opens in static pulses. Shipp hesitantly takes lead with four- and five-note piano clusters, while William Parker's bass explores the space between the rumbling drones. One aspect of the prerecorded soundtracks is that the musicians can slow down and test intimate, abstract harmonies usually only available to duos and trios. Evan Parker's lone soprano sax line repeats after long intervals, intriguingly programmatic considering his usual repertoire. This melancholy motif is the only semblance of melody in the entire song, and the noir ambience would fit perfectly in Blade Runner when Deckard sips his drink alone in the dim living room.

"Chiaroscuro" defines an opposite approach-- an amplified two-note bassline followed by a handclap serves as the rhythmic anchor for the entire track. Hardly boring, this relentless, aggressive reverb is the current through which Daniel Carter runs his saxophone, at first a playful expedition that becomes increasingly strained and frenetic. Guillermo Brown busts three minutes afterwards with overlapping bass-drum rolls and snares, adding to the uneasiness. Trying to isolate the organic from the preprocessed is difficult; at times, the streaks of Ed Coxon's violin blend seamlessly with the humming bed of distortion.

The title track, on which all players are involved, is by far the standout. Brown plays schizophrenically liberated percussion, abusing cowbells and the drumstand itself as pianist Shipp jabs at the low register ivory keys. A sudden crescendo: seconds too late, you realize these were pebbles before the rockslide. The onslaught erupts, burying the listener in a lung- collapsing surge of saxophone wails, trumpet squeals and double-bass throttling. The moment ends as soon as it began, dispersing into Brown's maniacally inspired building-block clatter. If the ascendant free jazz of the 1960's came to be known as "Fire Music," the elemental force here takes place somewhere between metamorphic earth and storm-strewn air, though the electrical fury can hardly be traced back along its silicate tangents to any original resting place.

But don't assume that the entire album is impenetrable noise. A few short interludes separate the longer works, giving single musicians the chance to test their mettle against the compositions. On "Cross," I felt transported to a swirling fantasia, sure that the background was tampering with Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" until I realized that this was just Mat Maneri in the foreground on acoustic and electric viola. "Salt" is a comparatively straightforward number, launched by Brown and William Parker's hard-bop rhythm and spiced by Shipp's Monk-like vamping. But the final track, "Coda," returns to the spatial acoustics of the first. Coxon and Wales pull the buzzing chimes of their earliest work off the lathe, causing the trumpet-like microtonality of Maneri's viola to recede into the background.

Masses compresses so many components: improv artists from New York jam with Londoners and other Europeans, organic instruments collide with digital spree, free jazz is tempered by prerecorded loops. Curated by Matthew Shipp and sequenced by the Spring Heel boys, this is steaming hot fusion, a record whose density and emotional nuance requires repeated listening to decipher. Many questions are raised, but the one that tugs most anxiously in my mind is whether Coxon and Wales will attempt improvisational electronics themselves on future projects.

_ By Christopher Dare, June 5, 2001 (Pitchfork)



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SPRING HEEL JACK – AMaSSED (2002)

Label: Thirsty Ear – THI57123.2
Series: The Blue Series – (Artistic Director of Blue Series: Matthew Shipp)
Format: CD, Album; Country: US - Released: 2002
Style: Free Jazz + Electronics
Recorded upstairs at the Strongroom, London & Gateway Studio, Kingston, 2001 
Mastered at Abbey Road
Design, Photography – Cynthia Fetty
Executive-producer – Peter Gordon;  Producer – Ashley Wales, John Coxon

Review:

John Coxon and Ashley Wales are back with their second installment of "Free Jazz plus Electronics" for Thirsty Ear's Blue Series. The Blue Series has, over the past couple of years, been a much-needed shot in the arm for recorded Jazz, presenting different approaches and ideas than the saccharine parade of dusty reissues and nostalgia acts still being churned out by most of the Major labels. Thirsty Ear has, effectively, thrown down a gauntlet by depicting Jazz as a living, thriving, and still-evolving musical genre. Moreover, while their releases depict the incorporation of such controversial material as electronics, dance-hall beats and DJ- ing, the focus is never on mere novelty, but is backed up by strong and committed performances from the participating musicians. AMaSSED is no exception.

AMaSSED brings back a few of the players from last year's Masses, but also features collaborations with several new musicians. Returning are pianist Matthew Shipp (curator of the Blue Series), saxophonist Evan Parker, bassist George Trebar and violinist Ed Coxon. The fresh faces are drummer Han Bennink, trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, trombonist Paul Rutherford and bassist John Edwards. In addition to jazz musicians, AMaSSED is graced by a prominent figure from the Indie Rock community -- Billed as J Spaceman, Spiritualized's Jason Pierce contributes guitar work to the recording. No interloper, Pierce is clearly at home in this musical environment.

AMaSSED does not present itself simply as a sequel -- Son of Masses, as it were. Instead, the combination of players new to the project and continuing participants allows SHJ to both invent entirely new compositions and to reinvestigate some of the material from Masses. The most notable example of the latter is the recycling of George Trebar's ostinato, open-string, one-note bass groove, first used on the Masses track "Chiaroscuro", on the even-more frenetic AMaSSED cut "Obscured". Gotta love the alliteration, by the way. Comparing the two pieces, one hears different sets of musicians, many accustomed to a more atonal atmosphere than the one-note ground provides them, seeking to obliterate its insistent low E with increasing violence. They create a pair of berserk yet inspired jams (for lack of a better word). There seems to be some resonance in these pieces with the effect achieved on Radiohead's Kid A by the horn section that plays on "National Anthem".

Another inspired effort is "Maroc"'s duet between Pierce and Parker. Parker plays his characteristic cascades of notes, while Pierce interjects both judicious feedback and spare textural playing. Despite the resultant flurry, neither seems to get in the other's way. Kenny Wheeler's always affecting playing is nicely featured, particularly his negotiation of the most stratospheric register trumpet will allow, on "Lit". "Double Cross" finds string players Edwards and Coxon playing with Parker and Wales on an ethereal composition that presents itself with the intimacy of chamber music.

Han Bennink and Ed Coxon tear it up on "Duel"; this cut is also an excellent demonstration of SHJ's more overt contributions. Throughout, the electronic duo are never heavy-handed with their interjections of beats and sound material. Turning this music into some kind of raver's bad trip by loading it with heavy, pulsing backgrounds would be a tragedy, given the flexibility of rhythm found in Avant-Jazz in general and especially when considering the sensitive playing found here. SHJ instead react appropriately to the sounds created by their collaborators, with flexible and fleeting beats and well-spaced dabs of synthetic sound.

In addition to the aforementioned "Obscured", "100 Years Before", "Wormwood" and the title track all feature larger cross-sections of the participants. One might suppose that the danger in these ensemble efforts, especially once electronics are added to the mix, is that the result will be dense and cluttered. However, this never appears to be a problem. Whether due to judicious editing, sensitive interaction, or some combination of the two, the music on AMaSSED is possessed of both clarity of texture and narrative flow.

Will the innovations and trends depicted in the Blue Series prove enduring? Only time will tell. However, the rapprochement between two wings of experimental music (Avant-Jazz and Electronica) indicated by AMaSSED and other recent recordings, seems to hold out the promise of much fertile musical creation in the future. Unlike many other recordings released this past year, Spring Heel Jack's latest seems to speak to the here and now instead of the past, all the while keeping an eye on what comes next.

_ By Christian Carey, 5 November 2002



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SPRING HEEL JACK – The Sweetness Of The Water (2004)

Label: Thirsty Ear – THI 57146.2
Series: The Blue Series – Format: CD, Album
Country: US; Released: 08 June 2004
Performer: Spring Heel Jack, Wadada Leo Smith, Evan Parker, John Edwards, Mark Sanders
Album: The Sweetness Of The Water
Style: avant-garde, free improvisation, Contemporary Jazz, Free Jazz
Recording information: Gateway Studios, Kingston, Jamaica.

Spring Heel Jack:
Ashley Wales - acoustic guitar, trumpet, congas, samples, electronics
John Coxon - guitar, organ, harmonica, vibraphone, samples, electronics

                    Spring Heel Jack

Review:

When the U.K. hard drum 'n bass "duo" Spring Heel Jack began collaborating with Thirsty Ear and their Blue Series curator Matthew Shipp, one doubts they had any idea that their own sense of proportion and direction would shift so far away from their source material as it has. Sweetness of the Water is the band's fourth outing in the Blue Series, and as such, it is their most provocative, challenging, and beautiful yet. John Coxon and Ashley Wales have become musicians in the old-fashioned sense of the word on this completely improvisational outing. Their guitars, vibes, keyboards, trumpet, and hand-percussion chores equal and even surpass their sampling and electronic contributions. In realizing this project, the "duo" once again turned to saxophonist Evan Parker (who has been a fixture since 2000) and brought together a rhythm section consisting of Mark Sanders on drums and John Edwards on bass. In addition, trumpeter and vanguard composer Wadada Leo Smith is present this time out. There are eight pieces on the set, none longer than eight minutes, the shortest of which is just under three. Sweetness of the Water exists in a far less controlled environment this time out, and since the language is free improv, Smith and Parker dialogue with one another uninhibited, and often, in unhurried, non-confrontational language. There are no intense flurries of engagement, but the lyrical communication is stunningly intuitive. Coxon's electric guitar on "Track Four" that opens the set walks slowly through the center as a bridge between the rhythm section and Smith's gorgeously long lines. Harsh feedback and improvisational elements are underneath the two main instruments, but they simply fill space with texture and layers of dynamic possibility. On "Quintet," Parker and Smith begin the first of their dialogues, with Coxon again creating an edge for them to walk along. Pace, tension, and texture are the points of congress here, and they come together seamlessly as Sanders and Edwards dance around the edges, bringing them into sharper focus. Harsh electronic sounds, drones, and an organ usher in "Lata," as Parker solos in the middle register. Pulse is the language of rhythm, though drums are absent. Think My Bloody Valentine meeting Gavin Bryars with Evan Parker soloing and you have it. The intricate guitar and drum encounter on "Duo" is a wooly and thoroughly engaging exercise in control and listening. But the recording's grandest piece, "Autumn," closes the set. Coxon's church organ blares out a majestic series of open chords as electric guitars, shimmering drums, and a confluence of lines by Parker and Smith punctuate the Wall of Sound. It's eerie, strange, and crystalline in its strange elegance and shifting dynamics where elements of drone and pulse are woven with multi-dimensional sonics and tight, restrained harmonics. The sonorities as they mutate and change shape are so haunting and pervasive they become their own esthetic.
Sweetness of the Water is not for everybody, but for those who like their free improvisation drenched in beauty, this is your album.

By Thom Jurek

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