TIM BERNE SEXTET – The Ancestors (LP-1983)

Label: Soul Note – SN 1061

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: Italy / Released: 1983

Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation

Recorded live on February 19, 1983 at the School of Visual Arts, NYC.

Recording Engineer: Kazunori Sugiyama

Produced by Empire Productions & Giovanni Bonandrini

Cover – Pick Up Studios

Cover painting by Betsy Berne

Photography By [Cover] – Kim Anway

A1 - Sirius B .............................................................................................. 10:47

A2 - Shirley's Song - Part I ........................................................................ 13:10

B  -  Shirley's Song - Part II / San Antonio / The Ancestors ...................... 21:00

Tim Berne — alto saxophone

Mack Goldsbury — soprano and tenor saxophones

Clarence Herb Robertson — pocket trumpet, trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn

Ray Anderson — trombone, tuba

Ed Schuller — bass

Paul Motian — drums, percussion

The Ancestors is an album by Tim Berne and which was released on the Italian-based Soul Note label in 1983. It features two (or four) compositions by Tim Berne performed by the Tim Berne Sextet which consisted of Clarence Herb Robertson, Ray Anderson, Mack Goldsbury, Ed Schuller, Paul Motian and Tim Berne.

Alto and baritone saxophonist Tim Berne combines influences from avant-garde jazz, modern classical music, rhythm 'n' blues, and experimental rock. The harmonic sophistication of his composition and improvisations, honed in collaboration with like-minded musicians such as John Zorn, Vinny Golia, and Nels Cline has helped him carve a niche in the vast sea of modern jazz...

 Tim Berne

 Ray Anderson / Ed Schuller

His fascination with jazz began after hearing saxophonist Julius Hemphill's 1972 album Dogon A.D.

In 1974, Berne left college and moved to New York City to pursue a career in music. In the fall of 1974, Tim briefly studied with saxophonist Anthony Braxton who proved to be too busy to teach Berne, but suggested he study with Julius Hemphill. Over the next year, Berne studied with Hemphill, who encouraged him to start composing his own music.

During his early years in New York, Berne supported himself by working in a record store and renting out loft spaces to host his own gigs. In 1979, Berne founded the record label Empire Productions and released his debut album, The Five Year Plan. The following year, he released his second album 7X, which featured contributions from Cline, Golia and bassist Robert Miranda.

From 1981 until 1983, Berne led an ensemble that featured saxophonist Mark Goldsbury, bassist Ed Schuller, and drummer Paul Motian. Berne's early records and performances eventually caught the attention of producer Giovanni Bonandrini, who released Berne's 1983 album The Ancestors and 1984's Mutant Variations on the Soul Note label.

Tim Berne's playing on Ancestors is fluid, warm and conveys a relaxed levity. For this live recording Berne enlarges his regular quartet (Mack Goldsburg, tenor sax, soprano sax; Ed Schuller, bass; Paul Motian, percussion) to include Herb Robertson (trumpet) and Ray Anderson, perhaps the finest trombonist of the past five years. As usual, the tunes are all Berne originals and display the sectional and harmonic structures that so much of his music seems to exhibit.

The magical...it's a measured authoritative set, rhythmically coherent.

If you find it, buy this album!

TIM BERNE'S BLOODCOUNT – Memory Select - The Paris Concert Vol.3 (1995)

Label: JMT Productions – JMT 514 029-2
Format: CD, Album, Country: Germany - Released: 1995
Jazz Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation
Recorded live on 22-25 September 1994 at Instants Chavirés, Montreuil, Paris, France.
Cover Design and Artwork – by Sebastian Byram
Engineer [Mastering] – Carlos Albrecht
Engineer [Recording] – Joe Ferla
Executive-Producer – Hiroshi Itsuno
Producer – Stefan F. Winter
Photography – Susanna Schoenberg

Tim Berne's Bloodcount:
MARC DUCRET (electric guitar); CHRIS SPEED (clarinet, tenor saxophone); TIM BERNE (alto saxophone, baritone saxophone); MICHAEL FORMANEK (double bass); JIM BLACK (drums)

Memory Select, the final release in the three-CD live series recorded by Tim Berne's Bloodcount at Instants Chavirés in Paris during September of 1994, begins in low-key fashion, with Chris Speed playing mournfully on his solitary clarinet before he is joined by Marc Ducret's skittering runs and begins to transfer some of the guitarist's energy into his own playing. The full-ensemble scored passages that follow in the 18-minute "Jazzoff" are akin to similarly subdued, chamberesque portions of compositions on the first two discs, Lowlife and Poisoned Minds, while Berne's buzzing multiphonics during the improvised segments place the saxophonist's fascination with sometimes abrasive textures on full display. Speed's clarinet, Berne's baritone sax, and Michael Formanek's arco bass draw long lines through a sometimes dark and melancholy sonic landscape punctuated by Jim Black's inventive, though comparatively laid-back, percussion. As suggested by the title, this is Berne at his least jazzy - - although there is plenty of room for skronky improvisation during the midsection of "Jazzoff." This is one of Berne's best pieces for sustaining a consistent mood, even if that mood might lead listeners expecting some upbeat music to reach for a bottle of Prozac. And like his most enduring extended-form music, it avoids the jarring cut-and-paste juxtapositions of lesser composers, while still taking listeners on a wide-ranging ride. "Jazzoff" is followed by the grand opus of the entire three-CD series, the 51-plus minute "Eye Contact." Here, Berne leads the band's slow buildup of energy with a stunning, soulful alto solo before bringing the dynamic back down to quiet, chamber music levels. A short burst of almost sprightly full-band harmony and counterpoint signals approaching showcases for Speed's wild and wailing clarinet and Formanek's soloing prowess; more tricky and complex charts then lead to a funked-up jam supporting a crazed, noisy guitar solo from Ducret. For sheer energy alone, this would be an apt conclusion to "Eye Contact," but there is much more to come. The track ends with Berne soloing over a dramatic buildup from the full band, unleashing torrents of notes and blistering multiphonics from his horn before joining a powerful unison melody line executed by Ducret's guitar and Speed's tenor, with Black and Formanek thundering in free jazz abandon below. It is such a grand gesture that it serves not only as a coda to "Eye Contact," but to the entire three-disc Instants Chavirés series. As Berne and Speed let their last sustained note slide into silence, Memory Select takes its place as a fitting climax to the three CDs, standing strongly on its own but also feeling, appropriately, like the series' grand finale. Any listeners interested in Berne's growth as a player, composer, and bandleader should pick this up if they can find it; better still to find all three of the JMT Bloodcount CDs to place Memory Select in proper perspective. While the Bloodcount Instants Chavirés discs are unfortunately out of print, Winter & Winter is planning to reissue all three, and Memory Select is tentatively scheduled to be available in November 2005. Meanwhile, a phenomenal big-band arrangement of "Eye Contact" by Berne and the Copenhagen Art Ensemble (also featuring Ducret and trumpeter Herb Robert) can be heard on the two-CD set Open, Coma, released by Berne's Screwgun label in December 2001.

_ By DAVE LYNCH



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TIM BERNE'S BLOODCOUNT – Poisoned Minds - The Paris Concert Vol. 2 (1995)

Label: JMT Productions – JMT 514 020-2
Format: CD, Album; Country: Germany - Released: 1995
Jazz Style: Free Jazz, Free Improvisation
Recorded live on 22-25 September 1994 at Instants Chavirés, Montreuil, Paris, France.
Cover Design and Artwork – by Sebastian Byram
Engineer – Carlos Albrecht
Executive-Producer – Hiroshi Itsuno
Producer – Stefan F. Winter
Photography – Robert Lewis

Tim Berne's Bloodcount:
MARC DUCRET (electric guitar); CHRIS SPEED (clarinet, tenor saxophone); TIM BERNE (alto saxophone, baritone saxophone); MICHAEL FORMANEK (double bass); JIM BLACK (drums)

Tim Berne continued Bloodcount's forays into extended-form creative jazz with Poisoned Minds, the second installment of the band's live CD series recorded at Instants Chavirés in Paris during September of 1994. There are only two pieces on the disc, "The Other" at 27 and a half minutes and "What Are the Odds?" at 41 and a half minutes; with running times like those, Berne was clearly not aiming for significant airplay on commercial radio. Instead, Poisoned Minds is for serious listeners without attenuated attention spans, a somewhat radical concept in itself. Yet aside from the lengths of the pieces, many elements of the music are not particularly radical despite Berne's avant-garde rep -- melody, rhythm, and theme are all important to the saxophonist, and the innovation comes from the way he manipulates structure, fitting the pieces of the puzzle together in unpredictable ways. "The Other" begins with Berne on alto and Chris Speed on clarinet, stating a bluesy, soulful, and somewhat melancholy theme in rubato time; drummer Jim Black uses this opportunity to color the music with textural embellishments rather than drive it forward. Urgent propulsion is dominant in the piece's middle section, where tension is stretched to the breaking point as Black and bassist Michael Formanek jam out with a twisted rhythm and Berne and Speed, scarcely taking time to inhale, throw long purple-faced lines over the top. And yet "The Other" perhaps finds its greatest power in an uneasy conclusion that combines elements of free jazz and chamber music, subverting any expectations of a slam-bang finale. Berne starts "What Are the Odds?" on alto accompanied only by Black, and he's not in the mood for rumination at this point, possessed instead by uptempo, boppish energy. As his sax lines leap and twist, bits of a Berne-ish melody become discernible, and suddenly the whole band is off to the races together on a highly charged theme that catapults forward even through abrupt, oddly timed stops and starts. Then Speed bursts through with a hot tenor solo over churning, chunky, and propulsive accompaniment from Black, Formanek, and guitarist Marc Ducret. The groove pulls completely apart in a cacophonous outburst from all the bandmembers, but Berne and Speed somehow find their way back to the theme and then drag the rhythm section back in line with them. An abrupt downward shift in dynamics leads to a beautifully subdued ensemble passage, and then Formanek is soon displaying his solo chops. From here on, unpredictability comes not in the piece's linear form -- which is in fact leading to a slam-bang finish -- but rather in the way Berne uses intra-band tension. In three separate waves, solo or group episodes informed by free improvisation are pitted against steadily rising backdrops of funky, twisted riffs that only Berne could write. Rhythmically off-kilter and yet with grooves that Black can drive a truck through, Berne's engaging riffs ultimately win the struggle, with so much energy expended that the listener is left -- happily -- exhausted.

_ By DAVE LYNCH



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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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TIM BERNE – The Empire Box (1998) - 5CDs

Label: Screwgun Records – SCREW U 70009
Format: 5 × CD, Album Box Set, Compilation
Country: US Released: 1999; Style: Jazz, Free jazz
Engineer – Kazunori Sugiyama; Mastered By – Bob Ludwig
Producer – Brian Horner, Jon Rosenberg
Compiles four early vinyl LPs released on Berne's own label, Empire Productions
All albums have been digitally remastered.


CD 1 - THE FIVE YEAR PLAN 
1. The Glasco Cowboy (For Julius Hemphill)
2. A.K. Wadud (For Abdul Wadud)
3. Computerized Taps for 12 Different Steps
4. N.Y.C. Rites

Personnel: Tim Berne (alto saxophone); Vinny Golia (baritone saxophone, alto flute, piccolo); Glenn Ferris (trombone); John Carter (clarinet); Roberto Miranda (acoustic bass); Alex Cline (percussion).
Producers: Tim Berne, Alex Cline, Nels Cline.
Engineers: Bruce Bidlack, Tony.
Recorded at Melnitz Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles, California on April 25, 1979.


CD 2 - 7X
1. Chang Tim Berne
2. The Water People (For Brian Horner)
3. 7x
4. Flies
5. A Pearl in the Oliver C.
6. Showtime (For Don and Thelma Cline)

Personnel: Tim Berne (alto saxophone); Vinny Golia (baritone saxophone, flute, bassoon, khene); Nels Cline (electric 6- & 12-string guitars, Hawaiian steel guitar); Roberto Miranda (acoustic bass); Alex Cline (percussion).
Producers: Brian Horner, Alex Cline, Nels Cline, Tim Berne.
Engineer: Bruce Bidlack.
Recorded at Intermix Studio, Los Angeles, California on January 8, 1980.

 
CD 3 - SPECTRES
1. Hot and Cold
2. Spectres
3. Grendel (For Hamid Drake)
4. Stroll
5. For Charles Mingus

Personnel: Tim Berne (alto saxophone); Olu Dara (cornet); James Harvey (trombone); Ed Schuller, John Lindberg (bass); Alex Cline (percusion).
Producers: Tim Berne, Gary Halvorson.
Recorded in Brooklyn, New York on February 5, 1981.


CD 4 - SONGS AND RITUALS IN REAL TIME (Vol. 1)
1. San Antonio/The Unknown Factor
2. Roberto Miguel (For Roberto Miguel Miranda)
3. New Dog/Old Tricks

CD 5 - SONGS AND RITUALS IN REAL TIME (Vol. 2)
1. Shirley's Song (For Shirley Britt) /The Mutant of Alberan
2. Flies/ The Ancient Ones (For Alex Cline)

Personnel: Tim Berne (alto saxophone); Mack Goldsbury (soprano & tenor saxophones); Ed Schuller (bass); Paul Motian (drums).
Producer: Tim Berne.
Engineer: Kazunori Sugiyama.
Recorded at Inroads, New York, New York on July 1, 1981.

Review:

The most remarkable thing about this box set of four of Tim Berne's reissued releases from the JMT label is that the wealth, depth, and breadth of the material here was recorded in only two years. This is astonishing, if one considers -- merely by cracking the box set open (a very handsome cardboard sleeve, really) and looking at the notes -- that Berne composed, arranged, and performed on these albums with no less than four different bands during the period. For starters, from 1979 there is The Five Year Plan, which featured Berne alongside the late clarinetist John Carter, wind and reedman Vinny Golia, drummer Alex Cline, and bassist Roberto Miranda. This is a live date with Berne's aggressive saxophone work taking a back seat to his leading a band full of strident personalities. Certainly he blows here, especially on alto on "The Glasco Cowboy," written for his mentor and hero, the late Julius Hemphill. Carter and Golia entwine each other, playing through separate harmonic architectures through the entire gig. Everything is crash and burn, and let's see who gets there first. Next is 7x, with Miranda, Cline, his brother Nels on guitars, Golia, and trombonist John Rapson. Here, the aggression factor is heightened by the presence of Nels Cline, whose overdriven scree and amplitude push Berne into the red zone and make Golia carry the structural frameworks and harmonic structures of most of the numbers. An excellent example is when Berne and Cline begin to solo at each other in "The Water People," and Golia and Rapson offer a contrapuntal intervallic figure to hold them in check while the rhythm section moves the tune into more open territory to accommodate them.

On Spectres, from 1981, Berne's counterparts include trombonist James Harvey, Olu Dara on cornet, and John Lindberg and Ed Schuller on alternating basses. On the title track and on "Hot and Cold," Berne utilizes the humorous aspects of Dara's attack on the cornet. Dara is the king of tricks on the instrument, and gives everything a loose carnival feel, even in the heat of a chromatic solo. When the band launches into "Stroll" with Lindberg, it's two players with a wry sense of jester's humor moving through Berne's raw emotionalism and roughing out the edges; the tempered moments of free- swinging post-bop are joyous in both their levity and intensity. Finally, on the double album Songs and Rituals in Real Time, Berne's compositions are in the hands of a band that includes drummer Paul Motian, Ed Schuller, and saxophonist Mack Goldsbury. In this quartet, also recorded in 1981, Berne found the perfect balance of aggressive improvisatory innovation and hardcore, taut ensemble playing. His compositions and arrangements walked the tightrope between restrained, reserved timbral and tonal equanimity and a swinging, blowing rhythmic intensity that had each saxophone player trying to move the other up the scale, not in terms of competition, but in expression. From a knotty, shimmering blues-like figure on "New Dog/Old Tricks," Berne slips into a modal R&B as Goldsbury answers him by taking the modal scale out of the rhythm section's interval, carrying it into an empty one (a diminished fourth), and roaring into the stratosphere with it. For their part, Motian and Schuller play around with time a lot, they stretch intervals to the breaking point and somehow roll them over, and conversely break apart small units of time into bebop-like figures. The 25-minute "The Ancient Ones" is one of Berne's finest moments as a composer and as a soloist, as he goes head to head with Schuller and Motian for ten minutes and clips through the entire chromatic range of his chord progression's palette. Each color becomes another figure upon which to build and deconstruct.

This set is a must for Berne's fans who didn't have the opportunity to get the records the first time around and, for those who did, hearing them in this way, as a set of music spanning only two years (the albums themselves were issued over a longer period), it becomes a revelation of Berne's development as a bandleader and as a soloist. Here is the shop work that witnessed him harnessing his considerable power as a composer and his frighteningly deft ability as a soloist, while leading not just one but four bands in a variety of settings with the same clarity and quality. Essential.

~ By Thom Jurek




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