Trevor Dunn's "Seances"

"Humans love to forget and to repeat. We fall subject to confirmation bias, sway to suggestion, take the easy way out and allow ourselves to be governed while adamantly broadcasting our independence." 

That isn't a quote from a sociological treatise but rather, from bassist-composer Trevor Dunn's extensive and thought provoking liner notes to Seances, the full artist appellation for which is Trevor Dunn's Trio-Convulsant avec Folie a Quatre (which seemed like a lot for a blog post title but is descriptive and accurate). Trio-Convulsant is a unit that Dunn convened after the collapse of avant-rock outfit Mr. Bungle, which he co-founded while in high school. The lineup on the trio's second album, 2004's Sister Phantom Owl Fish, included guitarist Mary Halvorson and drummer Ches Smith, both of whom went on to become important bandleaders and composers in their own right. I enjoyed Dunn's work on pianist/Pyroclastic Records boss Kris Davis' Diatom Ribbons and two albums by Dan Weiss' Starebaby. He's also collaborated with a diverse array of artists including John Zorn, Fantomas (with Bungle bandmate Mike Patton), the Melvins, and Wendy Eisenberg (my current obsession of the moment). 

Dunn's inspiration for Seances came from two disparate sources: Paul Desmond's 1962 album Desmond Blue, which teamed the ex-Brubeck saxophonist with guitarist Jim Hall and an orchestra, and Dunn's reading about an obscure French religious sect, the Convulsionnaires of Saint-Medard, whose "mass hysteria and group belief" (Dunn's words) have resonance in our own time. After an abortive 2015 attempt to write music for the trio plus a string quartet, and a release of his chamber music for Zorn's Tzadik label (2019's Nocturnes), Dunn composed the Seances material for the trio plus a mixed quartet of strings and winds. For this project, the trio with Halvorson and Smith is augmented by violinist/violist Carla Kihlstedt (Tin Hat Trio, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, last heard from here in 2015 on Ben Goldberg's excellent Orphic Machine), bass clarinetist Oscar Noriega (Tim Berne's Snakeoil), cellist Mariel Roberts (Wet Ink Ensemble), and flutist Anna Webber (Webber/Morris Big Band).

Dunn's compositions are complex and evocative, propelled by Smith's inventive rendering of their shifting time signatures. "Secours Meurtriers" opens with an aura of dark foreboding and gradually builds to something approximating a chamber music Mahavishnu Orchestra over a driving 13/4 ostinato. Dunn hears "Saint Medard" as a country blues tune, but if so, it's the most abstract one since Henry Cow somehow managed to wrestle "Bittern Storm Over Ulm" out of the Yardbirds' "Got To Hurry." Halvorson has become such a familiar compositional voice that it's refreshing to hear her percussive, dissonant improvisation as a color in someone else's tonal palette. "Restore All Things" retains some ideas from the aborted 2015 string quartet collaboration. Dunn cites the moment when Webber solos microtonally over a bass drone and string glissandi as his favorite on the record. 

The taut, tense, metallic theme of "1733" gives way to a freeblow meltdown, followed by a series of more spacious instrumental conversations before the theme returns. "The Asylum's Guilt" is probably my favorite piece here, a web of somber melody with solo statements from cello and bass clarinet. "Eschatology" is the most jazz-like item here. It's impossible not to think of Out To Lunch Eric Dolphy while listening to Noriega navigate the broken field of rhythm behind him, then Halvorson makes her statement over a bed of strings. Dunn concludes this intense program with the blessed relief of the simple melody  "Thaumaturge." See if you can spot the "collective metric accident" he chose not to fix. Seances is a strong testimony to his compositional acumen, and maybe the best record I've heard this year.