Sarah Ruth and Monte Espina's "Cuatro Estaciones"

The Covid-19 pandemic changed us all, in one way or another: through the dance of denial and death, enforced isolation and introspection, longing for community, or a level of attention to our immediate environment that we'd previously never paid while forging ahead, lost in our thoughts, oblivious to what was around us. All art that has appeared in its wake is somehow marked by the experience, although the response may be indirect or tacit.

These days I'm not writing regularly, but this release is special, not just because it exemplifies pandemic-referential art, but because its creators are, I think, the inheritors of my friend, the musician/visual artist/poet/educator/broadcaster Dennis Gonzalez's project of nurturing a homegrown experimental underground in North Texas, using a variety of media. Cuatro Estaciones is a collaboration between Sarah Ruth Alexander and Monte Espina, the duo of Miguel Espinel and Ernesto Montiel. 

Alexander grew up on a farm in the Texas Panhandle, surrounded by silence and space. Her education included studies with Meredith Monk, and she now teaches voice, piano, and improvisation (a class in Deep Listening is scheduled for April 8 at Oil & Cotton in Dallas). She contributed a chapter on "Community Building Through Collaboration" to the academic text Art As Social Practice: Technologies for Change (Routledge). She performs solo and in various ensembles, including the feminist improv trio Bitches Set Traps.

Alexander and Montiel are both radio presenters on KUZU 92.9 FM (he: Sonido Tumbarrancho, second/fourth/fifth Thursdays from 10PM-midnight; she: Tiger D, Tuesdays 8-10PM, they: In Praise of Covers, third Sunday 8-10PM). They've curated performances at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios in Denton, culminating in December 2022's two-day Molten Plains Fest, which presented world-class performers Rob Mazurek, Susan Alcorn, Luke Stewart, Henna Chou, and Weasel Walter, among others. On his own, Montiel has brought innovative talent including Peter Brotzmann, Heather Leigh, Damon Smith, Ra Kalam Bob Moses, Jaap Blonk, Wendy Eisenberg, and Atomic to Oak Cliff venues The Wild Detectives (a bookstore with a big backyard) and Texas Theatre (where Lee Oswald was arrested).

Montiel's father passed away in Venezuela two days before the pandemic quarantine began in Denton, and Monte Espina recorded their album Pa the following day, awash in an ocean of loss and uncertainty. That autumn, they came together with Alexander to improvise and record in the woods at Joe Snow's Aquatic Plants in Argyle, near Denton, amid ponds, trails, and creeks, performing for a small, invited audience, with Alexander's partner Stephen Lucas providing audio and video documentation. Each succeeding season, they recorded in a different location within the property, their quiet electroacoustic improvisation blending with sounds of nature (and human activity -- the occasional overflying airplane). The recordings were edited and mastered by Andrew Weathers for his Full Spectrum label.

In meditation, we sometimes listen for the moment when a sound enters our consciousness, or the one when it fades away. At other times, we listen to the space around sounds. Cuatro Estaciones is ideally suited to such focused listening. The musicians attend closely and respond to each other and the sounds in their environment. Espinel's percussion array, Alexander's small instruments and voice, and Montiel's electronics blend with the rustling of leaves, the crackling of a fire (in "Winter"), bird songs, and even the sounds of Alexander's dog Joan as she explores the objects.

In her book This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You, Susan Rogers -- once Prince's recording engineer, now a neuroscientist -- notes that with today's technology, every person carries their own individually curated soundtrack, which they consume passively. Cuatro Estaciones makes the argument that musical sounds -- indeed, all the sounds of our world -- reward more active engagement, if we will only be present and attentive. A lesson of the pandemic we can perhaps carry forward.

Zack Lober's "NO F1LL3R"

Bassist-composer-DJ-producer Zack Lober's a Montreal native by way of Boston and New York, now based in Utrecht, The Netherlands. His Landline project combined music with visual art, while his Ancestry Project used a jazz quintet, turntables, and visual projections to present a narrative based on oral history interviews with his grandfather -- a musician who escaped antisemitism in Europe and wound up playing with some giants of Canadian jazz. Lober's latest group, NO F1LL3R, whose debut release drops February 24 on digital media and limited edition vinyl from Zennez Records, is a trio with trumpeter Suzan Veneman and drummer Sun-Mi Hong. Both of his bandmates here are leaders in their own right, but as a unit, they are empathetic enough to make a spur-of-the-moment free improv like the title track sound as cohesive as the composed pieces.

NO F1LL3R the album is a collection of short takes that flow together seamlessly, starting with "Mid Music," a carryover from The Ancestry Project that unfolds with loose-limbed swing and a melody that recalls Wayne Shorter's "Dolores." "Force Majeure" is a reflective, somber piece that highlights the rhythm section's muscularity, which recalls Ornette's classic quartet in the deep song of Lober's bass and Hong's crisp ride and snare. "a Hymn" pays tribute to both Lober's grandfather Hyman Herman and the estimable pianist Paul (ne Hyman) Bley, with whom he played. "Blues" is written in the style of Bley's one time employer, clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre, but its simple melody again recalls Ornette (who played with Bley in Los Angeles; synchronicities abound). The interplay between Lober and Hong on this track is particularly keen.

The album's weightiest pieces are "Chop Wood" (from the Zen koan that reminds us to "be here now") -- which features the leader's most effective solo work here, and highlights the band's ability to shift effortlessly between deep rumination and propulsive swing -- and "Luck (Alice)," a dedication to Lober's wife in a style inspired by composer Carla Bley. In between, Hong takes a pithy solo on "Sun Drums," and the album concludes with Veneman's "Loved Ones," a brief, bittersweet solo remembrance of those now gone. A succinct introduction to a unit I'd like to see stretch out on these pieces. Producer Ben van Gelder (speaking of illustrious jazz names) captured their interaction with exceptional clarity; there are also remixes of "Force Majeure" available digitally by Utrecht turntablist Kypski and Boston DJ Durkin.

Satoko Fujii and Otomo Yoshihide's "Perpetual Motion"

Funny that having ended 2022 with a review of the formidable avant-garde pianist-composer Satoko Fujii's 100th (!) album, I'm starting 2023 (after processing the passing of Jeff Beck and Tom Verlaine) with a review of her latest release.

Beginning in 1996, Fujii's worked in a wide variety of contexts with top-flight improvisers from around the world, but this is her first recorded encounter with guitarist-turntablist-electronic musician Otomo Yoshihide, a similarly prolific creative spirit who's been active since the late '80s. Historically, the Japanese avant-garde has made less distinction between rock, jazz, and classical streams than their Western counterparts. This new release on Stephane Berland's estimable French indie Ayler Records blends all of these elements into a unity that recalls the collaboration between jazzers Yells At Eels and rockers Pinkish Black that the label released in 2020.

Perpetual Motion is a continuous 48-minute improvisation; its division on the CD into four segments reflects the music's ebb and flow, with dynamic shifts that are indicative of the closeness with which these veteran improvisers were listening to each other as they played together. At times, the music occupies a quiet and reflective space. Elsewhere, Otomo churns up welters of abrasive noise and feedback that Satoko answers with thundering dissonance. 

Satoko's ability to match the amplified guitar's metallic clangor with pianistic power is as impressive as Otomo's ability to make his instrument sing expressively at the piano's lowest volume. Both musicians employ extended techniques (guitar bowing, small objects placed inside the piano) to expand their sonic palette. Together, they use rhythm and repetition to build to peaks of excitement that resolve to ruminative valleys before setting off again. A deeply satisfying collaboration between two adepts of spontaneous composition.