Pinkish Black & Yells At Eels' "Vanishing Light in the Tunnel of Dreams"

Styles, genres, and categories don't really mean a lot in music -- they're marketing conveniences, no more. I've long maintained that anyone can play with anyone else, as long as everyone involved listens and allows the others space. So it was no surprise to me around this time last year when I got wind that Fort Worth's dark, heavy experimental duo Pinkish Black were convening at Cloudland Studio with Dallas' free jazz family trio Yells At Eels. While the bands' approaches to composition and improvisation diverge widely, their stature and shared respect gave their convergence the potential to produce something substantive.

They had a mutual admiration society dating from the days when brothers Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez used to book all-ages punk shows at their parents' Oak Cliff home. Aaron and Stefan had played thrash metal under the rubric Akkolyte before luring their free jazz eminence father, trumpeter Dennis Gonzalez, out of musical retirement to form Yells At Eels in 2001. (An early Yells At Eels composition was entitled "Free Jazz Is Thrash, Asshole.") Pinkish Black drummer/synthesist Jon Teague had subbed for Stefan on a memorable 2008 Yells At Eels gig, and had participated in the improv project "Age of Disinformation" with Aaron that same year.

Typically, Teague and his bandmate, keyboardist/synthesist Daron Beck, deal in spectral atmospherics and monolithic slabs of sound, replete with menace. Yells At Eels is more of a tug of war between the relentless energy and restless invention of the brothers' bass and drums and the grounded spirituality and lyricism of their father's trumpet. On Vanishing Light in the Tunnel of Dreams, the merging of these entities comes about by degrees.

The opening "Meditation" finds Pinkish Black creating a sound world for Yells At Eels to inhabit. "Slow Cascade of Tears" is introduced by Stefan's marimba before Dennis and Aaron make their melodic statements in turn, over Teague's thunderous backing. Aaron Gonzalez particularly shines on this date, whether wrestling deep, woody tones from his acoustic bass, or laying down elastic lines on electric, summoning the spirits of Jack Bruce, John Wetton, and Yannick Top on "Heatstroke Mirage." When Dennis kicks on his harmonizer pedal and blends his sound with Daron Beck's swirling accompaniment, the transformation is underway. The title track opens with a lengthy ambient section before the conversation is joined, its spaciousness reminding this listener of the moody drone pieces on Don Cherry's Brown Rice album.

The culmination of this journey comes on "The Sorrow of Guernica," which dwells on more immediate concerns than Picasso's anti-war masterpiece -- because in the months before the session, Dennis Gonzalez and both members of Pinkish Black had been dealing with health issues, and this music is suffused with awareness of mortality as well as the urge to achieve transcendence. Stefan Gonzalez's marimba tells that story, in the way he backs his father's somber song and then follows his brother's elegiac solo with a tortuous, yet melodic one of his own. Beck makes his own brief comments before the close; Teague anchors the whole piece with assertive sensitivity.

Cloudland's Britt Robisheaux, whose yeoman work helped make Pinkish Black's Concept Unification their strongest work yet, did a masterful job of capturing every element and nuance of this music as it went down, and Daron Beck mixed and mastered it during the pandemic lockdown. Released on Stefane Berland's estimable French indie Ayler Records, its beauty and majesty are eminently worthy of your ears.

3.7.2010, oak cliff, dallas, ftw

HIO opted out of our early a.m. sunday recording sesh inside the vortex outside the modern due to rain. rode over to the o.c. with mr. horn and met up with hickey outside the kessler theater. dance class had just gotten finished when we rolled up, and they've got a stage in place now. we could see the aftermath of the past two nights' benefit jams for sandaga market jazz venue.

jeff liles shot video of us in the upstairs green room, in front of some mirrors with some hanging lamps. looked real v.u.-like. he wanted three-minute pieces, but we suck at controlling time, so he wound up shooting five snippets of four or five minutes' duration apiece, using both a static and a handheld camera. all three of us played cigarbox guitars, terry through his laptop, plus i sawed away at a violin and dropped my keys on a cbg.

my fave moment came when i was playing the violin and the contact mic fell off, so i started tapping on the mic with a screwdriver, then moved to the cbg. jeff's posted three clips so far, one a compilation of bits from different pieces, and terry has the raw footage from the static camera, edits from which will wind up on virb.com at some point. when we fell by jeff's apartment to watch vid and pick up a dvd, he made us smoothies from the contents of a couple of unused catering trays from the previous night's show. a top fella.

onward to the phoenix project through dense traffic (accidents in both directions on i-30 around downtown). we arrived late but jessica (my middle daughter's ex-roommate who runs the phoenix project) said they'd just gotten there too. changes in the phoenix since we were there last -- they've got a decent little heater inside, similar to the one at 1919 hemphill, so no more hobo fire outside.

the stage was different too, but terry still wound up wearing half of it on his pants. i got a copy of their zine ...from the ashes, which included a review i wrote of aaron gonzalez's age of disinformation and a history of the daagnim collective by his dad dennis gonzalez.

michael chamy showed up to augment us, as did terry's teacher friend who was going to play chess on camera while we performed. two out of four bands didn't make it, which meant that the other chess player was absent, so jessica volunteered to step in instead. we wound up playing twice, because there were sound issues at first which made terry inaudible, then hickey had to leave to "slop the hogs" before we played again.

so the "world tour" is now complete, including a couple of performances we hadn't planned initially that wound up being among the highlights. we definitely learned a few things about what works and what doesn't with this project that we'll be applying in the future.

home to steak sammitches, then off to lola's 6th with my sweetie for tommy atkins' wake. good to see so many good folks there together, albeit for the worst reason you can possibly imagine. overall, it was a pretty good day.

Dennis Gonzalez/Yells At Eels' "The Great Bydgoszcz Concert"

It arrives with a somewhat portentous title, recalling Duke Ellington's The Great Paris Concert or Ornette Coleman's The Great London Concert. But this latest offering from the prodigiously talented and prolific Gonzalez family of Oak Cliff -- father Dennis (trumpet) and sons Aaron (bass) and Stefan (drums) -- earns its stripes, a magnificent artifact of a ten-year-old group that's just now beginning to hit its stride.

In the last twelve months, they've given us Renegade Spirits, a complex improvisational dialogue with Art Ensemble of Chicago percussionist Famoudou Don Moye and Nawlins saxophonist Tim Green; Scape Grace, a lovely duet album that pairs Dennis with Portuguese pianist Joao Pablo; and A Matter of Blood, a quartet outing in which Dennis, ex-Coltrane bassist Reggie Workman, pianist Curtis Clark and drummer Michael T.A. Thompson generate light as well as heat. (A review I penned of the latter album will appear in the Fort Worth Weekly.) Beyond that, the brothers continue to work together and separately in hardcore punk (their duo Akkolyte) and experimental contexts, as well as jazz. (Release of Aaron's ambient outfit Age of Disinformation on Mayyrh Records is imminent.)

The Great Bydgoszcz Concert (it's pronounced "by gosh," a fact commented on in the title of the closing group improv) documents a Polish tour Yells At Eels made in March of 2008, the basic trio augmented by Portuguese saxophonist Rodrigo Amado, the brothers' bandmate in guitarist Luis Lopes' Humanization 4tet. Guitarist Morgan Craft opines (and I agree) that it takes ten years to achieve proficiency on an instrument, another ten to achieve mastery. Using that criterion, Aaron and Stefan are right on track; their performances on this date represent as much of a quantum leap over their substantial achievement on 2006's Geografia as that record was over 2002's Home Away From Home/Pictogram. Having long ago progressed beyond merely holding their own in the rarefied improvisational atmosphere their father inhabits, they've become strong enough players in their own right to push their sounds into the air next to anyone.

Stefan's 15-minute-plus "Crow Soul" opens the proceedings with a ceremonial tattoo on toms that shifts to snare and cymbals as Aaron enters with a rumbling ostinato, then Dennis' octave-pedaled trumpet states the majestic theme, his long tones standing in stark relief against the busy rhythm section. Amado's solo starts slowly, building intensity as it unfolds. The brothers momentarily dispense with the pulse behind their father's solo, Gonzalez pere sounding pensive at first, then more assertive. Aaron makes a pithy statement of his own before the theme returns, this time played by the horns in unison.

The bracing theme to Ornette Coleman's "Happy House" hits with the shock of the familiar before the rhythm section races off behind Dennis' tortuous solo, Aaron walking -- actually more like sprinting at this tempo -- while Stefan starts out where Billy Higgins left off before careening into orbit, pushing the time and playing a furious, responsive counterpoint to Amado's robust explorations, then plays an explosive, cartwheeling solo of his own. Aaron's "Joining Pleasure with Useful" is almost a funk dirge, while Amado's "Dialeto da Desordem" is a bracing freeblow romp. "Document for William Parker" and "Elegy for a Slaughtered Democracy" have both evolved a ways since they were first recorded on Geografia. The dolorous "Litania" was composed by the late Polish trumpeter (and Rosemary's Baby soundtrack composer) Krzysztof Komeda, whose 1966 album Astigmatic is a touchstone for European jazzers.

Cop via dennisgonzalezx.blogspot.com or www.ayler.com.

Yells At Eels at Lola's, 8.8.2008

Caught up with Yells At Eels -- the Dallas-based free jazz outfit consisting of trumpeter Dennis Gonzalez (whom I first met 30 years ago!) with his sons Aaron Gonzalez on bass and Stefan Gonzalez on drums -- at Lola's the other night, after missing Fort Worth appearances they'd made at 1919 Hemphill and Arts Fifth Avenue. (I suck as a fan.) In fact, I hadn't seen them since they played the Wreck Room in 2002, but I'd followed their evolution through more recent recordings -- 2006's Geografia and this year's The Gift of Discernment (credited to Dennis Gonzalez Jnaana Septet). They've toured the U.S., Portugal, Poland, and Mexico, and played in loads of different contexts, including the brothers' thrash duo Akkolyte and Age of Disinformation, an ambient experiment of Aaron's (including Jon Teague on live electronics) that he plans to release on his Inner Realms Outer Realms label. (I got to play a show with Aaron last fall in a one-off improv outfit that was kind of a precursor to PFFFFT!.)

Before they hit, I got to talk with Stefan (who's getting ready to head to New York to play some shows with Puerto Rican hardcore band Cojoba) about taking drum lessons from Ronald Shannon Jackson and playing double drums with Alvin Fielder (on The Gift of Discernment) and Famoudou Don Moye (on a soon-to-be-released recording as Renegade Spirits). Aaron described some very vivid and bizarre dreams he'd had, to his father's great amusement. Since I saw 'em last, the brothers have gotten fiery. They both fairly dance on their respective instruments in the same way that Cecil Taylor does on piano, and are totally fearless as improvisers. Their performance was both powerfully physical and intensely emotional. When I mentioned to Teague (who subbed for Stefan on a YAE gig in Dallas earlier this year) that their hardcore background seemed very compatible with a free jazz context, he laughed and reminded me, "'Free Jazz Is Thrash, Asshole'" (title of a tune from YAE's 2002 release Pictogram/Home Away from Home). Their dad remains a touchstone, hitting pleasure centers from '60s Miles (something I'd never noticed in his playing before) to Don Cherry to Lester Bowie, using a Digitech harmonizer to transform himself into a one-man brass section, calling an Ornette tune ("Happy House") for Fort Worth.

Afterward, Aaron gave me a copy of a CD he and his brother recorded in Portugal last year with guitarist Luis Lopes and saxophonist Rodrigo Amado as the Humanization Quartet. It's the best representation I've heard on disc of the way he and Stefan play now. I'm looking forward to hearing the Renegade Spirits record (due in October on L.A.-based Furthermore Recordings) and having YAE back on the boards in the Fort again before too long. One idea: a YAE/Stoogeaphilia bill, so Stefan (who's started playing bass clarinet) can join us for "1970," "Funhouse," and "L.A. Blues."

Ten things I liked in 2016

1) Helping Dennis Gonzalez hang his art exhibit at Grackle Gallery, and hearing his new band Ataraxia Trio in one of their first performances. I'm looking forward to hearing the recordings they just completed, after a few more months of sound evolution.

2) Hearing Sarah Ruth Alexander and Gregg Prickett perform their darkly spiritual music twice, also at the Grackle. (Do I detect a theme here?) The first time, it was material from her solo cassette Words On the Wind, with atmospheric interludes from Gregg. The second time, it was Far From the Silvery Light, the album that they released under the rubric They Say the Wind Made Them Crazy, in its entahrty.

3) Taking 3/4 of X_____x to dinner in the Denton town square when they played at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studio (RIP) in January, and realizing as we listened to the VU's Matrix tapes on the way back that at least two of them had the memory of seeing the Velvets at La Cave. Hearing X_____x's stately version of Albert Ayler's "Ghosts" live was an unexpectedly moving experience. Bonus: Getting to hear Craig Bell's "New Haven era" compilation aka Darwin Layne on sweet, sweet vinyl.

4) Watching Half Cleveland perform live via the wonders of live streaming. Getting a shout-out from Harvey Gold. Becoming obsessed with Robert Wyatt's "Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road" after hearing Harvey sing it on Tin Huey's disinformation.

5) Hearing Nels Cline's Lovers, on which David Breskin performed the same service for Nels that George Martin did for Jeff Beck on Blow By Blow -- to wit, providing a context for his amazing guitar playing that emphasizes his gift for melody. Learning that Breskin also produced great albums by Mark Dresser, Kris Davis, and my guitar obession-o'-the-moment, Mary Halvorson, that dropped this year. And that he's currently at work on new ones by Halvorson and Chris Lightcap. All I ever need is something to look forward to.

6) Playing Stoogeaphilia shows with Tame, Tame and Quiet and their "brother bands" BULLS and Heater. Realizing that while my years are catching up with me, playing music with good friends is still the best catharsis your money can buy.

7) Seeing George Takei in the film of Allegiance with my middle daughter while in other cities, my sister watched it with one of her daughters, and one of her other daughters watched it with her boyfriend. Powerful, moving, and topical. And yeah, I'm a sucker for Broadway musicals, but more Rodgers & Hammerstein and Lerner & Loewe than Lloyd-Webber or, um, Disney.

8) Geeking out on Anthony Braxton, whose work I've underappreciated, with the help of intarweb buddy Charles Young and Sound American. Music's a deep well; how fortunate are we.

9) Reading Nick Blakey's meticulously researched and well-written liner notes to Smog Veil's worthy "Platters du Cuyahoga" series, three volumes of which (Mr. Stress Blues Band, Robert Bensick Band, and Schwartz-Fox Blues Crusade) dropped this year. When you encounter someone who does what you do, only better, the only thing you can do is take your hat off. Mine's doffed.

10) Watching Jim Jarmusch's Stooges doco Gimme Danger at the Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff ("the one where they caught Lee Oswald," as I'd explain to out of town friends) with pals including Sir Marlin Von Bungy's son, who's a couple of years younger than I was when I saw the Stooges play the Cincinnati Pop Festival on my parents' TV. Then again, when I was that age, I hadn't seen Joan Jett and Cheap Trick live half a dozen times, or worked the smoke machine for my father's band. Lucky kid.

my scrawl in the fw weekly

a review i penned of aaron gonzalez's new cd age of disinformation is online now (and maybe in the paper; haven't seen a copy yet).

aaron gonzalez's age of disinformation