Denton, 10.1.2025

It's been an ass-kick of a week, in which Repubs shut down the government because they were unwilling to negotiate with Dems to continue funding healthcare under the ACA at the same time they were continuing tax breaks for billionaires, and former Fox News shill turned "War Secretary" Hegseth summoned the entire senior leadership of the US military -- which we would have called "shitty OPSEC" back when I was Guarding Freedom's Frontier -- from around the globe to hear him espouse a John Milius wet dream as "warrior ethos" before his daddy got up to ramble for an hour or so, as is his wont, and announce he would use their forces against "the enemy within" (meaning, for now, blue cities in the North, especially those with Black mayors, and eventually, I suppose, your humble chronicler o' events). So my buddy Mike and I headed up to li'l d, where Ernesto Montiel was presenting the third installment of his new Porous Sonorous series at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios. 

First set, by composer/cellist Kory Reeder (who says his main axe is contrabass, but adopted the smaller instrument as a touring expedient) and Denton-based Portuguese soprano/harpist Julia Coelho was an abridged version of Reeder's two-and-a-half-hour piece Codex Praxis. The juxtaposition of Reeder's minimalist drones and pulses and Coelho's medieval-sounding song put me in mind of a release on Reeder's Sawyer Editions label, Feldman and Hume: Intermissions, in which works by minimalist icon Morton Feldman and 17th century composer Tobias Hume are presented side by side. In Codex Praxis, the overlaying of the two elements was surprisingly harmonious, even when a passing train (the "house band" at Rubber Gloves) added its tonality to the mix.

Second set was an ad hoc pairing of Trio du Sang bandmates Gregg Prickett (guitar) and Andrew May (violin), necessitated by the absence due to illness of Austin-based Turkish vocalist Esin Gunduz, who was present virtually via tracks she recorded, which May played on computer. I was accustomed to hearing Prickett and May perform together in Trio du Sang's acoustic format, but hearing them applying their electrified instruments (with Prickett adding echo and delay along with skillful use of a volume pedal) as they responded to Gunduz's voice and effects was a study in musical empathy, marked by deep listening and in-the-moment creation. High spots included May using a pick on their fiddle to respond to Prickett's percussive fingerpicking on muted strings, and skirling gypsy scales played against snaky slide guitar chords. Trio du Sang is about to hit the boards again, and Prickett says he plans to record his other band, Monks of Saturnalia, soon -- a welcome development. 

The wildcard of the evening was the Franco-Belgian "brutal jazz" trio Darrifourcq Hermia Ceccaldi, performing material from their third album, Unicorn and flexibility. Two minutes into their set, I told my friend Karla, "This is obviously the drummer's band," something Sylvain Darrifourcq denied, but their music is characterized by what they call "temporal elasticity," which in practice means frequent, jarringly on-a-dime shifts in dynamics, from quiet passages to free jazz intensity to harsh noise and back, often within a couple of bars. Darrifourcq uses extended techniques in the manner of a Han Bennink or a Tatsuya Nakatani, but he does so within the context of a cohesive, powerful unit playing tightly scripted compositions. 

Early in their set, a melodic sound I couldn't identify mystified me, seeing that saxophonist Manuel Hermia's reed was nowhere near his mouth. Then I realized it was Darrifourcq, rubbing what I thought were tuned bells (he later revealed they were teacups!) against the head of a floor tom (or was it a metal surface placed on that?). At other times he would scrape a cymbal against he same head, or careen across his kit like "arena jazz" era Tony Williams, pausing to damp cymbals as the music went through a series of astonishing stops and starts. 

Cellist Valentin Ceccaldi put me in mind of Kory Reeder's earlier comment about the cello as bassist's touring expedient, as Ceccaldi played grinding arco double stops reminiscent of the big rock PA behind the screen at Texas Theatre a few weeks ago, which made amplified arco basses sound like jet engines (Ceccaldi's double stops were more musical), or delicate pizzicato lines to which Darrifourcq responded with explosive percussion interjections. Hermia's tenor could rhapsodize, wail, or shriek, depending on the needs of the moment. This band definitely needs to be seen to be believed; if you get the chance, you owe it to yourself. Their record is also eminently worthy of your attention.

That would have been a tough act for anyone to follow, but fortunately, Firelife Trio was up to the task. Houston-based saxophone master Danny Kamins (El Mantis), whom I last saw dueting with Polish bassist Marcin Bozek last year, was back from kicking cancer's ass and playing up a storm on sopranino and alto, his circular-breathing fluency and limitless melodic imagination undiminished by months of chemotherapy. Alongside him, siblings Stefan Gonzalez (Trio Glossia, Young Mothers) on drums and Aaron Gonzalez (Kolga) on bass played with imagination and fire, the relentless intensity of their work with Yells At Eels -- thrash metal aesthetics with free jazz chops -- tempered with a new sense of dynamics and use of space, with both musicians vocalizing wordlessly at times. A cathartic soul rinsing to put the capper on a superlative night of music. 

Next Porous Sonorous event will be October 23 at The Wild Detectives in Oak Cliff, featuring spoken word artist Fred Moten in a duo with bassist Brandon Lopez, Aaron Gonzalez in a duo with saxophonist/drummer Joshua Canate (Trio Glossia), and poet Sherrie Zantea. It's presented in conjunction with No Idea Festival, under whose auspices Moten and Lopez will perform in different ensembles at Alienated Majesty in Austin the following night.