Adam Lane Trio | Absolute Horizon | No Business Records

Adam Lane – bass | Darius Jones – alto saxophone | Vijay Anderson – drums

Recorded by Ross Bonadonna, June 10, 2010 at Wombat Recording Company, Brooklyn, NY. Mixed by Jon Rosenberg, Brooklyn, NY July 31, 2012. All music by Lane, Jones, Anderson. Copyright 2013 SonicBlissMusic (BMI). Cover photo by by Peter Gannushkin / DOWNTOWNMUSIC.NET. Design by Oskaras Anosovas. Produced by Danas Mikailionis. Co-producer – Valerij Anosov

Tracklist CD: 1. Absolute Horizon 8’57” 2. Stars 6’52” 3. The Great Glass Elevator 7’47” 4. Run To Infinity 9’50” 5. Apparent Horizon 10’09” 6. Bioluminescence 7’22” 7. Light 10’49”

Tracklist LP: Side A: 1. Absolute Horizon 2. The Great Glass Elevator Side B: 1. Run To Infinity 2. Bioluminescence

NoBusiness Records NBLP 68, 2013. Limited edition of 300 records

Adam Lane Trio | Absolute Horizon | no business records

Adam Lane | Photo by Peter Gannushkin

Adam Lane is among the best and brightest

of the new wave of forward- looking jazz and improvising bassists, who along with his formidable cohorts exploit the trio format. Here, every inflection, tonality and nuance becomes prominently embedded into the group’s stylization which is based on instant composition. No doubt, the musicians’ astonishing synergy is a powerful underlying component. Sprinkled with off-kilter thematic overtures, blooming tone poems, and unwieldy or tumultuous breakouts, the trio largely straddles the avant-garde spectrum. Lane also uses electronics on certain pieces, adding another, albeit hard- edged contour that yields a series of bizarre connotations.

Each piece stands on its own. Nonetheless, the band does its best to carve out a diverse program. A prime example is “Apparent Horizon,” which is the lengthiest workout at 10-minutes. Exploration is the common denominator as Lane opens with subdued arco notes, circumnavigated by alto saxophonist Darius Jones’ warm lines that enrich the rather eerie soundscape. Moving forward, they open up the floor as drummer Vijay Anderson punches out a peppery African rhythm across his toms. Lane follows suit with a booming ostinato, setting the foundation for Jones’ surging choruses, as he also mirrors the buoyant pulse with a newly concocted melody.

After listening to the album, it’s somewhat mystifying that the program was constructed entirely on improvisation. This attribute alone serves as a testament to the artists’ stunning interactions and reformulations, evidenced within each ensuing development. — Glenn Astarita

Adam Lane Trio | Absolute Horizon | no business records

Darius Jones | Photo by Peter Gannushkin

I’m a sucker for the thick, bluesy tone of Adam Lane’s bass

—somehow, he always manages to convey its grittiest, most grounded side. Absolute Horizon kicks off with a track of the same name, a slow tattoo rising from drummer Vijay Anderson and Lane stumbling into a bass line that can’t help but give off a little swagger. Slowly, a groove coalesces, just the sort of low-end ride to best deliver Darius Jones’s sickly-sweet saxophone. Within minutes, you realize: this is what I want in a saxophone trio. There’s an edge for sure, but also the piece that fits perfectly into the well-worn rhythmic folds of your brain. Things heat up, but the trio never breaks a sweat. They ease out of the track just a coolly and calmly as they brought it into being.

The rest of Absolute Horizon can be typified by a track like “The Great Glass Elevator,” which breaks out a slick bassline about halfway through, the rhythm section working its way to a place where Jones gets everything he needs to go to town. And he does, getting such a deep, soulful sound out his alto that it sounds far more substantial, like a tenor. Elsewhere, “Stars” finds Lane bowing the hell out of his effects-laden bass. It’s not the most effective track, but it showcases a different side of the group as they move away from bluesy, heavily rhythmic improvisation and work towards continuously molding and remolding a unified slab of sound. “Run to Infinity” sounds just as it should, a driving rhythm over which Jones continually accelerates, the gaps between notes becoming ever shorter, the melodic line further and further compressed. Absolute Horizon closes on “Light,” which has a walking bassline that would be better characterized as sprinting, complete with racing high-hat and uncontainable shouts of exhilaration in the background.

The CD version of Absolute Horizon is nearly twice the length of the LP, though the vinyl may be the more effective dose. Still, the CD-only tracks are worth your time (“Apparent Horizon” has a particularly tasty bit of drum and bass). Basically, Absolute Horizon is the usual NoBusiness story: above-average musicians making above-average music. A little something for fans of Lane’s rawer side after the more straight-ahead sounds of the Blue Spirit Band releases. — Dan Sorrells

Adam Lane Trio | Absolute Horizon | no business records

Vijay Anderson | Photo by Peter Varshavky

Bassist Adam Lane has been quite active of late

releasing three albums on the past few months, in addition to playing with his Full Throttle Orchestra. On this album, he is in the excellent company of Darius Jones on alto saxophone and Vijay Anderson on drums. This is the first album Lane has done to date that was totally improvised in the studio and it provides the group with a large canvas on which to create their music. This format definitely plays to their strengths as they display on “Stars” where whirlpools of sound descend like wild dervishes with saxophone and bowed bass leading the charge. “The Great Glass Elevator” moves dynamically through raw blowing and subtle bass playing, while “Run to Infinity” develops from a cautious beginning to a torrid collective improvisation. “Apparent Horizon” develops patiently at length, featuring billowing saxophone, rolling drums and thick elastic bass. There is a spacious midsection fraught with tension, waiting for the finale which is a long blowing emotive saxophone and drums. “Bioluminescence” adds subtle electronics to the mix, as if the music had begun to glow itself. This is an experimental track that works well, with bass and drums building an excellent foundation. Raw saxophone weaves through the maelstrom, deep and powerful. “Light” finishes the album with a fast paced trio improvisation, developing very nimble bass and drums with flurries of saxophone gliding overhead. This was a gutsy move for Adam Lane to develop a totally improvised LP but it works very well. The musicians are locked in deeply and support each other throughout. — Music and More

adamdetail

Adam Lane has in the last several decades

thrived as one of the very brightest stars on acoustic bass, a jazz composer-arranger of unique personality and poise, and a band leader of the highest rank.

A new CD of him in a bare-bones trio setting doing completely improvised music, Absolute Horizon (No Business NBCD 61), gives us a slightly different, but none the less welcome perspective. Here we have three excellent players–Adam, Darius Jones on alto sax and Vijay Anderson on drums–putting aside arranged compositions and going straight at it.

And what you might expect is what you get–a totally free-wheeling ride through the fertile, musically inventive collective imaginations of a trio of master avant jazzmen.

It all clicks. There are seven contrasting pieces with a generous playing time so you can imbibe a good long set of it all.

There is of course lots of Adam Lane’s bass playing to dig here, arco or pizz, ensemble and solo. But then Darius and Vijay are primed and there are fully “actionable” sequences to get you off your mental seat and charge straight on through the music. (“Actionable” comes out of me almost involuntarily. It’s a word I keep coming across in the many job descriptions I go through online every day in search of a JOB, you’ll understand? It means that it invites or impells you to do something, in this case listen and dig.)

Some of this is flat-out, killer energy freedom, some of it is in a finessed, interactively subtle mood, some of it swings like hell, in time. It all swings in a wide sense, in or out of time. It shows you how some of the best can just let go and get a radically varied program of exciting new improvisations that showcase each as individuals yet get all kinds of group sounds and dynamics going. In fact this is something an avant jazz novice should hear if he or she needs to understand the importance of collective invention, of listening and proceeding in a totally free small group setting.

I have a couple more Adam Lane disks coming, so stay tuned. Meanwhile get a hold of this one! — Grego Applegate Edwards

adamdetail

Not enough is heard from Brooklyn-born bassist Adam Lane.

He boasts an impressive track record, illuminated by a series of outstanding recordings, mainly on the CIMP label, but culminating in the acclaimed Ashcan Rantings (Clean Feed, 2010). Nothing has surfaced under his own name since, so any new disc grabs attention. That’s not to say he has been idle, notching up notable appearances on drummer William Hooker’s excellent Bliss Suite (Not Two, 2010) which also featured rising star saxophonist Darius Jones, as well as on the reedman’s own Big Gurl (Smell My Dream) (Aum Fidelity, 2011).

But unlike the aforementioned entries in his discography, which paired masterful charts with inventive delivery, Absolute Horizon comprises seven totally improvised cuts, credited collectively to the trio of Lane, Jones (happily on board once again), and drummer Vijay Anderson. Both have been frequent collaborators, in particular Anderson, hitched to the bassist for almost two decades, accounting for the potent shared conception of jazz-imbued free improvisation.

With his rich deep tone, the leader adds a tensile strength to the cohesive exchanges and taut riffs, although some may find his use of electronic distortion on two selections insufficiently differentiated compared to his finely nuanced work elsewhere. On alto Jones’ treacly sweetness edging into tart dissonance, allied to soulful inflections and a broad vibrato, invest even the simplest phrases with emotional heft. As may be imagined Anderson meshes supremely well with the bassist, smoothly switching gears between sensitive accompanist and hard driving timekeeper.

Many of the numbers adhere to a template of gradual build up to a pressurized crescendo followed by eventual wind down. At best, what emerges sounds completely natural, inevitable even, with an effortless balance and near telepathic interplay. The title track lays out the band’s stall from the git-go: intermittent throb from the drums, spaciously measured bass and elongated alto combining to spine tingling effect.

Other highlights include “Run To Infinity” where Lane’s strummed bass settles into a searching vamp, fuelling a yearning alto soliloquy which escalates to a powerful sequence of expressive vocalized howls. Later on the final “Light” Jones spins out his stories over a buoyant rhythmic latticework until morphing into an insistent angular figure presaging a ticking conclusion. Only one thing prevents this being a five star outing: too many of the pieces seem to peter out rather than emphatically concluding, always a difficult trick to pull off after rhythm-based extemporization which sets up expectations of a more definite resolution. But that shouldn’t detract from the splendid interaction that comes before, and it certainly shouldn’t deter those wishing to hear more from Lane. — John Sharpe

adamdetail

Adam Lane is among the best and brightest of the new wave

of forward- looking jazz and improvising bassists, who along with his formidable cohorts exploit the trio format. Here, every inflection, tonality and nuance becomes prominently embedded into the group’s stylization which is based on instant composition. No doubt, the musicians’ astonishing synergy is a powerful underlying component. Sprinkled with off-kilter thematic overtures, blooming tone poems, and unwieldy or tumultuous breakouts, the trio largely straddles the avant-garde spectrum. Lane also uses electronics on certain pieces, adding another, albeit hard- edged contour that yields a series of bizarre connotations.

Each piece stands on its own. Nonetheless, the band does its best to carve out a diverse program. A prime example is “Apparent Horizon,” which is the lengthiest workout at 10-minutes. Exploration is the common denominator as Lane opens with subdued arco notes, circumnavigated by alto saxophonist Darius Jones’ warm lines that enrich the rather eerie soundscape. Moving forward, they open up the floor as drummer Vijay Anderson punches out a peppery African rhythm across his toms. Lane follows suit with a booming ostinato, setting the foundation for Jones’ surging choruses, as he also mirrors the buoyant pulse with a newly concocted melody.

After listening to the album, it’s somewhat mystifying that the program was constructed entirely on improvisation. This attribute alone serves as a testament to the artists’ stunning interactions and reformulations, evidenced within each ensuing development. — Glenn Astarita


CD version
(incl. shipment cost world-wide)

$ 15.00
Out of Stock

LP version (incl. shipment cost world-wide)

$ 24.00
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