Nasheet Waits

Bruce Eisenbeil Sextet | Inner Constellation Volume One | Nemu Records

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Don’t let the corrosive guitar that begins Bruce Eisenbeil’s extended “Inner Constellation” fool you into thinking you’re about to hear a psychedelic rave-up or some proto-fusion. Once bass and drums join in, followed by violin and horns, it’s apparent “Inner Constellation” (a 45-minute work recorded in one long take, meant to be listened to straight through from beginning to end, notwithstanding 27 individual track numbers and the enigmatic inner titles) is an example of what’s still sometimes called “free jazz” or “creative improvised music,” terms that ceased being meaningful as long ago as the 1970s, when composition asserted itself as a force to be reckoned with in the jazz avant-garde. There are numerous passages here that sound collectively improvised, and as many others that sound preplanned. Happily, because Eisenbeil’s writing is so open-ended and the members of his sextet give themselves over to it so completely, you’re never quite sure where composition ends and improvisation begins, or when the two overlap— a measure of Eisenbeil’s success. — Francis Davis Continue reading →

Craig Taborn | Rob Brown | Nasheet Waits | Rob Brown Trio | Unknown Skies | RogueArt Jazz

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…Every trio without a piano or without a drums, or as in this case without a double bass, gains in incline what it loses in “balance”. It only takes a little sometimes. Everyone plays at ease across. Everyone can split themselves. There are no more solos as solos but phases, circles of influence and predominance which do not last. The duos bind and unbind more clearly, the contrasts stand out better. The theme is no longer material to develop but, as in Unknown Skies, a lyrical and volatile substance which evaporates between the communicating vessels of two duos within the trio, from the sweet wanderings of Brown and Taborn to the moats where Taborn and Waits dance. Here and there. In the middle of Bounce Back, the theme is a branching, and only a branching, connecting the spiral discussion between the saxophonist and the drummer and the take off of the pianist. Here and there. On The Upshot, the theme does not unfold, it coils and rewinds more and more rapidly, up to the clearing. Bobbin-clearing. When it is still exposed in due form, and comes back at the end, as on A Final Line, the theme seems almost unable to bear the pressure of what will follow, of what has gone before. — Alexandre Pierrepont, excerpt from the liner notes Continue reading →