REVIEW
All About Jazz
January 26, 2011
By John Kelman
010
Live Download Series #010 travels back another three years behind
#009, to the time when Frisell made the break from his early days at
ECM, and the start of what would become a two-decade run for Nonesuch.
It also further demonstrates the fundamental difference between live
and studio recordings. "Unscientific American," which appears here
long before Frisell would record it as a structured, 48-second miniature
on This Land, is a more expansive eight-minute piece, where its idiosyncratic
theme acts as a jumping-off point—and, mid-piece, rallying point—for
collective improvisation, while Lookout for Hope's "Hangdog," this
set's opener, goes to far more extreme places than its studio counterpart;
Frisell's overdubbing replaced by a repeated bass/cello pattern that
drives an overdriven guitar solo, far edgier and expressionistic than
anything he's done in recent years.
With other material from Lookout and Rambler, the high point
of the 80- minute set is the extended version of "High Planes Drifter," from
Frisell's Elektra/Nonesuch debut, 1989's Before We Were Born. Arranged
by the New York Downtown scene's influential John Zorn, it reflects
a very different Frisell from what came before...and what would come
after. During Frisell's own New York days, he moved away from the ethereal
atmospherics of some of his earlier ECM work, towards a more aggressive
tendency that, nevertheless, reflected the almost geeky idiosyncrasies
of a guitarist as capable of ear-shattering shredding as he was moody
tone poems—a broader range of expressionism that was prerequisite
for his membership in Zorn's Naked City. Still, the episodic "High
Plains Drifter"—with its rapid section-to-section shifts that
reflected Zorn's own writing at the time—is all Frisell. There
may be harsher sonics, harder surfaces and more jagged edges than his
later work—this was before he developed a love affair with looping—but
there are still plenty of signposts of what would come, including direct
allusions to country and roots music, albeit delivered in a high-velocity,
cartoon-like fashion.
There are those who still bemoan Frisell's loss of edge, and
certainly the material here serves to justify those thoughts. Even "One
Week (Theme)"—ultimately part of a larger project, where the
guitarist scored three films by slapstick comedian Buster Keaton, released
on Go West and The High Sign/One Week, both on Elektra/Nonesuch—is
played with greater strength than on the album to come six years down
the road. But this lengthy look at the film's theme also hints at the
direction Frisell would be taking, even as "Devil Suit," from Go
West, finds Frisell, Roberts and Driscoll layering the languid theme
over Baron's tumultuous drumming. An early look at This Land's lyrical
and slightly reggae-ish "Amarillo Barbados" shows that there has always
been a straight line running through Frisell's career, a line that
the entire Live Download Series brings into sharper focus. -
John Kelman - All About Jazz
For the complete Download Series review visit All
About Jazz here. |
