Thursday, June 21, 2012

Pail Bug

Pail Bug (Generate Records 18) features a quartet of improvisers who follow the star of new music sounds more so than post-bop/freebop. They are Dietrich Eichmann on piano, John Hughes, double bass, Astrid Weins, double bass, and Jeff Arnal, percussion.

Their pedigree tells you a bit about where the music comes from: Jeff studied with Milford Graves, Dietrich with Schippenbach, and both John and Astrid have been associated with Peter Kowald.

The press sheet tells us that the group creates compositions "built from the extreme magnification of small sounds and gestures." And indeed this is more a micro- than a macro-music. The multilayering of sounds created by the collective places emphasis on the interaction of detailed improvisations. It's not, in other word, a band that focuses on the "big head" powerhouse thing or on aggressive soloing.

In that the music has more in common with AMM or MEV than in does with, say, Albert Ayler in full-shout mode. Or for that matter, more in the quieter sounds made by Cecil Taylor ensembles at the beginnings or endings of long improvisations.

If you listen with those parameters in mind I think you will find an interesting program of no compromising improv. They are off to a good start. May they continue to develop as an ensemble.

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