The alto saxophone comes with a heavy pocketful of associations: Ornette, Zorn, Berne, Bird... and memories of or associations with all of these spring to mind while listening to Silver Bullet in the Autumn of Your Years. A very dense mixture of "modern" jazz, punk, funk and noise is ladled into various vessels and churned briskly. The opening salvo, all of 45 seconds long, pits a periodic whump against frenetic improvising to announce the groups modus. "The Dali Lama's Got That PMA" sounds for all the world like a CD being fast-forwarded through an insistent tangle of breath-stealing riffs. Echoes of Blood Ulmer or The Contortions are refracted off thickly patinated loft flooring, with wedges of quick and quiet used as a lever to dislodge a spate of honking skree. Intricate spiky unison passages appear abruptly, a honed blade through the mass of knots.
There are two different rhythm sections on display here, alternating pieces, both featuring Pitsiokos and guitarist Sam Lisbeth. One has bassist Tim Dahl and drummer Jason Nazary, the other Henry Fraser and Connor Baker. Attentive and repeated listening might reveal the subtle differences between them, but to me they all sound of-a-piece. If this is due to the similarity of these gentlemen's playing or to Pitsiokos' compositional glue I cannot tell. Only that the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts.