The Squid's Ear
Writing about improvised, contemporary, experimental and unusual music,
following the activities of Squidco...
  •  •  •     Join Our Mailing List!

The Squid's Ear
Facebook: Squidco Sales



Heard In

Reviews of artist releases:
cd's, books, magazines, &c.


  Paul Dunmall / Mark Sanders 
  Unity
  (577 Records) 


  
   review by Marc Medwin
  2022-01-05
Paul Dunmall / Mark Sanders: Unity (577 Records)

One of the very special periods in the music we're still fumblingly calling "Free Jazz" involves its first large-scale flowering, that fertile stretch between 1955 and 1962, or thereabouts. To suggest that the music transitioned from metric to non-metric, or tonal to its supposed opposite, is to impose a partially false duality on many more complex manifestations. Both Paul Dunmall and Mark Sanders live at the most fruitful point of those continua and have done so for many years. Unity, their first duo album, could not have been given a more apt title for those very reasons.

The lovely opening moments on "The Quiet Mind" indicate precisely the erasure of those boundaries which, frankly, never really existed in the first place. Sanders is playing time, swing-time in fact, but it's extraordinarily subtle, just sneaking out through his brushes! The bell-like tone inaugurating the track lends an air of mystery to what is really grounded, though only just, in earth and groove. When he brings other skins and metals into the equation, the new rhythm grows organically out of the first, like the pivot to a perfect modulation. Dunmall's minor-modal tenor comes in at a whisper, but immediately and repeatedly its microtonal inflections point toward other variables, like the blues, which actually foregrounds itself only minutes later. The sounds of the instruments themselves bespeak multiple historical points, suggesting something conjoining romantic ballad and an anticipatory prelude to the roiling "New Thing" explorations of which much of the disc is comprised.

Maybe it's all about implication, an art of which both musicians are masters. Even to suggest that Sanders slides in and out of time is to impose false constructs on what is clearly a playing style built on subtlety. Hear his melodic and polyrhythmic interplay on the duo's homage to Henry Grimes, one of those pioneering masters so integral to the early 1960s music and its various iterations. I well remember Dunmall and Andrew Cyrille performing with Grimes during a Vision Festival, an astonishing concert all around, and this is a more than fitting tribute. Listen at around 2:45 to hear the arpeggios in motivic development that have been a mainstay of Dunmall's aesthetic for more than four decades. His approach to tonality is innovative, inclusive and expertly delineated, possibly an inheritance from Coltrane or Sam Rivers but which he makes his own at those points where every phrase and line converge. Here, he is playing C-melody saxophone, but his alto and usual tenor inhabit similar territory. His sound on alto is as colorful, as timbrally rich, as the kit Sanders has assembled for the occasion. The have fashioned a duo album of stunning power, extraordinary depth and, above all, a beauty equaling or surpassing anything else in their respective discographies.







Comments and Feedback:



The Squid's Ear presents
reviews about releases
sold at Squidco.com
written by
independent writers.

Squidco

Recent Selections @ Squidco:


Kim Jae Jung:
Shamanism
(Relative Pitch)



Joe McPhee/
Susanna Gartmayer/
John Edwards/
Maria Portugal:
Monster
(Klanggalerie)



Signe Emmeluth/
Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten/
Axel Filip:
Hyperboreal Trio
(Relative Pitch)



John Butcher/
John Edwards:
This Is
Not Speculation
(Listen! Foundation (
Fundacja Sluchaj!))



Izumi Kimura/
Lina Andonovska/
Dominique Pifarely:
Seven Dreams
(Listen! Foundation (
Fundacja Sluchaj!))



Jerome Deupree/
Sylvie Courvoisier/
Lester St. Louis/
Joe Morris:
Canyon
[2 CDs]
(Listen! Foundation (
Fundacja Sluchaj!))



Marc Baron/
Eric La Casa:
Contrefacons
(Swarming)



Francisco Lopez:
Untitled (
2021-2022)
[2 CDs]
(Bu Lang Tribute Cake)



Eventless Plot |
Haarvol:
The Subliminal Paths
[CASSETTE + DOWNLOAD]
(Innovo Editions)



Akmee:
Sacrum Profanum
(Nakama Records)



Karl Evangelista Quintet
feat. Bobby Bradford and
William Roper:
Solace Angles
(Asian Improv)



Sveio:
Latent Imprints
(577 Records)



The Sleep Of Reason
Produces Monsters (
Rasmussen/
Mitelli/
Rezaei/
Koenig):
The Sleep Of Reason
Produces Monsters
(Corbett vs. Dempsey)



Dan Brown/
Dan Reynolds:
Live At
The Grange Hall
[unauthorized][CASSETTE]
(Sacred Realism)



Matt Mitchell:
Sacrosanctity
(Obliquity)



Das B (
Mazen Kerbaj/
Mike Majkowski/
Magda Mayas/
Tony Buck):
Love
(thanatosis produktion/
Corbett Vs Dempsey)



Das B (
Mazen Kerbaj/
Mike Majkowski/
Magda Mayas/
Tony Buck):
Love
[VINYL]
(thanatosis produktion/
Corbett Vs Dempsey)



Mary Halvorson Septet:
Illusionary Sea
[2 LPS]
(Firehouse 12 Records)



Darius Jones:
Legend of e'Boi (
The Hypervigilant Eye)
[VINYL + DOWNLOAD]
(Aum Fidelity)



Irene Schweizer/
Rudiger Carl/
Johnny Dyani/
Han Bennink:
Irenes Hot Four
(Intakt)







Squidco
Click here to
advertise with
The Squid's Ear






The Squid's Ear pays its writers.
Interested in becoming a reviewer?




The Squid's Ear is the companion magazine to the online music shop Squidco !


  Copyright © Squidco. All rights reserved. Trademarks. (15832)