Edward De Bono poses several compelling perspectives on the art of creation via his life's work, the subject of Lateral Thinking: Delayed Judgment, hashing out two irrelevant ideas in your mind, allows new ideas to grow; looking deep into labels will help an artist eschew cliché patterns; if you reach a dead end, reverse gears. Most importantly, do not challenge an idea as right or wrong, but move in from another angle. How fitting that the free jazz community, namely Joe McPhee, would embrace De Bono's work (McPhee devoted a great deal of his '80s output to these methods after reading De Bono's 1977 text, Lateral Thinking: A Textbook of Creativity). Judging from titles such as "Build and Break" and "Crossing Messages", McPhee is still getting mileage out of this manifesto.
Tomorrow Came Today is the result of a one-day jam session between McPhee (on pocket trumpet and tenor sax) and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, a disc that showcases the duo's ability to build, adapt, build further, ignore and revisit. McPhee and Nilssen-Love launch into the title track with a "look, we're virtuosos and this is how fast we can play" segment (their version of handshakes and small talk), but soon shift their tenuous grip to the percussionist's loose-funk solo of palms and knuckles on skins. McPhee answers with a crooning purr, pausing between each graceful note; after Nilssen-Love tastefully introduces each cymbal, both men decrescendo into the void. Before you can catch your breath, the drummer roars back to life on "Go", a terrifying yet nimble piece that displays the through-composed fluidity of a Coltrane/Ali meeting (e.g. Interstellar Space). McPhee explores segmented, rapid-fire ostinatos, pushing his instrument into juicy, reed-splitting territories before quietly ending the piece with a progression of phantom timbres. To neutralize the brutality of the first half of the disc, McPhee begins "Acts of Time" with a breath barely capable of stimulating his sax. The tone evolves from an affable shakuhachi whisper to a squalling animalistic resonance that resentfully surrenders to a horrible death (Nilssen-Love provides the knell with furious bass drum work). For the poly-stylistic "Sun and Steel", the duo enters with a plodding Gagaku-by-way-of-Bhutan approach, invoking the mood of a scorned Noh theater bride with water gong, shimmering elephant bells and the feral big brother of the erstwhile shakuhachi. McPhee continues alone and subtly oscillates between the current mood and something a bit more Joe Henderson. Nilssen-Love follows suit with a hyperactive avalanche of finger rolls and genre-free rhythmic patterns then picks up his gong to resume the trance.
The most curious aspect of this album is the manner in which the musicians abort styles and ideas mid cliff-hang yet leave the listener searching and hungry for more (as opposed to confused, overwhelmed and bored, which happens in much of free jazz shock). This inhale sans exhale (or exhale twenty minutes later) style gives the music an attractive flow when listening to the disc as a whole.
The combination of one American veteran player with a younger, exuberant artist from the label's roster might just be a transparent marketing ploy, but Smalltown Super Jazz's international juxtaposition series is working well. Despite De Bono's ideas at play here, and all theory aside, the hinge of this album's success is simply this: an inarguable chemistry between McPhee and Nilssen-Love.
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