Nuts (Duboc / Siddik / Oki / Lasserre / Sato)

Symphony for Old and New Dimensions

Label: Ayler Country: Sweden

"When Benjamin Duboc gathered these four men around him, he knew he had to bring forth an underlying intuition - which has become his de facto philosophy, one would say his ideology - that the gathering, the very act of gathering individuals was the key of musicmaking today. Today, the dreary naughties, times typified by the endless recycling of worn-out concepts of fusion, cross-breeding of jazz and "world music" (whatever it is), odd revivals. A decade that went lost after the realization of a broader loss, that of the individual. There's no center anymore. It lies upon the musician to - do the job. More so than the energy to create won't be instillated by outside routines or the public's reaction: the public in 2009 is waiting for no one.

There's no center anymore, like we said: from the beginning, Benjamin Duboc's answer, his whole praxis has revolved around the notion of context. Context. A set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event. Let's not think in terms of "gig" or "session", as we are dealing with music, let's think in terms of "event". What's interesting is that a praxis built on parameters rather than definitions allows a shifting center, the music radiating from this center to reach its own boundaries, space- and time-wise, which it actually creates. Even the way we look at free jazz is blurred by jargon, clichés. In/Out. Shadow/Light. Rules/Freedom. Metaphors upon metaphors trying to describe the sound - there's a word for instance we read everywhere, "texture". The sound of free jazz is supposed to be "aggressive", "uneven", as opposed to the politeness and regularity implied by the historical relationship between free jazz and the previous jazz forms. What comes to mind are the "thick" "layers" of sound proponed by the continuous "flow" of improvisation.

NUTS doesn't produce this kind of music, doesn't produce anything that will help our ear to relate to such phraseology. Instead, NUTS rather aims at the improvising teams of the 70s': the AACM, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, BAG (no wonder the trumpet player is Rasul Siddik), NUTS is a playground of gathered individuals caught in the act of meeting each other. Live. Whatever "live" is: gigging, rehearsing, eating pizza together, that's the same. It is agreed in NUTS that the time devoted to make the acquaintance of the guy standing next to your shoulder on stage won't be devoted to create a definitory sound, an identifiable identity in music. We don't want to lose the individual in a transcendental experience of fusion: again, their performing music is contextualized.

The context is of course cultural in the first place. On hand we've got Benjamin Duboc, double bass player, born 1969 in France and Didier Lasserre, drummer, born 1971 in France. Mainstays of what appears to be a "French scene" as witnessed most notably at the Atelier Tampon-Ramier in Paris. Improvisers rather than jazzmen. Interest in Coltrane as well as John Cage. We've got Rasul Siddik, trumpet player, born 1949 in St. Louis. AACM. BAG. Played with Henry Threadgill, Julius Hemphill, Kalaparusha among others. Plays details like no other. Can also kill you with straight bebop. We've got Itaru Oki, trumpet player, born 1941 in Kobe. The "japanese Miles Davis" they said in the 60s'. Not false. Not true. Brought the sound of Shakuhachi and neat japanese engravings in jazz. We've got Makoto Sato, born in Japan too, cannot remember the date, who cares, still in his forties, is that OK? Stalwart of Marteau Rouge with Jean-François Pauvros. Has developed visually incredible gestures when attacking the drums, which also creates incredible rhythm. Context is also micro-tonal.

Take the moment and momentum; the time of day; the venue; the shirt one of them wore the day this here record was done; the psychologial and physical condition of the performers (history won't say if any of them felt his hemorrhoids too bad on that night - but that influes on a performance tons more than being born in Kobe or having listened to Ascension); the physical condition of the instrument. The weather. The meal. Discussions. Enough."-Julien Palomo

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