Van Hove / Dunmall / Lytton / Rogers

Asynchronous

Label: Slam Country: UK

"This is a quartet of 1970s-vintage European free-improvisers - three out of four called Paul - still warming to the task in 2008. Saxist and bass clarinettist Paul Dunmall's model was Evan Parker, while Paul Lytton actually played drums with Parker for years. Bass virtuoso Paul Rogers has spanned the postbop and improv scenes here and in New York, and Belgian pianist and movie composer Fred Van Hove started as a bebopper in the late 50s, then loosened up to spar with German sax free-blaster Peter Brötzmann. All that spontaneous music-making was caught at the Europa jazz festival in Le Mans in May 2008. There are only two tracks: one lasting 46 minutes and one of 15 minutes, with Dunmall's big, rounded sound and spiralling runs bursting out of a low-key overture, and then engaging in a long, dignified dance with Rogers's dark bowed chords. Dunmall sometimes builds solos in patterns of brief, squirted sounds a la Evan Parker, but he stays closer to post-Coltrane tonality for more of the time. Meanwhile, Van Hove unleashes glittering streams of notes with a Cecil Tayloresque intensity; his solo on the first track has an orchestral scope. The shorter episode begins as a bass drone pulsating like a didgeridoo, builds to the best full-on free-playing on the album, shifts to a lament-like section, a briefly resurfacing turmoil, and then evaporates into silence. An attentive and responsive quartet of experts in the genre."-John Fordham, The Guardian UK