Helias, Mark / Hemingway, Gerry / Anderson, Ray

The Line Up: BassDrumBone

Label: Clean Feed Country: Portugal

"A bassist associated with the best New York improvisers - Mark Helias; a drummer who has continued his meteoric rise since his stint as a member of Braxton's well-known Nineties quartet - Gerry Hemingway; and a trombonist known for his intensity and his motto, which says it all: "if I ever had a home, it was the slide trombone"- Ray Anderson. The latter's career represents very well what jazz is today - a music that's heard everything and absorbed it in some way. From Dixieland to AACM, from Mozart concertos to Broadway shows, and from John Cage to funk - especially Sly and the Family Stone - every bit of music appreciated by Anderson is reflected somehow in the jazz he plays. The newest from BassDrumBone is a hard driven, joyful manifestation of vitality of these three musicians and the music they play...music that is not dead and doesn't smell funny, to misquote a Frank Zappa saying. A music that takes "the risk, the willingness, and the trust to get away beyond the limb", as Hemingway writes in the liner notes of "The Line Up". If "it's all in the music" (Ray Anderson dixit), then even those bad moments that affect one's life are dealt here with a positive attitude, and that shows in the swing that permeates these tunes. "We're still so in love with life"; we read; we listen. A recording with great vibes, people..."-Clean Feed