The Squid's Ear Magazine


Dickey, Whit (w/ Nate Wooley / Matthew Shipp): Morph [2 CDs] (ESP)

Two albums released together as a single-priced 2-CD set, NY drummer, composer and free improviser Whit Dickey leads two groupings: on Reckoning, a duet with frequent collaborator, pianist Matthew Shipp; and Pacific Noir, a trio with Shipp and trumpeter Nate Wooley; both superb examples of modern jazz with creative inventiveness and virtuouso execution.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Whit Dickey-drums

Matthew Shipp-piano

Nate Wooley-trumpet


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UPC: 825481502627

Label: ESP
Catalog ID: ESPDISK 5026CD
Squidco Product Code: 28865

Format: 2 CDs
Condition: New
Released: 2020
Country: USA
Packaging: Digipack - 3 panel
Recorded at Park West Studios, in Brooklyn, New York, on June 29th, and March 27th, 2019, by Jim Clouse.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Whit Dickey has been a quiet but brilliant presence on the New York avant-jazz scene since his discographical debut in 1991 on the legendary Matthew Shipp Trio album Circular Temple. In concert and on recordings in groups led by Shipp, David S. Ware, Ivo Perelman, Joe Morris, and Rob Brown, he built a reputation for distinctively space-filled, subtle rhythmic support, even as he was perfectly capable of muscling up when the music called for it.

For some of the people he plays with, three decades yield dozens of releases as a leader, but the present release - his first on ESP-Disk'- is just Dickey's 13th at the helm after one in the '90s, seven in the '00s (including groups The Nommonsemble and Trio Ahxoloxha), and four in the recently concluded decade. The musician Dickey has most frequently teamed with is Shipp, and here they are again in a pair of contexts, the first disc a duo, the second a trio with the addition of Nate Wooley."-ESP-DISK

"Whit Dickey has been an understated but sturdy and vital figure on New York City's Downtown scene for the last 30 years. This drummer excels whether he's leading his own dates or acting as sideman, most famously as a long-time member of Matthew Shipp's groundbreaking Trio.

Dickey is now penning a new chapter in his career with the imminent christening of his new record label Tao Forms, but there was a bit of unfinished business to take care of first with a double-disc album submitted to ESP-Disk label.

On May 29, 2020, the legendary avant-garde imprint will release Morph, which is actually two albums packaged as one: Reckoning is a duet with his old bandleader Shipp, while Pacific Noir is a trio with Shipp and trumpet sage Nate Wooley.

Reckoning puts Whit Dickey in familiar company, no doubt, but without a guy like Michael Bisio to anchor down the low tones, the plot retains a good measure of intrigue. For a song like "Blue Threads," there's a noticeable breeziness, and Dickey's limber rhythms seems to direct Shipp's phrasing the whole way. The sketches on "Reckoning" are darker hued, and the spaces between the notes are no less important to the song's make-up.

Dickey's carefully calibrated tonal splashes ushers in "Dice" and Shipp comes in to meet it with right handed tinkles that sound like light rain patter. The rain patter turns in a bit of a thunderstorm on the aptly titled "Thick," a convulsive piece where Dickey resists the urge to 'Keith Moon' it and retains composure, playing with purpose even with a heavier footprint.

"Helix" resembles a mid-'60s Miles Davis track isolated to just the piano and drums; Whit Dickey manages to sounds lyrical on the drums and at strategic moments, he backs out and lets Shipp develop an idea alone.

"Steps" is a performance only possible from playing together for many years, because the clairvoyance is off the charts; especially in how the two change the thickness and tempo on the fly, and do it with elegance. The simpatico is also on the supernatural level for "Morph," and the heightened tension on this song is a bonus.

For Pacific Noir Shipp's role adjusts for the addition of Wooley, whose trumpet is vulnerable and colorful on "Noir 1." The same kind of Shipp/Dickey affinity heard all throughout Reckoning is the kind of oneness of mind heard between Wooley and Dickey on the initial part of "Take the Wild Train." By the end of the song, it's a three-way séance. There's a lot of pensiveness coming out of Wooley's horn during "To Planet Earth," and Shipp and Dickey use silence as a form of expression on an equal plane with tonality.

Wooley's inventiveness is evident everywhere you turn. "Pulse Morph" is a melee, with Wooley assuming three different trumpet personalities: muted, unmuted and false notes. Wooley navigates the episodic journeys "Space Trance" and "Noir 3" with ease, with Dickey and Shipp acting as a single unit throughout the multiple mood pivots.

With his own record company to record for - the first one on Tao Forms is following this one by less than a month - others might have been content to mail it in. Whit Dickey's mindset is playing at the highest level no matter the circumstances and Morph gives ESP-Disk another quality addition to its fabled catalog."-S. Victor Aaron, Something Else!


Get additional information at Something Else!

Artist Biographies

"Whit Dickey (born May 28, 1954, New York City) is a free jazz drummer. He has recorded albums as a bandleader, with David S. Ware, Matthew Shipp and others.

Free jazz drummer Whit Dickey first stepped into the spotlight as a leader with the release of his Transonic album from Aum Fidelity in 1998. Two years later, Wobbly Rail issued his Big Top release. Previously, he was best known for his solid work with Matthew Shipp and David S. Ware, with whom Dickey split in 1996. Early the following year, the drummer began composing the works that would be included on Transonic. Dickey penned all but two songs, "Kinesis" and "Second Skin," on the collection, and he even had a hand in those with the help of his fellow musicians on the album. The original compositions give a nod to the influence of "Criss Cross" and "Off Minor" from the legendary Thelonious Monk. Dickey recorded the album with the aid of Rob Brown on flute and alto saxophone, and Chris Lightcap on bass. In 2001, Dickey recorded half a dozen of his compositions with Mat Maneri, Shipp, and Brown under the name Nommonsemble, and put out Life Cycle through Aum Fidelity.

Whit Dickey made a name for himself as the former drummer of David S. Ware's famous quartet. Since then Dickey's musical contributions have gone well beyond his work as Ware's drummer. He is capable of tremendous power and yet has the ability for subtle gesture. Dickey is a composer as well as a drummer and his music has reached new heights in his recent small group work, with a coterie of great musicians including alto saxophonist Rob Brown. He has been performing with Matthew Shipp since 1991 and continues to play and record with Roy Campbell Jr., Mat Maneri, Chris Lightcap and many others. Since 2007 Dickey has been focussing on developing an integrative improvisational style while working with Shipp's Trio.

Daniel Carter and Dickey recorded an album pianist Eri Yamamoto in 2008.

The album Art of the Improvisor from The Matthew Shipp Trio received much critical acclaim and was listed as one of the year's best of 2011. Dickey has started a cooperative unit with Sabir Mateen & Michael Bisio, which is another example of post- Coltrane integral unity, and is call Blood Trio.

Shipp, Bisio and Dickey have also been working with Ivo Perelman in various configurations."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whit_Dickey)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Matthew Shipp was born December 7, 1960 in Wilmington, Delaware. He started piano at 5 years old with the regular piano lessons most kids have experienced. He fell in love with jazz at 12 years old. After moving to New York in 1984 he quickly became one of the leading lights in the New York jazz scene. He was a sideman in the David S. Ware quartet and also for Roscoe Mitchell's Note Factory before making the decision to concentrate on his own music.

Mr Shipp has reached the holy grail of jazz in that he possesses a unique style on his instrument that is all of his own- and he's one of the few in jazz that can say so. Mr. Shipp has recorded a lot of albums with many labels but his 2 most enduring relationships have been with two labels. In the 1990s he recorded a number of chamber jazz cds with Hatology, a group of cds that charted a new course for jazz that, to this day, the jazz world has not realized. In the 2000s Mr Shipp has been curator and director of the label Thirsty Ear's "Blue Series" and has also recorded for them. In this collection of recordings he has generated a whole body of work that is visionary, far reaching and many faceted."

-Matthew Shipp Website (http://www.matthewshipp.com/bio.html)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Nate Wooley was born in 1974 in Clatskanie, Oregon, a town of 2,000 people in the timber country of the Pacific Northwestern corner of the U.S. He began playing trumpet professionally with his father, a big band saxophonist, at the age of 13. His time in Oregon, a place of relative quiet and slow time reference, instilled in Nate a musical aesthetic that has informed all of his music making for the past 20 years, but in no situation more than his solo trumpet performances.

Nate moved to New York in 2001, and has since become one of the most in-demand trumpet players in the burgeoning Brooklyn jazz, improv, noise, and new music scenes. He has performed regularly with such icons as John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Eliane Radigue, Ken Vandermark, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, and Yoshi Wada, as well as being a collaborator with some of the brightest lights of his generation like Chris Corsano, C. Spencer Yeh, Peter Evans, and Mary Halvorson.

Wooley's solo playing has often been cited as being a part of an international revolution in improvised trumpet. Along with Peter Evans and Greg Kelley, Wooley is considered one of the leading lights of the American movement to redefine the physical boundaries of the horn, as well as demolishing the way trumpet is perceived in a historical context still overshadowed by Louis Armstrong. A combination of vocalization, extreme extended technique, noise and drone aesthetics, amplification and feedback, and compositional rigor has led one reviewer to call his solo recordings "exquisitely hostile".

In the past three years, Wooley has been gathering international acclaim for his idiosyncratic trumpet language. Time Out New York has called him "an iconoclastic trumpeter", and Downbeat's Jazz Musician of the Year, Dave Douglas has said, "Nate Wooley is one of the most interesting and unusual trumpet players living today, and that is without hyperbole". His work has been featured at the SWR JazzNow stage at Donaueschingen, the WRO Media Arts Biennial in Poland, Kongsberg, North Sea, Music Unlimited, and Copenhagen Jazz Festivals, and the New York New Darmstadt Festivals. In 2011 he was an artist in residence at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, NY and Cafe Oto in London, England. In 2013 he performed at the Walker Art Center as a featured solo artist.

Nate is the curator of the Database of Recorded American Music (www.dramonline.org) and the editor-in-chief of their online quarterly journal Sound American (www.soundamerican.org) both of which are dedicated to broadening the definition of American music through their online presence and the physical distribution of music through Sound American Records. He also runs Pleasure of the Text which releases music by composers of experimental music at the beginnings of their careers in rough and ready mediums."

-Nate Wooley Website (http://natewooley.com/about)
3/13/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



CD1



1. Blue Threads 3:30

2. Reckoning 6:10

3. Dice 4:51

4. Thick 4:54

5. Helix 8:12

6. Steps 6:49

7. Morph 7:37

8. Firmament 4:33

CD2



1. Noir 1 5:10

2. Noir 2 4:45

3. Take the Wild Train 6:52

4. To Planet Earth 7:45

5. Epiphany 6:43

6. Pulse Morph 3:41

7. Space Trance 7:23

8. Noir 3 6:03

9. Noir 4 4:34

Related Categories of Interest:


ESP
Improvised Music
Jazz
Free Improvisation
NY Downtown & Metropolitan Jazz/Improv
Trio Recordings
Nate Wooley

Search for other titles on the label:
ESP.


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