The Squid's Ear Magazine


Fowler, Chad / WC Anderson: Lacrimosa (Mahakala Music)

Free jazz recorded one person at a time from the duo of saxophonist Chad Fowler and WC "Chad" Anderson who, constrained by pandemic, chose to create "simulated concerts" by exchanging solo recording, each starting the process for different pieces and surprised at how "live" the results felt, as they built up the twelve excellent, rule-breaking tracks of this album.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Chad Fowler-saxophones

WC Anderson-percussion


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UPC: 195269010270

Label: Mahakala Music
Catalog ID: MAHA-005
Squidco Product Code: 31686

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2020
Country: USA
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Jazz improvisation--especially free improvisation--happens as a deep, intimate connection of communication between its players. Improvisers feel what the others are feeling through intuition, inflection, tone, harmony, melody, tempo, facial expression, body language, and many other microscopic untraceable nuances. It happens in the moment--the shared moment--in a shared space and time.

The year 2020 brought to our population an unexpected and unprecedented level of isolation. For musicians, this meant that gigs were canceled, tours were scrapped, and recording sessions were indefinitely postponed. Musicians were suddenly unable to even co-locate to rehearse or collaborate. This new global constraint made the aforementioned constraints around improvisation obsolete.

Some musical genres lend themselves well to long periods of social isolation. Composers can sit alone writing, revising, and even listening to some soulless rendition of their work played by a computer. Electronic music creators typically work on computers, possibly collaborating with others from across the world.

The worst possible fit for social isolation in music is improvised jazz. But, the people of the world didn't just stop talking to each other because of imposed social isolation, so we decided to try to keep talking musically.

Our first experiment started as the result of a conversation between Chad Fowler and Joel Futterman. Joel and Chad both live in, for most avant-garde jazz fans, would be considered perpetually socially isolated locations. Small towns in the South. In a phone conversation about how to further develop the art of free improvisation while alone, Joel suggested putting on "simulated concerts" at home along with existing records. Joel sent Chad a copy of his solo piano CD Pathways to play along with.

Chad recorded one of these simulated concert practice sessions to send to Joel. Having recorded into multitrack recording software, Chad decided to do an experiment. He sent his saxophone track, minus the original piano recording, to a friend to record a guitar track on. Then he sent that to another friend. Then to another. (One of these was WC Anderson). The final result was surprising. It's beautiful, reactive, improvised jazz music. The performers seemed to be anticipating each other's moves, and reacting to each other in real time. All this with the now-tacit influence of an original piece, no longer audible but still present in the essence of the music.

It was beautiful creative music. Why not make more? Chad and WC started recording short pieces for each other to "react" to. With the completion of each new piece, came the inevitable surprise--even elation--over what had happened when the two came together. What starts with just a solo saxophone or a solitary drummer comes together to transform into, as the overused saying goes, more than the sum of its parts. Over the course of a couple of months, an entire record formed.

With this record we hope to bring you some strange mix of the feelings of isolation, anxiety, anger, fear, and--most important--joy. What started as a heretical experiment, creating music that can only be created in person in the moment with real time communication, asynchronously with only one direction of true interaction. There are no rules in free jazz, but we were pretty sure we were breaking the rules anyway. "-Mahakala Music


Artist Biographies

"I'm Chad Fowler. I write books, write and play music, write software, lead organizations (currently for Microsoft, in Berlin), invest in startups, speak at conferences, teach, learn, organize conferences, etc.

I started and co-organized a couple of Ruby-related conferences including The International Ruby Conference and RailsConf."

-Chad Fowler Website (http://chadfowler.com/)
3/27/2024

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

"WC Anderson, also known as "Chad" Anderson, is an artist and musician currently living in the southeast United States.

WC has performed with artists such as Henry P. Warner, Kidd Jordan, Chad Fowler, Chris Parker, Warren Smith, William Parker, Cooper-Moore, Douglas Ewart, Andy McCloud, and many others within the creative music orbits."

-WC Anderson Bandcamp (https://wcanderson.bandcamp.com/)
3/27/2024

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


Track Listing:



1. Lacrimosa 3:50

2. Trickster 3:46

3. Pendulum 6:05

4. Chess 4:05

5. Corner 4:53

6. Deranged 4:05

7. Inches 6:26

8. Videshi 3:47

9. Matter 5:13

10. Marker 5:21

11. Here 4:13

12. Signals 7:40

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Free Improvisation
Jazz
NY Downtown & Metropolitan Jazz/Improv
Electro-Acoustic
Electroacoustic Composition
Saxophone & Drummer / Percussionist Duos
Duo Recordings
New in Improvised Music
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