The Squid's Ear Magazine


Cooper-Moore / Tsahar, Assif / Taylor, Chad : Digital Primitives (Hopscotch Records)

Prolific and working incredibly fertile creative ground, New Yorkers Cooper-Moore, Tsahar and Taylor release their first as a trio on Tsahar's Hopscotch label.
 

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Personnel:



Cooper-Moore-diddlie-bow, mouth bow, bango, voice

Assif Tsahar-tenor sax, bass clarinet, didgeridoo

Chad Taylor-drums, percussion


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UPC: 00695269603927

Label: Hopscotch Records
Catalog ID: HOP 39
Squidco Product Code: 7392

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2006
Country: USA
Packaging: Cardstock foldover
Recorded and producted by Assif Tsahar October 2006.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Cooper-Moore and Assif Tsahar continue to amass a reservoir of creative work on the latter's Hopscotch imprint. After a couple of rewardingly eclectic duo albums, they hit genuine pay dirt teaming with Hamid Drake in a trio configuration and coming up with 2005's Lost Brother. This new one tweaks the template slightly, trading Drake's trap kit for that of Chad Taylor, a regular in the Chicago Underground projects of Rob Mazurek. The customarily stark line drawn cover art depicts a piano as holster for pistol, the slight irony being that C-M's ivories are nowhere to be found in the set. The disc's title cleverly conveys the players' application of bargain basement electronics to add color their aural collages.

C-M's diddley-bow lines wobble and bank like a ball bearing rolling up and down a length of irregularly grooved rail. His elastic patterns on the amplified one-string are often funky in spite of themselves, the chicken scratch strums of "Turn it Up" generating a chugging groove and then threatening to implode it through percolating repetition. The same tactic holds true on the even more slippery "Human Interface", fuzzy string tendrils undulating atop a punchy backbeat as Tsahar riffs expressively on tenor. Taylor plays more consistently "in-pocket" than his predecessor, but resists predictability through a broad menu of beats. Tsahar once again wears his David Murray influences through the purring rasp pregnant in many of his phrases and a lithe dancing attack, most prominently on the somber shuffle "Money Wars."

"Old Saint Peter" finds C-M's singing a sardonic ditty through a vintage microphone set-up against a light calypso rhythm of brushed drums, stereo-channeled strings and overdubbed sax. "Electric Garden" blooms in a loose assemblage of amplified percussion, contact mic static and sibilating bass clarinet. "Bones" and "Misanthropes" traffic in more proto-elecrofunk, C-M's diddley bow twice again obliterating any craving for a conventional bass presence with slab-sized vamps. The title piece joins mouth-bow, an instrument that lodged in C-M's jowls strongly brings to mind Charles Burnham's violin in its sliding tonal dexterity, with Tsahar's didgeridoo drone. A chugging dub beat by Taylor completes the package. "True to Life" and "Refuge" center on luminous marimba rhythms and gentle winding braids of overdubbed reeds that easily erode jaded listener defenses. Along with its slightly older sibling, this disc is a decisive acid test for the argument that creative improvised music is far from played out."-Derek Taylor, Bagatellen.com


Get additional information at Bagatellen

Artist Biographies

"As a composer, performer, instrument builder/designer, storyteller, teacher, mentor, and organizer, Cooper-Moore [b. August 31, 1946] has been a major, if somewhat behind-the-scenes, catalyst in the world of creative music for over 40 years. As a child prodigy Cooper-Moore played piano in churches near his birthplace in the Piedmont region of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. His performance roots in the realm of avant jazz music date to the NYC Loft Jazz era in the early/mid-70s. His first fully committed jazz group was formed in 1970 - the collective trio Apogee with David S. Ware and drummer Marc Edwards. Sonny Rollins asked them to open for him at the Village Vanguard in 1973, and they did so with aplomb. A studio recording of this group was made in 1977, and issued as Birth of a Being on hatHut under Ware's name in 1979 (re-mixed and re-issued in expanded form on AUM Fidelity in 2015!). Following an evidently rather trying European tour with Ware, Beaver Harris, and Brian Smith in 1981, Cooper-Moore returned home and completely destroyed his piano, with sledgehammer and fire, in his backyard. He didn't play piano again until some years after, instead focusing his energies from 1981-1985 on developing and implementing curriculum to teach children through music via the Head Start program. Returning to New York in 1985, he spent a great part of his creative time working and performing with theatre and dance productions, largely utilizing his hand-crafted instruments. It was not until the early 90s, when William Parker asked him to join his group In Order To Survive, that Cooper-Moore's pianistic gifts were again regularly featured in the jazz context. In the early 'aughts the group Triptych Myth was his own first regular working jazz group in decades and together they blazed some trails and released two albums: one rich formative, and one exquisite. A destined creative re-union with David S. Ware in the Planetary Unknown quartet, the Digital Primitives trio with Assif Tsahar & Chad Taylor, and continued work with William Parker followed. Cooper-Moore's creative life continues well-strong and unabated into the present day. He will be/was the Lifetime Achievement Honoree at the 22nd iteration of Vision Festval, NYC on May 29, 2017."

-Aum Fidelity (http://www.aumfidelity.com/cooper-moore.html)
3/13/2024

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

"Assif Tsahar (born Israel, June 11, 1969) is an Israeli tenor saxophonist and bass clarinetist. He lived in New York City from 1990 to the early 2000s, returning to Israel.

He has performed with Cecil Taylor, Butch Morris, William Parker, Mat Maneri, Hamid Drake, Peter Kowald, Susie Ibarra, Rashied Ali, Warren Smith, Wilbur Morris, Le Quan Ninh, John Tchicai, Fred Anderson, Rob Brown, Roy Campbell, Gerald Cleaver, Agusti Fernandez, Ken Vandermark, Kent Kessler, Joe Daley, Herb Robertson, Cuong Vu, Chris Jonas, Ori Kaplan, Oscar Noriega, Roman Stolyar, Alex Harding, Steve Swell, Cooper-Moore, and Tom Abbs

He founded the label Hopscotch Records in 1999. In 2006 he opens the music club Levontin7 with Daniel Sarid in Tel Aviv. "

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

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

"Chad Taylor (b. 1973) is a composer, educator, percussionist and scholar who is a co-founder of the Chicago Underground ensembles. Originally from Tempe, AZ, Chad grew up in Chicago where he started performing professionally at the age of 16. Chad has performed with Fred Anderson, Derek Bailey, Cooper-Moore, Pharoah Sanders, Marc Ribot, Peter Brotzmann, Malachi Favors and many others. Chad leads his own band Circle down which debut recording was given a 5 star review by All music:

"What is remarkable is that there is no wasted motion, no histrionics or grandstanding, as pure emotion is translated to superlative music making on this most highly recommended recording, one for the ages." Allmusic.com

Chad has a BFA from the New School in Jazz Performance and a MFA in Jazz Research and History from Rutgers University."

-Chad Taylor Website (http://www.chadtaylordrums.net/html/about.php)
3/13/2024

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


Track Listing:



1. Turn It Up 5:50

2. Ol' Saint Peter 4:07

3. Human Interface 5:43

4. Electric Garden 5:21

5. Bones 5:41

6. Digital Primitives 5:23

7. Misanthropes 6:47

8. True To Life 5:19

9. Money Wars 9:05

10. Refuge 3:54

11. Back It Up 5:48

Related Categories of Interest:

Improvised Music
Jazz
NY Downtown & Metropolitan Jazz/Improv
January 2007
Hopscotch Records
Trio Recordings
Improvised Music
Jazz
NY Downtown & Metropolitan Jazz/Improv
January 2007
Hopscotch Records
Trio Recordings

Search for other titles on the label:
Hopscotch Records.


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