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Josephson / Wachsmann / Lindsay / Smith / Blume: Zero Plus (Balance Point Acoustics)

The Triple D Trio of Aurora Josephson (voice), Jacob Lindsay (clarinet) & Damon Smith (bass) met with visiting European improvisers Philipp Wachsmann (violin) and Martin Blume (drums) to record these live concerts in Oakland and SF.
 

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Personnel:



Aurora Josephson-voice

Philipp Wachsmann-violin, electronics

Jacob Lindsay-Ab clarinet, Bb clarinet, bass clarinet

Damon Smith-doublebass

Martin Blume-drums


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UPC: B00BV1KR00

Label: Balance Point Acoustics
Catalog ID: bpa007
Squidco Product Code: 15201

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2004
Country: USA
Packaging: Jewel Tray
Recorded by Scott R. Looney. Tracks 1-4 recorded April 16th, 2003 live at 21 Grand, Oakland, CA. Tracks 5-6 recorded April 17th, 2003 live at The Luggage Store, San Francisco, CA. Tracks 7-11 recorded on April 18th, 2003 in studio at 1502 8th St., Oakland, CA.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Singer Aurora Josephson, clarinetist Jacob Lindsay, and bassist (and Balance Point Acoustics owner) Damon Smith perform regularly as the Triple D trio. Keen on developing projects with European free improvisers visiting the United States, the latter arranged for three consecutive days of concerts and recording sessions in April 2003, with violinist Philipp Wachsmann and drummer Martin Blume. The two concerts at 21 Grand (Oakland, CA) and the Luggage Store (San Francisco, CA) were recorded on a multi-track machine by Scott R. Looney, who also presided over the studio session. As a result, Zero Plus offers very good and consistent sound quality throughout, the shift from one venue to another detectable only through the few extra seconds of silence separating the three "chapters" of the CD.

The music could easily have taken the form of a "trio plus two" setting, the guests attempting to find a niche amidst the existing dynamics of the core unit. Instead, they assist in forming a total reconfiguration of the group. Lindsay and Wachsmann team up, developing intricate dialogues as they interact with the other voices. Smith and Blume form a partnership that answers the modus operandi of a bona fide rhythm section, even if they never actually sound like one (the bass also establishes a strong connection with the violin at times). Josephson either leads the way -- her warm tone and extended techniques captivate the listener's attention in a way that gives her predominance over the other improvisers -- or integrates a subunit by mimicking a particular sound that has attracted her. In the quieter passages, her voice can often be confused with the clarinet or violin. Highlights include "Tiger, Tiger!" and "Zero," but the level of involvement is high from start to finish, with excellent balance between the pensive and the frantic ends of the free improv spectrum. Recommended."-François Couture, All Music



"So often a dedication can seemed forced, especially between the visual arts and music, like trying to draw a line we all hope is there. In this instance, it happened very spontaneously and it was exciting to be able to connect my two strongest interests this way.

Toward the end of the session, while listening to the earlier takes, I felt like we needed another approach, with more distance from the instruments. I thought of Brice Marden drawing with a long stick cut from a tree to distance himself from the canvas or paper -- and then I saw a shop broom.I immediately thought of Joseph Beuys and his performance/vitrine "Ausfegen," where he swept Karl-Marx-Platz, Berlin in 1972, the year Kristian and I were born. He deposited the contents (see titles) and the broom in a vitrine and a recording of the action plays from a speaker next to it.

For the next piece we recorded, which ended up being track 7, I asked Kristian to play his guitar with the shop broom, and I used two double basses (thanks to Tony Dryer for the second bass), both prepared, laying on their backs, played standing with two bows."-Damon Smith, May 2007



"Recently, in a conversation with Anthony Braxton, I mentioned a new group I'd organized and the way I'd written the music for it. Braxton said, "that sounds like a real new millennium ensemble."Of course Braxton is the master of finding exactly the right words to describe subtle things that exist in new and primarily improvised music. He might say the same thing about the music on this recording. This recording is certainly music of the new millennium, and not just because we have turned the calendar over, but because it is made by a group of focused musicians who function in a small community creating music using a vocabulary of rarefied materials to express themselves in a contemporary way. That vocabulary has developed over the past few decades in a similar way to that of early jazz music, by daring artists working in an underground culture. Different material used in a different "time space reality" (to use another Braxtonism) but which to me functions much like its predecessor. On this recording, "newness" is the goal and the norm. Just like in the old days.Dissonance, dynamics, harmonics, conversational interaction, extended techniques and energy, are, in certain places, the standard material of the day. The early standard material meant playing the blues, or a Tin Pan Alley tune. The jazz player's challenge was in embellishing a standard tune in a strict form with a personal interpretation and the use of a unique set of techniques. The reward for the listener then was in hearing the obvious be transformed into something special and maybe even spectacular or superhuman. The results were a new way to see the world through music. One could say that the music here is more inspired by contemporary classical music than jazz. Maybe. There certainly are things here that suggest that, but improvising musicians have always drawn from every source they feel is relevant with the goal of turning it into something else altogether. I hear a connection to early jazz in this music in the way the players communicate with each other. There is an open exchange of ideas and a sense of playfulness and discovery. The challenge for the musicians making the music on this recording is to use the new vocabulary to create the form instantly and with the same amount of technical control and vitality as in the old days, while never relying on the obvious. The reward for the listener of this music comes from the discovery of the uniqueness of the form rendered in personal technique, and the possibility that the results could suggest a new viewpoint that hasn't existed before.When the world catches up, it will find that there are just as many future-seeking musicians now as there ever were. The amount of soul needed to persevere with new ideas and with the goal of suggesting a new viewpoint is the same as it ever was, and is present on this recording."-Joe Morris, May 2007
Get additional information at All Music

Artist Biographies

"Philipp Wachsmann. Born Uganda, 1944; violin, viola and electronics.

In the CD booklet to Gushwachs, John Corbett notes that Phillip Wachsmann came to free improvisation from a predominantly classical background, particularly via the contemporary experiments of "indeterminacy, graphic and prose-based scores, conceptualism and electroacoustics, listening to Webern, Partch, Ives, Berio and Varèse, reading 'Die Reihe' and interrogating the rhythmic, harmonic and melodic preoccupations of Western art music. Starting in 1969, Wachsmann was a member of Yggdrasil, an ensemble performing works by Cage, Cardew, Feldman, Ashley and others and in this group he used contact mikes on the violin and made his own electronic instruments, ring modulators and routing devices. Ironically, his studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris (1969-1970) pushed him hard in the direction of free music. He recalls: 'Despite her neoclassical orientation, her insistence that composition is about the imagination of performance and its realisation, the live moment, and her stunning ability to make this happen was a powerful influence on me, steering towards 'performance' and therefore 'improvisation'.'"

Wachsmann moved from Yggdrasil to Chamberpot - recorded on Bead 2 - and shortly thereafter appeared on Tony Oxley's influential February papers, forward looking in the virtual 'industrial' orientation of some of the tracks, years before this became an accepted genre; the two musicians have continued to work together, in various groupings but notably in the percussionist's Celebration Orchestra. Philipp Wachsmann has also performed and/or recorded with: Derek Bailey's Company, e.g. on the recording Epiphanies; Georg Graewe; Barry Guy; Iskra 1903; King Übü Orchestrü; London Jazz Composers' Orchestra; Evan Parker, particularly as part of the Evan Parker Electronic Project; Quintet Moderne; Fred Van Hove's ML DD 4; Rüdiger Carl's COWWS (now CPWWS) Quintet; and Lines, with Martin Blume, Jim Denley, Axel Dörner and Marcio Mattos. He also plays as a solo musician.

Phillip Wachsmann also administers Bead Records."

-EFI: European Free Improv (http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/mwachs.html)
3/13/2024

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

"Damon Smith studied double bass with Lisle Ellis and has had lessons with Bertram Turezky, Joëlle Leandré, John Lindberg, Mark Dresser and others. Damon's explorations into the sonic palette of the double bass have resulted in a personal, flexible improvisational language based in the American jazz avant-garde movement and European non-idiomatic free improvisation. Visual art, film and dance heavily influence his music, as evidenced by his CAMH performance of Ben Patterson's Variations for Double Bass, collaborations with director Werner Herzog on soundtracks for Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World, and an early performance with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

Damon has collaborated with a wide range of musicians, including: Cecil Taylor, Marshall Allen (of Sun Ra's Arkestra), Henry Kaiser, Roscoe Mitchell, Michael Pisaro, Wadada Leo Smith, Marco Eneidi, Wolfgang Fuchs, Peter Brötzmann and Peter Kowald. After many years in the San Francisco Bay Area, and five great years in Houston, Texas working regularly with Alvin Fielder, Sandy Ewen, David Dove & Chris Cogburn, Damon will move to the Boston area in the fall of 2016. Damon has run Balance Point Acoustics record label since 2001, releasing music focusing on transatlantic collaborations between US and European musicians."

-Balance Point Acoustic Website (https://www.balancepointacoustics.com/damon-smith/)
3/13/2024

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

"Martin Blume - drums, percussion, composition

Born 1956 in Arnsberg/Westfalen. Has worked since 1983 as a performer and composer with several musicians and in different musical situations, both as a collaborator and in leading his own groups including musicians like Peter Brötzmann, Peter Kowald, Helmut Joe Sachse, Luc Houtkamp, Johannes Bauer, Conny Bauer, Marcio Mattos, Jay Oliver, Phil Minton, Lol Coxhill, John Butcher, Mario Schiano, Georg Graewe, Frank Gratkowski, Dieter Manderscheid, Hans Schneider, Wolfgang Fuchs, John Edwards, Werner Lüdi, John Russell, Chris Burn, Roger Turner, Joëlle Leandré, Axel Doerner, Horst Grabosch, Melvyn Poore, Earl Howard, Richard Teitelbaum, Jim Denley, Alfred Zimmerlin, Dorothea Schürch, Phil Wachsmann , Mats Gustafsson, Xu Feng Xia, Thomas Lehn, Fred van Hove, Wilbert de Joode, Ken Vandermark, Kent Kessler, Cor Fuhler a.m.o.Toured in Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg, France, England, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, USA, Canada and Australia and performed at Festivals."

-Martin Blume Website (http://www.martinblume.de/)
3/13/2024

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


Track Listing:



1. Scissors Cut Paper (The Hairy Heel Of Achilles) 13:08

2. Tiger, Tiger! (The Hairy Heel Of Achilles) 9:08

3. Long Tail on a Ghost (The Hairy Heel Of Achilles) 3:51

4. The Deadly Tube (The Hairy Heel Of Achilles) 7:20

5. Two Men In Straw Hats / Big Fleas Have Little Fleas (La Tricoteuse) 8:02

6. A Bird with a Wing Down (La Tricoteuse) 4:45

7. Facts or Figures (Zerotables) 3:53

8. Table Z (Zerotables) 4:00

9. Zero Minus (Zerotables) 3:24

10. Zero (Zerotables) 8:19

11. Zero Plus (Zerotables) 3:42

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Jazz
West Coast/Pacific US Jazz
Unusual Vocal Forms
Quintet Recordings

Search for other titles on the label:
Balance Point Acoustics.


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