Futuro Ancestrale is an epiphany of sorts. Recorded live at their first performance together at the legendary Bimhuis, it is the product of three musicians with very different backgrounds, who have all recently converged on Amsterdam. Italian-born, conservatory trained Giuseppe Doronzo doubles as bandleader and on baritone sax and Iranian bagpipes (ney anban). Anarcho-punk turned free jazz noise pollutant Andy Moor contributes his guitar. Arizonan-turned-Chicagoan-turned-expat Frank Rosaly adds his percussion to the mix.
One might expect a sonic onslaught from such a line-up. On Futuro Ancestrale, however, the trio is relatively restrained. To their credit. Through the first two selections — Neptune and Hopscotch — Moor dances to and fro contributing tinny shimmers and grumbly feedback (and possibly the bass drone, as well). Rosaly can be tempestuous behind the drum set. On this album, however, he provides sound and space rather than just rhythm. Meanwhile, Doronzo, the unknown entity to me in this trio, adds his heavy baritone, fragmentally touching on melodies — especially on the darkly jaunty second track — but more often sounding like a foghorn through the sludgy morass. On the third piece, "Magma", he abandons his sax for the Iranian bagpipes, which come off as a cross between their Scottish counterparts and a quavering clarinet. As the title captures, Magma reflects the igneous stew before the eruption. That violent potential is there, but it remains potential, a seething current beneath the surface. Track four, "Digging the Sand", approaches a culmination, and maybe a definitive statement of the "ancestral" element in all of this. Out of its techno-dystopic soundscape arise chthonic chants, pulling the ritualized and mysticized past into the cybernetic present, offering a vague glimpse of a strange future. In a sense, it resolves the tension of the album, but any catharsis is only partial. A certain eeriness, a mild unsettledness remains. Again, this is to the trio's credit.
One obvious parallel to Futuro Ancestrale is doom metal. In a way that few free jazz dalliances into that world do, this one captures a lot of the aesthetic without simply mimicking it or half-heartedly crossing over. Indeed, this album seems to deal with the essence of that style — its gravity and drone — at a much lower volume and with greater attention to primary sound production rather than feedback loops. Once they set the atmosphere, Doronzo, Moor and Rosaly double down on the subtleties and improvisational spaces within and around the heaviness. This is no ear-bleed, wall-of-sound outing, but it evokes similar feelings of disorientation and disquiet, as well as that primal scream viscerally. With a soft chant, rather than a shout. And with a raw sensitivity to mood and detail that simply enraptures.
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