POINt OF DEPARTURE - Jason Bivins

Distinct Machinery

Since the early 1990s, Graewe has been exploring various permutations of quartet music, one key vehicle for which is the long-running Frisque Concordance. Tenor saxophonist John Butcher has been on board since the beginning, and they’re joined here by a pair of long-time collaborators, bassist Wilbert de Joode and percussionist Mark Sanders. Distinct Machinery contributes healthy to this combo’s discography, with two discs chock full of top notch music. The first is a 10-track studio effort from 2017. These are musicians of great sensitivity, and that’s definitely audible at the outset of “Inklings,” with its delicate tracings, overtones, and soft notes that work steady to coax an intense heat-bloom. Likewise, the spacious “Torsion” clicks and hisses along, subtle gestures building in impact. And yet the robust “Hot and Cold” is very much the former for much of its duration, with Sanders and de Joode so crisp and forceful at the same time. One particular treat is hearing Butcher play in a robustly linear fashion on tunes like this. That feel continues through “Metes and Bounds” and into the expansive “Drunken Thread,” whose opening tense minutes hint at the energetic cross-cutting intervals and volleys to come. The music moves through dense, dark tone poems that are filled with small details (“Fissures” and “Flank Angles”), flinty deconstructions like “Flow Field,” and full flow exuberance on pieces like “Entanglements.” That latter tune is a for-sure highlight, with a glorious piano solo at its heart, the ensemble spitting out coil after coil of sound.
The second disc is from a 2018 live date at Nickelsdorf. “Desmodromics I” has something of the drive and urgency of “Hot and Cold” or “Entanglements” in places but never lingers overlong. There’s simply too much going on, and too much information that the musicians want to get out. And with the simpatico these guys have, things happen with at times astonishing subtlety and intuitiveness. There are multiple lengthy sections where they breathe as one, taking moisture from the air and turning it into notes. Sanders is a player of such subtlety, and his ears are simply huge. When playing on his own (at the opening of “II,” for example) he achieves such impact with small splashes and taps. This section of “Desmodromics” is truly powerful once the group enters. De Joode’s solo practically has its own gravitational field, and there’s some truly interstellar soprano and piano as well. The third section practically explodes in great whorls of color and sound, with loads of chromaticism leading up to an absolutely riveting piano/drums duo. The piece ends with a head-spinning gliss-fest before the soft susurrus of the concluding section. Bracing stuff from this group, and both of these releases are warmly recommended.