Craig
Taborn is one of those musicians who have maintained
a chameleon-like, but shadowy presence over the last
decade. Despite having recorded three albums - including
Junk Magic - as leader, arguably his highest
profile work has been on Carl Craig’s Programmed
(listening to Junk Magic highlights the contribution
made by Taborn on that work). Junk Magic is
released on Thirsty Ear’s Blue Series, which any
fan of the improv/electronica hybrids released on European
labels such as Rune Grammofon, Jazzland and Smalltown
Supersound is encouraged to check out.
The title track begins like a chamber music piece: Aaron
Stewart’s sax and Mat Maneri’s viola cautiously
dancing together, afraid to do anything more than touch
fingertips while shadowed by Taborn’s equally
chary electric piano. This strange little trio begins
to be menaced by a growling bass figure, which gradually
steals closer, and closer. After almost three minutes,
a driving rhythm, which seems to blow in from nowhere,
increases tension significantly. There’s something
very visual about this music, as if the listener were
watching scenes directed by Kafka or his modern day
cinematic equivalent David Lynch: imagine the music
as occupants of a dusky room, watched surreptitiously
from outside by a shadowy figure, then cut to a chase
scene of said parties running from their unknown pursuer.
There’s a rigid repetitiveness to the playing
here, a mechanistic horror comparable to the more paranoid
tracks on Giorgio Moroder’s soundtrack to Midnight
Express.
Mystero introduces wavering synthetic tones
woven with mournful viola and punctured by scattershot,
mechanic snares like a stripped down and radically reassembled
version of Omni Trio’s Renegade Snares.
The formal, melodic element of the previous track reappears
here a hybrid of Steve Coleman’s M-Base
work and Michael Nyman-esque contemporary Minimalism.
The formal patterns break up into variations, just as
the tempo shatters in multiple temporal shards. Like
running through a fairground hall of mirrors it’s
never quite clear where the music is or what it will
become in the next moment, the only certainty is a certain
strangeness.
Shining Through is silvery, as if recorded
behind the screen of a long-closed and possibly haunted
cinema. It begins like the memory of another time: there’s
the crackle of an old soundtrack, through which Maneri’s
viola traces curlicues and flourishes. It’s like
something old and possibly poisonous discovered in an
attic that should probably have been left undisturbed.
Bodies At Rest & In Motion is pensive,
its dark corners explored sorrowfully by each of the
players before Taborn ups the ante with splinters of
high notes which catalyse King’s electronic drums
into similar motion until the rest of the ensemble are
sucked in and mixed together like a serial dust devil.
Stalagmite is an all too brief (1’09”)
fragment driven by a bass hoover garnished with ziggurat
movements. It’s a heavy track, which acts as a
signpost indicating a possible direction for the group.
Final track, The Golden Age, creeps in on the
shadow of a mourning viola accompanied by even darker
shadows cast by Taborn. Synthetic percussion strafes
their gathering folds and dips of their gestures. This
golden age is riddled with a darkness that belies its
title.
This listener expected a jazz/techno hybrid, something
along the lines of Carl Craig’s Programmed.
Junk Magic defies such expectations, delivering
instead a hybrid of edgy modern jazz, minimalist composition
and contemporary dance rhythms twisted and made oblique.
It is an ambitious and successful work that takes the
listener into eerie worlds where the next moment is
uncertain and shadows gather suddenly.
Colin Buttimer
3/5 |
