There’s a chiming quality to the opening track
on Matthew Shipp’s new album that evokes images
of halls of mirrors, shiny surfaces, moments in time
caught unexpectedly in the butterfly net of a computer.
The whole of this remarkable track (Ion) suggests
a relationship to the final scene of Kubrick’s
2001, A Space Odyssey where David Bowman arrives
in an 18th century room and encounters other versions
of himself. There’s a similar sense of the familiar
become unfamiliar.
The next track, New ID, opens with an acoustic
piano figure accompanied by multiple, clattering drums
and William Parker’s muscular bass. It’s
a busy tussle with no one coming out a clear winner,
except the listener that is. Shipp’s playing shuffles
a number of cards, a particular musical phrase on each
plays its turn out only to be replaced by another, though
it may turn up again at any point later on. Shipp’s
acoustic piano throughout Harmony & Abyss
is dark, meaty, salty. It’s as though he’s
making pacts with his fellow players to create especially
dramatic music: he’s trailed and shadowed by them,
parrying their thrusts and sometimes following their
lead. Shipp is always at the centre of the dark forest
that grows from his piano. On Virgin Complex,
Shipp is circled by Parker’s bass and phased,
shaken percussion. As the music travels forwards it
loses its initial certainty and becomes increasingly
attenuated; in its dying moments it seems to hover and
fly upwards. Galaxy 105 comes on like a funky
jam for a noir film, all popping bass and tinkling,
out piano thrashed this way and that by Cleaver’s
accelerating snares. String Theory is spooked
by a distant industrial pulse rendered in white noise
while all around it torn remnants of melody and sound
flutter. Blood 2 The Brain delivers impressively
funky beats and bass on a parallel course to Shipp’s
voyaging narrative.
There are strains of classical-orientation in Shipp’s
playing, but they’re married surprisingly successfully
to Gerald Cleaver’s and FLAM’s funky beats.
There’s also a distinct sense of structure, of
the ensemble focusing upon points of compression and
release at throughout each composition. Harmony
& Abyss is Shipp’s first release as leader
since last year’s Equilibrium and it
represents a significant development from the rather
low-key and slightly too cautious feel of that album.
This new instalment in Shipp’s electric odyssey
is a force to be reckoned with, something that can confidently
take its place alongside recent European hybrids of
jazz and popular forms such as breakbeat, techno, ambient,
etc. Harmony & Abyss engages with the heritage
of modern jazz but recognises that to survive it must
adapt. There are whole vital histories which jazz’s
roving spirit can enrich itself with and Shipp and his
group convincingly explore this potential with Harmony
& Abyss.
Colin Buttimer
4.5/5 |
