The cover art for this CD from Jon Irabagon's trio with Mike Pride and Mick Barr features a story line about three hombres that move from slingin' back a few shots to throwin' down pugilistic-style by the bar to riding off into the sunset. The sounds on
I Don't Hear Nothin' But the Blues, Volume 2: Appalachian Haze are ones produced from this tremendously focused trio who simply do not stop playing for close to fifty minutes' duration. Drummer Pride gets to play what in some ways is the leading role of the set. His explorations of micro-tempos, drum set coloration, blasting chops-based mega fills, and just overall hyperactive motion will surely have an attentive listener's ears pinned to the back of their skull. Mike doesn't play anything resembling a traditional beat until at least fifteen minutes in, and then only for a couple of bars. Obviously he's propelled by his own subjective cadence, and its subject is powerful and intensely driven. Also bearing down for extensions of extensions is experimental guitar Wizard Mick Barr. Fingers are flying across the frets of guitar for like ninety nine percent of
Haze, which leads to the micro-tonal zones which have been so consistent and repeatedly mind blowing from Barr for quite a few years now. The precision of his attack supplies a sonic quilt of drone. Surely others have compared Mick's guitar sound to swarming bees but damned if that's not the perfect descriptor of it when he's in full flight. Just so powerful. Atop the guitar and drums blitzing, Jon Irabagon stretches out with his tenor saxophone, darting in and out of the maelstrom with overtones and polyphonics which sound authentic and studied. The man knows his horn and its tones are mastered by him. When Irabagon sets up long, circular phrases with the circular breathing technique his music hunches down like an imposing mountain, y'all ain't getting around it so best just to climb into it and let it happen. If you're at all craving bonkers, electrified free improvisation these Blues will sate that craving and then some. Yowsa.
