Bruckmann/Heule/Nishi-Smith/Rivero-negligiblism; Full Spectrum Records, 2024

 

Number two of the recent submissions from Jacob Felix Heule is negligiblism, which documents an Autumn 2021 meeting between long term collaborators Heule, Kyle Bruckmann, Kanoko Nishi-Smith and Danishta Rivero. It's an album which showcases the merits of long term collaborations or even dare I say bands. This quartet's players are participants within a quite small yet tightly focused micro-scene, nominally underneath the umbrella of Jazz and yet quite removed from a lot of its elements. Still, that's a starting point and it's been a bit of a conceptual window from which Disaster Amnesiac has attempted to perceive its sounds. For example, in between playing negligiblism, I've spun Spring, the mid-1960's Tony Williams disc from Blue Note. That album features players who played in bands together. As such, there are certain playing approaches, developed interactively, which mark the recording as a band recording. One could also spin some Led Zeppelin as a window into band music. What I'm trying to show is that Jacob, Kyle, Kanoko and Danishta  make good band music as such. negligiblism features a darkly intimate vibe that's eventually quite easily captured by a good band; its sounds are deeply interactive as they arrive from players who are taking the time to listen to their fellow band mates and to respond accordingly in thoughtful manners. Yes, this too can be a way that band operates! Just think of a Miles Davis Quintet with the fellows mentioned previously, or Anthony Braxton's 1980's classic crew, or Darkthrone for cryin' out loud. Surely the reader gets the drift here. Sounds float up and away into the ether on negligiblism. Passages fill with sonic violence and/or foreboding. Insect warfare commences. Urban racket from drama moves. If one wants to find controlled abstraction and expression, one can find it therein. Ditto group densities and drones. Vocal explorations, extended techniques, percussive passages from possibly not percussion players, high register squeaks. All of this and surely more are there for the listener's pleasure, and all of if conjured from a grouping of people that have clearly spent a lot of quality playing time, working out their shared voice band sound. And it's gloriously free and Free if you catch the drift. Catch it here. And when you do, listen to it as band music.

Heule/Leguia/Rivera/Escalante-An Inscrutable Bodily Discomforting Thing

 

It's been a bit over four years since Disaster Amnesiac has heard from Jacob Felix Heule, but recently that silence has been broken by a couple of releases that the Oakland-based drummer has sent my way. Gotta say right off the bat that it's wonderful to hear from him as well as to hear what he's been up to musically in the interim. The first of two releases for review is An Inscrutable Bodily Discomforting Thing, featuring the quartet of Heule, Danishta Rivero, Tete Leguia, and Martin Escalante. Recorded while the latter two musicians, on bass and saxophone respectively, were on a 2021 tour stop in the Bay, An Inscrutable Bodily Discomforting Thing is a long form improvisational piece that's best taken in within one sitting, as that's the best analogue for what this configuration likely gets on to when up close and personal. The group sets off pretty much immediately into the jittery abstraction that characterizes so many freely improvised sets, and Disaster Amnesiac has wondered at the quickened listening on display within their dynamics. Clearly, extended thinking and its attendant musical performance is on display. Jacob starts the set off with what sounds like his stripped down, bass drum centered style, but as the set's duration unfolds he can be heard to be performing on a bigger set of drums. Within that former approach, lots of drags, scrapes, and scratches emerge; surely, these must have been coaxed not only from Felix's rig but also from those of Tete's bass and Martin's saxophone. Rivero eventually joins the fray and shows herself to be a skilled user of the human voice as musical instrument. Danishta is a classic Jazz singer in the sense that she uses notes that are either being explored or have been explored. It's certainly not a lazy approach to the craft. Eventually, a more jarring Noise territory is dipped into, full of brash and big and possibly unsettling zones. Disaster Amnesiac's perceptions have been pushed into those of a more Industrial bent by the over saturated, physically moving qualities therein. Lequia finds joy within an overblown, multiphonic aesthetic, very much in the loft style, and the group is not so much going into the void as they are immersed in a beautiful vortex of sound generation. The CD version of An Inscrutable Bodily Discomforting Thing is very limited, so fans of physical media will want to swoop quickly on this fine free energy blast of a document. Heule, Rivero, Leguia, and Escalante have delivered an album of perfectly expansive accelerated thought/music interactions.

Live shot(s) #171!

Both shots from The Timeout Lounge Phoenix 5/17/25.

Above: Working People. Tucson-based band with bright guitar and a sharp, drummer propelled rhythm section. The vocalist sings in English fluently but it's not her first language. 

Below: SewerBitch! There are layers to this Phoenix band to be discovered. Like subtleties beyond belief. Find their cassette, which mentions a band hotline but gives no phone number. Boss moves. 

Live shot #170!

 

Phog Masheen, The Palms Restaurant Twentynine Palms CA April 2024. Opening up the Wonder Valley Experimental Music Festival for that year.

Live shot(s) #169!

 All photos taken at a house party in Tucson!

Below: Sean Whalen. Guitar, harmonica, vocals. Songs paired down to essences.

Above: Abe's Bones. Unhinged house rockin'! The band is headed to Wisconsin to record an album soon!

Below: Boyos. Primitive Prog with twin guitar lines. Sharp rhythm section moves. The singer invented a board game!

House parties in Tucson are wonderful.