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.