When it comes to "purchase on sight" artists, Rudolph Grey is most definitely within that category for Disaster Amnesiac. Ask anyone familiar with his music, and surely you'll get similar responses. His somewhat slim catalog always delivers the kind of bonkers aesthetics that people inclined to like Free Jazz and Free Improvisation find massively appealing. A few months back a cassette copy of
Transfixed, his 1988 New Alliance Records release was espied by yours truly over at the University District branch of Wooden Tooth Records in Tucson and obviously I was all over it. As stated, "purchase on sight". Side 1 begins with a duo of Grey on guitar and the late great Arthur Doyle on tenor saxophone. It sounds as if they're playing in front of a coterie of Lower East Side people and also as if Doyle is ripping up the mental fabric of himself and anyone within ear shot. Hopefully those voices on the the tape were voices of people marveling at the man's singular tone shaping and multi-phonic greatness. Grey joins in with swooping diver bomber messages from his six strings and amplifier. The two proceed to bounce ideas back and forth and it's gloriously abstract. The two of them really goo things up handily on this track entitled
Ghosts. Albert Ayler is in there somewhere, of course, but Rudolph and Arthur summon their own unique haints also. The former's tones on guitar are really colorful and sound deeply considered.
1000 Luminous Flowers follows (such an incredible song title!) and it features Grey on guitars. The stun zone is hit with the quickness here as he builds up walls of arpeggio; densities of sound are embedded within those walls and the listener can pick out all kinds of granular details should he/she choose to do so. This flower garden is exited pretty quickly, so you'll want to pay attention lest you miss those desired nuggets of colorful sound. On Side 2 Sumner Crane, Rudolph's band mate of a brief duration within the amazing Mars, duets with Grey on piano piece
Whirl. It's a piece that's full of the vigor of New York Jazz, pretty much all eras, along with elements of 20th Century Composition. Think Ives and Schoenberg and Crumb and you'll get the drift. The pianos sound decently in tune and their two players wrap ideas around each other's skulls in the most joyous of manner.
Transfixed closes out the set with more of Grey's solo guitar expressiveness. More of those swooping dramatics and sonic earthworks that arise from genuine creative guitar exploration. Rudolph Grey was burnin' in that era with his unique vision, one seemingly informed by 1950's Sci-Fi films, No Wave moves, and presumably also the raw energies zapping all over the Big Apple and its environs.
Transfixed is one part of what Disaster Amnesiac knows as a three pronged set of releases from a musician gifted with genuine vision. Seek it and Rudolph Grey's other two records from New Alliance. If you're at all interested in free form musical wanderings, they go the distance in terms of delivering powerful musical wampum.
