Download it Here - Eartrip Magazine

everberations from the snare, which can be heard as a kind of
involuntary rhythmic accompaniment; the piano playing is tremendously
exhilarating when at its most gleefully, wholly deranged, smashing
clusters, smears of sound with no regard for subtlety in that moment,
though also with an odd obsessive quality also shared by de Dionysio (for
instance, playing a Latin hook for well over half of the third piece while
the rest of the band dances free time around it).
It all has a sound to it which is some way very different to a lot of
other free jazz bands; entirely appropriate to the new vision of ESP, it
possesses all the rawness of their original 60s recordings, now the
classics from which de Anysio and co. learn, rather than the boundarypushers
of the moment, but takes things even further out from the
realms of jazz (which does, however, rear its head in a few piano phrases
now and again, and in the occasional hints of a walking bass (which
might just be auditory hallucinations after yet another stop-start
assault)). Even the punk and rock musics which David Keenan mentions
in his enthusiastic and wholly appropriate liner notes don’t seem quite
relevant; for though this music is hard and raw and aggressive as hell, it
also has a sense of control and even of manipulation (perhaps down to de
Dionysio’s role as ‘musical director’, in some way spontaneously shaping
these collective improvisations as the band’s leader). In addition, you can
rely on the band never to do the expected thing (when they do, as in the
Latin vamp on the third piece, it becomes unexpected by dint of its
rarity); this may in large part be due to the way drummer Niekrasz
always looks to avoid the expected and tested paths there to tempt all
percussionists (jazz time-keeping, punk rock emphatic mechanics, allover
Sunny-Murray sound-waves).
Special mention, too, must go to de Dionysio’s instrumental
prowess; while most bass clarinettists working in this area of the music
have carried on from where Eric Dolphy left off, propelling themselves
into ever more raucous and athletic displays, de Dionysio’s playing on
this disc is perhaps the most vigorous and elemental I’ve heard in quite a
while, blaring over and egging on the collective fury of the band and,
occasionally, engaging in breathy, tightrope-walk duos with Skloff’s arco
bass that unsettle as much as they represent any sort of ‘calm’.
This, then, is a genuinely fresh recording: music with real spirit
and bite, wholly inspiring and inspired. (DG)