The chase continues.
"RACCA Trio w Vinny Golia"
Tim Berne, "Yikes Too" (Out of Your Head/Screwgun 2CD)
Chasing, chasing -- both recordings feel like that. And so do we. Suitable for the times. You don't have to be black to recall Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray's famous tenor battle in "The Chase" from 1947, the year eight black and eight white men traveled by bus through the South on a Journey of Reconciliation to see if the locals would challenge the recent anti-discrimination Supreme Court rulings (they were arrested six times). And then there was Archie Shepp's "The Chased" from 1965, the year of Selma's Bloody Sunday and the Watts Rebellion.
Vinny Golia (soprano sax) and Tim Berne (alto), both seasoned veterans of the avant trenches, have each chosen to engage in hot pursuit with a guitarist on their new records.
Golia's foil is RACCA Trio's Alex Nauman, a clasher, a twister and a stabber with a clean, cutting tone. Though they improvise freely, the two quote each other, follow each other's leads and bounce off each other in unexpected directions, just as you'd hope equals in a democracy would, often inspired by the trashcan blasts & spins of drummer Ron Coulter and the bold interweavings of electric bassist Matt Smiley. There's a lot of space here, as in the Colorado recording sites, but plenty of action to fill it. Watch out for flying birds.
Berne's foil is Gregg Belisle-Chi, a dirty bird whose distortoboxed lines are often counterpointed or unisoned with planned synchronicity but poised to jump off Berne's rails at any moment. Tom Rainey is one of those drummers whose rhythmically layered orchestrations you can focus on separately, then zoom out to hear how he's accommodating the other two. The overall initial impression (studio and especially live) is jaggedness, then you realize this trio is sucking in a jagged, raw world, chewing it up and transforming it into something you can swallow.
And also into something that gives energy. Listeners thought '40s bebop was weird at first, and they thought the same about what was often called "energy" jazz in the '60s. Those necessary revolutions continue. You'll see the last of them when you see the last of the bad times.
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Listen to RACCA here.
Listen to Berne here.