Glenn Astarita
New World Records is a New York City-based organization that specializes in the modern classical space, highlighting works by avant-garde composer John Cage and others. Every so often the label releases a progressive-jazz or in this case, a new music and largely unclassifiable program by experimentalist, composer and improviser Kyle Bruckmann. Featuring members of the revered West Coast Rova Saxophone Quartet and others performing on select tracks, Bruckmann uses the oboe as his primary instrument during this set containing four pieces, including the title track that clocks in at twenty-nine minutes.
With live electronics, strings, horns and percussion encapsulating the band makeup, Bruckmann explores the outer perimeters of music where stringent genre-based applications are nonexistent. Sound-shaping, microtonal interludes, nouveau chamber and other aspects are treated with either mystical qualities or executed via disparate tonal swashes and boisterous breakouts. But a jazz element weaves around several movements, evidenced on the title piece set in motion by drummer Tim Daisy’s slowly paced rock pulse; contrapuntal horns choruses and the classical element, sparked by Bruckmann’s deft oboe phrasings. Moreover, the musicians create a kaleidoscopic range of mood-evoking dialogues, painting catastrophic circumstances or temperate ebbs and flows.
Detours and subtle shifts in strategy are underlying components amid some verbose free-jazz dialogues by members of Rova. Bruckmann’s compositions often project an unearthly vista, offering ammo for one’s psycho to wander, featuring segments where short-circuited electronics effects intimate a disruption to the flow. Otherwise, Bruckmann uses electronics, an English horn and oboe on his solo piece “Orgone Accelerator.” Here, the artist generates a subdued mindset with quaint sound-sculpting maneuvers and breathy horn implementations, as he decrees a bizarre semi-organic, electro-mechanical type framework.
Bruckmann has appeared on various new-jazz record labels as a leader and sideman. This album in particular showcases his global musical perspective, suggesting that rules are meant to be broken among other off-kilter sensibilities, modeled with stark contrasts and a conglomerate of beguiling propositions. – Glenn Astarita
www.newworldrecords.org
http://www.kylebruckmann.com
Personnel: Kyle Bruckmann – oboe, electronics, English horn with: SFSOUND (Matt Ingalls – clarinet, bass clarinet; John Ingle – alto saxophone; Gino Robair – prepared piano: Benjamin Kreith – violin: Tara Flandreau – viola; Monica Scott – cello; Kjell Nordeson – percussion) WRACK (Tim Daisy – percussion; Anton Hatwich – bass; Jen Clare Paulson – viola; Jason Stein – bass clarinet) ROVA SAXOPHONE QUARTET (Bruce Ackley – soprano; Steve Adams – alto; Larry Ochs – tenor; Jon Raskin – baritone) and Tim Perkis & Gino Robair – live electronics
Tracks: Cell Structure; On Procedural Ground; Orgone Accelerator; Tarpit.
