“Outcrop,” the first track from Tells or Terrier — the recent release from Jeb Bishop on trombone, Nathan McBride on bass, and New Haven improvised music stalwart Joe Morris on drums — begins with searching, pulsing notes from all three musicians, quickly finding their way into their sound. Before long, the music gains velocity, as Morris and McBride settle into a faster mode of playing while Bishop deploys the flexibility in a trombone’s tone that can make it sound like a human voice, like animal calls. There’s rigor, but also deep camaraderie, a shared sense of humor and determination, that makes the music hang together.
“This recording took place at my home in the woods in Connecticut,” Morris writes in the liner notes. “My dog, Scout, a Border Terrier, came with us on a walk onto the huge rock outcropping behind the studio that I call the Temple. Scout draws a lot of attention which explains why Terrier is in the title. On the walk, in the studio, and later eating take-out pizza on the beach together, we all talked like the old friends that we are. Sharing ideas and stories, having endured the tough parts and enjoyed the best parts of doing this for so long, which might be why Tells is also part of the title, although our playing has a certain — particular to this group — kind of narrative formulation too. These things were improvised like the music, in collective agreement, casually, and also worthy of being noticed as part of the whole collective creative process.”
Tells or Terrier is one of a few albums to be released this month on Bandcamp out of the New Haven jazz scene, and in its fun, its grit, and its willingness to explore, it’s emblematic of the scene as a whole, as the Elm City keeps a musical tradition very much alive that is already a few generations deep.
One curio to pop back into the eternal present of recorded music is an album by The Lazenbys, recorded in May 1997 but rereleased just last week. “The Lazenbys were an experimental musician’s collective based in New Haven and were voted one of the top three instrumental bands in the New Haven Advocate readers poll in 1998,” the band’s description reads. The title of the album is Sextet Live at the State Street Fest, May 31, 1997. What was the State Street Fest? It’s lost to recorded internet history (anyone who reads this and knows what it was, please leave a comment).
What we do know, from the recording, is that the Lazenbys came in on a squall of sinister noise and ominous clangs, groans from a bowed bass, crackles from drums, and that the horns bided their time, waiting over 10 minutes before making their entrance, and that’s when the band’s energy deepened, and the sextet went out with the coiled fury of a soundtrack to the freakiest science fiction movie someone never got a chance to make. Was it really performed on a late spring day three decades ago? If so, in the confidence with which the Lazenbys performed, it also could have been recorded yesterday.
Meanwhile, Nick Di Maria, who spearheads the ongoing concert series New Haven Jazz Underground at Cafe 9, Three Sheets, Nolo, and elsewhere, comes in with his latest release, [green eight], moving the trumpeter, composer, and educator ever closer to completing his album cycle inspired by and structured around Stephen King’s massive Dark Tower fantasy series. A quote from a character from the series sets the mood — “when Eddie is in that fuckin zone, he could talk the devil into setting himself on fire” — and Di Maria’s quartet, made up of Di Maria on trumpet, Andrew Kosiba on Fender Rhodes, Matt Dwonszyk on bass, and Avery Collins on drums, follows.
On the opening track, “Via Mganga,” the band begins with a deep, impressionistic flourish before launching into a groove that partakes of shades of Afrobeat as a launchpad for a series of extended improvisations from all the band members. “Computation” starts off on an easy swing that grows more strident as it goes on. “Streetlamps” conjures up a vibe true to its late-night name. The final two numbers, “Blaine is a Pain” and “Bennie,” find the band reaching peak velocity. Like the Bishop-McBride-Morris trio, they partake of the musical experience of the past, and plunge headlong into the future
Tells or Terrier, Sextet Live at the State Street Fest, and [green eight] can be found on Bandcamp.