1) Red Mitchell / Joe Beck, Live at Salishan, Capri 74033
2) Jeff Song and Matt Turner, In Vivo, Asian Improv Records (AIR) 0016
Reviewed by Scot Hacker
Although Red Mitchell had been given at times to rather enigmatic outings, this recording, made just a few months before his passing, was not one of them. He is at home in a duo setting with Beck, with whom he had played intermittently for 25 years. "The duo format is the smallest possible society... there's more freedom while there are more demands on both players," he has said. Indeed, Mitchell exploits the format to its maximum potential, knowing when to lay in the hook and when to pull back. Both players react to one another's curve balls with lightning reflexes, but they play with, not against one another.
Mitchell's bass sound is rather unique, owing in part to his celebrated innovation of tuning the bass in fifths, allowing for intervallic leaps unusual to the ears, but not (at least not here) dissonant. In addition, notes are played "pull-off" style, rather than plucked. Aside from these technicalities, his musical ideas are fresh. He plants long slides in the midst of long, warbling runs, and pulls melodies down through the octaves at odd stops. None of this for the sake of strangeness, but for an eerie beauty that beams through the novelty.
Beck himself is something fresh. Discarding cliches often associated with jazz guitar, he seems to have absorbed something of Mitchell's unusual harmonic approach over the years. Chord progressions mirror melodic progressions, running through changes like water down a rocky cliff, its motion gentle despite the rough ground below. He understands Mitchell's intentions instantaneously. It's hard to imagine another guitarist meshing so eloquently with Mitchell's strange angles. This is not a difficult recording to listen to in any way. In fact, in the background it seems downright tame. Only upon close listening do its inner peculiarities become apparent.
Red Mitchell lived in Stockholm from 1968 through 1992. This recording was made just after his repatriation. The two had not played together for quite a while. Fittingly, Salishan, the club where this was recorded gains it name from a Native American word meaning "A coming together from distant points to communicate in harmony." Highly recommended.
(2) "This recording is dedicated to everyone who plays by their own rules," says the inscription in the liners. It rings true, as this record is unique from start to finish. With the exception of two tracks, in vivo is a series of duets, each radically different from the last. One moment they're blending the ethereal twang of the kayagum (a form of Korean zither, similar to the Japanese koto) with the saw of an arco cello, and the next pounding drums are laying foundations for funky bass or howling feedback. The record keeps its sensibilities on the outside, but this is not "difficult" music. Rather, Turner and Song demonstrate how simply the lineages of two cultures' improvisatory traditions can merge without cancelling each other out. As musicians, Turner and Song are difficult to rate -- what they do is so different it bears comparison to little else -- the usual standards just don't apply. This is another recording pushing the question of what qualifies as "jazz."
Typical of this heady yet strangely peaceful blend is "Ancestral Residue?," which pits an almost tympanic tom-tom flurry against cello bowed in the upper register (almost violin-like). The slow shaking of shells provides an earthly quality, while the plucked kayagum reels in the dreams. Everything happening sounds ancient; these instruments, or their not dissimilar ancestors, could all have been played a thousand years ago. One hears mud, rock, and wood in these notes, and thinks of the origins of music.
But this mood gives way in the next track to something completely modern, as a terrifying poem (Helen Decker's "Tonight Your Ashes") is practically shrieked through a distorting mechanism, underlined by electric bass warbling around like a ball in a Pachinko machine. As the album progresses, the tracks stay just as unpredictable in intention and execution.
Session details:
Red Mitchell:
Now's the Time / Tenderly / In a Mellow Tone / What Would I Do Without You? / Secret Love / Body & Soul / Things Ain't What They Used To Be / Like Someone in Love / Gremlins. 55:10.
Mitchell, b; Joe Beck, gt. Rec. 3/92
Jeff Song and Matt Turner:
St. Vitus' Dance / Chejudo Lament / Bait / Lost in the Translation / in vivo / Ancestral Residue? / Tonight Your Ashes / Quiet Revolution* / Top / My Heart is a Slim Truck / Equivalent / Irritant Surge / Naum: 52-4-1*. 69:22.
Song, b, kayagum, vcl; Turner, cel, p. With John Mettam, perc. and Dean Laabs, tpt on *.
[Writers] [Birdhouse]