such as New, the band stretches out and shows a common, musical language in development. An excellent release through and through.
 
While Haley doesn’t shy away from his improvising roots on “The Green Suite and Other Stories”, this is a more concisely composed effort. Creating a rhythm section with percussionist Jean Martin, bassist Paul Donat, adding saxophonist Evan Shaw, vocalist Christine Duncan and Eugene Martynec on laptops, The Every Time Band is one rocking affair.  Quite literally so.
 
As an ensemble, they attempt to be an improvised music group but in the end, everything is tightly controlled by Haley. The ensemble is infiltrated with “foreign” forces – such as a rarely heard vocalist and a laptop. Fair enough, Haley is taking risks and this is a big plus.  Musically, they present a variation on more adventurous jazz territory while allowing thick improvised passages to peek through. On Oligarchy, Duncan showcases a strange vocal succession of non-syllabic owl-like warbles, accompanied by Haley’s sparse guitar motions. All of the mass seems to be processed by Martynec. Weirder still, on the following piece, Gloves and Goggles, she sounds like a more alive Karen Mantler and the band returns to a more sedate form of music creation. It’s on the longer pieces – Iceberg and Tree Hugger – the band truly gets a chance to stretch out. Everyone gets play with and scrape against one another, allowing a number of good moments of friction to come through. The one grapple I have with the disc is that Eugene Martynec seems like he’s underused.
 
Shifting between adventurous and the more standard fare, the album is still quite good allowing all members to speak with one common voice, channelled by Haley’s vision.
 
Tom Sekowski

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3 Suits & A Violin Christian Weber hatOLOGY 364 (www.hathut.com)

 
About as distant from Swiss folk music’s traditional Alpine airs as possible, this imaginative CD features five Zürich-based players – lacking both suits and a violin – exploring the intersections among minimalism, electronics and free improvisation. Spiccato scrapes, stretched stops and shrilling slides from bassist Christian Weber and cellist Michael Moser combine with complex triggered sound envelopes to make up the inchoate lines and quivering drones which coagulate underneath individual tones on each track. Disconnected frails and licks from guitarist and lap-steel player Martin Siewert or clustered split-tone whistles from bass clarinettist and tenor saxophonist Hans Koch are easily identifiable despite the rotor-blade-like grinding created by their electronic add-ons. Distinctive too are the blunt, concussive pops from drummer Christian Wolfarth’s echoing cymbals.
 
But the triumph of hard-core chamber sounds like these is that typically each instrument’s sonic characteristics are subsumed into indivisible timbres. Humour isn’t lacking however, considering that one drone-fest is ostentatiously named for American astronaut Buzz Aldrin.
 
The session’s unequivocal definition is attained on Frogmouth the nearly 16-minute climatic track. Slithering among drones, amplifier hums and fan-belt-like pitter-pattering, folksy guitar strums swollen by electronics plus jarring broken chords from the arco strings simultaneously references the 17th and 21st century. Lacking a melodic centre, the cyclical friction still reflects tension then release, allowing the quintet’s undifferentiated timbres to impress as the program dissolves into silence.
 
Ken Waxman

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Thin Air Queen Mab Trio Stiching Wig Wig 14 (www.vergemusic.com)

 
As a cross-Atlantic outfit - Lori Freedman is based in Montreal, Marilyn Lerner in Toronto and Ig Henneman in Amsterdam - Queen Mab Trio has a world of new music mastered at their fingertips. Through their last few releases, they’ve wavered between chamber music, improvised styling and dashes of jazz. They’re never content to be shuffled into one given category, which makes each new release a surprise for the listener. At the beginning of every record, we ask ourselves, just what musical style will the group head into? So, here we are, at the first piece of their latest release. As I’m listening to the title track, I’m under an impression they’re hovering heavily over new music territory. Freedman’s well placed clarinet blows are interspersed with Henneman’s ear-friendly viola dabbling that are then wrapped up with occasional ivory strokes from Lerner. But then, wait, as I re-listen to the piece, it’s more on the improvised scheme. Well, yes – all three members have writing credits on the track. Something is up. I listen to the piece a few more times and at every turn I’m surprised at how easily they shift between styles. They’re like a sly fox who’s trying to outrun a wolf. Throughout the record, they take sudden shifts in direction at least half a dozen times. Every time this happens, you’re left with a question mark smack in front of your face. Is theirs an exercise in confusion or are they deliberately playing every imaginable style of sound they can get their hands on? Regardless, interplay with each other is marvellously stated. From the crow-like clarinet guffaws, through to the pointed viola clicks, through to the understated piano caresses, these women are working on a higher plane in terms of communication. With such superlative means of communication at work, it’s a shame the record is a mere 43 minutes long. I could listen to what “Thin Air” offers for hours on end.
 
Tom Sekowski
 
Concert Note: Queen Mab’s Marilyn Lerner and her Ugly Beauties Trio perform music of Thelonious Monk at Two-Tone Thursdays: Jazz at the Bata Shoe Museum on March 1.

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Streaming Muhal Richard Abrams; George Lewis; Roscoe Mitchell Pi Recordings 22 (www.vergemusic.com)

 

Summit meeting among three veterans of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (ACCM), the five elongated, spontaneous improvisations showcase the empathetic interaction only available to mature players who know intimately each other’s idiosyncrasies.
 
This is no exercise in nostalgia however. AACM founder Muhal Richard Abrams, 74, utilizes percussion implements and bamboo flute along with aggressive pianism; Roscoe Mitchell, 63, vibrates and rattles hollow-sounding percussion as well as tracing unique paths with soprano and alto saxophones; and George Lewis, 52, spends as much time triggering pulsations with his laptop computer as vibrating chromatic trombone lines.
 
Thus hair-trigger sonic reactions can as easily involve a contrapuntal duet between malleable rhythm tones and sequenced electronics as portamento keyboard slides, dog-like yelps and animal squeaks from the reedist and the trombone’s braying triplet slurs. Abrams’ timbre command is such as well, so that at points he appears to be trading double counterpoint licks with himself.
 
Most notable track is the 18 minute Dramaturns, a Lewis/Abrams duet that encompasses blues and baroque acoustic inferences plus blurry electronic pulsations. Rococo trombone grace notes join metronomic piano colouring at the top, until clouds of dense choir-like laptop surges meet staccato, double-quick, repetitive note clusters from Abrams. Broken chord interface turns to polyphonic harmonies by the finale.
 
Allowing separate musical agendas to simultaneously evolve during these trios and duets confirms that risk-taking impulses still predominate for these veterans. The palpable excitement lies in hearing the three shape the dissonant tones into distinctive sound sculptures.
 
Ken Waxman

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Dialogue Hisato Higuchi Family Vineyard (www.family-vineyard.com)

 
Having released a couple of excellent EPs a couple of years ago - “She” and “2004 11 2005 4” - Japanese guitarist Hisato Higuchi now releases his first State-side record, simply entitled “Dialogue”. As with the previous two releases, the proceedings are kept to a bare 36 minute length. This is something that works highly in his favour. Higuchi’s pacing is morosely slow. When he picks at the strings of his guitar, you feel he’s straining hard to figure out his own way. It’s improvisation by force of nature. The whispers he exhales are quiet and heavily restrained. In fact, each single note he strums is discreet and has a singular purpose attached. Make no mistake, this is mood music. If there were a reference point to be found, it would be Loren Connors, though Higuchi is even more restrained in his delivery. The only time he tends to get away from his atmospheric sedation is during Guitar #3, when he lets some electricity out of the bag. Otherwise, this is as slow and purposefully sad as it gets. Wonderful landscapes are crafted from thin air and everything happens as if by magic. 
 
Rarely do you hear someone with this much unspoken power in their instrument as you do on this disc. Intimate playing with an abundant degree of reserve, this is guitar music for those with an aversion to the guitar.
 
Tom Sekowski