The Squid's Ear
Writing about improvised, contemporary, experimental and unusual music,
following the activities of Squidco...
  •  •  •     Join Our Mailing List!

The Squid's Ear
Facebook: Squidco Sales



Heard In

Reviews of artist releases:
cd's, books, magazines, &c.


  The Lou Grassi Po Band with Marshall Allen 
  Live at the Knitting Factory, Volume 1
  (Porter Records) 


  
   review by Florence Wetzel
  2011-05-23
The Lou Grassi Po Band with Marshall Allen: Live at the Knitting Factory, Volume 1 (Porter Records)

Although drummer Lou Grassi has worked with some of the most prominent avant-garde musicians of our time, you could just as easily find him on a park bandstand playing Dixieland. He’s one of those musicians who flows seamlessly through the many faces of jazz, and as his website says, “He has literally played from Ragtime to No-Time.” To date Grassi has appeared on over sixty recordings, and this new release represents another shining facet of his multidimensional career.

Recorded in 2000 at New York City’s legendary Knitting Factory, Grassi is joined by his long-running Po Band. The personnel of the Po Band shifts on occasion, but it always includes the crème de la crème of avant-garde jazz: this time it’s trumpeter Paul Smoker, trombonist Steve Swell, clarinetist Perry Robinson, and the late great bassist Wilber Morris. The band is joined on this occasion by saxophonist and flautist Marshall Allen, who sprinkles some Arkestra stardust atop an already powerful group.

The CD consists of three songs, two clocking in at 23 minutes, and another at 13 minutes. This is avant-garde jazz at its improvisational best, with plenty of time for the songs to bloom and the individual musicians to unfold. Each song starts gently, with the musicians exploring the silence, offering up blurts and tweets and bits of melody. This slow simmering eventually starts to cook, building to a roiling boiling feast of sound. If you like your jazz wild and raucous and free, this is the CD for you — and if your neighbors aren’t home, turn this one up LOUD.

It’s a delight to experience the energy that exists between the musicians on this session, to witness the way they inspire and cajole one another. Together they create lines of thought and sound, explore them, expand them, and then smash them to bits — or perhaps just drop them into silence. And although one of the songs features a melody line by Paul Smoker, for the most part this music is something they all created from thin air, just like that.

The painter Mark Rothko once said, “I do not believe that there was ever a question about being abstract or being representational. It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing and stretching one’s arms again.” This is exactly what music can do: hold out a hand and invite the listener into a community of sound. So sit back and enjoy this CD, which holds out a hand from the dark, quirkily cornered Knitting Factory, deep in the heart of pre-9/11 downtown Manhattan, on a late September evening not so long ago.





Comments and Feedback:



The Squid's Ear presents
reviews about releases
sold at Squidco.com
written by
independent writers.

Squidco

Recent Selections @ Squidco:


Kim Jae Jung:
Shamanism
(Relative Pitch)



Joe McPhee/
Susanna Gartmayer/
John Edwards/
Maria Portugal:
Monster
(Klanggalerie)



Signe Emmeluth/
Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten/
Axel Filip:
Hyperboreal Trio
(Relative Pitch)



John Butcher/
John Edwards:
This Is
Not Speculation
(Listen! Foundation (
Fundacja Sluchaj!))



Izumi Kimura/
Lina Andonovska/
Dominique Pifarely:
Seven Dreams
(Listen! Foundation (
Fundacja Sluchaj!))



Jerome Deupree/
Sylvie Courvoisier/
Lester St. Louis/
Joe Morris:
Canyon
[2 CDs]
(Listen! Foundation (
Fundacja Sluchaj!))



Marc Baron/
Eric La Casa:
Contrefacons
(Swarming)



Francisco Lopez:
Untitled (
2021-2022)
[2 CDs]
(Bu Lang Tribute Cake)



Eventless Plot |
Haarvol:
The Subliminal Paths
[CASSETTE + DOWNLOAD]
(Innovo Editions)



Akmee:
Sacrum Profanum
(Nakama Records)



Karl Evangelista Quintet
feat. Bobby Bradford and
William Roper:
Solace Angles
(Asian Improv)



Sveio:
Latent Imprints
(577 Records)



The Sleep Of Reason
Produces Monsters (
Rasmussen/
Mitelli/
Rezaei/
Koenig):
The Sleep Of Reason
Produces Monsters
(Corbett vs. Dempsey)



Dan Brown/
Dan Reynolds:
Live At
The Grange Hall
[unauthorized][CASSETTE]
(Sacred Realism)



Matt Mitchell:
Sacrosanctity
(Obliquity)



Das B (
Mazen Kerbaj/
Mike Majkowski/
Magda Mayas/
Tony Buck):
Love
(thanatosis produktion/
Corbett Vs Dempsey)



Das B (
Mazen Kerbaj/
Mike Majkowski/
Magda Mayas/
Tony Buck):
Love
[VINYL]
(thanatosis produktion/
Corbett Vs Dempsey)



Mary Halvorson Septet:
Illusionary Sea
[2 LPS]
(Firehouse 12 Records)



Darius Jones:
Legend of e'Boi (
The Hypervigilant Eye)
[VINYL + DOWNLOAD]
(Aum Fidelity)



Irene Schweizer/
Rudiger Carl/
Johnny Dyani/
Han Bennink:
Irenes Hot Four
(Intakt)







Squidco
Click here to
advertise with
The Squid's Ear






The Squid's Ear pays its writers.
Interested in becoming a reviewer?




The Squid's Ear is the companion magazine to the online music shop Squidco !


  Copyright © Squidco. All rights reserved. Trademarks. (14443)